So for those that don't know, it's quite common for a visa renewal to be required to leave the country. Depending on the visa, you might have to do this every year.
So just imagine, having a normal job in the US and you're asked to leave to renew your visa and this stuff happens.
That's no more appointment, not even a new date and you're now very likely unable to work and possibly can't even enter the country to get your belongings if you were to leave.
Just 'putting a pause' on people with existing appointments with no answer for when they might resume is.... Inhumane
Not trying to make a political point at all and perhaps a controversial take. But, it’s specifically and maybe implicitly by design. Meaning they made this way precisely so you have to reapply so they can change their mind or block you out later. Nothing about getting a visa is permanent and you’re fully at risk when you move here with that type of status. If you evaluate the situation that’s always been the case.
The leaving part is not the issue, as you try to immigrate into a country you're subject to the rules that country sets. You're always free to not immigrate into that country (this is not about asylum).
The issue here is that, if you just left the country to do everything the country asked you, you are now in limbo.
For how long? No one can tell.
Does this mean you lose your job? Maybe.
And when you decide it's no longer worth it, you might even have issues getting back in to get your stuff...
Retraining your people CAN be done without it being so disruptive, they chose not to.
> The issue here is that, if you just left the country to do everything the country asked you, you are now in limbo.
I feel like I’ve said it a few times but - Yes, exactly. The country wants you to leave and then get’s to decide if you can come back. That’s how it’s designed. On purpose.
You’re approaching it from a perspective where you’re being asked to leave and your reentry is a right. It’s not. They never said, if you leave you can come back. They said, leave and we’ll see. The risk of being blocked out is inherent by anyone residing in a country that has this similar process; there are many.
> I feel like I’ve said it a few times but - Yes, exactly. The country wants you to leave and then get’s to decide if you can come back. That’s how it’s designed. On purpose.
That is how it's designed, and that's fine.
But make a decision... They're pausing the decision making for an indefinite amount of time. That's not how it was designed, but it sure does look like that's on purpose.
Pause is a silly way of saying No for now. You can try again later. But they’re not advising when that may be happening. To me, that tells you everything you need to know. That they don’t know themselves because it’s to be determined, maybe. Until then, no.
Can they? Because one of the questions on these questionnaires is almost always 'have you had a prior request being denied'.
> But they’re not advising when that may be happening. To me, that tells you everything you need to know.
These are life altering decisions for people that might have put decades into doing their best for the US. This is not about what to have for dinner.
This causes a LOT of uncertainty and chaos for no real reason. If they're so convinced it should all be denied, then issue those denials so they can be challenged.
I don't think you understand anything about an immigration process.
All these cases are meticulously documented. So not making a decision is not at all the same as a 'no'.
A 'no' you can challenge, a pause not so much. They probably cannot and don't want to actually deny all those applications as they'll be in hot water really quick. So this is just the childish, not wanting to really own it, way of trying to achieve the same result.
Look around the thread and notice how little the comments defending these policies have to say about the policies themselves. Instead, what they all have in common is a vague underlying fear of being displaced, or sense that something owed to them is being taken.
The program has always "threatened" to displace citizens. That's not new and if that were the only reason motivating people then why wait till now to complain? Frankly I don't care if I'm fairly displaced. That's meritocracy at work.
The reality is the program has been abused and stretched far beyond its intent by corporations in pursuit of cheap (I’d argue slave) labor. You cannot, with a straight face, argue that the spirit of the program is being upheld. Come on. People are upset because they are realizing that they haven't been playing fair--the game's been rigged this whole time. I think that's a very understandable and normal human emotion all things considered.
Fraud is illegal. And when people enrich themselves fraudulently it does tend to feel like something has been taken by someone not entitled to it, yes. That works for both the corporations fraudulently hiring H1B and the fraudulent credentialing rings being operated to supply the labor.
It is sad that good people and valid visa holders are swept up in this. Aim your ire at the fraudsters, not the people trying to enforce the law and fix the problem.
Are you calling for open border with no controls? That's the only way to get meritocracy.
The system is set up so the casino wins. You cannot, with a straight face, argue the odds are in your favor, but there are rules about how the casino works, both formal and informal.
When a casino only investigates cases where someone wins $1 million on the slots, to see if there's a fault in the system, while never investigating all the times that people lose, that's technically within the legal system, but the spirit of gambling is not being upheld, and people get upset. Just ask Katerina Bookman.
The immigration system, with the thumb firmly in favor of the interests of capital, is still based on the expectation of good faith by those running the system, as doing otherwise results in orders of magnitude more rules, or an alternate set of unspoken rules based more on vibes.
"Pausing" is a bad faith breaking of the spirit of the system.
I think what he's saying is if a corporation has a genuine need of some high specialist in a skill, and no American has that skill - then okay, such is life - bring in a foreign worker. But corporations have abused the system to unnecessarily employ immigrant labor in lieu of American, because immigrant workers not only tend to earn well below market wages (which is supposed to be illegal), but also tend to be far more easily coerced and loyal because their visa is dependent upon them staying with their employer.
I didn’t follow your casino allegory. Anyway I happen to agree that “pausing” is inhumane. What I’m trying to communicate is we didn’t get here in a vacuum. There is a real problem and good faith attempts have been made to curtail it by putting pressure via “taxes” on the “interests of capital” abusing H1B. Cooperation would have prevented this.
Like most internet meme phrases, this is both trite and inaccurate. The cruelty is not the point. This administration has decided foreigners are the scapegoat, and wants to get rid of as many as they can. It’s heartless, but cruelty is not the objective.
Normally I’d agree. For this admin the cruelty does actually look intentional as a deterrent. Making it intentionally turbulent to discourage people from trying in the first place.
I mean, anyone who is still defending this administration isn't even trying to have a conversation in good faith.
I have a Republican friend who appreciates the Supreme Court Justices, and then suddenly has zero clue about any news story involving the administration, and shrugs off the war. This despite meticulously following Benghazi hearings when it was someone he wanted to dislike. He would rather Trump be Romney, but he's not going to do anything about it whatsoever.
I blame myself for teasing my Italian friend in college over Silvio Berlusconi, and now I've found myself in the same position :(
I have good friends on an H1B. I've got plenty of amazing coworkers and teammates on it as well. At the same time, the program has been wildly abused. We don't need to go into the details I'll assume if you are trying to have a conversation in good faith here then you are well aware that companies abuse the H1B program to import literal indentured servants (to the point of there being covert rings that traffic H1B workers with fake credentials into the country) that ultimately aren't serving even the most remote interests of working class America and really just allowing companies to lower costs while increasing profits so boomers can get rich. We can have nice things until people abuse the system en masse. This isn't a new failure mode.
So what do we do? I don't want good people disrupted. But I also morally disagree with everything the abuse of the H1B program represents. What's the solution? It doesn't seem that crazy to me that "tax the companies so they can't undercut local labor so easily" is a reasonable first pass. But we know how that went.
I can't help but think if instead of shouting across the isle there were some amount of bipartisan accountability and shared understanding on the topic then the previous attempts by this administration to curtail the problem would have been more effective and we wouldn't be at a point where people have to take the gloves off.
Suppose a homeless guy knocks on your door and asks if he can stay in your living room. If you say no, or ask for more information, would it be fair for the homeless guy to say "the cruelty is the point"?
To equate immigrants who have followed due process to a homeless person insisting on staying in a property owner's living room is appalling.
It's understandable for everyone to have varying views on immigration and immigrants, but this sort of rhetoric is a vile, racist and xenophobic dog whistle.
An immigrant who has followed due process is equivalent to a homeless person who has convinced the property owner to willingly let the homeless person stay in the property owner's living room. The property owner is allowed to change their mind about the arrangement at any point, unless and until the person obtains part ownership of the property (citizenship).
"due process" means in concordance with the law. And the law is drafted and implemented by our elected politicians. As a sovereign country, we're allowed to change our laws and our policies.
The homeless person thought experiment is meant to illustrate the existence of tradeoffs. "The cruelty is the point" is essentially rhetoric meant to demonize political opponents, and sweep under the rug the existence of tradeoffs and differences of opinion.
If immigration is such a good idea, people ought to be able to defend it on the merits, instead of pearl-clutching and playing dishonest rhetorical games.
I'm not exactly sure what is so racist or xenophobic about my thought experiment. Homeless people are people too. I'm tempted to pearl-clutch just like you, and accuse you of denying their humanity. Want me to do it?
It is sufficiently incoherent as to suggest you aren't interested in the serious discussion you are requesting in response. You could better refute this by starting with a policy you would consider cruel, and the in turn demonstrating how this one doesn't fit it.
Historically i've tended to agree that "the cruelty is the point" was too dismissive for the policies in question. But with immigration policy of this admin, I'm not sure that's the case. For a while they were deporting people to the equivalent of a Gulag, and literally suggested that if people were afraid of that outcome they should self deport. I think that would be a pretty fair example of a policy where the cruelty was the literal point: The hope was it would be viewed with sufficient fear as to dissuade people from staying in the country illegally. However seriously you think immigration should be taken, and however many people you feel should be deported, there are policy choices that do not involve that level of cruelty that could be chosen instead. That they are intentionally not is what the term "The cruelty is the point" is meant to imply.
>You could better refute this by starting with a policy you would consider cruel, and the in turn demonstrating how this one doesn't fit it.
I actually don't think it is that common for policy to be cruel just for the sake of being cruel ("the cruelty is the point")
>For a while they were deporting people to the equivalent of a Gulag, and literally suggested that if people were afraid of that outcome they should self deport. I think that would be a pretty fair example of a policy where the cruelty was the literal point: The hope was it would be viewed with sufficient fear as to dissuade people from staying in the country illegally.
The point of law enforcement is to deter and prevent lawbreaking, not be cruel for its own sake. Suppose you observe that meals in prison aren't very tasty. Would you criticize this policy on the grounds that "the cruelty is the point"?
You can argue that the punishment is too harsh, but that still doesn't prove that cruelty was the point.
It’s not “cruelty” to have and enforce rules. The words “temporary” and “nonimmigrant” is plastered all over the laws that govern these visas. People shouldn’t have treated them as permanent immigration visas. And employers shouldn’t have mislead employees into thinking these were permanent immigration visas.
It’s like saying that it’s “cruelty” to remove someone who uses a 2 hour parking spot as their permanent car parking.
Rules are well and good, but norms are important too.
An immigration system governs people making major life choices, and companies making large investments.
Legally, there's very little the state can't do, there could be a bill passed tomorrow revoking all immigrant visas. But businesses, and by proxy the nation, benefit from work done by these workers.
Sudden unilateral moves like this are stupid on a social level (cause damage to businesses and communities), and on a moral level. "First do no harm" is a principle just as suited to government as medicine. Even if there is a broad consensus for reducing or eliminating H1B visas, why punish people who followed the system as it exists and contributed? It's perfectly possible to pass a bill, stop handing out new visas, and sunset renewals after some 1-2 year timeframe.
It's legal to invite a bunch of guests over and kick them all out after you open the wine, but you're going to lose friends. And ultimately it will be businesses and individuals paying the cost for these needlessly volatile course changes. Tourism and high skilled immigration rates will face lasting harm.
> Rules are well and good, but norms are important too
Not when the norm is open defiance of the rules for decades.
> An immigration system governs people making major life choices, and companies making large investments.
And it also governs the right of people to decide who they want to invite into their country and, ultimately, with whom they want to share democratic governance of their home. Those are important stakes, not to be minimized. But you neglected to mention them.
> It’s like saying that it’s “cruelty” to remove someone who uses a 2 hour parking spot as their permanent car parking.
That's a very weak analogy for the moral issue here.
The consequences are radically different; losing a parking space is a minor inconvenience; losing immigration status can/does involve relocation and upends employment, family, property, and years of life planning / general stability.
No, people are following the rules and politely asking for a renewal in a different country.
The issue here is that they're not being denied, the government is basically refusing to make a decision for an indefinite amount of time.
I'm assuming most normal cases will get their visas eventually, the question is when. In the meantime the applicant can pay rent in the US, find some place to live abroad and maybe continue working from overseas? All so the state department can retrain a few people?
The moral issue is defined by the nature of the rule, not the stakes for someone who has transgressed. Enforcing the rule doesn’t become less legitimate just because someone has invested more in breaking it.
> Enforcing the rule doesn’t become less legitimate just because someone has invested more in breaking it.
Nobody broke any rules here. These are the people folowwing the rules for the legal immigration system.
You just want to break the law as it stands today and not have an immigration system at all. That's a view you can hold and just as valid as any other. Just stop talking about people breaking rules, that's not what this is about, this has nothing to do with illegal immigration.
Why is that how the moral issue is defined? Seems to me the moral issue is the stakes, and I have no idea why I would cede that judgement to you. What's your basis for claiming moral authority? If you don't, please show your homework: what strange anticonsequentialism underlies your claims, and why should I agree with it?
Consequentialism in general is a third-world mindset. But in this particular context it leads to the absurd result that someone who breaks the rules more egregiously is rewarded for doing so.
In first world countries, we focus on rules over consequences. If you build a dwelling on my property, the rule doesn't reward you for making a house rather than a tent. The moral analysis is based on the nature of the rule, not the consequences to those who break the rule.
Then you don't see why stealing $10 is a misdemeanor and stealing $1000 is a felony (depending on jurisdiction, but whatever you get the point). Not saying you should see why, just that many clearly do for it to be public policy.
But it makes me wonder: do you think the $10 theft should be punished more heavily (minimum 1 year in prison), or the $1000 theft punished more lightly (maximum 1 year in prison)?
Do you think the moral issue is the same if someone fails to hold a door for you, or if they shoot you? It’s rude either way, right?
I don’t have words for it, but the US has been infected with some kind of hybrid reductionism / nihilism where people think that vicious bad behavior can be enjoyed and justified, even righteously glorified, if a disingenuous analogy can somehow be crafted to something banal and comparatively harmless.
Nobody actually believes it, but it’s become a game of sorts. I don’t like it.
Are we reading different articles? The headline says immigrant visas. The first paragraph says immigrant visas.
“The Trump administration has paused processing of immigrant visas, which allow recipients to move permanently to the U.S., to train visa officers on new guidance ensuring that applicants have enough financial means to support themselves after they arrive.”
American immigration laws are designed to have a small stream of permanent immigration, both to protect american jobs and to protect american culture from foreign influence. That’s what people voted for over decades. The New York Times did a good podcast on the issue. https://youtu.be/xgDdTV7A57w. If you want to define “xenophobic” to encompass that then that’s your choice. I don't think that's a sensible or useful definition. The concept of "xenophobia" only applies to individuals. It's wrong to assume that somebody will be a certain way because of their nationality. That obviously doesn't translate to immigration, which involves the mass movement of people who do have a distinct culture in the aggregate, and do transplant their culture into the U.S.: https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran...
I know a lot of people that support these cruel and chaotic changes to our immigration laws and they are mostly xenophobic - they don’t like people speaking languages other than English at the store, they don’t like religions different than their own, they don’t like family traditions different than their own.
Xenophobia is about assuming that people are different because of their national origin. It's not "xenophobia" if there are actual differences, especially if there are actual changes to someone's society. Treating all cultural differences as equally desirable is cultural relativism. Not everyone who rejects cultural relativism is xenophobic. You're allowed to prefer your own culture and to live in a society that reflects your culture. The countries that most immigrants come from treat that principle as axiomatic.
You’ve successfully mangled the definition of xenophobia.
“A strong aversion, antipathy, or fear of foreigners.” Simple as.
It wouldn’t be wrong if you admitted that you want some degree of xenophobia. But I suppose that sounds even less convincing than your preferred abuse of terminology.
> “A strong aversion, antipathy, or fear of foreigners.”
Yes, it's antipathy to foreigners in and of themselves. It's antipathy based on the mere fact that someone is a foreigner by stereotyping them based on nationality. Antipathy based on actual cultural differences.
This might seem like an academic point but the support of all xenophobic people for these changes doesn't imply that some non-xenophobes don't support these changes (or ones in the same spirit) as well. I don't know what the relative numbers are, but the support of a negative group for a cause doesn't invalidate the cause.
US immigration can be very slow and bureaucratic (even pre-Trump). I hesitate to say but generally, it's not as arbitrary as people think. If things are clearly above board, it works out.
The US still is a destination in very high-demand. There are a huge number of qualified and unqualified people, who would come here in a heartbeat (and it goes without saying, there are a huge number of people who have no interest in moving here).There are clearly agents like the H-1B body shops who have exploited the system. Similarly, masters programs were launched effectively to trade full tuition for an opportunity to enter the US labor market (e.g. all the masters in financial math programs). This doesn't mean we don't get amazing people on H-1Bs or in masters programs but these pathways have been exploited.
Many people desire a sane immigration policy and experience. One that allows promising candidates into the country. The exact definition of a "promising candidate" was outsourced to universities and companies sponsoring these visas. A lot of people have lost trust in those institutions. I don't know what a good solution is but the rise of these policies is a symptom that the current system is not working.
> This might seem like an academic point but the support of all xenophobic people for these changes doesn't imply that some non-xenophobes don't support these changes (or ones in the same spirit) as well.
Americans aren't "xenophobic." I just got back from two weeks in rural Texas and everyone was super nice to me. Nobody was "afraid" that I'm a foreigner. They just don't want me to bring my entire extended family over and in numbers that changes the culture of their home. And people in my dad's village in Bangladesh would hate if some other group did the same thing to them.
Let he who hasn't cheated on his first wife to get with his second wife to cheat on his second wife to get with his 'genius visa' third wife cast the first stone! Seriously, people, everyone does it!
I was recently in Malaysia on a digital nomad visa. When it expired I was required to leave the country and either wait for the renewal to go through or reenter on a tourist visa (and either not work or work illegally). So not distinctively American.
It's definitely not. I know Japan and Korea had a similar process when I was living there, and I was under the impression that most places operate this way. Your visa grants you right to temporarily stay in the country, and if you don't have a visa you have no right to be there. Sometimes there's a bridging visa to cover the gap, but a country isn't under any obligation to provide one.
I've renewed my visa in Japan a bunch of times, including changing work category or visa status, and never had to leave the country for it. It's not standard for working or student visas, though you would have to leave if you were switching from a tourist visa to a different category.
But my point is it’s a known factor up front, and it’s so they can (have the option of) getting you to leave without allowing you back in. The thinking is that if people had visas that expires or revoked, they just wouldn’t leave and enforcement would be difficult (we have a forceful ICE now, but not always). Having them leave first is by design even if unique.
All 29 countries in the Schengen Zone require exit to renew tourist visas
Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria, and most EU nations generally require non-EU citizens to return to their home country to change visa types.
The pause is for immigrant visas so most visas like H1 or H2 or O visas aren't affect this time. But it's definitely part of the US admin's overall theme of ratcheting up visa restrictions and making any immigration or travel to the US extremely difficult.
Immigrant visas cannot be renewed - if you use such a visa to enter the country then you become a lawful permanent resident and are not eligible for any visas until you abandon your permanent residency, and even then you will need to apply for a brand new visa.
Visa renewals are processed at a US consulate. You can extend your status (ie you ability to legally be in the US) while staying in the US, but if you want to renew your visa (your ability to leave and re-enter) you need to visit a consulate and those only exist outside of the US.
I was questioning the renewals every six months and asking about US visas which are granted for 6 months (i.e. expire after 6 months). I am aware of renewals requiring leaving the country.
I think the whole point of making someone leave is the possibility that they may not be allowed back in. If staying was a foregone conclusion then there’d be no point in leaving.
I can’t think of any other rationale. What, only border officers are able to process a visa renewal? Please. We can have offices inside the country handle this stuff, just like offices handle Trusted Traveler applications and Social Security card issuances.
The point is surely to get another chance to grill the immigrant and potentially bar them entry. Other countries don’t always do this: Canada for example has inland changes of status and I believe renewals.
For many visas, people are expected to maintain a home that they intend to return to in their country of origin. Forcing people to leave every once in a while makes this more likely (at least in theory.)
See the recent events and pushback on immigration enforcement, to answer this, with whole cities (with their judicial system and police) refusing to participate, and governors condemning enforcement.
The visa holder is forced to expend nominal financial resources and time in their home country (where they agreed they would return to.) Most people can't afford to maintain a facade of residency or two actual residences (and those who can aren't the intended targets of this type of restriction.)
Not sure if things have changed recently, but up until at least 2019 (last time I had to do it iirc) you definitely had to do a "flagpole" (drive through the border and immediately turn back) to change your status in Canada.
Canada effectively requires leaving and re-entering. It can take multiple months for an online visa to get processed, meanwhile leaving and reentering takes hours.
there were other dumb factors pushing people to do border runs, like your paperwork says "expired" but your status still being valid while being processed.
Except you had zero paperwork to show to an employer and they had no way to verify themselves. Even if an employer understood the process and accepted some proof that you submitted an application, they would have no idea if you were rejected and became out-of-status.
"Must leave to renew" certain visas has been policy for decades - through at least the Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations.
Most visas are for temporary guests: obtaining a visa doesn't normally give someone the right to permanently reside, and most don't permit their holders to work.
You are talking about change (or extension) of status, not visa.
US is unique in that the visa sticker and your right to remain in the country (status) are two different things. The only purpose of the visa sticker is to allow you to travel to a U.S. port of entry, where you apply for admission, and therefore legal status. You can have legal status in the U.S. while the visa sticker has expired, and your status can be changed or extended domestically. However unless you have a valid sticker you cannot leave and return.
Australia too - however, to get a renewal all you need is an online connection and a credit card, the renewal (at least for me!) goes through automatically. (Notwithstanding that Australia just increased the PR-renewal cost from ~400-500 to ~1400-1500 AUD)
Based on my experience 20 years ago you could only renew the H-1B visa in the passport in-country under extraordinary circumstances. In the majority of cases they reject your request and would tell you to travel to a consulate.
Prior to the mid 00s you could renew at any consulate but they changed it so you could only renew in your home country.
The pause on visa appointments does not apply to H1-B and L1 as they are nonimmigrant visas. It applies to family based immigration visa, diversity visa, and EB-1/2/3 when you do processing abroad.
(You might have known that, but I thought it's worth clarifying).
> So just imagine, having a normal job in the US and you're asked to leave to renew your visa and this stuff happens.
The only way I can see this happening is if you try to convert from OTP to an H1. I used to do some runs up to Vancouver to help a friend do that.
This just generally sucks for anyone making plans in their life. I remember my wife's greencard interview in Guangzhou, and it would have sucked if they instituted this the day before she did that.
I think there are a lot of inhumane things happening around the world right now to label this inconvenient, at best. We need better leadership through higher voter participation and an informed electorate to stop these inhumane and inconvenient policies.
I think it is helpful to remind folk that these policies are not universally hated. Indeed a majority of voters voted specifically for them, and they were explicitly laid out.
This is democracy in action. The majority (of those who care enough at all) get to rule over the minority (and the apathetic). Obviously not all actions will be universally loved, but no govt action can ever be universally loved.
But will remain anonymous and are okay with the collateral damage. My suspicion is that competition makes you feel insecure. I was born and raised in SF, and I see this not only with immigrants but also from people who feel violated by migrants. There is a spectrum. It’s ugly, short sighted and unhelpful. It’s what it takes to make the valley, but people love pulling up ladders. At least, behind an alias, you’re will to acknowledge your shortcomings.
I've had a couple of reports that this applied to. It's incredibly disruptive. "I've got to fly back to India to renew my visa." "Okay, when will you be back?" "I have no idea, it depends when I can get an appointment. It could be next week, it might be in a month." "[State department] We're pausing all visa appointments." "Well fuck."
Meanwhile I've got a tech lead who is 12 hours away from the rest of the team. He was at least willing to work US-East hours while in India (basically staying up all night and sleeping during the day), but there was a huge amount of management overhead and inconvenience for the employee involved.
I've worked at companies where we transfer people to Canada during periods like this in the same time zone. Sometimes they enjoy it so much they don't want to transfer back to the US.
At least the procedure used to be that one would try to get an appointment at the US consulate in one's home country and then arrange the trip around it. Also, at least in my experience (but importantly, not with this administration) was that one was never required to leave the US.
The main constraint is re-entry into the US and being able to travel outside the US. If one stayed here, there was no problem switching schools, programs, jobs, adjusting status to permanent residency or naturalization. On the other hand, for re-entry, one needs a valid visa stamped on a passport which necessitated a trip to one's home country. This stamping visit could be unpredictable.
Ideally, one would like to travel freely to see family and friends but I see a lot of comments implying that one is forced to leave. It might be true now but a lot of comments here are conflating several issues together.
The first time it happened (2023) it was a non-issue; he did exactly as you said, appointment happened as planned, and then he was back on his scheduled plane trip a week later.
Everything post-2025 has been a shit-show. There's no predictability or clear guidance, either from our lawyers or from the state department.
Predictability matters a lot in business. If you know what the procedure is and how long it will take, you can plan around it. If the rules change in the middle of the game you're left scrambling to keep up.
Predictability flew out the window with the last election. I simply do not understand how any business leaders supported this, but I suppose the ability to bribe their way out of chaos was appealing.
It's beneficial for the largest firms, the ones that can forge personal relationships with the administration, because it's detrimental to all other businesses. Competitive advantage and all that.
Honestly, this is kind of the point. Making foreign labor so unbearably difficult to work with will force companies to hire domestically. At least, hire more domestic workers than they would have otherwise.
Hundreds of thousands of tech workers have been laid off in the last two years. There are many skilled Americans on the job market. Foreign workers are here for the benefit of the United States, not as charity to the rest of the world, or as a source of cheaper labor for global employers seeking to undercut American wages.
It's clear you are not a hiring manager. There aren't thousands of highly qualified engineers looking for work. I can't tell if this a troll post or not.
It's clear you are not considering the long-term effects of labor policy. If we want a stronger domestic workforce, the answer is to incentivize Americans to develop the skills we need and to train them when they do not already have those skills. Mass importing foreign labor is not a substitute for building and investing in the domestic workforce.
Btw, this is analogous to the argument for positive discrimination:
Preferentially treat one group of people (non-white/women/Americans) even if in the short term the revealed preference of businesses is to hire a different group of people (white/men/immigrants), such that, in the long term, the first group of people can develop the necessary skills to compete with the second group.
The arguments can be the same but have entirely different hidden variables that make it fine to use the argument in one context and not the other.
Also, this ignores that the government works for citizens, no matter their race. Promoting racial equality among citizens is a function that the government might undertake. Pursuing policies that favor citizens over non-citizens falls in line with that same reasoning.
No it's really not the same because we have laws against racial discrimination, but it is the entire purpose of the state to represent the interests of its citizens above all others.
You can’t get them to apply. They are already very well paid. It’s a finite pool that is not large enough. Bidding up pay won’t change that. Instead you just hire overseas.
I’m very pro immigration, but “Americans are lazy and stupid , thus unfit for hiring” isn’t a winning argument.
Tons of Americans are out of work. I’ve personally seen my wages drop by at least 20$ an hour as well as the work being less stable.
Gasp, you might need to train someone a bit or have employees that will say no if you ask them to work on Christmas.
If I ran the H1B program it would be an unrestricted work permit with an automatic pathway to a GC after 5 years. Don’t get *convicted* of a felony and here you go.
Fortunately such ridiculous hypotheticals have no correspondence to reality. Most every job can be easily trained or cross trained. Mathematicians make good physicists. Nor is there some foreign pipeline of a million physicists. Such ridiculous argument exist only to perpetuate the lie of a skills shortage and deny the wage shortage.
They may make good physicists, but not great physicists. Similar to saying I know how to drive a car, now let me win the inde 500. Things take to for specialization, even with the advent of guessing and checking machines (llms).
A shocking number of innovations in x field are because y person brought an idea that maps from z field. Cross functional teams are important and mathematicians can and absolutely do make top level contributions to physics.
One of the math problems recently publicized as having being solved by was actually just discovering that a German mathematician had published a solution in the 1950s.
Hiring is such a shit show, there's no reason to assume the people doing the hiring know what they're doing. Like HR has to insert them selves into the process
> Foreign workers are here for the benefit of the United States
But that's the point, isn't it? Some foreign workers who "worked the US for the benefit of the US" are now unable to come back to the US. Isn't that bad for the US too?
And what do you do about the people who only want to work in jobs that they're not qualified for, and who have unrealistic expectations about pay, benefits, work demands, etc.?
Is every natural-born American entitled to a job that pays what they want, for the hours they want, in the location they want, regardless of their qualifications for the job?
But isn't that how market supposed to work? Company offers to pay x for the job, can't find anyone for x, so it raises salary to x+y.
I would understand logic of bringing people from other countries when there is a shortage of workers but with current market it doesn't seem to be the case.
But America is a capitalist system. The market has determined that not all Americans deserve jobs. Are Americans willing to work a 996 schedule for 2.00/hr to compete with labor overseas?
Most capitalist countries have 100% employment for their citizens and little to no immigration? No. "Every citizen who can work having a job" is not something capitalist countries do. They all take ample advantage of foreign labor, they all have corporations that prioritize their own profits and outsource.
> Most capitalist countries have 100% employment for their citizens and little to no immigration
You must have responded to the wrong post as it has nothing to do with my statement.
That statement is that there is nothing about capitalism that prevents a country from prioritizing its own citizens. That is a perfectly normal and rational thing to do.
Additionally, the exact percentages of unemployement rates also has little to do with capitalism, nor does the uncommonness of fully achieving a lofty but possibly valuable goal also has nothing to do with what capitalism is, nor does it say very much about how valuable that goal is or the value in attempting to aspirationally achieve it.
>You must have responded to the wrong post as it has nothing to do with my statement.
OK. You can't handle context, noted.
>That statement is that there is nothing about capitalism that prevents a country from prioritizing its own citizens.
The free market is what prevents it. The purpose of capitalism is the creation of capital and its transfer to the capitalist class, and the purpose of corporations is to maximize profits to facilitate that process as quickly and efficiently as possible. Neither capitalism as a system nor corporations have an obligation to improve quality of life for their employees beyond their market value, or to "prioritize" the social welfare over profit, or to hire more people than they need.
It's simple supply and demand and there isn't a demand for American labor.
>Additionally, the exact percentages of unemployement rates also has little to do with capitalism
which is weird because you're arguing that capitalist companies need to prioritize "citizen" labor in order to reduce unemployment, or that governments need to force them to.
Do you propose to restrict the international flow of capital too while you're at it? Until every spare US dollar is invested in the US? or you just want to restrict the market for the 99% of people whose biggest asset is their labor.
Thats the amazing part of a diverse society, there is a variety of opinions and world views that you can come across that that might even be completely outside your current understanding. As by being curious and trying to understand something surprising you might just gain a new and deeper understanding of the world.
Most folks don’t want their minds opened to new and surprising views and opinions. They want a good job in the town they grew up in so they can take care of their family and raise their kids in the culture they were raised in.
Globalism has ruined that entirely, and there’s no amount of implying these people are closed minded or incurious that will make them change their mind on this issue.
This administration is clearly on a war against immigration of all sorts but... we need to be accurate here.
This is specifically a pause on immigrant visas. That is, green cards. So this is for family-based green cards and investor green cards through consular processing (ie when out of the country).
As yet, work visas and other nonimmigrant visas are unaffected.
Notably, this is exceptionally common in every country I’ve ever lived in that had such Visa’s. Including them being used as political footballs (including for India, Brazil, Germany, etc).
Does it suck? Yes. Is this unexpected? Not really, no.
In the mid 2000s, I had to leave the US for renewal while leaving all my hard assets behind. I had a plan in place in case I couldn't go back to the country, which did happen to some people. These people had their interviews, but they got held back outside the US, sometimes for months, waiting for the renewal process to finish. I had an immediate renewal, but was almost held back for some red tape reasons.
The scale is new. Obviously a nightmare or even a tragedy for individual people that it happens at all. But this happening to (tens of?) thousands of people all at once is a whole different thing.
At least for F1 and H-1B visas, one wasn't required to get a new visa physically stamped (for which one would have to leave) to switch schools (undergrad -> grad) or jobs. Is this forced now? Of course, if one wanted the freedom to be able to travel or visit one's home country, a new stamping was required if the old visa expired.
It's not ideal but a lot of us basically didn't leave for several years (even pre-Trump 1) to avoid the hassle of a new stamping.
Agreed. I live in Midwest and that's the same sentiment I am getting from the people. People voted to oppose illegal migration, not stopping legal migration. This November will be judgment day for this administration's policies.
The term "illegal immigration" got moved to "people who have proper papers and did everything legally but were granted access by someone I don't like" - anyone who was an informed voter could see that "against illegal immigration" was just red meat for the base.
This report is for immigrant visas. H-1B visas are not immigrant visas and are the ones that require the stamp renewal in the home country.
That being said, yes, the way the current administration handles immigrant visas, worker visas, and more is absolutely inhumane and completely asinine. I've been through it with family and friends, and it is painful and can be heartbreaking even.
By default we'll have a change of president in 2-3 years. Like Karl Popper said, the primary strength of democracy is the ability to remove bad leaders with minimal violence.
Hang on a tick: does that mean we may have been the baddies all along?
I say this as someone who just sent their daughter to NYC explaining how we used to try to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to poor immigrants who just assumed this was a land of kind people, WTF? Could we not take a decade off from being prissy about our democracy *and* total cocks about how we actually act?
everything this administration does daily is from one of three boxes
[CHAOS] [CORRUPTION] [CRUELTY]
this is a little from the first box and the last box
imagine what's tomorrow or next week
meanwhile let's all enjoy the billion spent on making statues gold plated in DC and the ballroom and the arch and his drapes and his reflecting pool and 100 foot banners of his face on federal building and his face on gold coins, passports, park passes and the $250 bill
In Canada you never have to leave to renew or change status; it's just sometimes faster to do so. It's always the applicant's choice. I went through the whole work permit to PR to citizenship pipeline without ever having to leave the country.
I'm not sure if its the same in Canada but when I went through the process for Australia it depended on where you started the process. I started the process while outside the country so to activate my visa I had to leave and come back but if I had filed while in the country I could have stayed.
I do remember Canada telling my partner she wouldn't be guaranteed reentry while they were processing her PR visa until it was finalised if we left the country though so we just ended up doing the Australian half first and I never went back.
I had a study permit at first. I renewed my permit, got a work permit, renewed my foreign passport and extended my work permit, got PR and got citizenship, getting visas to match my work and study permits, over a period of 10 years, without ever having to leave Canada. So my experience is that in Canada you never have to leave but in the US you do.
My classmates who had gone to the US for PhD programs, even those who were fortunate enough to get multiple entry visas, had visas that allowed re-entry for only the first two years of the PhD program. After that, if they wanted to leave the US, say for a conference or to visit family, they would have had to apply for a visa from abroad and hope to be granted one. In Canada, I could apply for the visa and get it while in Canada. Even comparing like with like, the American system seems bizarre to me, looking at it from a Canadian lens.
I don't think the practice of the change is significant. Reddit has numerous stories of people who are still receiving it, so whatever that release says, things haven't changed. People seem to be receiving AoS based Green Cards the same way I did under the Biden Administration. It does seem to be a bit more uncertain which is always troubling.
Really? My spouse and I lived in Canada on work permits and were not required to leave in order to achieve PR status; nor to achieve citizenship status.
Prior to Covid, my wife had
to exit the country to get photos taken as part of the permanent resident process. We took a trip to Montana for
that purpose.
This seems to have changed in the past 3-4 years, but as the GP said, the original process did involve leaving.
Inhumane is every choice made by this country under this regime. The "bothsides" and "no politics" crowds are equally as complicit in this as Trump voters.
Surely you would admit that this Administration’s approach to immigration has been both chaotic and cruel. The workers who were given status in the United States expected a predictable process, not one that changes weekly based on the unserious personal whims of a bored, ill-informed and vindictive man. In any case, the prioritization of citizens’ wellbeing writ large is demonstrably _not_ a feature of this Administration’s agenda.
The entire point of a temporary visa is that the host country can refuse to renew and force you to leave the country at their whim. When you apply for such a visa you accept those terms.
How, in any way does this help the wellbeing of a citizen? Why bring up that very strange point, which is completely unconnected to the massive harm here.
If anything, these policies harm the citizens of the US in a myriad of ways. There's zero benefit to be had from any of this. Except for the joy tha tthe cruel feel in causing others misery, but that's not citizens, that's just a few sick people.
"Updated guidance and training were being put in place to ensure that visa applicants don’t become a public charge under U.S. law or depend on government benefits intended for Americans in need, a spokesman for the department said Wednesday."
They can’t vote in most elections (except a few local elections in some places) and aren’t guaranteed entry at the border. They also can’t work a litany of jobs requiring citizenship.
They get a plenty bad enough shake. Let’s grant them the absolute basics of humane treatment and a fair shake at getting citizenship, sheesh.
Other countries get by just fine not having such a huge delta between haves and have nots on citizenship, and their social cohesion is better for it.
Oh, spare me. What an unserious statement. The entire point of an I-9 is to discriminate on citizenship, which is the document that HR pesters you on for your first few days at any new job anyway.
I have a better idea. Let them make their countries worth living in. If they don't like it in America they can leave. Because unlike Americans, we don't have another home country to retreat to.
Most countries have MUCH higher standards for immigration and their citizens much better off for it.
> Most countries have MUCH higher standards for immigration and their citizens much better off for it.
I think your math is off. The US is in the top 10 for GDP per capita, 99% literacy rate when the global average is 87%, the poverty rate is below average, the list goes on. Most countries in the world aren’t even considered developed nations. Immigration has been America’s core growth engine for two and a half centuries. There may be problems but you are deluding yourself if you think the whole economy hasn’t benefited from immigration. Even when that immigration was through chattel slavery.
It’s a symbiotic relationship. The reason the US is so prosperous is due to immigration, mostly during the 20th century. The US cannot run off of just the existing citizens. Well, it can, for a while, but not indefinitely.
I am aware of the concept of children, thank you. Not sure why we have to argue like we have a stick up our asses, but here we are.
As you're well aware, the US is just barely meeting replacement birth rate. Most developed countries are under it. And the big picture: the US is all about growth. Economic growth, cultural growth. If you want more of that, you need immigrants. Sorry, that's how the US has always worked. If you don't agree with it, then I'm not sure the US is the country for you.
There are plenty of developed, homogeneous countries. Diversity is what makes the US the US. Please, feel free to seek a country that better aligns with your beliefs.
The founders were, themselves, immigrants. From multiple different countries.
Of course racism existed when the founding father's were alive, we had slavery. But, from the beginning, the US has been a country founded on immigration and racial diversity. Yes, we did not, at the time, consider black Americans Americans. But we certainly do now, and have for a very long time.
I'm also not convinced immigration lowers wages. People throw this around, while providing no evidence. And, even if it did, I think it's obvious that wages is not the cause behind birth rate decline.
All the developed countries, with the high wages and standard of living, have poor birthrate. All the developing countries, with low wages and low standard of living, have high birthrates. Hmm.
If we look at the demographic progression of nations the "culprit" behind birthrate is development. Particularly, social development, the liberation of women. Turns out lots of women don't actually want to have children, and when we stop pressuring them socially, they don't. They work instead.
Obviously this is a hard problem to solve. If you want to solve birthrate, you need to de-develop your nation. Not good. Or, some other solution, which nobody has found yet. Or, you just have immigration, which we do and have had.
George Washington was the 4th generation of his family in america. He and his community has deep roots in america and did not consider themselves immigrants. The American nation existed before the revolution and was a precondition for such.
Only supply a demand economic denialists cannot understand than an increase in the supply of something leads to falling prices.
> Other countries get by just fine not having such a huge delta between haves and have nots on citizenship, and their social cohesion is better for it.
Outside of the USA and a few other countries, there is no social cohesion at all shared between natives and immigrants/foreigners, just different levels of animosity. Even between different native ethnicities and groups.
What responsibility does a non-citizen shirk? They must follow lows, pay taxes, etc. Even for things like social security.
I sometimes wonder where these concepts come from, because it sounds like somebody tricked you into thinking that non-citizens are somehow taking things from everybody else, rather than contributing just the same as everyone.
National defense, and (more vaguely) a responsibility to keep the host country in good shape as there's no other country they can run back to if things go bad in the host country.
The mere suggestion that this admin is doing this or anything else for the wellbeing of its citizens is a complete departure from reality.
It's very clear what the motivations are, and just because they don't seem harmful in isolation doesn't mean it's going to have no consequences for everyone else.
And its going so great for our citizens wellbeing. Oodles of programs for the needy smashed to bits. Corruption and self dealing out the wazoo. Protestors shot to death by ICE agents. A legendarily stupid war fucking up international shipping. Illegal tariffs changing daily.
My company has a H-1B guy that travelled home to India a few months ago and since then can't come back because the next date he can get with the US embassy is next year. Seems he may get stuck even longer...
I am to some degree on board with keeping a closer eye on immigration, but the way the current administration does it feels intentionally cruel. The guy at my company has a house, wife, and kids in the US; his visa is perfectly legal, so it seems it would make sense to process these people quickly. But instead, he is now in some limbo. Same for ICE. Clamping down on illegal immigration makes sense, but it doesn't make sense for ICE to behave like some unaccountable secret police that hires the biggest assholes they can find who can then do whatever they want.
I'm an American that lives abroad. I have first-hand experience how other countries treat 'immigrants'. H1B is a temporary non-immigrant visa.
I could never imagine myself buying a home in a country where I don't have permanent access to that real estate. I am not opposed to voting to prevent non-PRs from owning real estate in order to keep housing prices lower for residents and prevent non-immigrants from shooting themselves in the foot.
As I live abroad in temporary status, I keep one foot back home (USA) and am extremely mindful of the risks of needing to close up shop and move.
If you want an economic perspective, consider reading Warren Buffet's "America’s growing trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us" article [0].
I think one of the fundamental problem with h1b is that it is labeled as "non-immigrant" whereas for all practical purposes it is really an immigrant visa. Why would a person who is supposedly having rare skills come to a country and spend their best years here without reasonable guarantee of permanency? People buy homes because it is a reasonable belief that they are going to be living here permanently and it has historically been true.
In any case I don't see the point you are making. Should America be treating immigrants poorly because whichever country you're in makes you slightly uncomfortable to buy a home there? It's not an excuse for all this pain and cruelty. America should hold itself to higher standards.
There are arguments from the other side too. Many H1B folks do keep one foot back in the country they are from. But then a lot of backlash on specifically Indian folks for sending most of their salary back home. They know that this is transient state, many of them have rented housing, but still these visas are not like weekly visas, they are for 3 years, people would build somewhat of a life in that time and uprooting them instantly is inhumane indeed.
I don't have opinions about them sending their salary back home. Obviously its better for the USA if the money stayed in the USA, but "earning money in one locality and spending it another" is really really really situation, even in the USA.
American Police officers are famous for not actually living in the cities they work in.
In each country I have lived in, I was a guest. With that knowledge, I carefully designed my life so uprooting would not be a painful inhumane process.
If you throw a party and a guest refuses to leave, you wouldn't declare forcing them to leave your home in-humane.
> If you throw a party and a guest refuses to leave
Show me where the govt has actually revoked their visa? Instead, because they cannot cancel the visa legally they are trying to create as much pain as possible for these visa holders hoping that some will give up and leave.
Who's angry about how people are spending their already-taxed income? Is that really a thing? Is it sincere or just racism masked as "think of the economy"? (Honest question, Not American. Don't live there, news to me).
The big beautiful bill included a 1% foreign remittance tax for outbound international transfers funded using physical cash, money orders, and cashier's checks.
When I was in the US as a student (F1 Visa) that is why I decided to go back home instead of trying to optain an H1B. It was just too risky for too long. I did not want to live a life where I had to expect to leave the next day. Besides, it was right at the beginning when Trump won the first time.
(a) The WSJ article is talking about "immigrant visas" a.k.a. green cards, not H1-Bs.
(b) Even if we are talking about H1-Bs, it takes someone in India 10-15 years of waiting in line to get a green card. If someone were to buy a house in the interim, it doesn't seem so irrational to me.
Its easy to blame the victim and say they should have known.
(a) I responded to OP's comment about H1-Bs, not the article itself. Even then, presumably, they paused processing new visa and the people that have already obtained them may continue to stay. If they fail to renew GC during this time, I agree that is a dark issue.
(b) If I enter China on a temporary work permit visa, with a 15 year plan to obtain Chinese citizenship, no one will have sympathy for me if that plan is interrupted by legal, political, economic changes. Since I full well knew my current status and the risks of failing to obtain Chinese citizenship.
Just because there is a possibility in the distant future for permanence, doesn't mean you can safely backdate it to today.
An H-1B is a temporary non-immigrant visa. You're not supposed to rely on it to build a life in the US with no backup plan; that was never the intent of the law. However, successive administrations ignored the intent of the law, for so long that people began to rely on assurances that the law never promised. Now that the law is getting applied properly, those people are facing the consequences. It sucks for them, but continuing to not have rule of law would suck worse for all of us
It is always possible to make rules stricter for the new applicants. While there was some complaints with visa price hikes, they were for new visas so it was okay. Denying existing legal visa holders entry or time to wrap things up doesn't seem bad to you? These are not criminals per say.
brother H-1Bs are transparently vectors for foreign educated workers to come to the US to build lives and eventually get a green card, so the US doesn't have to actually build a functional education system.
no one talented will come pay taxes and make your nice tech companies carry the S&P500 and in turn, everyone's retirement funds, if you treat them like hogs
So you agree with the person you're responding to, but you're attacking them for stating it with less melodrama than you would prefer? What a useless comment.
Having the only appointment be a year or more out isn’t new. Anyone I knew wouldn’t take the risk of leaving the US if they didn’t have an appointment secured.
This was never about talent. It's about companies hiring foreigners on h1b visas at below market wages where their life in the USA is contingent on their job performance forcing them to work harder and longer than their peers to remain in the country. It's a situation that only benefits companies, while harming US citizens who have to compete with the lower wages of foreigners.
I work in a global company. As an interviewer, I don't even know if the person I interview is a US citizen. I don't even know if they live in the US or another country, and I'm probably not allowed to ask. I just rate their performance. And everybody is paid the same.
I think the situation is quite simple. Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better.
If tomorrow you were to tell (let say) Google they now need to hire only US citizens, would they lower their hiring bar, or would they expand their Shanghai or Zurich offices? Are US citizens entitled to work at Google more than others for the sole reason they have a particular citizenship?
> Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better.
Yes, at the lowest wages they can get. Increase supply -> lower prices (wages) -> more corporate profits!
However, there are those who believe that corporate profits are not the highest good. Some of us also care about the earnings of American workers.
Also, "best candidates" alone does not "best company" make. You need people who can work well together—which requires some degree of culture fit. Immigration restrictions help preserve the cultural homogeneity that makes collaboration and social trust possible.
Why? All big and even medium tech companies have dev offices in EU and India. As example since it's much easier to deal with visas say in Ireland a lot of hiring was shifted to Irish offices.
1/ Employment provides training and experience. If the h1bs are given access to the jobs (training and experience), then is it the American's fault that they are no longer considered "best"?
2/ h1b increases labor supply, not the demand. More supply, means lower wages for everyone.
1/ Training is only effective if you can fill the function of the job and learn from it. Many software engineering jobs people claim are stolen by H1B hires are filled by human beings more likely to meet the bar. Many American candidates just don’t. Filling a software role is hard.
2/ Demand for software is not static. Good software drives demand for more engineers in many cases, intra or extra-company. There is probably a non zero rate of wage suppression per marginal h1b currently. But an American economy with no h1b employees could feasibly have a much lower average sde salary. It is not an Econ 101 problem.
1/ Training goes all the way down the pipeline to colleges. If x% of students are foreign, then Americans didn't have the opportunity to get the education.
Again... the skill issue falls apart when you consider teams at tech companies having 1 non-American national origin or caste. I'm very skeptical that, between two foreign candidates with the same U.S. education and experience but different national origins, the fact that the candidate whose nationality matches the current team composition is selected can be explained purely as a matter of skill.
2/ Great, lets train up more American engineers to push the demand higher.
People are not as capable as you think they are and software engineering (well) is actually difficult. You cannot just push more people in. People are not fungible.
There is truth to your statement, but high salaries and demand encourage locally capable people to enter the industry.
Consider growth of CS graduates in the past 5 years or the number of people that transitioned into tech (like myself).
In 2026, this signal is not as clear: with the uncertainty of tech, increased output with less labor due to AI, and growing competition amongst workers (citizen or otherwise). We may see a shift in studies to other fields.
> I just rate their performance. And everybody is paid the same.
For some visa classes, the law says you should hire an American citizen if they can do the job - not if they rank first at whiteboards or fizz-buzz.
> If tomorrow you were to tell (let say) Google they now need to hire only US citizens, would they lower their hiring bar
Does it really matter? To a point, obviously, but a lot of people are good enough for the role without being the world's best. The bar for getting into Google has dropped since its early days, and Google keeps breaking profit records quarter after quarter.
This entire "hire the best or nothing" mindset has led to a dysfunctional hiring process that's a pain to both employers and employees, and is prima facie unachievable.
> not if they rank first at whiteboards or fizz-buzz.
As an interviewer, I don't rank candidates. I have my set of questions, some candidates solve them, others don't. You can argue that it's the bar to do your job properly. Should politicians tell big tech companies what's the bar for being a successful SWE?
> When it comes to national interest, the argument for "meritocracy" falls apart quickly.
A lot of US tech exists because of skilled foreign workers. I'm not sure what would be the tech industry without them.
Someone in your org does - an individual or committee: that's the entire purpose of the hiring pipeline. I've interviewed candidates at multiple companies small and (extremely) big, and interviews always have to give recommendations for ranking purposes (out of 10/100, or (strong-/)yes / maybe / (strong-/)no)
I am not attacking you personally, but the fact remains: in some circumstances hiring "the best" - when they happen to be a non-citizen - can be in contravention with the law depending on the visa class and whether you failed to find an American capable of doing the job.
Don't just take my word for it, big tech companies have lost or settled multiple AG suits because they tried to hide job postings from Americans, e.g. by posting SWE/PM jobs in some podunk, print-only Farmers-Weekly-type magazines.
> A lot of US tech exists because of skilled foreign workers.
I fully agree. Unfortunately being skilled doesn't grant them the right to vote, and as young people keep finding out, those who write (and sign) laws care a lot about what actual voters think and feel. You have to get into office first before you can do the hard labor-policy stuff.
Being paid the same as the other guy doesn't necessarily mean the wages themselves stayed the same. Adding H1B candidates to the talent pool exerts downward pressure on salary due to the law of supply and demand. I can't say for sure whether the allure of a green card or threat of deportation play a material factor in lowering the average salary that H1B immigrants are willing to accept. But in an environment where talent is treated as fungible (even if it isn't always so), any such downward pressure affects everyone.
That's the parent's argument. Prevailing wage in country A is X. Prevailing wage in country B is Y, and according to your numbers X > 2Y. Person from country B emigrates to country A and accepts wage 1.9Y, putting downward pressure on the jobs in country A at wage X.
You don't need the carrot of a green card or the stick of deportation to make a software engineer on an H1B accept a depressed wage, because it's not depressed relative to their alternatives.
The idea is that the "same wage" you are talking about is too low to hire enough employees in the time needed that the company needed so they had to look abroad for people willing to work for that amount.
Actually they get normal wages now. H1B’s get hired because H1B’s are now in hiring, recruiting, HR, etc.. they stack the candidate pool with their own shamelessly. I’ve seen it first hand.
H-1B / L-1 are non-immigrant visas, immigrant visas are green cards yes. Pausing green card processing in consulates after (on sketchy legal grounds) forcing folks to not do adjustment of status for getting an immigrant visa inside the country is, indeed, how the admin is trying to get around doing their job the way the INA intends them to.
That only means you won't be denied if you express immigration intent during interview. Besides that it's nothing special. There is no special path to GC/naturalization for H1Bs.
If you mean the memo earlier this year, it was about tourist visas and similar doing aos in country when they are not dual intent visas, which makes it iffy.
They explicitly said that for h1b and l1 aos wouldn’t be affected as they are dual intent visas.
They are doing that now too, however the problem is that h1b is used for roles outside of tech, believe it or not, and if you measure everything by Bay Area tech salaries a bunch of necessary but lower paying jobs will go unfilled
These visa policies have already encouraged large tech companies etc to expand their Indian offices. It erodes the US tax base and means talent stay in their home country, which means more innovation happens outside the US. More start-ups are been founded in these countries because more talent is now there.
Trump first term was make Mexico and Vietnam Great Again as companies moved their manufacturing there.
This term its make India Great Again as companies retain and train their tech talent there.
Who cares where this so called innovation happens? Won't it be cheaper for all of us if the salaries are in much lower cost of living places? Why would a US citizen give a shit?
I've never worked at a company that gave offshore teams the same responsibilities as onshore employees. When shit gets real, and someone's head needs to be on the chopping block, it's always a same-shore employee. But reduced responsibility also means reduced impact. Let's see if that changes, and I'd love to see it happen, but I'm not holding my breath.
Welcome to how immigration works in other countries. Canada just changed a bunch of rules and is actively sending immigration officers to immigrant protests to run status checks and deport anyone in the country illegally.
There is no right for non-citizens to come to the US.
I used to think things like this as an American. But let's simplify. What if they're just fucking idiots and they realized they could rally a bunch of other fucking idiots to the polls?
So if you were essentially having a spasm about how no one understands how perfect the world was when you had all the advantages, I mean, we don't need a fancy theory at that point. It's literally old people spewing up acid about why their kids don't come to Thanksgiving, only we managed to create such a presence in the world media, it's a damned disaster.
> the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents
The U.S. had a draconian restrictive immigration policy from 1921-1965. That worked fine. How can you say with a straight face that someone must be a “foreign agent” to think doing the same thing again will have the same result? Surely the burden is on you to prove the opposite, right?
>And the U.S. has been doing even better since 1965.
Better for whom? People are struggling to afford groceries largely because the dollar is worth 1/165th of its 1913 value and the minimum wage hasn't been raised in 17 years.
I found a job that pays in BTC and I'm super hopeful about that one because my effective salary won't go down by 3-8% every year but instead will appreciate relative to what things are priced in.
White people are a global minority at ~7%. "Minorities™" have their own countries where they are majorities. If they don't want to be Minorities™, they can stay home.
Personally, I'm fine with non-white people. But the idea of moving to a country where people like me are in a minority, then complaining: "Woe is me, I'm a minority, I demand special treatment", is objectionable. This isn't the type of immigrant I want.
No more than they like white people. The only race in any study you can find shows that every racial group prefers themselves the most, other races less, and whites the least. Except white people. Who've been conditioned to get rid of their in-group bias. If HN supported images, I could show you the charts.
I looked at that data and decided deliberately, out of rational self interest to be just like them and put my own race first exactly like they do. Equality!
> The only race in any study you can find shows that every racial group prefers themselves the most, other races less, and whites the least.
Hard to parse .. ESL ?
That aside, what made up assertive nonsense is this? There are many stories and studies about various non Caucasian groups WhiteMaxxing to make themselves look more Caucasian because <reasons>.
We were able to make progress on those fronts in the 1960s because we had a culturally homogenized population after decades of immigration restriction.
In the area of women’s rights, for example, the driving force was mainline protestants who wanted prohibition, in opposition to recent immigrants: https://www.wpbstv.org/prohibition-and-the-suffrage-movement.... If America had remained an Anglo-Protestant society, it likely would have developed on a similar trajectory as Canada, the UK, and Australia on issues like abortion. Remember, Roe v. Wade had five Nixon and Eisenhower Republicans in the majority. The party shifted positions on the issue with Reagan because it was a way to flip a large number of catholics, who had overwhelmingly voted democrat until then. Evangelical protestants plus religious Catholics was a big enough coalition to offset mainline protestants on the issue.
That doesn't follow. I'm pretty sure they're talking about the effect of nominal wage stickiness: you're not constantly renegotiating your rate, so when there's fluctuations in relative value, it matters what unit the original number is denominated in. Compare with the case of a US expat being paid a steady salary in USD and converting to the local currency to make purchases, if you want an example with a similar mechanic but very different intuitive feel and practicalities.
(I'm not sure they're right about the overall effect though.)
You basically nailed it. USD crashed in the 1970s after the Nixon shock, and is basically a shambling corpse losing 3-8% of its value every single year while BTC is 600x the value of a 1913 dollar... and trending up: https://i.imgur.com/PJT01T8.png
Even if they don't give me a raise, I'll still have more purchasing power at the end of a year rather than less as the case with USD.
The U.S. was at the apex of its power during those years. Those years are also why we remember earlier immigration waves as “working.” The foreign born population dropped from 15% to under 5% during that period. The Italian and Irish enclaves disappeared and so did the separate ethnic identity of those groups (to a large degree).
“I’m okay with racial prison camps if it makes us powerful” is the exact sort of moral bankruptcy to be expected from the people who defend this administration.
We should modularize our discussion to distinguish between the various effects of immigration and the most humane/optimal way to enforce immigration law.
That’s a common misconception. The U.S. actually became the world’s largest industrial power before World War I. Germany had 60% of the US’s GDP per capita in 1910. It dipped during the war itself, but by 1960 it was closer to 70%. https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/us-gdp-per-cap....
It contradicts the conclusion he’s drawing from those two facts, which is that U.S. economic dominance results from European economies having been destroyed after WWII. The U.S. became a world power during its isolationist phase prior to WWI.
I think the last 20 years of that 45 year period were substantially due to exactly what they described.
If you give any debit for the decade-long Great Depression, or wartime malaise due to loss of life, emotional toll, and rationing, it’s fair to conclude that half of the period of good times was during exactly that post-war rebuilding (largely powered by US industrial capacity) and concomitant baby boom.
Would you have preferred that the US military stay at home during WW2 to avoid bombing anyone? You know that Japan was killing something like a Hiroshima and Nagasaki worth of civilians every month?
I would have preferred the banks be told not to expect a bailout in 1914. Privatize the profits, socialize the losses. It's been a problem for a long time and the body count stretches into the millions.
Mmmmhmmm. Ah yes 1921, the year both the Klu Klux Klan (and European Fascism) metastasized in society. All immigration controls come from a rather interesting, dark place; shifting of the Overton Window, and all that.
It did matter. It was restrictive in actual effect, in that it blocked immigration from the places it was mainly coming from, and dropped the foreign born population under 5% by 1970.
How can you with a straight face equate “fine for 1921-1965” with “best for 2026”?
Even odder: what makes you find it plausible that an understanding of the policies of this period and their effect on the economy were part of the decision-making process of this administration - especially when they have actively voiced opinions that fully explain this action? At some point bending backwards to provide some benefit of the doubt is saying more about the speaker than the topic - I am certainly of the opinion that we are well beyond that rubicon. I cannot fathom the reasoning at this point.
> How can you with a straight face equate “fine for 1921-1965” with “best for 2026”
It’s strong evidence that immigration restriction isn’t economically destructive. If you think economic circumstances have changed and the result would be different this time, then I think you have the burden to prove it.
I wonder if this has to do with the current economy and job market. Anecdotally I have found it very tough to find a new job (software engineering), though my previous employer continues to post job listings for green card applications as part of the required labor market test.
You're correct. I spoke a little too loosely, there are many different kinds of visas, but something like 95% of all work visas issued each year fall into the category of non-immigrant.
I'll concede that this statistic is cold comfort if you fall into that 5% category, but the point is that work visa almost always means non-immigrant.
I'd say it's on the Trump administration being full of racists and white nationalists and wanting to deport immigrants.
Why do you wonder if it's economic instead of the Trump administration's announced policies of stopping immigration, including unconstitutionally removing birthright citizenship?
Conflating not wanting to compete with foreigners for jobs in your own country with racism is bad faith bullshit. Foreigners of the exact same race are equally unwanted competition.
Even taking you at your word, immigrants also create far more jobs. The economy is not some zero sum thing, with some fixed amount of jobs and fixed amount of work and fixed amount of wealth to be split.
Every economic analysis I have ever seen shows that there's economic surplus from immigrants entering a local economy; more jobs and more wealth is created, per person, than if those people had not come. In particular I'm thinking of some studies of local economy in Miami when there have been bursts of immigration.
>In particular I'm thinking of some studies of local economy in Miami when there have been bursts of immigration.
That was study about Cuban immigrants into Miami, a city with large Cuban population and thus existing infrastructure to absorb. I wouldn't draw that study into anything broader.
As someone in Local Politics, the issue generally is, immigration, esp of unskilled kind decimates local budgets since they are generally directly tied to number of people. Here is CBO report on it. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61464
Now, type of immigration that mostly impacts this study is not type of immigration that is impacted by visa application processing halting but acting like "Yea, this current system is working GREAT!" is false. This is what so annoying about this issue, it's in clear need of change but Congress refuses to do it and Trump doesn't have leadership to get it done.
No it's a negative sum thing. Especially when they come in at such insane rates as they did under Biden. Notice you car insurance rates going up? Housing costs skyrocketing? Hospital waits taking forever? That's the cost of mass immigration. And that's not even accounting for the millions of illegal immigrants.
>Every economic analysis
Since there apparently so many, surely you wouldn't mind citing a handful.
Its only racism when you then go and invite white south africans in. And make statements like "Why cant we have more people come in from countries like Norway"
They say it out loud. The people writing these policies are vocally proud of being white nationalists. Defending them with "well maybe they have a good reason!" is evidence that you're either on board with their actual agenda (i.e., evil) or incomprehensibly naive (i.e., stupid).
Birthright citizenship is so weird, because when I think of my son’s birthright, I imagine things he’s entitled to because he’s my son. He’ll inherit from my estate, he’ll enjoy my love and encouragement and support, etc. The location of the hospital where he was born doesn’t really have anything to do with it, but now I have an entirely new fear about foreign countries claiming my child if my wife happens to give birth early while on a vacation. Like, I want to go to Israel, but don’t they have compulsory military service? I wouldn’t want the baby to accidentally become an Israeli citizen and forced to serve for some foreign army. Same with China. I’d love to see the country, but they’ve had some weird and draconian laws like the one child policy. For all I know they take some children to be raised by the state. Whatever their laws are… I don’t think they should apply to my children.
This is rather weird framing since usually an additional citizenship (especially one in a country like the US) is considered a valuable thing to have for your child. Usually people claiming birthright citizenship are weird are doing it because they also see it as valuable. It’s also woven into the traditions of New World countries.
Regarding your concerns, I don’t see why it is unreasonable to simply renounce citizenship later or just simply double check your travel itinerary during the late stages of a pregnancy. This seems like at best an unfounded concern.
I agree that you can "just renounce" although notice that this won't necessarily work (it will for the US assuming you follow the procedure properly)
However being a dual citizen isn't necessarily all upside. Citizenship comes with requirements, particularly in some countries military service is mandatory and so if you're a citizen - even though you are a permanent resident of somewhere else, you must either go do your service or maybe pay a fine depending on the country.
You also get treated differently if things go wrong. Foreigners are entitled in most cases to diplomatic assistance from the representatives of their country. Your country can't necessarily do much for you, but typically you will get that phone call home to let loved ones know what happened, they can find a lawyer who speaks your language (but you'll need to find a way to pay them), if there's some paperwork snafu they might be able to help (often for a fee). It's at least nice, if you're jailed or in hospital after surprise food poisoning or whatever, to hear somebody who speaks your language.
None of this applies to dual citizens. You're "home" from their point of view, so no need to contact your diplomatic representative, maybe you have never been there since the day you were born and can't speak a word of the language but too bad.
> You also get treated differently if things go wrong.
Not treated differently. Treated the same.
You are required by law to enter your country of citizenship using that country's passport (this is true for every country). Not doing so can result in fines or jail time. This is precisely to stop idiots from playing the "foreigner" card to try to, for example get out of paying a speeding ticket or parking fines.
you have a kid like billions of other people in the world, nothing special tbh besides it is "your" kid
you just want a subscription pass to a country, and i think people like that are useless freeloader people who want none of the stakes and all of the benefits
cool you can code and get hired by some company, or maybe you start a company. so what?
I think many (if not most) countries in the developed world should reduce immigration, and usa in particular should abolish birthright citizenship.
The first because a lower supply of labor is going to create breathing space for an entire working population who will see tremendous job upheaval due to AI automation. A lower aggregate demand on houses, services will also be welcome to take the fuel out of inflation, and maybe we'll regain some of that experience of true affluence, where scarce things (e.g. access to cabin in the woods, a rowhome in a walkable city, ...) are in abundance. There is also the import of an idle, criminal element that has very clearly reduced quality of life and safety in many places.
Birthright citizen should be abolished because birth tourism and illegally crossing the border to have anchor babies are a vector for foreigners to participate politically and claim imho undeserved welfare benefits.
I think largely these are the stated reasons of the administration too.
Birthright citizenship is a constitutional right in the US same as freedom of speech, religion, the press, and the right to sue the government.
The change would require 2/3 of all states to approve a constitutional amendment. It won't ever pass. Most of us are only citizens because someone up the chain was born under this rule.
My family came here in the early 1700s and fought in the revolution. It would be a disgrace for me to do anything other than support immigrants.
Serious question - would your ancestors from the 1700s agree that you should support the immigrants you are supporting? Or have you been taught that your ancestors were wrong and evil and that you should honor them by doing the opposite of what they believed?
The administration has never justified immigration policy on economic terms, only keeping out criminals.
If it were really part of a coherent anti-inflation, pro-housing strategy, then, well, a lot of other policies would be different... (Including signing the ROAD act, not starting trade wars, or driving up the price of oil)
FWIW the Road ACT became law anyway without his signature, but yeah if he wanted to demonstrate he cared about such things he would have signed it promptly and proudly.
I think birth tourism is an overblown fear, but I suppose their answer is that poor welfare sponges and rich-ish passport collectors are both threats, for different reasons.
How many, how expensive, and how much is this offset by others who come back and pay taxes?
I have seen a lot of freakouts about birth tourism since the recent SCOTUS ruling and I haven’t seen anyone give even the most cursory overview of the actual scale of the supposed problem. It’s purely an emotional reaction.
What kind of welfare? Do you have stats or stories? I'm skeptical someone wealthy would slum it for the peanuts they could get from welfare fraud.
Or if they do, surely there are ways wealthy "real Americans" could hide their money just as easily and defraud welfare, so this isn't really a problem specific to birth tourism.
They can do whatever you presume the rich birth tourist does, like deposit in foreign banks, not own US land, obfuscate land ownership through trusts or straw owners.
I don't get this argument. We skip over fixing the birthrate and instead rely on immigration. There's a whole bunch of reasons people give for why we can't fix it like costs, jobs, housing, etc. Ok, so then first wouldn't immigrants also have the same problem once they get here or do they have a way of bypassing our low birthrate somehow but then we were told we can't bypass it, it exists because of the costs, jobs. etc.
So the immigrants end up with the same birth rate and then we have to bring in more immigrants. So there would have to be a constant source of excess people somewhere else for this to be sustainable. So it gets to a point where I wonder if this is really the plan.
You're assuming the birthrate can be "fixed". Japan has an even worse demographic problem. They've tried "fixing" it and nothing much works. Similar for South Korea. Japan would certainly benefit from opening up to more immigration. Countries that can attract more immigration are going to benefit economically as the birthrates continue to decline globally. Why not be attractive to immigrants instead of wanting to repel them?
Or, crazy idea, we make life livable for the locals and then we incentivize them to have kids of their own? And before you say it, I'm an immigrant from the 3rd world myself. I'm not anti-immigratiom, but the birth rate talking point is a very poor one.
Not to mention how unsustainable it is anyways, what happens a few years down the line when the immigrants stop having kids? There isn't an infinite ocean of people you can import on a whim, and definitely not forever.
straight up lying and doomer boomer mentality, sad and gross.
very consistent correlations between migrants being net positive economic providers, more law abiding then native citizens, and just straight up regurgitating racist myths
mass deportations won’t solve anything economic when it’s the same admin hamstringing prices and rates with tariffs, war, and defacto support of the oligopoly
i really wish basement dwellers like you though of something original now and then
Attempts to find plausibly deniable rationales for this administration's anti-immigrant policies other than "gutter racism" are ridiculous.
Occam's razor. When somebody shows you who they are, believe them. Nativism is possibly the only stable and coherent political ideology this admin holds. Everything else is negotiable, but not this one.
Don't forget Nazism! (AKA, anyone who isn't left-wing.)
There's nothing inherently wrong with pausing immigration visas. These commenters act like anything less than fully open borders and unlimited immigration quotas makes you Satan reincarnate.
They intentionally over-dramatize everything he does to spread fear and alarmism cause that's all they can do. It's so tiring and nonsensical.
In a vacuum the immigration pause might be innocuous. But put into context the other actions and statements from this administration and it tells a deeper story.
Just think of it as the return of the 19th-century Know Nothings or the 1920s nativists if the Nazi comparison makes you squeamish.
This is a response to the supreme court ruling on birthright citizenship. They're using the levers they do have, since that was removed. Anyone who agrees with the ruling should really read justice Thomas' dissent.
it’s a cut and dry constitutional amendment, it doesn’t matter if Thomas thinks the people that were in mind when it was drafted are not the same people it applies to now. if they want to change it, go ahead and get the states to ratify a new amendment.
Supreme Court doesn’t get to throw out an amendment because it’s old.
No, it's not. This seems to be Stephen Miller's baby and the efforts to limit legal immigration (see my other comment) predate the birthright citizenship case and pretty much started day 1 of the administration. Birthright citizenship is really part of that.
This one doesn’t mention tourist visas, so I am guessing they will be issued? I don’t get what benefit they see by inconveniencing and potentially harming folks that are already in the country legally to just live their lives. I get that this administration’s goal is to completely shut down all immigration and potentially even remove folks here legally too but there will be a cost to bear for the country because of that. It will be slow to come and so they will be able to blame it on the next administration
That is reference to people who have applied for asylum after having come in on a tourist visa. Technically their status is legal, because they have a pending application. This is an attempt to make their status illegal, so they can be deported.
This is specifically for immigrant visas. USCIS distinguishes two broad categories of visas: immigrants and non-immigrants. Tourists are part of the latter group.
That's not accurate. H-1B is a non-immigrant visa. It's not intended for tourists.
From CBP's own website[1], emphasis is mine:
An immigrant visa (IV) is issued to a foreign national wishing to live permanently in the United States.
A nonimmigrant visa (NIV) is issued to a foreign national with permanent residence outside the United States but wishes to be in the United States on a temporary basis for tourism, medical treatment, *business, temporary work, or study*, as examples. Note: There are more than 20 different categories of nonimmigrant visa classifications.
Slanted take here, but this is exactly what they are doing with the federal government.
They like to complain that "big government inefficient and bad" while actively making it inefficient and bad. They are fulfilling their own prophecies.
Similar to immigration I'm sure. If all immigration is illegal then it's all bad!
By "they" it is that every single politician lies.
So of course that is the tiniest small print of every promise any politician makes, such that once it is a promise broken it is someone else's fault and not theirs.
Being anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration doesn't mean you want to flood the country with legal immigrants. That's the case in the UK, by the way, where the vast majority of immigrants are legal and it's the reason for the growing anti-immigrant attitude of the natives.
People who are anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration also have requirements like:
- there should be a fixed number of legal immigrants
- they should be well vetted (this may be lacking in the US and UK)
- legal immigration should be points based
- quotas for legal immigrants should be increased contingent
on the number of illegal immigrants which are expelled
- there should be checks to verify that visas are not abused (the way H1Bs are abused in the US with under qualified immigrants)
- asylum should be abolished because it's abused. It can be replaced by paying poorer countries to permanently host asylees.
It most certainly is hypocritical. You can not be simultaneously pro-legal immigration and support banning legal immigration. If you support banning legal immigration, you are by definition anti-legal immigration.
> Being anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration doesn't mean you want to flood the country with legal immigrants.
If only there were something between 0 and unrestricted immigration, some sort of program where people apply for permission and the government issues approvals for individuals to enter its borders after meeting legal criteria.
> You can not be simultaneously pro-legal immigration and support banning legal immigration.
Nobody is banning legal immigration. It's being restricted. The headline itself says "pauses". Do you think no legal immigrant will be let into the US until 2028?
> some sort of program where people apply for permission
Yes, and if that program is being abused (just ask people here on HN about H1Bs to see how they feel), then you pause it until you figure out how to solve it.
You're giving the current government the benefit of the doubt, which I never do.
In 2024, I didn't think we'd be murdering protesters in the streets or kidnapping heads of state or inciting global tariff wars paid for by US citizens or watching the president take billions of dollars of bribes using cryptocurrency.
Why do you think thos government is responding to something in a good faith attempt at improving a system?
What will be next in Trump's destruction of the American Economy?
So far he has driven away allies, put huge tariff on our most loyal allies. Driven away manufacturing by tariff policies. Driven away immigrants and academics. Pushed a last century oil based economy. Shown us how our exquisite weapon tech will fail (this might actually be good in the long run). Along with crippling our cybersecurity and state departments.
Not just immigration, seems like travel in general is becoming difficult too.
It's a real shame that just when we have the tech and infrastructure to allow people to travel anywhere in the world within a day, for a single person to be able to explore the entirety of this awesome planet for the first time in human history,
that the worst among us have to enforce artificial borders and deny everyone this basic freedom.
Travel should be codified as a human right.
If someone can support themselves and doesn't harm anybody, what ethical justification does anybody have for denying a person from living where they want?
People aren't simply interchangeable units of economic output, and when they live together for long periods of time they develop unique and distinct cultures that are dear to them. Letting the entirety of the world into your country without stops is cultural suicide. If you put any a value in preserving culture you will find it ethical to put some limit on immigration. Assimilation is possible but there is a limit to the rate and amount of foreigners a place can absorb before changing significantly.
The easiest way to see it is look at Japanese portrayals (outsider perspective). Cowboys, horses, guns, pride in our military and our free speech, fireworks and BBQs.
Just because you look down on the culture doesn't mean there isn't one.
Big cities are indistinguishable from other big cities in other countries. All big cities mostly have the same culture. That's why I liked the Japanese perspective on us. They saw cool things that they liked and included in their fiction that contained us.
The US is too large to have one monolithic culture but it certainly contains many subcultures on the regional level. I won't dispute they're on the decline though.
> Letting the entirety of the world into your country without stops is cultural suicide.
The natives of the Americas, Australia, and the many nations previously colonized by European countries, know that better than any descendants of the colonizers.
No one actually thinks this is hypocrisy. No one is giving up their houses to Native Americans. They do an land acknowledgement and call it even. Even the most liberal among us don't feel it's necessary to sacrifice any meaningful amount of their own comfort to right some past wrongs.
> to enforce artificial borders and deny everyone this basic freedom.
a very postnational view, humanist in a way, lipsius or erasmus would recognize it.
that sort of individuated cosmopolitanism only works for educated men and women with means, who have or have the capacity to self-actualize.
not for the masses. the nation is still a cradle to protect and nurture the commonwealth, and given that they took hundreds to sometimes thousands of years to form, i don't think borders are artificial in the least.
> and given that they took hundreds to sometimes thousands of years to form, i don't think borders are artificial in the least.
"Borders" as they are treated today began barely 200 years ago, and only started being enforced so strictly since WW1 and then even worse after WW2.
For the vast >95% of human history, if you could walk to somewhere and survive there, you could live there.
The real ironic shit is that most of the travel and immigration restrictions of today are instituted by the descendants of people that invaded and occupied the lands of other people :')
50% of all American unicorns were started by immigrants. This is sheer stupidity to prevent the best of what the world has to offer when they are knocking at your door.
The impact on academics and research has already been felt over the last decade. US used to be the default destination for academics and skilled workers from China ever since the cultural revolution. They engrained themselves in the country, studied/worked at top univerities, taught multiple generations of students, did key research, worked at top tech companies, and overall were major contributors to American technological superiority.
Then starting ~2016 Trump and his DoJ made it borderline impossible for Chinese nationals to get visas, specifically targeting research universities. Since then new Chinese skilled immigration has slowed down to a trickle, and there has been a massive "brain gain" of existing talent in China's favor.
The result - China now has a booming tech industry, Chinese universities have overlapped Amercian ones in research output, China is a very close 2nd in the AI race. And as skilled immigrants continue to be driven out of the US China in particular will enjoy the benefits.
You can't ignore the impact of China also becoming a better place to live as well. China is a different place no than it was 20 years ago, and the need to go overseas anywhere is probably felt less today than back then.
I think what voters want is for highly skilled founders to come and start companies and for normally skilled employment to go to Americans before foreigners.
No one just starts companies as soon as they land. It takes decades of hard work and building yourself before they are at a point where they can start companies.
The world's richest man is an illegal immigrant who started multiple companies.
(Musk started X.com while on a student visa and didn't get around to securing a work visa until many years later. This rule violation technically renders his U.S. citizenship void under Trump-era immigration rules.)
It’s unquestionably bad for the United States, but it will be good for the rest of the world. Time for US dominance to end, and Trump is doing a good job of that.
> The State Department has paused all immigrant visa applications while it briefs consular officials around the world on a new policy that aims to keep out people who are considered potential drains on public coffers.
From AP NEWS. Sooo Trump can get deported? Is anyone draining public coffers faster than him?
This is really frustrating. I'm (native-born US citizen) naviagting the visa process with my future wife. She has no intentions of working (enjoys being NEET) and there's zero risk of her becoming a public charge (our hh gross income is closer to 7 digits than it is to 5 digits), very frustrating that we're getting screwed by this under the justification of labor market competition and public charge risk.
The political leaders (not just Trump) and their backers clearly are thinking that AI and robotics will replace most of the work force, so why keep importing new ones.
The issue is American citizens will likely face similar but different developments. A future with almost no work in a country and political elite that detest social safety nets will lead to a societal breakdown.
I want to give some context to this because I know a lot about this system. You have to see it as part of the larger moves thi sadministration has made to restrict legal immigration.
The most important thing to note is this for immigrant visas ie green cards. As yet, nonimmigrant visas such as visitor, student and employment visas are unaffected. That may change. It's also unclear if K1 (fiance) visas are affected because they're technically nonimmigrant but they'll probably be treated as immigrant visas.
This has the most effect on family-based green cards. The most common type is a marriage-based green card but there are also green cards for parents, children and even siblings of primarily US citizens but also lawful permanent residents ("LPRs").
When a US citizen or LPR marries a non-resident and they wish to live in the US, you broadly have three routes to make this happen:
1. If they're within the US, you can do an adjustment of status ("AoS"). This is where you file an I130 and an I485. Generally you do this concurrently. If you're an LPR and not a citzen then you might not because you may need to wait for a visa to become available. There can be other reasons depending on the foreign spouse's immigration history, whether they're in removal proceedings and what other immigration benefits they've applied for;
The I130 is filed by the sponsor (ie the citizen or LPR) and it basically shows that you both are free to marry and the marriage is legal. If neither of you have been married before, this is relatively straightforward. It can be difficult otherwise but an I130 is generally considered routine;
The I485 is filed by the immigrant to adjust status. It can be based on an approved I130 or filed concurrently (within the US only). This is where USCIS will determine if they believe the marriage is bona fide, meaning there's no fraud taking place. This includes the submission of marriage evidence (eg joint bank accounts, bills in both of your names, a lease or deed in both of your names, photos, proof of the relationship and so on). USCIS makes a holistic determination based on the totality of your case and prior immigration history. For various reasons, you may have a bar on adjusting and may need a waiver;
2. If the foreign spouse is outside the US, you will generally need to do what's called consular processing. You file the I130 as per normal and once it's approved you apply with the consulate. Depending on the country it may take over a year to get an appointment and the embassy and/or USCIS may end up sitting on the case. This whole process can take years. If granted, you are granted a visa to enter the US. Upon entry, you get a green card; or
3. The so-called fiance visa (K1). In this case you are unamrried and the foreign fiance is outside the US. It's similar to consular processing. If granted, you get a visa stamp and can enter the US. You need to marry within 90 days of entry and then you apply for adjustment of status within the US.
So, what has this administration done to block legal immigration? A ton, actually:
1. They've placed various bans on the issuance of visas to citizens of certain countries. There are 3 such bans in place now and they're called the 19, 39 and 75 country bans. I honestly forget which is which. What happens in consular processing and fiance visa cases is that you go through all the above steps including a consular interview and then... nothing. The consulate is forbidden from issuing you a visa by executive order.
Although it's never been estated, the administration tends to take a broad view of citizenship. For example, if you were born in Afghanistan and your family moved to Canada when you were 1 month old and you've never been there in your life, this administration treats you as an Afghan for the purposes of the bar.
2. The administration implemented a rule whereby you have to consular process in the country of your birth regardless of where you live. There's really no reason for this rule other than to make it harder for people from "shithole" countries to get visas because certain countries have incredibly long wait times for consulate interviews. And if your country of birth has no consulate, they'll assign you to another one and that may not be convenient or even possible (ie you may not be able to enter that country);
3. The administration released a policy memo that stated that adjustment within the US was an "extraordinary" rememdy and that most cases should consular process. They like consular processing because AoS can be challenged in federal court whereas the Supreme Court has ruled that the president has broad powers to limit immigration so consular decisions generally can be reviewed by any court. So the various bans will likely stop issuance of visas to citizens of those countries outside of the US until, at a minimum, Trump leaves office;
4. They're introducing a new rule that's typically called "public charge". This is a new standard whereby USCIS should reject visa applications from people who have been or they consider will be a "public charge", meaning rely on public benefits. You can guess the skew in what countries this does and doesn't apply to;
5. When you adjust within the US, you can optionally apply for an employment authorization document ("EAD") ie a work card. In earlier times, this would arrive within 2-3 months and allow a person to work legally while their I485 case is being processed. It seems like since January 21, 2025, USCIS has basically stopped issuing EADs to make life difficult for immigrants in most cases;
6. To adjust within the US, you need to be inspected at the border. People without this (eg they sneak across the border) are called entering without inspection ("EWI"). This administration has decided some previous programs under Biden specifically (eg CBP One and TPS) in most cases won't be treated as valid entries. This generally means you need a difficult to get waiver to adjust and if you leave to consular process, you're facing a 3-10 year bar and possibly a permanent bar depending on circumstances;
7. In certain circumstances to adjust within the US you have to maintain valid status the entire time or be in status at the time you apply. This administration is trying to take the view that TPS is not valid status for this purpose. This can be mean you're retroactively out of status and can be placed in rmeoval and/or face a bar if you leave and try and return;
8. Various humanitarian programs to parole in place ("PIP") have been ended, forcing people to leave the country to adjust and then face bans from certain countries, bars for unlawful status and/or inadmissibility;
9. There have been pilot programs, particularly in San Diego, to coordinate removals by ICE when people go an appointment at USCIS for an interview or check-in;
10. Judges in immigration court are not Article III judges like federal judges are. They can be fired by the executive for any rason. This president basically fires judges that approve too many cases;
11. Previously, people in removal proceedings depending on their circumstances could get out on bond. For a lot of people, this has been eliminated;
12. ICE will generally try and get someone out of the jurisdiction after picking them up to avoid getting blocked by a habeas petition in federal court. Often they're moved to jurisdictions with far friendlier judges (eg Louisiana). They can also be moved randomly to make it hard to family or even their attodrneys to find and talk to them;
13. There is a ton of evidennce that USCIS is sitting on cases to delay for really no good reason. For example, they'll approve the I130 and just not make a ruling on an I485. This can force people to pay even more money to go into federal court and get a writ of mandamus;
14. Naturatlization has a requirement for "good moral character". Up until thi sadministration, that's been treated as the lack of bad moral character, such as a conviction for certain aggravated offences. This administration takes the view that an applicant has to instead prove good moral character, which can be letters of support from citizens;
15. Denaturalization has historically been a very rare occurrence. It requires the government to go into federal court and make a case that you committed fraud to become a citizen. Historically this has been a few dozen casea a year at most. Now it's in the hundreds. That's still not a lot but people expect this to ramp up. They're also taking a broader view of grounds for denaturalization. For example, if you committed a disqualifying offence before you naturalized but weren't charged and convicted until after, they isometimes now go after that where they didn't previously;
16. They've implemented so-called third-country deportation. That is, you can be deported to some other country entirely if your home country won't take you or if it's deemed unsafe for you to return to that country. So, you can flee civil war in South Sudan and be deported to El Salvador now. Historically, we didn't do this;
17. This week they announced they were going to revoke the B1/B2 visas for asylum seekers issued in the last 10 years. For anyone who doesn't know, visitor visas typically allow you to enter the US for up to 6 months. It's up the officer at the port of entry and they just make it up, basically.
People who seek asylum are generally forgiven for however they get into the country as long as they entered with inspection. There is a huge backlog in immigration cases from the mid 2010s that are still pending.
Now those visas have long expired so what's the point? I have a theory. When you apply for a temporary visa, you're asked what it's for. So for a visit visa, it might be to go to the World Cup. At any point later on if they find you didn't do what you said you were going to do, they can view that as misrepresentation (ie immigration fraud). This is particularly the case for people who get a visit visa, come to the US and get married within a short window of time.
A finding a misrepresetation can make you permanently inadmissible and that makes you ineligible to adjust.
So what's the point of expiring old visas? I believe they're going to say certain asylum seekers committed immigration fraud to get into the country and they'll find them inadmissible and use that as an excuse to deport them, something we never previously did;
Or, that evocation will potentially break your chain of maintaining status retroactively, making you ineligible to adjust in other circumstances; and
18. The latest: immigrant visas are being paused in consular processing cases, ostensibly for "retraining" in public charge scenarios.
Right wing oligarchs want infinite immigration because they get a larger labor pool and lower wages. Right wing normies want less immigration because they don't want to compete with the entire world for a job and don't want to become a minority in their own country.
Spend some time on X and you can see the two parts of the right wing attack each other over this issue.
Huh, this is rather useless argument. People in US already how companies, sport teams extract exorbitant tax breaks to move or stay put in particular state/city etc and nonetheless still end up moving because someone offered even better incentives. The jobs that are moving will not stay here for long even if all hurdles removed for immigration.
Most right wingers are fine with that. As the recent GTA 6 leak shows, companies that embrace offshoring too eagerly learn the hard way that not all jobs can be sent to the other side of the planet.
Ultimately, there is some value in each position, and in a corresponding set of positions on the left. Unlike many issues in US politics, in the long run this one is not well left-right aligned, and there is no single correct number for how much immigration is best. It's a bunch of trade-offs, which should be made democratically and end up somewhere around the number that the median person wants, such that roughly half of us are unhappy because too many immigrants come in and roughly half unhappy because too few. Arriving at that number and changing it slowly would be far better than wild swings.
> don't want to become a minority in their own country.
Yet in the next thread over, people are crucifying DHH for saying the same thing, except they are spinning it as "denying their right to exist"... somehow.
It's an obvious thing that anyone can understand, any group of people on the planet would behave the same way. It is natural to oppose becoming a minority, minorities are treated poorly and marginalized, by dint of human nature. The data showing it's happening are undeniable, the only way to defeat the argument is to shut it down by labeling the people who make it as hateful.
What? Where is the contradiction? DHH is deplorably wrong for the same reason that these right-wingers are deplorably wrong. (Even more so in the US because none of them are "native" to the country in the first place. Their immigrant ancestors just got here a little bit faster.)
The US seems hellbent on destroying its own economy, immigrants have always played a key part in it. Looking forward to Trump yelling about how the radical left has somehow undermined the US economy in a few months.
And in the interim he's positioning his family and cronies to benefit from any rebuilding. Just as he literally sat in the White House and said, verbatim, "My children insider trade all the time".
I often think about how far the Republican party has fallen from Truman with his "The Buck Stops Here" plaque on his desk to Trump's "I don't take any responsibility at all" response to poor Covid testing in 2020.
Plus he outright stole government money, not even the pretense of some kind of pass-through contracting entity or something, just brazenly stole cash. And later went on a PR tour lying about being destitute to get Congress to give him a big pension (presidents didn’t get one before that; and he was doing quite alright financially without it).
Whatever the party affiliation, he was an actual thief and scam-artist at the public’s expense, so wouldn’t be a great example of some high water mark for public service.
Meanwhile, just this week, he's taking credit for Biden's legislative efforts on cost reductions for pharmaceuticals that every single Republican voted against, and Trump campaigned against.
Looking forward? He never stopped. It's been 10+ years of narcissistic scapegoating, even for times when he was President, even while Republicans controlled congress, and even over trade-deals, policies, and laws that he took-credit for and bragged about. (e.g. USMCA in 2020.)
> Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein had been at work!
The parallels between Emmanuel Goldstein and Trump Derangement Syndrome are impossible to ignore for anyone who's actually read 1984.
To borrow from Baum (The Wizard of Oz): today there's not only a curtain with men behind it, but a man in front of the curtain that everyone is pointing to (a la Goldstein). And if he stops being useful they'll replace him. This has happened several times already while the men behind the curtain and long standing policies he people hate remain unchanged.
Donald Trump: Billionaire in one of the top government roles of one the most powerful countries in the world; puts enormous banners of his own face over buildings; runs a personal distribution network to announce what he hates every day to his followers; regularly "jokes" about being a dictator; triggers perpetual wars with other countries; etc.
Emmanuel Goldstein: An exiled academic in hiding with a death-sentence over his head for criticizing the despotic government.
You: "People like myself who actually read 1984 know that Trump is basically Goldstein! Not any other character. The parallels are impossible to ignore."
If you really read the book, then that's tragic, because all you learned was how to embody doublethink.
You sound like someone who started paying attention to politics in 2016. Trump isn't even an outlier. Foreign policy has been dictated by AIPAC (as well as a lot of domestic policy) for decades.
Do you not remember the two-minutes-hate where they screamed at Emmanuel Goldstein? Apparently not. The point is people rabidly attack Trump when his policies - especially foreign - are indistinguishable from Biden, Obama, and Clinton. You're attacking a dummy setup for that. Your obsession with him makes it obvious. Israel gets whatever they want instantly, and Americans get fancy speeches from figureheads.
You're the one screaming at a figurehead and accusing me of doublethink? Read the book again.
And they are. I read somewhere a few days ago that France is vacuuming up academics and advanced students that have been displaced by various recent policy changes that have proven to be hostile towards academia and research.
I don't know about vacuuming good students ... you probably have no idea what kind of students get hired in the USA nowadays.
The recruiting at a typical research university has an woke dimension to it - and I am reporting my personal experience, not hearsay:
Out of five scores each student was graded on, three were basically pure wokism like: describe how you overcame a difficult prejudice in life, or talk about how your presence will contribute to an inclusive environment ... only one was probing actual skills ...
PS: I have nothing against immigration - I am an immigrant myself ... a former immigrant student at that ...
I am against the selection process that ignores talented, skilled people and replaces them with mediocre people with some (probably made-up) nice woke story.
If you can't understand the utility of having welcoming and creative/tenacious people involved in your science (which your questions listed are asking about) then you are not nearly the expert in qualifications you think you are.
I am saying we are not selecting for those people.
When we hire at the university, we ignore creative, tenacious people and instead select mediocre people with a nice woke story that meets the woke requirements.
>When we hire at the university, we ignore creative, tenacious people and instead
select mediocre people with a nice woke story that meets the woke requirements.
Which university? Name some "creative, tenacious people" who were rejected by said university.
There's nothing in your HN profile to out you to anyone, so have at it. If you are unwilling to do so, I call bullshit on your anecdote. Or as they say, "pix, or it didn't happen."
I would encourage you to reflect on what you think "woke" is, and why things that you think are woke are mutually exclusive from the skills and qualities you value.
"Woke" is a nonsense scare phrase at this point, when what you're actually taking issue with is valuing people's lived experiences and backgrounds as a part of what they contribute. Understanding where people come from and how that colors their world view is simply a good practice when doing anything, but especially when you're trying to do science/academia. Too many similar minds in a room will never produce what one with a diverse group will. Diversity is good science, and valuing it is not "woke".
Pretending the word doesn't mean anything is the most obvious sign that the person saying that is one of them.
If you don't like the term given to your basket of political beliefs give one that encapsulates it that you like better.
"MAGAts" is the obvious 'other side' parallel. Both sides have their crazies and denying that one exists means you're obviously one of them. As a Pacific Green I don't even like the fact that I can say "both" and people both know what I'm talking about and perpetuates the misguided notion that only two parties exist.
As noted clearly in the article, this is a temporary pause while personnel are brought up to speed on the protocols. The real question is how just or unjust the refusals will be once it is unpaused. It's bad enough that the process is excruciatingly slow.
Users keep downvoting my comment even though it is the only literal interpretation supported by the evidence, without any evidence to the contrary. I would rethink only if it lasts over three months.
Note also that courts would easily overrule Trump if the pause became unreasonable.
You're obviously wrong, it obviously doesn't make sense to close down instead is implementing the training for the new protocols in parallel. And the current disruption is just as real of a question as the future refusals.
And obviously courts couldn't do it easily.
By the way, you also haven't provided any evidence for your opinion, why would you burden type replies with it?
Also, lol @ "the courts will fix it!" Fat fucking chance. I'm looking into my crystal ball: I see a 6-3 supreme court ruling supporting the administration's executive order to liquidate congressional power and fold it into the executive branch (as the founding fathers intended...)
Consular staff are trained on this as-is. It is hard to imagine a re-training on process that could take any more than two days.
And yet we have an entirely open-ended "We have nooooo idea how long this will take!"
Garbage. This is the same administration that paused all immigration from Africa except for "Caucasian South Africans" who were classified as refugees by default, regardless of their motivation on immigration.
This is just Stephen Miller doing exactly what he said he intended to do, and exactly what Project 2025 said the government should do (meanwhile, Trump, "What's that? Never heard of it").
https://archive.is/cjW9v
So for those that don't know, it's quite common for a visa renewal to be required to leave the country. Depending on the visa, you might have to do this every year.
So just imagine, having a normal job in the US and you're asked to leave to renew your visa and this stuff happens.
That's no more appointment, not even a new date and you're now very likely unable to work and possibly can't even enter the country to get your belongings if you were to leave.
Just 'putting a pause' on people with existing appointments with no answer for when they might resume is.... Inhumane
Not trying to make a political point at all and perhaps a controversial take. But, it’s specifically and maybe implicitly by design. Meaning they made this way precisely so you have to reapply so they can change their mind or block you out later. Nothing about getting a visa is permanent and you’re fully at risk when you move here with that type of status. If you evaluate the situation that’s always been the case.
The leaving part is not the issue, as you try to immigrate into a country you're subject to the rules that country sets. You're always free to not immigrate into that country (this is not about asylum).
The issue here is that, if you just left the country to do everything the country asked you, you are now in limbo.
For how long? No one can tell.
Does this mean you lose your job? Maybe.
And when you decide it's no longer worth it, you might even have issues getting back in to get your stuff...
Retraining your people CAN be done without it being so disruptive, they chose not to.
> The issue here is that, if you just left the country to do everything the country asked you, you are now in limbo.
I feel like I’ve said it a few times but - Yes, exactly. The country wants you to leave and then get’s to decide if you can come back. That’s how it’s designed. On purpose.
You’re approaching it from a perspective where you’re being asked to leave and your reentry is a right. It’s not. They never said, if you leave you can come back. They said, leave and we’ll see. The risk of being blocked out is inherent by anyone residing in a country that has this similar process; there are many.
> I feel like I’ve said it a few times but - Yes, exactly. The country wants you to leave and then get’s to decide if you can come back. That’s how it’s designed. On purpose.
That is how it's designed, and that's fine.
But make a decision... They're pausing the decision making for an indefinite amount of time. That's not how it was designed, but it sure does look like that's on purpose.
Pause is a silly way of saying No for now. You can try again later. But they’re not advising when that may be happening. To me, that tells you everything you need to know. That they don’t know themselves because it’s to be determined, maybe. Until then, no.
> You can try again later.
Can they? Because one of the questions on these questionnaires is almost always 'have you had a prior request being denied'.
> But they’re not advising when that may be happening. To me, that tells you everything you need to know.
These are life altering decisions for people that might have put decades into doing their best for the US. This is not about what to have for dinner.
This causes a LOT of uncertainty and chaos for no real reason. If they're so convinced it should all be denied, then issue those denials so they can be challenged.
They did make a decision? The current decision is no, that’s what it means to pause applications.
I don't think you understand anything about an immigration process.
All these cases are meticulously documented. So not making a decision is not at all the same as a 'no'.
A 'no' you can challenge, a pause not so much. They probably cannot and don't want to actually deny all those applications as they'll be in hot water really quick. So this is just the childish, not wanting to really own it, way of trying to achieve the same result.
> That’s how it’s designed. On purpose.
The cruelty is the point.
(The UK system requires initial applications from overseas but I believe doesn't require you to leave for renewals)
The cruelty is the point.
Look around the thread and notice how little the comments defending these policies have to say about the policies themselves. Instead, what they all have in common is a vague underlying fear of being displaced, or sense that something owed to them is being taken.
"Instead, what they all have in common is a vague underlying fear of being displaced, or sense that something owed to them is being taken."
This is true for both the citizens and the immigrants.
The immigrants have something very specific and real on the line.
The program has always "threatened" to displace citizens. That's not new and if that were the only reason motivating people then why wait till now to complain? Frankly I don't care if I'm fairly displaced. That's meritocracy at work.
The reality is the program has been abused and stretched far beyond its intent by corporations in pursuit of cheap (I’d argue slave) labor. You cannot, with a straight face, argue that the spirit of the program is being upheld. Come on. People are upset because they are realizing that they haven't been playing fair--the game's been rigged this whole time. I think that's a very understandable and normal human emotion all things considered.
Fraud is illegal. And when people enrich themselves fraudulently it does tend to feel like something has been taken by someone not entitled to it, yes. That works for both the corporations fraudulently hiring H1B and the fraudulent credentialing rings being operated to supply the labor.
It is sad that good people and valid visa holders are swept up in this. Aim your ire at the fraudsters, not the people trying to enforce the law and fix the problem.
Are you calling for open border with no controls? That's the only way to get meritocracy.
The system is set up so the casino wins. You cannot, with a straight face, argue the odds are in your favor, but there are rules about how the casino works, both formal and informal.
When a casino only investigates cases where someone wins $1 million on the slots, to see if there's a fault in the system, while never investigating all the times that people lose, that's technically within the legal system, but the spirit of gambling is not being upheld, and people get upset. Just ask Katerina Bookman.
The immigration system, with the thumb firmly in favor of the interests of capital, is still based on the expectation of good faith by those running the system, as doing otherwise results in orders of magnitude more rules, or an alternate set of unspoken rules based more on vibes.
"Pausing" is a bad faith breaking of the spirit of the system.
I think what he's saying is if a corporation has a genuine need of some high specialist in a skill, and no American has that skill - then okay, such is life - bring in a foreign worker. But corporations have abused the system to unnecessarily employ immigrant labor in lieu of American, because immigrant workers not only tend to earn well below market wages (which is supposed to be illegal), but also tend to be far more easily coerced and loyal because their visa is dependent upon them staying with their employer.
I didn’t follow your casino allegory. Anyway I happen to agree that “pausing” is inhumane. What I’m trying to communicate is we didn’t get here in a vacuum. There is a real problem and good faith attempts have been made to curtail it by putting pressure via “taxes” on the “interests of capital” abusing H1B. Cooperation would have prevented this.
Like most internet meme phrases, this is both trite and inaccurate. The cruelty is not the point. This administration has decided foreigners are the scapegoat, and wants to get rid of as many as they can. It’s heartless, but cruelty is not the objective.
Normally I’d agree. For this admin the cruelty does actually look intentional as a deterrent. Making it intentionally turbulent to discourage people from trying in the first place.
Using people as a scapegoat so you can parade their suffering for your fans is intentional cruelty.
I mean, anyone who is still defending this administration isn't even trying to have a conversation in good faith.
I have a Republican friend who appreciates the Supreme Court Justices, and then suddenly has zero clue about any news story involving the administration, and shrugs off the war. This despite meticulously following Benghazi hearings when it was someone he wanted to dislike. He would rather Trump be Romney, but he's not going to do anything about it whatsoever.
I blame myself for teasing my Italian friend in college over Silvio Berlusconi, and now I've found myself in the same position :(
yes, I remember making fun of my british friends for brexit, and then ...
I have good friends on an H1B. I've got plenty of amazing coworkers and teammates on it as well. At the same time, the program has been wildly abused. We don't need to go into the details I'll assume if you are trying to have a conversation in good faith here then you are well aware that companies abuse the H1B program to import literal indentured servants (to the point of there being covert rings that traffic H1B workers with fake credentials into the country) that ultimately aren't serving even the most remote interests of working class America and really just allowing companies to lower costs while increasing profits so boomers can get rich. We can have nice things until people abuse the system en masse. This isn't a new failure mode.
So what do we do? I don't want good people disrupted. But I also morally disagree with everything the abuse of the H1B program represents. What's the solution? It doesn't seem that crazy to me that "tax the companies so they can't undercut local labor so easily" is a reasonable first pass. But we know how that went.
I can't help but think if instead of shouting across the isle there were some amount of bipartisan accountability and shared understanding on the topic then the previous attempts by this administration to curtail the problem would have been more effective and we wouldn't be at a point where people have to take the gloves off.
Suppose a homeless guy knocks on your door and asks if he can stay in your living room. If you say no, or ask for more information, would it be fair for the homeless guy to say "the cruelty is the point"?
Tradeoffs exist.
To equate immigrants who have followed due process to a homeless person insisting on staying in a property owner's living room is appalling.
It's understandable for everyone to have varying views on immigration and immigrants, but this sort of rhetoric is a vile, racist and xenophobic dog whistle.
An immigrant who has followed due process is equivalent to a homeless person who has convinced the property owner to willingly let the homeless person stay in the property owner's living room. The property owner is allowed to change their mind about the arrangement at any point, unless and until the person obtains part ownership of the property (citizenship).
The property owner in this case is the American people, who I'm pretty sure don't support this.
They may have hired a property manager, but if the manager goes rogue, what the owners say is more important.
OK but that's a much different argument from "the cruelty is the point".
The legal perspective doesn't preclude that the cruelty is the point.
Consider the possibility that people might simply have different views from you.
"due process" means in concordance with the law. And the law is drafted and implemented by our elected politicians. As a sovereign country, we're allowed to change our laws and our policies.
The homeless person thought experiment is meant to illustrate the existence of tradeoffs. "The cruelty is the point" is essentially rhetoric meant to demonize political opponents, and sweep under the rug the existence of tradeoffs and differences of opinion.
If immigration is such a good idea, people ought to be able to defend it on the merits, instead of pearl-clutching and playing dishonest rhetorical games.
I'm not exactly sure what is so racist or xenophobic about my thought experiment. Homeless people are people too. I'm tempted to pearl-clutch just like you, and accuse you of denying their humanity. Want me to do it?
It is sufficiently incoherent as to suggest you aren't interested in the serious discussion you are requesting in response. You could better refute this by starting with a policy you would consider cruel, and the in turn demonstrating how this one doesn't fit it.
Historically i've tended to agree that "the cruelty is the point" was too dismissive for the policies in question. But with immigration policy of this admin, I'm not sure that's the case. For a while they were deporting people to the equivalent of a Gulag, and literally suggested that if people were afraid of that outcome they should self deport. I think that would be a pretty fair example of a policy where the cruelty was the literal point: The hope was it would be viewed with sufficient fear as to dissuade people from staying in the country illegally. However seriously you think immigration should be taken, and however many people you feel should be deported, there are policy choices that do not involve that level of cruelty that could be chosen instead. That they are intentionally not is what the term "The cruelty is the point" is meant to imply.
>You could better refute this by starting with a policy you would consider cruel, and the in turn demonstrating how this one doesn't fit it.
I actually don't think it is that common for policy to be cruel just for the sake of being cruel ("the cruelty is the point")
>For a while they were deporting people to the equivalent of a Gulag, and literally suggested that if people were afraid of that outcome they should self deport. I think that would be a pretty fair example of a policy where the cruelty was the literal point: The hope was it would be viewed with sufficient fear as to dissuade people from staying in the country illegally.
The point of law enforcement is to deter and prevent lawbreaking, not be cruel for its own sake. Suppose you observe that meals in prison aren't very tasty. Would you criticize this policy on the grounds that "the cruelty is the point"?
You can argue that the punishment is too harsh, but that still doesn't prove that cruelty was the point.
It’s not “cruelty” to have and enforce rules. The words “temporary” and “nonimmigrant” is plastered all over the laws that govern these visas. People shouldn’t have treated them as permanent immigration visas. And employers shouldn’t have mislead employees into thinking these were permanent immigration visas.
It’s like saying that it’s “cruelty” to remove someone who uses a 2 hour parking spot as their permanent car parking.
Rules are well and good, but norms are important too. An immigration system governs people making major life choices, and companies making large investments.
Legally, there's very little the state can't do, there could be a bill passed tomorrow revoking all immigrant visas. But businesses, and by proxy the nation, benefit from work done by these workers.
Sudden unilateral moves like this are stupid on a social level (cause damage to businesses and communities), and on a moral level. "First do no harm" is a principle just as suited to government as medicine. Even if there is a broad consensus for reducing or eliminating H1B visas, why punish people who followed the system as it exists and contributed? It's perfectly possible to pass a bill, stop handing out new visas, and sunset renewals after some 1-2 year timeframe.
It's legal to invite a bunch of guests over and kick them all out after you open the wine, but you're going to lose friends. And ultimately it will be businesses and individuals paying the cost for these needlessly volatile course changes. Tourism and high skilled immigration rates will face lasting harm.
> Rules are well and good, but norms are important too
Not when the norm is open defiance of the rules for decades.
> An immigration system governs people making major life choices, and companies making large investments.
And it also governs the right of people to decide who they want to invite into their country and, ultimately, with whom they want to share democratic governance of their home. Those are important stakes, not to be minimized. But you neglected to mention them.
> It’s like saying that it’s “cruelty” to remove someone who uses a 2 hour parking spot as their permanent car parking.
That's a very weak analogy for the moral issue here.
The consequences are radically different; losing a parking space is a minor inconvenience; losing immigration status can/does involve relocation and upends employment, family, property, and years of life planning / general stability.
The moral issue is the same in both cases: there’s a big sign that says “temporary.” People have chosen to ignore the sign.
No, people are following the rules and politely asking for a renewal in a different country.
The issue here is that they're not being denied, the government is basically refusing to make a decision for an indefinite amount of time.
I'm assuming most normal cases will get their visas eventually, the question is when. In the meantime the applicant can pay rent in the US, find some place to live abroad and maybe continue working from overseas? All so the state department can retrain a few people?
> The moral issue is the same in both cases: there’s a big sign that says “temporary.” People have chosen to ignore the sign.
No. Your analogy works well solely for the concept of temporary authorization.
If you're offering up 2h parking as proof that the moral stakes are equivalent...
The moral issue is defined by the nature of the rule, not the stakes for someone who has transgressed. Enforcing the rule doesn’t become less legitimate just because someone has invested more in breaking it.
> Enforcing the rule doesn’t become less legitimate just because someone has invested more in breaking it.
Nobody broke any rules here. These are the people folowwing the rules for the legal immigration system.
You just want to break the law as it stands today and not have an immigration system at all. That's a view you can hold and just as valid as any other. Just stop talking about people breaking rules, that's not what this is about, this has nothing to do with illegal immigration.
Why is that how the moral issue is defined? Seems to me the moral issue is the stakes, and I have no idea why I would cede that judgement to you. What's your basis for claiming moral authority? If you don't, please show your homework: what strange anticonsequentialism underlies your claims, and why should I agree with it?
Consequentialism in general is a third-world mindset. But in this particular context it leads to the absurd result that someone who breaks the rules more egregiously is rewarded for doing so.
Those sure are words. Can you relate them to the question in some way?
In first world countries, we focus on rules over consequences. If you build a dwelling on my property, the rule doesn't reward you for making a house rather than a tent. The moral analysis is based on the nature of the rule, not the consequences to those who break the rule.
> Consequentialism in general is a third-world mindset.
Ah, this must be why so many utilitarian philosophers are European and American.
The principle is the same; the magnitude is different. I don't see why adjusting the magnitude should affect the principle.
Then you don't see why stealing $10 is a misdemeanor and stealing $1000 is a felony (depending on jurisdiction, but whatever you get the point). Not saying you should see why, just that many clearly do for it to be public policy.
But it makes me wonder: do you think the $10 theft should be punished more heavily (minimum 1 year in prison), or the $1000 theft punished more lightly (maximum 1 year in prison)?
>you don't see why stealing $10 is a misdemeanor and stealing $1000 is a felony (depending on jurisdiction, but whatever you get the point).
A shift in magnitude follows a shift in magnitude, as expected.
Do you think the moral issue is the same if someone fails to hold a door for you, or if they shoot you? It’s rude either way, right?
I don’t have words for it, but the US has been infected with some kind of hybrid reductionism / nihilism where people think that vicious bad behavior can be enjoyed and justified, even righteously glorified, if a disingenuous analogy can somehow be crafted to something banal and comparatively harmless.
Nobody actually believes it, but it’s become a game of sorts. I don’t like it.
This entire article is about immigrant visas.
No it’s about B-1 and B-2 visas:
> The State Department and Department of Homeland Security are reviewing all B-1 business and B-2 tourist visas, he said.
https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary... (“B-1 Temporary Business Visitor”)
The very first sentence of the article begins "The Trump administration has paused processing of immigrant visas..."
Are we reading different articles? The headline says immigrant visas. The first paragraph says immigrant visas.
“The Trump administration has paused processing of immigrant visas, which allow recipients to move permanently to the U.S., to train visa officers on new guidance ensuring that applicants have enough financial means to support themselves after they arrive.”
Suspicious given the xenophobic nationalist government the US has in place. "But we're just following the rules!" innocent look
American immigration laws are designed to have a small stream of permanent immigration, both to protect american jobs and to protect american culture from foreign influence. That’s what people voted for over decades. The New York Times did a good podcast on the issue. https://youtu.be/xgDdTV7A57w. If you want to define “xenophobic” to encompass that then that’s your choice. I don't think that's a sensible or useful definition. The concept of "xenophobia" only applies to individuals. It's wrong to assume that somebody will be a certain way because of their nationality. That obviously doesn't translate to immigration, which involves the mass movement of people who do have a distinct culture in the aggregate, and do transplant their culture into the U.S.: https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran...
I know a lot of people that support these cruel and chaotic changes to our immigration laws and they are mostly xenophobic - they don’t like people speaking languages other than English at the store, they don’t like religions different than their own, they don’t like family traditions different than their own.
Xenophobia is about assuming that people are different because of their national origin. It's not "xenophobia" if there are actual differences, especially if there are actual changes to someone's society. Treating all cultural differences as equally desirable is cultural relativism. Not everyone who rejects cultural relativism is xenophobic. You're allowed to prefer your own culture and to live in a society that reflects your culture. The countries that most immigrants come from treat that principle as axiomatic.
You’ve successfully mangled the definition of xenophobia.
“A strong aversion, antipathy, or fear of foreigners.” Simple as.
It wouldn’t be wrong if you admitted that you want some degree of xenophobia. But I suppose that sounds even less convincing than your preferred abuse of terminology.
> “A strong aversion, antipathy, or fear of foreigners.”
Yes, it's antipathy to foreigners in and of themselves. It's antipathy based on the mere fact that someone is a foreigner by stereotyping them based on nationality. Antipathy based on actual cultural differences.
This might seem like an academic point but the support of all xenophobic people for these changes doesn't imply that some non-xenophobes don't support these changes (or ones in the same spirit) as well. I don't know what the relative numbers are, but the support of a negative group for a cause doesn't invalidate the cause.
US immigration can be very slow and bureaucratic (even pre-Trump). I hesitate to say but generally, it's not as arbitrary as people think. If things are clearly above board, it works out.
The US still is a destination in very high-demand. There are a huge number of qualified and unqualified people, who would come here in a heartbeat (and it goes without saying, there are a huge number of people who have no interest in moving here).There are clearly agents like the H-1B body shops who have exploited the system. Similarly, masters programs were launched effectively to trade full tuition for an opportunity to enter the US labor market (e.g. all the masters in financial math programs). This doesn't mean we don't get amazing people on H-1Bs or in masters programs but these pathways have been exploited.
Many people desire a sane immigration policy and experience. One that allows promising candidates into the country. The exact definition of a "promising candidate" was outsourced to universities and companies sponsoring these visas. A lot of people have lost trust in those institutions. I don't know what a good solution is but the rise of these policies is a symptom that the current system is not working.
> This might seem like an academic point but the support of all xenophobic people for these changes doesn't imply that some non-xenophobes don't support these changes (or ones in the same spirit) as well.
Americans aren't "xenophobic." I just got back from two weeks in rural Texas and everyone was super nice to me. Nobody was "afraid" that I'm a foreigner. They just don't want me to bring my entire extended family over and in numbers that changes the culture of their home. And people in my dad's village in Bangladesh would hate if some other group did the same thing to them.
Unless you use the visa to marry Donald Trump, as his 3rd wife did.
His first wife too.
Hey! She was a genius and deserved it!
/s (poe's)
Let he who hasn't cheated on his first wife to get with his second wife to cheat on his second wife to get with his 'genius visa' third wife cast the first stone! Seriously, people, everyone does it!
So brave
Lots of countries have temporary worker status. The requirement to leave the country to re-up it appears to be a distinctively American thing.
I was recently in Malaysia on a digital nomad visa. When it expired I was required to leave the country and either wait for the renewal to go through or reenter on a tourist visa (and either not work or work illegally). So not distinctively American.
It's definitely not. I know Japan and Korea had a similar process when I was living there, and I was under the impression that most places operate this way. Your visa grants you right to temporarily stay in the country, and if you don't have a visa you have no right to be there. Sometimes there's a bridging visa to cover the gap, but a country isn't under any obligation to provide one.
I've renewed my visa in Japan a bunch of times, including changing work category or visa status, and never had to leave the country for it. It's not standard for working or student visas, though you would have to leave if you were switching from a tourist visa to a different category.
But my point is it’s a known factor up front, and it’s so they can (have the option of) getting you to leave without allowing you back in. The thinking is that if people had visas that expires or revoked, they just wouldn’t leave and enforcement would be difficult (we have a forceful ICE now, but not always). Having them leave first is by design even if unique.
It’s fairly common in destinations for migration, less so elsewhere.
Is extremely common in europe and asia
I've known several people on visas in my european country. They don't need to go out of the country to apply for renewal.
In which European countries?
All 29 countries in the Schengen Zone require exit to renew tourist visas
Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria, and most EU nations generally require non-EU citizens to return to their home country to change visa types.
In my experience it’s quite uncommon for immigration visas/residence permits to require to leave
The pause is for immigrant visas so most visas like H1 or H2 or O visas aren't affect this time. But it's definitely part of the US admin's overall theme of ratcheting up visa restrictions and making any immigration or travel to the US extremely difficult.
Immigrant visas cannot be renewed - if you use such a visa to enter the country then you become a lawful permanent resident and are not eligible for any visas until you abandon your permanent residency, and even then you will need to apply for a brand new visa.
I have friends who are expats and they’ve done this for years. I had one family member who left every six months to renew their visa.
It’s a chore, but very common around the world.
Were the visas for the US? B1/B2?
I know stuff like this happens for digital nomads in southeast asia or Schengen but the US generally doesn't approve of "visa runs".
Visa renewals are processed at a US consulate. You can extend your status (ie you ability to legally be in the US) while staying in the US, but if you want to renew your visa (your ability to leave and re-enter) you need to visit a consulate and those only exist outside of the US.
I was questioning the renewals every six months and asking about US visas which are granted for 6 months (i.e. expire after 6 months). I am aware of renewals requiring leaving the country.
Were they able to come back when they did this?
I think the whole point of making someone leave is the possibility that they may not be allowed back in. If staying was a foregone conclusion then there’d be no point in leaving.
I can’t think of any other rationale. What, only border officers are able to process a visa renewal? Please. We can have offices inside the country handle this stuff, just like offices handle Trusted Traveler applications and Social Security card issuances.
The point is surely to get another chance to grill the immigrant and potentially bar them entry. Other countries don’t always do this: Canada for example has inland changes of status and I believe renewals.
> I can’t think of any other rationale.
For many visas, people are expected to maintain a home that they intend to return to in their country of origin. Forcing people to leave every once in a while makes this more likely (at least in theory.)
> I can’t think of any other rationale.
Lack of real domestic enforcement would be an obvious one, so everything gets pushed to the border entry points.
They know who you are and where you work… how hard could it be to enforce rules?
Wait, what’s getting enforced here, anyway? They are getting a new visa, no? I don’t believe this rationale at all.
> how hard could it be to enforce rules?
See the recent events and pushback on immigration enforcement, to answer this, with whole cities (with their judicial system and police) refusing to participate, and governors condemning enforcement.
No, not necessarily. Sometimes visas are rejected. Unless you're talking about giving everyone who gets a visa a green card?
> They know who you are and where you work
Most visas don't permit their holder to work.
> Wait, what’s getting enforced here, anyway?
The visa holder is forced to expend nominal financial resources and time in their home country (where they agreed they would return to.) Most people can't afford to maintain a facade of residency or two actual residences (and those who can aren't the intended targets of this type of restriction.)
Not sure if things have changed recently, but up until at least 2019 (last time I had to do it iirc) you definitely had to do a "flagpole" (drive through the border and immediately turn back) to change your status in Canada.
Nah, you can renew work permits online—-and in fact, they push you to.
However, the in-country processing takes 6 months while the flagpole option (If you’re eligible) takes 15 minutes.
Canada effectively requires leaving and re-entering. It can take multiple months for an online visa to get processed, meanwhile leaving and reentering takes hours.
there were other dumb factors pushing people to do border runs, like your paperwork says "expired" but your status still being valid while being processed.
Except you had zero paperwork to show to an employer and they had no way to verify themselves. Even if an employer understood the process and accepted some proof that you submitted an application, they would have no idea if you were rejected and became out-of-status.
They've made no secret of the desire to purge the country of "others". This is part of that plan.
"Must leave to renew" certain visas has been policy for decades - through at least the Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations.
Most visas are for temporary guests: obtaining a visa doesn't normally give someone the right to permanently reside, and most don't permit their holders to work.
Maybe stimulating the airline economy? Is Big Plane at it again?
In the EU you do not need to leave to renew your visa. I don't know how common it is elsewhere.
Japan doesn't require you to leave either.
Visa rules are country specific and don’t apply to the EU in general. There are countries that require you to leave.
Sorry, but that is not common around the world. Most countries do not have such a system. I.e. none of the EU/UK/Australia countries have that.
Is it? You’re generally able to renew without leaving. Unless you mean abusing a visitor visa?
H1-B and L1 can actually be done in-country, but for some reading going abroad and get consular processing has a lower chance of RFE.
You are talking about change (or extension) of status, not visa.
US is unique in that the visa sticker and your right to remain in the country (status) are two different things. The only purpose of the visa sticker is to allow you to travel to a U.S. port of entry, where you apply for admission, and therefore legal status. You can have legal status in the U.S. while the visa sticker has expired, and your status can be changed or extended domestically. However unless you have a valid sticker you cannot leave and return.
It's not unique: Japanese system is exactly as you described.
Australia too - however, to get a renewal all you need is an online connection and a credit card, the renewal (at least for me!) goes through automatically. (Notwithstanding that Australia just increased the PR-renewal cost from ~400-500 to ~1400-1500 AUD)
There actually is a pilot to renew h1-b visa foils while in the US without a consular appointment.
Based on my experience 20 years ago you could only renew the H-1B visa in the passport in-country under extraordinary circumstances. In the majority of cases they reject your request and would tell you to travel to a consulate.
Prior to the mid 00s you could renew at any consulate but they changed it so you could only renew in your home country.
the "only in your home country" change happened very recently, late 2025 or early 2026
The pause on visa appointments does not apply to H1-B and L1 as they are nonimmigrant visas. It applies to family based immigration visa, diversity visa, and EB-1/2/3 when you do processing abroad.
(You might have known that, but I thought it's worth clarifying).
> So just imagine, having a normal job in the US and you're asked to leave to renew your visa and this stuff happens.
The only way I can see this happening is if you try to convert from OTP to an H1. I used to do some runs up to Vancouver to help a friend do that.
This just generally sucks for anyone making plans in their life. I remember my wife's greencard interview in Guangzhou, and it would have sucked if they instituted this the day before she did that.
Isn't this specifically for immigrant Visas? The work and student Visas (H1B / F1) are non-immigrant Visas.
I think there are a lot of inhumane things happening around the world right now to label this inconvenient, at best. We need better leadership through higher voter participation and an informed electorate to stop these inhumane and inconvenient policies.
Speak for yourself, I voted for exactly these policies.
Thank you for posting. I'm being sincere.
I think it is helpful to remind folk that these policies are not universally hated. Indeed a majority of voters voted specifically for them, and they were explicitly laid out.
This is democracy in action. The majority (of those who care enough at all) get to rule over the minority (and the apathetic). Obviously not all actions will be universally loved, but no govt action can ever be universally loved.
But will remain anonymous and are okay with the collateral damage. My suspicion is that competition makes you feel insecure. I was born and raised in SF, and I see this not only with immigrants but also from people who feel violated by migrants. There is a spectrum. It’s ugly, short sighted and unhelpful. It’s what it takes to make the valley, but people love pulling up ladders. At least, behind an alias, you’re will to acknowledge your shortcomings.
> But will remain anonymous and are okay with the collateral damage.
Have you worked at a tech company in 2026?
Plenty of engineers, born in India/China and working in Silicon Valley, are openly anti-immigration. And I also support them since I agree with them.
Pull up the ladder once you’ve made it.
Nothing new.
Or imagine if an employee works for you and this happens to them.
I've had a couple of reports that this applied to. It's incredibly disruptive. "I've got to fly back to India to renew my visa." "Okay, when will you be back?" "I have no idea, it depends when I can get an appointment. It could be next week, it might be in a month." "[State department] We're pausing all visa appointments." "Well fuck."
Meanwhile I've got a tech lead who is 12 hours away from the rest of the team. He was at least willing to work US-East hours while in India (basically staying up all night and sleeping during the day), but there was a huge amount of management overhead and inconvenience for the employee involved.
I've worked at companies where we transfer people to Canada during periods like this in the same time zone. Sometimes they enjoy it so much they don't want to transfer back to the US.
At least the procedure used to be that one would try to get an appointment at the US consulate in one's home country and then arrange the trip around it. Also, at least in my experience (but importantly, not with this administration) was that one was never required to leave the US.
The main constraint is re-entry into the US and being able to travel outside the US. If one stayed here, there was no problem switching schools, programs, jobs, adjusting status to permanent residency or naturalization. On the other hand, for re-entry, one needs a valid visa stamped on a passport which necessitated a trip to one's home country. This stamping visit could be unpredictable.
Ideally, one would like to travel freely to see family and friends but I see a lot of comments implying that one is forced to leave. It might be true now but a lot of comments here are conflating several issues together.
The first time it happened (2023) it was a non-issue; he did exactly as you said, appointment happened as planned, and then he was back on his scheduled plane trip a week later.
Everything post-2025 has been a shit-show. There's no predictability or clear guidance, either from our lawyers or from the state department.
Predictability matters a lot in business. If you know what the procedure is and how long it will take, you can plan around it. If the rules change in the middle of the game you're left scrambling to keep up.
Predictability flew out the window with the last election. I simply do not understand how any business leaders supported this, but I suppose the ability to bribe their way out of chaos was appealing.
It's beneficial for the largest firms, the ones that can forge personal relationships with the administration, because it's detrimental to all other businesses. Competitive advantage and all that.
Props to your coworker. In my office, they usually just work normal India hours and we have a 12+ hour delay for all communications.
Honestly, this is kind of the point. Making foreign labor so unbearably difficult to work with will force companies to hire domestically. At least, hire more domestic workers than they would have otherwise.
Hire Americans?
Hundreds of thousands of tech workers have been laid off in the last two years. There are many skilled Americans on the job market. Foreign workers are here for the benefit of the United States, not as charity to the rest of the world, or as a source of cheaper labor for global employers seeking to undercut American wages.
It's clear you are not a hiring manager. There aren't thousands of highly qualified engineers looking for work. I can't tell if this a troll post or not.
It's clear you are not considering the long-term effects of labor policy. If we want a stronger domestic workforce, the answer is to incentivize Americans to develop the skills we need and to train them when they do not already have those skills. Mass importing foreign labor is not a substitute for building and investing in the domestic workforce.
Btw, this is analogous to the argument for positive discrimination:
Preferentially treat one group of people (non-white/women/Americans) even if in the short term the revealed preference of businesses is to hire a different group of people (white/men/immigrants), such that, in the long term, the first group of people can develop the necessary skills to compete with the second group.
Short term pain for long term gain.
The arguments can be the same but have entirely different hidden variables that make it fine to use the argument in one context and not the other.
Also, this ignores that the government works for citizens, no matter their race. Promoting racial equality among citizens is a function that the government might undertake. Pursuing policies that favor citizens over non-citizens falls in line with that same reasoning.
No it's really not the same because we have laws against racial discrimination, but it is the entire purpose of the state to represent the interests of its citizens above all others.
Yes, there are thousands of qualified engineers looking for work.
Millions depending on how you cut it.
It’s a big industry. There are many roles at many different levels of expertise and experience.
Many can’t find locals.
> Many can’t find locals.
*for the price they want to pay.
You can’t get them to apply. They are already very well paid. It’s a finite pool that is not large enough. Bidding up pay won’t change that. Instead you just hire overseas.
Paying more will inherently mean that people cross-train to reap the financial rewards.
I’m very pro immigration, but “Americans are lazy and stupid , thus unfit for hiring” isn’t a winning argument.
Tons of Americans are out of work. I’ve personally seen my wages drop by at least 20$ an hour as well as the work being less stable.
Gasp, you might need to train someone a bit or have employees that will say no if you ask them to work on Christmas.
If I ran the H1B program it would be an unrestricted work permit with an automatic pathway to a GC after 5 years. Don’t get *convicted* of a felony and here you go.
They would be looking for work with you if you were offering them better pay and conditions than where they're currently working.
Money does not fix the supply problem the parent comment pointed out (at least for fields that need multi year training).
Let’s say that tomorrow we need 1M nuclear physicists. How can money help? You still need to wait for the talent pipeline to divert.
Fortunately such ridiculous hypotheticals have no correspondence to reality. Most every job can be easily trained or cross trained. Mathematicians make good physicists. Nor is there some foreign pipeline of a million physicists. Such ridiculous argument exist only to perpetuate the lie of a skills shortage and deny the wage shortage.
They may make good physicists, but not great physicists. Similar to saying I know how to drive a car, now let me win the inde 500. Things take to for specialization, even with the advent of guessing and checking machines (llms).
A shocking number of innovations in x field are because y person brought an idea that maps from z field. Cross functional teams are important and mathematicians can and absolutely do make top level contributions to physics.
One of the math problems recently publicized as having being solved by was actually just discovering that a German mathematician had published a solution in the 1950s.
With training (remember that?) and practice, one could vastly improve. It’s called a growth mindset.
Why are they needed in the USA, but not needed in their home country?
Hiring is such a shit show, there's no reason to assume the people doing the hiring know what they're doing. Like HR has to insert them selves into the process
> Foreign workers are here for the benefit of the United States
But that's the point, isn't it? Some foreign workers who "worked the US for the benefit of the US" are now unable to come back to the US. Isn't that bad for the US too?
Not until all Americans who can work have jobs
And what do you do about the people who only want to work in jobs that they're not qualified for, and who have unrealistic expectations about pay, benefits, work demands, etc.?
Is every natural-born American entitled to a job that pays what they want, for the hours they want, in the location they want, regardless of their qualifications for the job?
But isn't that how market supposed to work? Company offers to pay x for the job, can't find anyone for x, so it raises salary to x+y.
I would understand logic of bringing people from other countries when there is a shortage of workers but with current market it doesn't seem to be the case.
> Company offers to pay x for the job, can't find anyone for x, so it raises salary to x+y.
In the world you're imagining, is x+y potentially infinite?
But America is a capitalist system. The market has determined that not all Americans deserve jobs. Are Americans willing to work a 996 schedule for 2.00/hr to compete with labor overseas?
Nothing in capitalism prevents a country from prioritizing its own citizens.
And it is uncontroversial in most countries that a country should do this.
So this isn't a contradiction. Indeed america is capitalist. And it is also prioritizing its own citizens. There is nothing weird about that.
Most capitalist countries have 100% employment for their citizens and little to no immigration? No. "Every citizen who can work having a job" is not something capitalist countries do. They all take ample advantage of foreign labor, they all have corporations that prioritize their own profits and outsource.
> Most capitalist countries have 100% employment for their citizens and little to no immigration
You must have responded to the wrong post as it has nothing to do with my statement.
That statement is that there is nothing about capitalism that prevents a country from prioritizing its own citizens. That is a perfectly normal and rational thing to do.
Additionally, the exact percentages of unemployement rates also has little to do with capitalism, nor does the uncommonness of fully achieving a lofty but possibly valuable goal also has nothing to do with what capitalism is, nor does it say very much about how valuable that goal is or the value in attempting to aspirationally achieve it.
>You must have responded to the wrong post as it has nothing to do with my statement.
OK. You can't handle context, noted.
>That statement is that there is nothing about capitalism that prevents a country from prioritizing its own citizens.
The free market is what prevents it. The purpose of capitalism is the creation of capital and its transfer to the capitalist class, and the purpose of corporations is to maximize profits to facilitate that process as quickly and efficiently as possible. Neither capitalism as a system nor corporations have an obligation to improve quality of life for their employees beyond their market value, or to "prioritize" the social welfare over profit, or to hire more people than they need.
It's simple supply and demand and there isn't a demand for American labor.
>Additionally, the exact percentages of unemployement rates also has little to do with capitalism
which is weird because you're arguing that capitalist companies need to prioritize "citizen" labor in order to reduce unemployment, or that governments need to force them to.
Do you propose to restrict the international flow of capital too while you're at it? Until every spare US dollar is invested in the US? or you just want to restrict the market for the 99% of people whose biggest asset is their labor.
Dollars and people are not the same thing. I’m not sure how you can even make the claim that they could be or even should be.
Thats the amazing part of a diverse society, there is a variety of opinions and world views that you can come across that that might even be completely outside your current understanding. As by being curious and trying to understand something surprising you might just gain a new and deeper understanding of the world.
Most folks don’t want their minds opened to new and surprising views and opinions. They want a good job in the town they grew up in so they can take care of their family and raise their kids in the culture they were raised in.
Globalism has ruined that entirely, and there’s no amount of implying these people are closed minded or incurious that will make them change their mind on this issue.
We've had three people get stuck in India for months. two got removed from job because of it.
> it's quite common for a visa renewal to be required to leave the country
you mean leaving the country is required for visa renewal? the other way around?
This administration is clearly on a war against immigration of all sorts but... we need to be accurate here.
This is specifically a pause on immigrant visas. That is, green cards. So this is for family-based green cards and investor green cards through consular processing (ie when out of the country).
As yet, work visas and other nonimmigrant visas are unaffected.
Someone who appears to have actually read the article, or at least the first sentence! Wonders never cease.
Notably, this is exceptionally common in every country I’ve ever lived in that had such Visa’s. Including them being used as political footballs (including for India, Brazil, Germany, etc).
Does it suck? Yes. Is this unexpected? Not really, no.
In the mid 2000s, I had to leave the US for renewal while leaving all my hard assets behind. I had a plan in place in case I couldn't go back to the country, which did happen to some people. These people had their interviews, but they got held back outside the US, sometimes for months, waiting for the renewal process to finish. I had an immediate renewal, but was almost held back for some red tape reasons.
This sucks but it isn't new, unfortunately.
The scale is new. Obviously a nightmare or even a tragedy for individual people that it happens at all. But this happening to (tens of?) thousands of people all at once is a whole different thing.
At least for F1 and H-1B visas, one wasn't required to get a new visa physically stamped (for which one would have to leave) to switch schools (undergrad -> grad) or jobs. Is this forced now? Of course, if one wanted the freedom to be able to travel or visit one's home country, a new stamping was required if the old visa expired.
It's not ideal but a lot of us basically didn't leave for several years (even pre-Trump 1) to avoid the hassle of a new stamping.
Agreed. I live in Midwest and that's the same sentiment I am getting from the people. People voted to oppose illegal migration, not stopping legal migration. This November will be judgment day for this administration's policies.
The term "illegal immigration" got moved to "people who have proper papers and did everything legally but were granted access by someone I don't like" - anyone who was an informed voter could see that "against illegal immigration" was just red meat for the base.
This report is for immigrant visas. H-1B visas are not immigrant visas and are the ones that require the stamp renewal in the home country.
That being said, yes, the way the current administration handles immigrant visas, worker visas, and more is absolutely inhumane and completely asinine. I've been through it with family and friends, and it is painful and can be heartbreaking even.
Indeed it is. But that’s the point Miller, etc are trying to make.
We’re so screwed. Good luck to us ever building up goodwill again.
It will take generations -- if we even get the chance.
We'll be fine. It didn't take Germany & Japan that long after they started WWII
Who's going to conquer the United States and restore rule of law and representative government by force?
By default we'll have a change of president in 2-3 years. Like Karl Popper said, the primary strength of democracy is the ability to remove bad leaders with minimal violence.
Hang on a tick: does that mean we may have been the baddies all along?
I say this as someone who just sent their daughter to NYC explaining how we used to try to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to poor immigrants who just assumed this was a land of kind people, WTF? Could we not take a decade off from being prissy about our democracy *and* total cocks about how we actually act?
everything this administration does daily is from one of three boxes
this is a little from the first box and the last boximagine what's tomorrow or next week
meanwhile let's all enjoy the billion spent on making statues gold plated in DC and the ballroom and the arch and his drapes and his reflecting pool and 100 foot banners of his face on federal building and his face on gold coins, passports, park passes and the $250 bill
it's surreal
You forgot [INCOMPETENCE]
That's the foundational box for the actors, not a property of the actions
Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
In Canada I had to leave and re-enter for my permanent resident status to complete. It’s not that uncommon - but it’s a pain.
In Canada you never have to leave to renew or change status; it's just sometimes faster to do so. It's always the applicant's choice. I went through the whole work permit to PR to citizenship pipeline without ever having to leave the country.
I'm not sure if its the same in Canada but when I went through the process for Australia it depended on where you started the process. I started the process while outside the country so to activate my visa I had to leave and come back but if I had filed while in the country I could have stayed.
I do remember Canada telling my partner she wouldn't be guaranteed reentry while they were processing her PR visa until it was finalised if we left the country though so we just ended up doing the Australian half first and I never went back.
... It's always applicant's choice
> I went through the whole work permit to PR to citizenship pipeline without ever having to leave the country.
You're comparing apples to oranges.
People going from non-immigrant visa (H1B, F1 etc.) to Green card via i485 "adjustment of status" do not need to leave the country either.
Only consular processing (ds 260) are in scope of this pause
https://www.ellis.com/resources/immigrant-visa-pause-2026
Has more details than the paywalled article
I had a study permit at first. I renewed my permit, got a work permit, renewed my foreign passport and extended my work permit, got PR and got citizenship, getting visas to match my work and study permits, over a period of 10 years, without ever having to leave Canada. So my experience is that in Canada you never have to leave but in the US you do.
My classmates who had gone to the US for PhD programs, even those who were fortunate enough to get multiple entry visas, had visas that allowed re-entry for only the first two years of the PhD program. After that, if they wanted to leave the US, say for a conference or to visit family, they would have had to apply for a visa from abroad and hope to be granted one. In Canada, I could apply for the visa and get it while in Canada. Even comparing like with like, the American system seems bizarre to me, looking at it from a Canadian lens.
Yeah, but they tried to change Adjustment of Status too.
https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/us-citizenship-...
I don't think the practice of the change is significant. Reddit has numerous stories of people who are still receiving it, so whatever that release says, things haven't changed. People seem to be receiving AoS based Green Cards the same way I did under the Biden Administration. It does seem to be a bit more uncertain which is always troubling.
I did it 20+ years ago and I had to “land”. They’ve relaxed a lot of immigration rules since then so it might have changed.
"Flagpoling" was the beautiful euphemism for this.
OP isn't criticizing the practise of leaving to renew. He's criticizing the this new policy of not letting you back in when you leave.
Really? My spouse and I lived in Canada on work permits and were not required to leave in order to achieve PR status; nor to achieve citizenship status.
Prior to Covid, my wife had to exit the country to get photos taken as part of the permanent resident process. We took a trip to Montana for that purpose.
This seems to have changed in the past 3-4 years, but as the GP said, the original process did involve leaving.
Inhumane is every choice made by this country under this regime. The "bothsides" and "no politics" crowds are equally as complicit in this as Trump voters.
Inhumane maybe, but our government should owe its first allegiance to our citizens wellbeing, not imported workers.
Surely you would admit that this Administration’s approach to immigration has been both chaotic and cruel. The workers who were given status in the United States expected a predictable process, not one that changes weekly based on the unserious personal whims of a bored, ill-informed and vindictive man. In any case, the prioritization of citizens’ wellbeing writ large is demonstrably _not_ a feature of this Administration’s agenda.
The entire point of a temporary visa is that the host country can refuse to renew and force you to leave the country at their whim. When you apply for such a visa you accept those terms.
The entire point of a temporary visa is for the country to benefit from your labor. How does canceling it on a “whim” benefit anybody?
The government should not be doing inhumane things to people. This should not be a controversial statement.
How, in any way does this help the wellbeing of a citizen? Why bring up that very strange point, which is completely unconnected to the massive harm here.
If anything, these policies harm the citizens of the US in a myriad of ways. There's zero benefit to be had from any of this. Except for the joy tha tthe cruel feel in causing others misery, but that's not citizens, that's just a few sick people.
>There's zero benefit to be had from any of this.
From the article:
"Updated guidance and training were being put in place to ensure that visa applicants don’t become a public charge under U.S. law or depend on government benefits intended for Americans in need, a spokesman for the department said Wednesday."
The implication that visa applicants are receiving government benefits is completely unsubstantiated.
The first responsibility is to protect the rights of all people in the country. Citizenship is not required for protected rights
Why be a citizen at all if non-citizens have all the benefits and none of the responsibilities?
They can’t vote in most elections (except a few local elections in some places) and aren’t guaranteed entry at the border. They also can’t work a litany of jobs requiring citizenship.
They get a plenty bad enough shake. Let’s grant them the absolute basics of humane treatment and a fair shake at getting citizenship, sheesh.
Other countries get by just fine not having such a huge delta between haves and have nots on citizenship, and their social cohesion is better for it.
A litany of jobs? Do you mean a minority of jobs - civil service, some clearance jobs, holding some offices?
The Immigration and Nationality Act makes citizenship discrimination illegal.
>Other countries get by just fine
Which ones are your model for the US?
Oh, spare me. What an unserious statement. The entire point of an I-9 is to discriminate on citizenship, which is the document that HR pesters you on for your first few days at any new job anyway.
I have a better idea. Let them make their countries worth living in. If they don't like it in America they can leave. Because unlike Americans, we don't have another home country to retreat to.
Most countries have MUCH higher standards for immigration and their citizens much better off for it.
> Most countries have MUCH higher standards for immigration and their citizens much better off for it.
I think your math is off. The US is in the top 10 for GDP per capita, 99% literacy rate when the global average is 87%, the poverty rate is below average, the list goes on. Most countries in the world aren’t even considered developed nations. Immigration has been America’s core growth engine for two and a half centuries. There may be problems but you are deluding yourself if you think the whole economy hasn’t benefited from immigration. Even when that immigration was through chattel slavery.
I'm relieved that the magic soil in the United States can improve these peoples' lives.
It’s a symbiotic relationship. The reason the US is so prosperous is due to immigration, mostly during the 20th century. The US cannot run off of just the existing citizens. Well, it can, for a while, but not indefinitely.
Can't? Do citizens expire? Are you unaware of the concept of children?
I am aware of the concept of children, thank you. Not sure why we have to argue like we have a stick up our asses, but here we are.
As you're well aware, the US is just barely meeting replacement birth rate. Most developed countries are under it. And the big picture: the US is all about growth. Economic growth, cultural growth. If you want more of that, you need immigrants. Sorry, that's how the US has always worked. If you don't agree with it, then I'm not sure the US is the country for you.
There are plenty of developed, homogeneous countries. Diversity is what makes the US the US. Please, feel free to seek a country that better aligns with your beliefs.
>As you're well aware, the US is just barely meeting replacement birth rate.
Oh no, they'll have to raise wages due to lack of labor. How terrible for the working class (everyone).
Without immigration lowering wages more citizens would be able to afford having children.
> Diversity is what makes the US the US.
Is this meant as a joke? I can't tell, but it is completely ahistorical. The foundera wrote about their demographic intention extensively.
The founders were, themselves, immigrants. From multiple different countries.
Of course racism existed when the founding father's were alive, we had slavery. But, from the beginning, the US has been a country founded on immigration and racial diversity. Yes, we did not, at the time, consider black Americans Americans. But we certainly do now, and have for a very long time.
I'm also not convinced immigration lowers wages. People throw this around, while providing no evidence. And, even if it did, I think it's obvious that wages is not the cause behind birth rate decline.
All the developed countries, with the high wages and standard of living, have poor birthrate. All the developing countries, with low wages and low standard of living, have high birthrates. Hmm.
If we look at the demographic progression of nations the "culprit" behind birthrate is development. Particularly, social development, the liberation of women. Turns out lots of women don't actually want to have children, and when we stop pressuring them socially, they don't. They work instead.
Obviously this is a hard problem to solve. If you want to solve birthrate, you need to de-develop your nation. Not good. Or, some other solution, which nobody has found yet. Or, you just have immigration, which we do and have had.
George Washington was the 4th generation of his family in america. He and his community has deep roots in america and did not consider themselves immigrants. The American nation existed before the revolution and was a precondition for such.
Only supply a demand economic denialists cannot understand than an increase in the supply of something leads to falling prices.
> They get a plenty bad enough shake.
Then why are they coming if it's so bad?
> Other countries get by just fine not having such a huge delta between haves and have nots on citizenship, and their social cohesion is better for it.
Outside of the USA and a few other countries, there is no social cohesion at all shared between natives and immigrants/foreigners, just different levels of animosity. Even between different native ethnicities and groups.
What responsibility does a non-citizen shirk? They must follow lows, pay taxes, etc. Even for things like social security.
I sometimes wonder where these concepts come from, because it sounds like somebody tricked you into thinking that non-citizens are somehow taking things from everybody else, rather than contributing just the same as everyone.
National defense, and (more vaguely) a responsibility to keep the host country in good shape as there's no other country they can run back to if things go bad in the host country.
The vast majority of citizens never made a conscious choice to be one.
Rights and benefits are two different things, surely you aren’t that dumb. Do you think non-citizens can get Social Security or a US Passport?
> Do you think non-citizens can get Social Security or a US Passport?
Non-citizen Nationals can get a US passport. For example, folks born in American Samoa.
If they have almost all of the rights and almost all of the benefits but none of the responsibilities, which you ignored, then the point stands.
They benefit from the entire bill of rights (arguably rightly so).
They have better job prospects.
They can purchase homes with federal loans.
They can attend college.
They can invest and own companies.
They can even draw from Social Security.
For now, non-citizens cannot vote openly in congressional elections, but can in minor elections like school boards and municipal votes.
They cannot be drafted to defend a nation. They have to remain employed, but enforcement is questionable and creative solutions exist.
It's a pretty good deal. Oh, and of course dual citizens always have an escape hatch to leave one country and their debts behind should they choose.
> Do you think non-citizens can get Social Security
I know they can (because I checked).
If they have paid into it like anybody else, crucially. They met their responsibilities.
The mere suggestion that this admin is doing this or anything else for the wellbeing of its citizens is a complete departure from reality.
It's very clear what the motivations are, and just because they don't seem harmful in isolation doesn't mean it's going to have no consequences for everyone else.
And its going so great for our citizens wellbeing. Oodles of programs for the needy smashed to bits. Corruption and self dealing out the wazoo. Protestors shot to death by ICE agents. A legendarily stupid war fucking up international shipping. Illegal tariffs changing daily.
My company has a H-1B guy that travelled home to India a few months ago and since then can't come back because the next date he can get with the US embassy is next year. Seems he may get stuck even longer...
I am to some degree on board with keeping a closer eye on immigration, but the way the current administration does it feels intentionally cruel. The guy at my company has a house, wife, and kids in the US; his visa is perfectly legal, so it seems it would make sense to process these people quickly. But instead, he is now in some limbo. Same for ICE. Clamping down on illegal immigration makes sense, but it doesn't make sense for ICE to behave like some unaccountable secret police that hires the biggest assholes they can find who can then do whatever they want.
I'm an American that lives abroad. I have first-hand experience how other countries treat 'immigrants'. H1B is a temporary non-immigrant visa.
I could never imagine myself buying a home in a country where I don't have permanent access to that real estate. I am not opposed to voting to prevent non-PRs from owning real estate in order to keep housing prices lower for residents and prevent non-immigrants from shooting themselves in the foot.
As I live abroad in temporary status, I keep one foot back home (USA) and am extremely mindful of the risks of needing to close up shop and move.
If you want an economic perspective, consider reading Warren Buffet's "America’s growing trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us" article [0].
[0] - https://fortune.com/article/warren-buffett-foreign-trade/
I think one of the fundamental problem with h1b is that it is labeled as "non-immigrant" whereas for all practical purposes it is really an immigrant visa. Why would a person who is supposedly having rare skills come to a country and spend their best years here without reasonable guarantee of permanency? People buy homes because it is a reasonable belief that they are going to be living here permanently and it has historically been true.
In any case I don't see the point you are making. Should America be treating immigrants poorly because whichever country you're in makes you slightly uncomfortable to buy a home there? It's not an excuse for all this pain and cruelty. America should hold itself to higher standards.
There are arguments from the other side too. Many H1B folks do keep one foot back in the country they are from. But then a lot of backlash on specifically Indian folks for sending most of their salary back home. They know that this is transient state, many of them have rented housing, but still these visas are not like weekly visas, they are for 3 years, people would build somewhat of a life in that time and uprooting them instantly is inhumane indeed.
I don't have opinions about them sending their salary back home. Obviously its better for the USA if the money stayed in the USA, but "earning money in one locality and spending it another" is really really really situation, even in the USA.
American Police officers are famous for not actually living in the cities they work in.
In each country I have lived in, I was a guest. With that knowledge, I carefully designed my life so uprooting would not be a painful inhumane process.
If you throw a party and a guest refuses to leave, you wouldn't declare forcing them to leave your home in-humane.
> If you throw a party and a guest refuses to leave
Show me where the govt has actually revoked their visa? Instead, because they cannot cancel the visa legally they are trying to create as much pain as possible for these visa holders hoping that some will give up and leave.
Who's angry about how people are spending their already-taxed income? Is that really a thing? Is it sincere or just racism masked as "think of the economy"? (Honest question, Not American. Don't live there, news to me).
The big beautiful bill included a 1% foreign remittance tax for outbound international transfers funded using physical cash, money orders, and cashier's checks.
When I was in the US as a student (F1 Visa) that is why I decided to go back home instead of trying to optain an H1B. It was just too risky for too long. I did not want to live a life where I had to expect to leave the next day. Besides, it was right at the beginning when Trump won the first time.
(a) The WSJ article is talking about "immigrant visas" a.k.a. green cards, not H1-Bs.
(b) Even if we are talking about H1-Bs, it takes someone in India 10-15 years of waiting in line to get a green card. If someone were to buy a house in the interim, it doesn't seem so irrational to me.
Its easy to blame the victim and say they should have known.
(a) I responded to OP's comment about H1-Bs, not the article itself. Even then, presumably, they paused processing new visa and the people that have already obtained them may continue to stay. If they fail to renew GC during this time, I agree that is a dark issue.
(b) If I enter China on a temporary work permit visa, with a 15 year plan to obtain Chinese citizenship, no one will have sympathy for me if that plan is interrupted by legal, political, economic changes. Since I full well knew my current status and the risks of failing to obtain Chinese citizenship.
Just because there is a possibility in the distant future for permanence, doesn't mean you can safely backdate it to today.
An H-1B is a temporary non-immigrant visa. You're not supposed to rely on it to build a life in the US with no backup plan; that was never the intent of the law. However, successive administrations ignored the intent of the law, for so long that people began to rely on assurances that the law never promised. Now that the law is getting applied properly, those people are facing the consequences. It sucks for them, but continuing to not have rule of law would suck worse for all of us
Thanks for the info. But the WSJ article is taking about green card appointments, not H1-Bs.
It is always possible to make rules stricter for the new applicants. While there was some complaints with visa price hikes, they were for new visas so it was okay. Denying existing legal visa holders entry or time to wrap things up doesn't seem bad to you? These are not criminals per say.
brother H-1Bs are transparently vectors for foreign educated workers to come to the US to build lives and eventually get a green card, so the US doesn't have to actually build a functional education system.
no one talented will come pay taxes and make your nice tech companies carry the S&P500 and in turn, everyone's retirement funds, if you treat them like hogs
“Feels intentionally cruel”?
Where have you been? There is so much evidence of the deliberate cruelty that it beggars belief you’d say that.
So you agree with the person you're responding to, but you're attacking them for stating it with less melodrama than you would prefer? What a useless comment.
Having the only appointment be a year or more out isn’t new. Anyone I knew wouldn’t take the risk of leaving the US if they didn’t have an appointment secured.
Did you read the article? They postponed all appointments.
the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents.
not only are they making it hard & unbearable for families of US citizens & PR holders to be together.
while at the same time - discouraging talent to come to the US at a crucial time when talent is at a premium due to A.I development.
last the backwards energy policy of banning renewable energy.
This was never about talent. It's about companies hiring foreigners on h1b visas at below market wages where their life in the USA is contingent on their job performance forcing them to work harder and longer than their peers to remain in the country. It's a situation that only benefits companies, while harming US citizens who have to compete with the lower wages of foreigners.
I work in a global company. As an interviewer, I don't even know if the person I interview is a US citizen. I don't even know if they live in the US or another country, and I'm probably not allowed to ask. I just rate their performance. And everybody is paid the same.
I think the situation is quite simple. Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better.
If tomorrow you were to tell (let say) Google they now need to hire only US citizens, would they lower their hiring bar, or would they expand their Shanghai or Zurich offices? Are US citizens entitled to work at Google more than others for the sole reason they have a particular citizenship?
> Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better.
Yes, at the lowest wages they can get. Increase supply -> lower prices (wages) -> more corporate profits!
However, there are those who believe that corporate profits are not the highest good. Some of us also care about the earnings of American workers.
Also, "best candidates" alone does not "best company" make. You need people who can work well together—which requires some degree of culture fit. Immigration restrictions help preserve the cultural homogeneity that makes collaboration and social trust possible.
If the h1bs are given access to the jobs (training and experience), then is it the American's fault that they are no longer considered "best"?
Google (and friends) famously have teams composed of a single national origin (or caste...). What does that say about their hiring bar?
Google (and friends) are already expanding the Shanghai and Zurich offices.
> Google (and friends) famously have teams composed of a single national origin (or caste...). What does that say about their hiring bar?
That racism isn't only something white people are capable of.
> I think the situation is quite simple. Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better.
Respectfully, this sounds terribly naive.
Why? All big and even medium tech companies have dev offices in EU and India. As example since it's much easier to deal with visas say in Ireland a lot of hiring was shifted to Irish offices.
Having worked at a few large companies, this was the case at all of them. I do think there is a messy middle of companies built on vibes.
There are 2 issues:
1/ Employment provides training and experience. If the h1bs are given access to the jobs (training and experience), then is it the American's fault that they are no longer considered "best"?
2/ h1b increases labor supply, not the demand. More supply, means lower wages for everyone.
1/ Training is only effective if you can fill the function of the job and learn from it. Many software engineering jobs people claim are stolen by H1B hires are filled by human beings more likely to meet the bar. Many American candidates just don’t. Filling a software role is hard.
2/ Demand for software is not static. Good software drives demand for more engineers in many cases, intra or extra-company. There is probably a non zero rate of wage suppression per marginal h1b currently. But an American economy with no h1b employees could feasibly have a much lower average sde salary. It is not an Econ 101 problem.
1/ Training goes all the way down the pipeline to colleges. If x% of students are foreign, then Americans didn't have the opportunity to get the education.
Again... the skill issue falls apart when you consider teams at tech companies having 1 non-American national origin or caste. I'm very skeptical that, between two foreign candidates with the same U.S. education and experience but different national origins, the fact that the candidate whose nationality matches the current team composition is selected can be explained purely as a matter of skill.
2/ Great, lets train up more American engineers to push the demand higher.
People are not as capable as you think they are and software engineering (well) is actually difficult. You cannot just push more people in. People are not fungible.
There is truth to your statement, but high salaries and demand encourage locally capable people to enter the industry.
Consider growth of CS graduates in the past 5 years or the number of people that transitioned into tech (like myself).
In 2026, this signal is not as clear: with the uncertainty of tech, increased output with less labor due to AI, and growing competition amongst workers (citizen or otherwise). We may see a shift in studies to other fields.
> I just rate their performance. And everybody is paid the same.
For some visa classes, the law says you should hire an American citizen if they can do the job - not if they rank first at whiteboards or fizz-buzz.
> If tomorrow you were to tell (let say) Google they now need to hire only US citizens, would they lower their hiring bar
Does it really matter? To a point, obviously, but a lot of people are good enough for the role without being the world's best. The bar for getting into Google has dropped since its early days, and Google keeps breaking profit records quarter after quarter.
This entire "hire the best or nothing" mindset has led to a dysfunctional hiring process that's a pain to both employers and employees, and is prima facie unachievable.
> not if they rank first at whiteboards or fizz-buzz.
As an interviewer, I don't rank candidates. I have my set of questions, some candidates solve them, others don't. You can argue that it's the bar to do your job properly. Should politicians tell big tech companies what's the bar for being a successful SWE?
> When it comes to national interest, the argument for "meritocracy" falls apart quickly.
A lot of US tech exists because of skilled foreign workers. I'm not sure what would be the tech industry without them.
> As an interviewer, I don't rank candidates
Someone in your org does - an individual or committee: that's the entire purpose of the hiring pipeline. I've interviewed candidates at multiple companies small and (extremely) big, and interviews always have to give recommendations for ranking purposes (out of 10/100, or (strong-/)yes / maybe / (strong-/)no)
I am not attacking you personally, but the fact remains: in some circumstances hiring "the best" - when they happen to be a non-citizen - can be in contravention with the law depending on the visa class and whether you failed to find an American capable of doing the job.
Don't just take my word for it, big tech companies have lost or settled multiple AG suits because they tried to hide job postings from Americans, e.g. by posting SWE/PM jobs in some podunk, print-only Farmers-Weekly-type magazines.
> A lot of US tech exists because of skilled foreign workers.
I fully agree. Unfortunately being skilled doesn't grant them the right to vote, and as young people keep finding out, those who write (and sign) laws care a lot about what actual voters think and feel. You have to get into office first before you can do the hard labor-policy stuff.
OP and you are obviously on different end of the spectrum. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
I was a hiring manager. H1B candidates got exactly the same wage as native born. There were no differences.
Being paid the same as the other guy doesn't necessarily mean the wages themselves stayed the same. Adding H1B candidates to the talent pool exerts downward pressure on salary due to the law of supply and demand. I can't say for sure whether the allure of a green card or threat of deportation play a material factor in lowering the average salary that H1B immigrants are willing to accept. But in an environment where talent is treated as fungible (even if it isn't always so), any such downward pressure affects everyone.
The prevailing wage for H1B software engineers is a very good salary for most software engineers in the world.
It's common for the prevailing wage to be double what that person could earn in their country of origin.
That's the parent's argument. Prevailing wage in country A is X. Prevailing wage in country B is Y, and according to your numbers X > 2Y. Person from country B emigrates to country A and accepts wage 1.9Y, putting downward pressure on the jobs in country A at wage X.
Yeah, I'm agreeing.
You don't need the carrot of a green card or the stick of deportation to make a software engineer on an H1B accept a depressed wage, because it's not depressed relative to their alternatives.
And still exert downward pressure on wages. Just by virtue of having more people in the pool.
This would only make sense if there are a finite number of possible jobs and that more jobs are never added as an economy grows.
This would be interesting data to collect - given some field F, for each immigrant that enters the workforce, what is the delta between:
* The expected marginal increase in supply, from immigrants looking for jobs in F
* The expected marginal increase in demand, from immigrants (or non-immigrants identifying an opportunity) starting companies that need experts in F
And how strongly does that delta correlate with average salary in F?
When they're on visa managers know you can work them harder, especially during the PERM process
The idea is that the "same wage" you are talking about is too low to hire enough employees in the time needed that the company needed so they had to look abroad for people willing to work for that amount.
I was an H1B and this is a fucking lie.
Actually they get normal wages now. H1B’s get hired because H1B’s are now in hiring, recruiting, HR, etc.. they stack the candidate pool with their own shamelessly. I’ve seen it first hand.
The news is about immigrant visas and H1B is temporary non-immigrant visa...
Isn't that a work visa and not an immigrant visa
H-1B / L-1 are non-immigrant visas, immigrant visas are green cards yes. Pausing green card processing in consulates after (on sketchy legal grounds) forcing folks to not do adjustment of status for getting an immigrant visa inside the country is, indeed, how the admin is trying to get around doing their job the way the INA intends them to.
H-1B is dual intent, isn't it?
That only means you won't be denied if you express immigration intent during interview. Besides that it's nothing special. There is no special path to GC/naturalization for H1Bs.
If you mean the memo earlier this year, it was about tourist visas and similar doing aos in country when they are not dual intent visas, which makes it iffy.
They explicitly said that for h1b and l1 aos wouldn’t be affected as they are dual intent visas.
How does companies hiring h1b-holders (a non-immigrant visa) relate to a pause on immigrant visa applications?
Oh cool, good thing labor isn't fungible and nobody ever outsources.
What a brilliant plan. Lets make sure that we restrict the supply of doctors and medical personell, that's sure to improve care!
Recently[1] Microsoft laid off several thousand domestic employees while simultaneously hiring a couple thousand employer-sponsored-Visa workers.
[1]https://www.newsweek.com/microsoft-layoffs-2026-xbox-h1b-vis...
As a hiring manager no one tells you who is an immigrant and who isn’t when you interview them.
As an interviewee I've read "we're not sponsoring visas at this time" a million times.
At the HR/JD level, not at the actual interview.
And yet, they never applied the simple option of ranking the visa applications by salary, and approving in order of demand for the talent.
That would be a market based solution that allows everyone to get the talent they need without driving down American wages.
But the point isn't about helping Americans, it's about being peedormatively against letting in brown people.
They are doing that now too, however the problem is that h1b is used for roles outside of tech, believe it or not, and if you measure everything by Bay Area tech salaries a bunch of necessary but lower paying jobs will go unfilled
If it's truly necessary, the fact that it's unfilled would be directly related to it being low paid.
And if the employer isn't willing to pay the cost of labor to fill the position, it directly raises the question of whether its "necessary".
They can pay more, or hire American.
"Superpower Suicide" in the words of historian Timothy Snyder.
Also encompasses the self-destruction of military power, alliances, and beneficial trade.
It looks more like homicide to me. Almost exactly like being pushed out the window of a skyscraper. But who would do such a thing?
> the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents.
They are insurgents. These people are Confederates.
These visa policies have already encouraged large tech companies etc to expand their Indian offices. It erodes the US tax base and means talent stay in their home country, which means more innovation happens outside the US. More start-ups are been founded in these countries because more talent is now there.
Trump first term was make Mexico and Vietnam Great Again as companies moved their manufacturing there. This term its make India Great Again as companies retain and train their tech talent there.
They will and after a cyberleek incident they'll rethink that plan.
Who cares where this so called innovation happens? Won't it be cheaper for all of us if the salaries are in much lower cost of living places? Why would a US citizen give a shit?
I've never worked at a company that gave offshore teams the same responsibilities as onshore employees. When shit gets real, and someone's head needs to be on the chopping block, it's always a same-shore employee. But reduced responsibility also means reduced impact. Let's see if that changes, and I'd love to see it happen, but I'm not holding my breath.
Do you think China should open their borders for everyone no questions asked? Kick out no one, even overstayed visas?
If not, are you willing to equate the current Chinese regime’s quality to that of your perceived quality of the US?
I see you trying to kick a field goal all the way from the school parking lot, good luck with that.
It's not popular to mention but the US is the most immigrated to country on the planet, almost 4x the next country.
But really, immigrating to any country is quite complex. It's far from "just fill out a form" for pretty much every western country.
Welcome to how immigration works in other countries. Canada just changed a bunch of rules and is actively sending immigration officers to immigrant protests to run status checks and deport anyone in the country illegally.
There is no right for non-citizens to come to the US.
I used to think things like this as an American. But let's simplify. What if they're just fucking idiots and they realized they could rally a bunch of other fucking idiots to the polls?
So if you were essentially having a spasm about how no one understands how perfect the world was when you had all the advantages, I mean, we don't need a fancy theory at that point. It's literally old people spewing up acid about why their kids don't come to Thanksgiving, only we managed to create such a presence in the world media, it's a damned disaster.
Like if your racist grampa got put in charge of US Treasuries, tell me how things would be worse.
How is Scott Bessent like a racist grandpa?
> the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents
The U.S. had a draconian restrictive immigration policy from 1921-1965. That worked fine. How can you say with a straight face that someone must be a “foreign agent” to think doing the same thing again will have the same result? Surely the burden is on you to prove the opposite, right?
And the U.S. has been doing even better since 1965. So really the question goes back to you.
Either way, your whataboutism isn’t even relevant since those were congressional changes.
This is the executive trying to undermine the law.
There is a whole site with various trends that diverged or changed since 1971.
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
It's not exactly an unbiased selection but it is interesting.
>And the U.S. has been doing even better since 1965.
Better for whom? People are struggling to afford groceries largely because the dollar is worth 1/165th of its 1913 value and the minimum wage hasn't been raised in 17 years.
I found a job that pays in BTC and I'm super hopeful about that one because my effective salary won't go down by 3-8% every year but instead will appreciate relative to what things are priced in.
> Better for whom?
Minorities and women, for a start.
White people are a global minority at ~7%. "Minorities™" have their own countries where they are majorities. If they don't want to be Minorities™, they can stay home.
Seriously? You don’t like non-white people?
Personally, I'm fine with non-white people. But the idea of moving to a country where people like me are in a minority, then complaining: "Woe is me, I'm a minority, I demand special treatment", is objectionable. This isn't the type of immigrant I want.
No more than they like white people. The only race in any study you can find shows that every racial group prefers themselves the most, other races less, and whites the least. Except white people. Who've been conditioned to get rid of their in-group bias. If HN supported images, I could show you the charts.
I looked at that data and decided deliberately, out of rational self interest to be just like them and put my own race first exactly like they do. Equality!
> The only race in any study you can find shows that every racial group prefers themselves the most, other races less, and whites the least.
Hard to parse .. ESL ?
That aside, what made up assertive nonsense is this? There are many stories and studies about various non Caucasian groups WhiteMaxxing to make themselves look more Caucasian because <reasons>.
eg: (2013) - Asian women are turning to plastic surgery to look more Caucasian https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/asian-women-are-tur...
>Hard to parse .. ESL ?
Native English speaker. Read more books. Or maybe some Thomas Jefferson. The sentence wasn't that complex.
>That aside, what made up assertive nonsense is this?
It's ANES data. Since words are clearly difficult for you, I included a picture. https://arete.network/attachments/zcbz1owza8jnvaot6u2gmd5o20...
We were able to make progress on those fronts in the 1960s because we had a culturally homogenized population after decades of immigration restriction.
In the area of women’s rights, for example, the driving force was mainline protestants who wanted prohibition, in opposition to recent immigrants: https://www.wpbstv.org/prohibition-and-the-suffrage-movement.... If America had remained an Anglo-Protestant society, it likely would have developed on a similar trajectory as Canada, the UK, and Australia on issues like abortion. Remember, Roe v. Wade had five Nixon and Eisenhower Republicans in the majority. The party shifted positions on the issue with Reagan because it was a way to flip a large number of catholics, who had overwhelmingly voted democrat until then. Evangelical protestants plus religious Catholics was a big enough coalition to offset mainline protestants on the issue.
Do you pay your taxes in btc too?
Who cares when I can sell BTC to USD in seconds?
So, it really doesn’t matter that your job is paid in BTC, given that you could just convert your USD income to BTC whenever you want
That doesn't follow. I'm pretty sure they're talking about the effect of nominal wage stickiness: you're not constantly renegotiating your rate, so when there's fluctuations in relative value, it matters what unit the original number is denominated in. Compare with the case of a US expat being paid a steady salary in USD and converting to the local currency to make purchases, if you want an example with a similar mechanic but very different intuitive feel and practicalities.
(I'm not sure they're right about the overall effect though.)
You basically nailed it. USD crashed in the 1970s after the Nixon shock, and is basically a shambling corpse losing 3-8% of its value every single year while BTC is 600x the value of a 1913 dollar... and trending up: https://i.imgur.com/PJT01T8.png
Even if they don't give me a raise, I'll still have more purchasing power at the end of a year rather than less as the case with USD.
"Worked fine" is a pretty vague description for the year we had a Great Depression, world war, Jim Crow, Japanese internment to name a few.
The U.S. was at the apex of its power during those years. Those years are also why we remember earlier immigration waves as “working.” The foreign born population dropped from 15% to under 5% during that period. The Italian and Irish enclaves disappeared and so did the separate ethnic identity of those groups (to a large degree).
“I’m okay with racial prison camps if it makes us powerful” is the exact sort of moral bankruptcy to be expected from the people who defend this administration.
False equivalence. The claim was:
"the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49453997
We should modularize our discussion to distinguish between the various effects of immigration and the most humane/optimal way to enforce immigration law.
The rest of the world was bombed to pieces while the USA had an untouched industrial output.
That’s a common misconception. The U.S. actually became the world’s largest industrial power before World War I. Germany had 60% of the US’s GDP per capita in 1910. It dipped during the war itself, but by 1960 it was closer to 70%. https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/us-gdp-per-cap....
Whether or not what you say is correct, it does not at all contradict GP’s two claims.
It contradicts the conclusion he’s drawing from those two facts, which is that U.S. economic dominance results from European economies having been destroyed after WWII. The U.S. became a world power during its isolationist phase prior to WWI.
I think the last 20 years of that 45 year period were substantially due to exactly what they described.
If you give any debit for the decade-long Great Depression, or wartime malaise due to loss of life, emotional toll, and rationing, it’s fair to conclude that half of the period of good times was during exactly that post-war rebuilding (largely powered by US industrial capacity) and concomitant baby boom.
There was not any particular discontinuity in GDP per capita growth during the post WWII period compared to previous periods: https://conversableeconomist.com/2023/09/14/the-remarkable-s....
Bombed to pieces by the USA, ironically enough.
Would you have preferred that the US military stay at home during WW2 to avoid bombing anyone? You know that Japan was killing something like a Hiroshima and Nagasaki worth of civilians every month?
I would have preferred the banks be told not to expect a bailout in 1914. Privatize the profits, socialize the losses. It's been a problem for a long time and the body count stretches into the millions.
We also had strong unions and income tax rates as high as 95% on the highest income brackets.
Yeah we should also have very high income tax rates.
I believe that human flourishing is a better goal than state power relative to its rivals.
Mmmmhmmm. Ah yes 1921, the year both the Klu Klux Klan (and European Fascism) metastasized in society. All immigration controls come from a rather interesting, dark place; shifting of the Overton Window, and all that.
Oh god I hope this lie is part of an attempt to get right-wingers on board with a “let’s roll immigration policy back to what we had in 1950!” push.
I hope this because it’d be hilarious if they got what they wanted and realized that meant actual open borders with most or all of the Americas.
Before Hart-Cellar we had national origin quotas, it wasn't a free-for-all.
For those outside the Americas, yes. Western hemisphere immigration had no meaningful restrictions until 1965.
We had little meaningful immigration pressure from the america at the time. The foreign born population dropped from 15% in 1921 to under 5% by 1970.
We’re backing away from:
> The U.S. had a draconian restrictive immigration policy from 1921-1965.
to “well ok not really but it didn’t matter”?
It did matter. It was restrictive in actual effect, in that it blocked immigration from the places it was mainly coming from, and dropped the foreign born population under 5% by 1970.
How can you with a straight face equate “fine for 1921-1965” with “best for 2026”?
Even odder: what makes you find it plausible that an understanding of the policies of this period and their effect on the economy were part of the decision-making process of this administration - especially when they have actively voiced opinions that fully explain this action? At some point bending backwards to provide some benefit of the doubt is saying more about the speaker than the topic - I am certainly of the opinion that we are well beyond that rubicon. I cannot fathom the reasoning at this point.
> How can you with a straight face equate “fine for 1921-1965” with “best for 2026”
It’s strong evidence that immigration restriction isn’t economically destructive. If you think economic circumstances have changed and the result would be different this time, then I think you have the burden to prove it.
I wonder if this has to do with the current economy and job market. Anecdotally I have found it very tough to find a new job (software engineering), though my previous employer continues to post job listings for green card applications as part of the required labor market test.
They are not connected - this is a pause on immigrant visas, not work visas.
What do you think EB visas are: immigrant visas or work visas? Answer: they are both.
You're correct. I spoke a little too loosely, there are many different kinds of visas, but something like 95% of all work visas issued each year fall into the category of non-immigrant.
I'll concede that this statistic is cold comfort if you fall into that 5% category, but the point is that work visa almost always means non-immigrant.
This is the most missed point in all of the flame throwing in this thread.
They certainly aren’t doing this out of any particular love for American workers.
I'd say it's on the Trump administration being full of racists and white nationalists and wanting to deport immigrants.
Why do you wonder if it's economic instead of the Trump administration's announced policies of stopping immigration, including unconstitutionally removing birthright citizenship?
Conflating not wanting to compete with foreigners for jobs in your own country with racism is bad faith bullshit. Foreigners of the exact same race are equally unwanted competition.
Even taking you at your word, immigrants also create far more jobs. The economy is not some zero sum thing, with some fixed amount of jobs and fixed amount of work and fixed amount of wealth to be split.
Every economic analysis I have ever seen shows that there's economic surplus from immigrants entering a local economy; more jobs and more wealth is created, per person, than if those people had not come. In particular I'm thinking of some studies of local economy in Miami when there have been bursts of immigration.
>In particular I'm thinking of some studies of local economy in Miami when there have been bursts of immigration.
That was study about Cuban immigrants into Miami, a city with large Cuban population and thus existing infrastructure to absorb. I wouldn't draw that study into anything broader.
As someone in Local Politics, the issue generally is, immigration, esp of unskilled kind decimates local budgets since they are generally directly tied to number of people. Here is CBO report on it. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61464
Now, type of immigration that mostly impacts this study is not type of immigration that is impacted by visa application processing halting but acting like "Yea, this current system is working GREAT!" is false. This is what so annoying about this issue, it's in clear need of change but Congress refuses to do it and Trump doesn't have leadership to get it done.
>The economy is not some zero sum thing
No it's a negative sum thing. Especially when they come in at such insane rates as they did under Biden. Notice you car insurance rates going up? Housing costs skyrocketing? Hospital waits taking forever? That's the cost of mass immigration. And that's not even accounting for the millions of illegal immigrants.
>Every economic analysis
Since there apparently so many, surely you wouldn't mind citing a handful.
Its only racism when you then go and invite white south africans in. And make statements like "Why cant we have more people come in from countries like Norway"
They say it out loud. The people writing these policies are vocally proud of being white nationalists. Defending them with "well maybe they have a good reason!" is evidence that you're either on board with their actual agenda (i.e., evil) or incomprehensibly naive (i.e., stupid).
Birthright citizenship is so weird, because when I think of my son’s birthright, I imagine things he’s entitled to because he’s my son. He’ll inherit from my estate, he’ll enjoy my love and encouragement and support, etc. The location of the hospital where he was born doesn’t really have anything to do with it, but now I have an entirely new fear about foreign countries claiming my child if my wife happens to give birth early while on a vacation. Like, I want to go to Israel, but don’t they have compulsory military service? I wouldn’t want the baby to accidentally become an Israeli citizen and forced to serve for some foreign army. Same with China. I’d love to see the country, but they’ve had some weird and draconian laws like the one child policy. For all I know they take some children to be raised by the state. Whatever their laws are… I don’t think they should apply to my children.
This is rather weird framing since usually an additional citizenship (especially one in a country like the US) is considered a valuable thing to have for your child. Usually people claiming birthright citizenship are weird are doing it because they also see it as valuable. It’s also woven into the traditions of New World countries.
Regarding your concerns, I don’t see why it is unreasonable to simply renounce citizenship later or just simply double check your travel itinerary during the late stages of a pregnancy. This seems like at best an unfounded concern.
I agree that you can "just renounce" although notice that this won't necessarily work (it will for the US assuming you follow the procedure properly)
However being a dual citizen isn't necessarily all upside. Citizenship comes with requirements, particularly in some countries military service is mandatory and so if you're a citizen - even though you are a permanent resident of somewhere else, you must either go do your service or maybe pay a fine depending on the country.
You also get treated differently if things go wrong. Foreigners are entitled in most cases to diplomatic assistance from the representatives of their country. Your country can't necessarily do much for you, but typically you will get that phone call home to let loved ones know what happened, they can find a lawyer who speaks your language (but you'll need to find a way to pay them), if there's some paperwork snafu they might be able to help (often for a fee). It's at least nice, if you're jailed or in hospital after surprise food poisoning or whatever, to hear somebody who speaks your language.
None of this applies to dual citizens. You're "home" from their point of view, so no need to contact your diplomatic representative, maybe you have never been there since the day you were born and can't speak a word of the language but too bad.
> You also get treated differently if things go wrong.
Not treated differently. Treated the same.
You are required by law to enter your country of citizenship using that country's passport (this is true for every country). Not doing so can result in fines or jail time. This is precisely to stop idiots from playing the "foreigner" card to try to, for example get out of paying a speeding ticket or parking fines.
You can always relinquish citizenship. No one is forcing your child to be a dual citizen if they are born abroad.
Lol, no you can't. Most people these days can't.
Costs $2500 AND payment of all student debts.
This place (USA) is literally a fucking company town.
The failure mode is statelessness, and that's a very cruel fate to wish on anybody's baby.
go make your own anarchist nation then
you have a kid like billions of other people in the world, nothing special tbh besides it is "your" kid
you just want a subscription pass to a country, and i think people like that are useless freeloader people who want none of the stakes and all of the benefits
cool you can code and get hired by some company, or maybe you start a company. so what?
I think many (if not most) countries in the developed world should reduce immigration, and usa in particular should abolish birthright citizenship.
The first because a lower supply of labor is going to create breathing space for an entire working population who will see tremendous job upheaval due to AI automation. A lower aggregate demand on houses, services will also be welcome to take the fuel out of inflation, and maybe we'll regain some of that experience of true affluence, where scarce things (e.g. access to cabin in the woods, a rowhome in a walkable city, ...) are in abundance. There is also the import of an idle, criminal element that has very clearly reduced quality of life and safety in many places.
Birthright citizen should be abolished because birth tourism and illegally crossing the border to have anchor babies are a vector for foreigners to participate politically and claim imho undeserved welfare benefits.
I think largely these are the stated reasons of the administration too.
Birthright citizenship is a constitutional right in the US same as freedom of speech, religion, the press, and the right to sue the government.
The change would require 2/3 of all states to approve a constitutional amendment. It won't ever pass. Most of us are only citizens because someone up the chain was born under this rule.
My family came here in the early 1700s and fought in the revolution. It would be a disgrace for me to do anything other than support immigrants.
Serious question - would your ancestors from the 1700s agree that you should support the immigrants you are supporting? Or have you been taught that your ancestors were wrong and evil and that you should honor them by doing the opposite of what they believed?
> Birthright citizenship is a constitutional right in the US same as freedom of speech, religion, the press, and the right to sue the government.
And we can amend constitutional rights. It most definitely will happen in our lifetimes.
> Most of us are only citizens because someone up the chain was born under this rule.
And?
You think the world in 2026 is exactly the same as in 1776?
What about slavery? Good idea in 1776 therefore good idea in 2026?
This doesn't stop our politicians from completely ignoring the 2nd amendment so whats the difference
The administration has never justified immigration policy on economic terms, only keeping out criminals.
If it were really part of a coherent anti-inflation, pro-housing strategy, then, well, a lot of other policies would be different... (Including signing the ROAD act, not starting trade wars, or driving up the price of oil)
FWIW the Road ACT became law anyway without his signature, but yeah if he wanted to demonstrate he cared about such things he would have signed it promptly and proudly.
Just how many people are being born through birth tourism and end up claiming more in welfare than they pay in taxes?
I think birth tourism is an overblown fear, but I suppose their answer is that poor welfare sponges and rich-ish passport collectors are both threats, for different reasons.
Estimates vary from 40-80%. Not just birth tourism, but all sorts of government handouts (your tax dollars). Especially under Mayorkas.
40-80% of what?
Of illegal immigrants on some form of welfare.
Minimal. In the hundreds vs H1b with the tens of thousands.
Many don't bother coming back but the ones the do are almost always very expensive.
How many, how expensive, and how much is this offset by others who come back and pay taxes?
I have seen a lot of freakouts about birth tourism since the recent SCOTUS ruling and I haven’t seen anyone give even the most cursory overview of the actual scale of the supposed problem. It’s purely an emotional reaction.
Usually birth tourism is done by wealthier foreigners but that foreign wealth is not visible to the government so they end up qualifying for welfare.
What kind of welfare? Do you have stats or stories? I'm skeptical someone wealthy would slum it for the peanuts they could get from welfare fraud.
Or if they do, surely there are ways wealthy "real Americans" could hide their money just as easily and defraud welfare, so this isn't really a problem specific to birth tourism.
Hard for Americans to hide their assets in america. Land ownership is usually public.
They can do whatever you presume the rich birth tourist does, like deposit in foreign banks, not own US land, obfuscate land ownership through trusts or straw owners.
That doesn’t answer my questions at all.
Our birthrate has been below replacement for several years now. We need immigrants to mitigate that.
I don't get this argument. We skip over fixing the birthrate and instead rely on immigration. There's a whole bunch of reasons people give for why we can't fix it like costs, jobs, housing, etc. Ok, so then first wouldn't immigrants also have the same problem once they get here or do they have a way of bypassing our low birthrate somehow but then we were told we can't bypass it, it exists because of the costs, jobs. etc.
So the immigrants end up with the same birth rate and then we have to bring in more immigrants. So there would have to be a constant source of excess people somewhere else for this to be sustainable. So it gets to a point where I wonder if this is really the plan.
> We skip over fixing the birthrate
You're assuming the birthrate can be "fixed". Japan has an even worse demographic problem. They've tried "fixing" it and nothing much works. Similar for South Korea. Japan would certainly benefit from opening up to more immigration. Countries that can attract more immigration are going to benefit economically as the birthrates continue to decline globally. Why not be attractive to immigrants instead of wanting to repel them?
Or, crazy idea, we make life livable for the locals and then we incentivize them to have kids of their own? And before you say it, I'm an immigrant from the 3rd world myself. I'm not anti-immigratiom, but the birth rate talking point is a very poor one.
Not to mention how unsustainable it is anyways, what happens a few years down the line when the immigrants stop having kids? There isn't an infinite ocean of people you can import on a whim, and definitely not forever.
straight up lying and doomer boomer mentality, sad and gross.
very consistent correlations between migrants being net positive economic providers, more law abiding then native citizens, and just straight up regurgitating racist myths
mass deportations won’t solve anything economic when it’s the same admin hamstringing prices and rates with tariffs, war, and defacto support of the oligopoly
i really wish basement dwellers like you though of something original now and then
Are you... genuinely this naive and ignorant to what's happening in USA?
Attempts to find plausibly deniable rationales for this administration's anti-immigrant policies other than "gutter racism" are ridiculous.
Occam's razor. When somebody shows you who they are, believe them. Nativism is possibly the only stable and coherent political ideology this admin holds. Everything else is negotiable, but not this one.
"Everything I don't like is racist/sexist/ableist/something-ist"
When you think the only group we should allow to immigrate is white South Africans, then, yea, it's racism. At least be honest about it.
Don't forget Nazism! (AKA, anyone who isn't left-wing.)
There's nothing inherently wrong with pausing immigration visas. These commenters act like anything less than fully open borders and unlimited immigration quotas makes you Satan reincarnate.
They intentionally over-dramatize everything he does to spread fear and alarmism cause that's all they can do. It's so tiring and nonsensical.
You're the one dramatizing here
In a vacuum the immigration pause might be innocuous. But put into context the other actions and statements from this administration and it tells a deeper story.
Just think of it as the return of the 19th-century Know Nothings or the 1920s nativists if the Nazi comparison makes you squeamish.
didn't big tech co's layoff thousands of people here and then filed for thousands more h1b ?
If it happened, there should be evidence (an article link). If it isn't supportable, then the implication is disingenuous to make.
“Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?”
But since you asked, here you go: https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/microsoft-...
Some of the comments are talking about H1-B which isn't impacted by this.
Vivek Wadhwa, one of the staunchest supporters of H1B (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12489558) is now recommending to end it: https://x.com/wadhwa/status/2090958079726927873
This is a response to the supreme court ruling on birthright citizenship. They're using the levers they do have, since that was removed. Anyone who agrees with the ruling should really read justice Thomas' dissent.
it’s a cut and dry constitutional amendment, it doesn’t matter if Thomas thinks the people that were in mind when it was drafted are not the same people it applies to now. if they want to change it, go ahead and get the states to ratify a new amendment.
Supreme Court doesn’t get to throw out an amendment because it’s old.
It's also amusing that you won't ever hear conservatives like Thomas making the same argument when it comes to, say, the 2nd amendment.
No, it's not. This seems to be Stephen Miller's baby and the efforts to limit legal immigration (see my other comment) predate the birthright citizenship case and pretty much started day 1 of the administration. Birthright citizenship is really part of that.
What is this "lever" you claim already existed and then got "removed", precisely?
No one should be subjected to a Thomas dissent. Especially that one.
Just more distraction from a clown administration the most incompetent in American history.
I see this as a reaction of the administration to the judge’s injunction against their 75 country visa policy.
This one doesn’t mention tourist visas, so I am guessing they will be issued? I don’t get what benefit they see by inconveniencing and potentially harming folks that are already in the country legally to just live their lives. I get that this administration’s goal is to completely shut down all immigration and potentially even remove folks here legally too but there will be a cost to bear for the country because of that. It will be slow to come and so they will be able to blame it on the next administration
"tourist visas" is in the sub-headline.
"The State Department and Department of Homeland Security are reviewing all B-1 business and B-2 tourist visas, he said."
That is reference to people who have applied for asylum after having come in on a tourist visa. Technically their status is legal, because they have a pending application. This is an attempt to make their status illegal, so they can be deported.
This is specifically for immigrant visas. USCIS distinguishes two broad categories of visas: immigrants and non-immigrants. Tourists are part of the latter group.
That's not accurate. H-1B is a non-immigrant visa. It's not intended for tourists.
From CBP's own website[1], emphasis is mine:
[1]: https://www.help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-1027?language=en_...This is good for Americans. I'm not sorry.
Are H1Bs still being processed? They are dual intent visas as far as I know
Yes, they are. Immigrant visa = green card. Dual intent just means you are allowed to apply for a green card.
"We're not anti-immigration, we're only anti-illegal immigration!"
* indefinitely pauses legal immigration *
Slanted take here, but this is exactly what they are doing with the federal government.
They like to complain that "big government inefficient and bad" while actively making it inefficient and bad. They are fulfilling their own prophecies.
Similar to immigration I'm sure. If all immigration is illegal then it's all bad!
It’s not slanted, it’s accurate.
The right wing doesn’t want to run the government, they want to occupy it so it doesn’t run except to enrich themselves.
Everything they say is a lie.
By "they" it is that every single politician lies.
So of course that is the tiniest small print of every promise any politician makes, such that once it is a promise broken it is someone else's fault and not theirs.
Therefore their entire job is to lie.
If you're saying that's hypocritical, it's not.
Being anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration doesn't mean you want to flood the country with legal immigrants. That's the case in the UK, by the way, where the vast majority of immigrants are legal and it's the reason for the growing anti-immigrant attitude of the natives.
People who are anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration also have requirements like:
- there should be a fixed number of legal immigrants
- they should be well vetted (this may be lacking in the US and UK)
- legal immigration should be points based
- quotas for legal immigrants should be increased contingent on the number of illegal immigrants which are expelled
- there should be checks to verify that visas are not abused (the way H1Bs are abused in the US with under qualified immigrants)
- asylum should be abolished because it's abused. It can be replaced by paying poorer countries to permanently host asylees.
It most certainly is hypocritical. You can not be simultaneously pro-legal immigration and support banning legal immigration. If you support banning legal immigration, you are by definition anti-legal immigration.
> Being anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration doesn't mean you want to flood the country with legal immigrants.
If only there were something between 0 and unrestricted immigration, some sort of program where people apply for permission and the government issues approvals for individuals to enter its borders after meeting legal criteria.
> You can not be simultaneously pro-legal immigration and support banning legal immigration.
Nobody is banning legal immigration. It's being restricted. The headline itself says "pauses". Do you think no legal immigrant will be let into the US until 2028?
> some sort of program where people apply for permission
Yes, and if that program is being abused (just ask people here on HN about H1Bs to see how they feel), then you pause it until you figure out how to solve it.
You're giving the current government the benefit of the doubt, which I never do.
In 2024, I didn't think we'd be murdering protesters in the streets or kidnapping heads of state or inciting global tariff wars paid for by US citizens or watching the president take billions of dollars of bribes using cryptocurrency.
Why do you think thos government is responding to something in a good faith attempt at improving a system?
What will be next in Trump's destruction of the American Economy?
So far he has driven away allies, put huge tariff on our most loyal allies. Driven away manufacturing by tariff policies. Driven away immigrants and academics. Pushed a last century oil based economy. Shown us how our exquisite weapon tech will fail (this might actually be good in the long run). Along with crippling our cybersecurity and state departments.
Replacing Lisa Cook or Jerome Powell and cutting rates to 0.
Well at least you're healt... oh wait.
Not just immigration, seems like travel in general is becoming difficult too.
It's a real shame that just when we have the tech and infrastructure to allow people to travel anywhere in the world within a day, for a single person to be able to explore the entirety of this awesome planet for the first time in human history,
that the worst among us have to enforce artificial borders and deny everyone this basic freedom.
Travel should be codified as a human right.
If someone can support themselves and doesn't harm anybody, what ethical justification does anybody have for denying a person from living where they want?
People aren't simply interchangeable units of economic output, and when they live together for long periods of time they develop unique and distinct cultures that are dear to them. Letting the entirety of the world into your country without stops is cultural suicide. If you put any a value in preserving culture you will find it ethical to put some limit on immigration. Assimilation is possible but there is a limit to the rate and amount of foreigners a place can absorb before changing significantly.
There's no real Us culture to preserve.
>There's no real Us culture to preserve.
Fish Fails to Detect Water
The easiest way to see it is look at Japanese portrayals (outsider perspective). Cowboys, horses, guns, pride in our military and our free speech, fireworks and BBQs.
Just because you look down on the culture doesn't mean there isn't one.
That's one subset of Americans and not representative of all.
NYC and Los Angeles are the biggest cultural exporting centers in the US and have none of that.
Big cities are indistinguishable from other big cities in other countries. All big cities mostly have the same culture. That's why I liked the Japanese perspective on us. They saw cool things that they liked and included in their fiction that contained us.
If you want to experience American culture I recommend https://www.youtube.com/@PeterSantenello
America doesn't have one culture. It has 500 cultures. But the ones that other cultures notice are the ones I listed. Cities literally stink.
The US is too large to have one monolithic culture but it certainly contains many subcultures on the regional level. I won't dispute they're on the decline though.
> Letting the entirety of the world into your country without stops is cultural suicide.
The natives of the Americas, Australia, and the many nations previously colonized by European countries, know that better than any descendants of the colonizers.
Did they get to have any say?
Yes that is a great example. You certainly don't want what happened to them happening to you.
Yeah that's a great example of hypocrisy
No one actually thinks this is hypocrisy. No one is giving up their houses to Native Americans. They do an land acknowledgement and call it even. Even the most liberal among us don't feel it's necessary to sacrifice any meaningful amount of their own comfort to right some past wrongs.
> to enforce artificial borders and deny everyone this basic freedom.
a very postnational view, humanist in a way, lipsius or erasmus would recognize it.
that sort of individuated cosmopolitanism only works for educated men and women with means, who have or have the capacity to self-actualize.
not for the masses. the nation is still a cradle to protect and nurture the commonwealth, and given that they took hundreds to sometimes thousands of years to form, i don't think borders are artificial in the least.
> that sort of individuated cosmopolitanism only works for educated men and women with means, who have or have the capacity to self-actualize.
So because not everyone can afford to travel freely we shouldn't let anyone do that?
There's no reason why we should worship borders, or the state.
> and given that they took hundreds to sometimes thousands of years to form, i don't think borders are artificial in the least.
"Borders" as they are treated today began barely 200 years ago, and only started being enforced so strictly since WW1 and then even worse after WW2.
For the vast >95% of human history, if you could walk to somewhere and survive there, you could live there.
The real ironic shit is that most of the travel and immigration restrictions of today are instituted by the descendants of people that invaded and occupied the lands of other people :')
> For the vast >95% of human history, if you could walk to somewhere and survive there, you could live there
For 95% of human history we were hunter gatherers living in extremely sparsely populated areas.
50% of all American unicorns were started by immigrants. This is sheer stupidity to prevent the best of what the world has to offer when they are knocking at your door.
People think immigrants come to just take. When they can contribute to the economy.
The impact on academics and research has already been felt over the last decade. US used to be the default destination for academics and skilled workers from China ever since the cultural revolution. They engrained themselves in the country, studied/worked at top univerities, taught multiple generations of students, did key research, worked at top tech companies, and overall were major contributors to American technological superiority.
Then starting ~2016 Trump and his DoJ made it borderline impossible for Chinese nationals to get visas, specifically targeting research universities. Since then new Chinese skilled immigration has slowed down to a trickle, and there has been a massive "brain gain" of existing talent in China's favor.
The result - China now has a booming tech industry, Chinese universities have overlapped Amercian ones in research output, China is a very close 2nd in the AI race. And as skilled immigrants continue to be driven out of the US China in particular will enjoy the benefits.
You can't ignore the impact of China also becoming a better place to live as well. China is a different place no than it was 20 years ago, and the need to go overseas anywhere is probably felt less today than back then.
Salaries are still very low (like 10x lower) compared to the US.
PPP is what matters financially, add on ethnic homogeny and familial presence in a culture that values both and staying becomes a lot more compelling.
I think what voters want is for highly skilled founders to come and start companies and for normally skilled employment to go to Americans before foreigners.
No one just starts companies as soon as they land. It takes decades of hard work and building yourself before they are at a point where they can start companies.
What is a "normally skilled" job? Working at Home Depot?
The world's richest man is an illegal immigrant who started multiple companies.
(Musk started X.com while on a student visa and didn't get around to securing a work visa until many years later. This rule violation technically renders his U.S. citizenship void under Trump-era immigration rules.)
It’s unquestionably bad for the United States, but it will be good for the rest of the world. Time for US dominance to end, and Trump is doing a good job of that.
And now they can be more evenly distributed all over the world. I'd call it a net win even if administration did not think it this way.
> The State Department has paused all immigrant visa applications while it briefs consular officials around the world on a new policy that aims to keep out people who are considered potential drains on public coffers.
From AP NEWS. Sooo Trump can get deported? Is anyone draining public coffers faster than him?
This is really frustrating. I'm (native-born US citizen) naviagting the visa process with my future wife. She has no intentions of working (enjoys being NEET) and there's zero risk of her becoming a public charge (our hh gross income is closer to 7 digits than it is to 5 digits), very frustrating that we're getting screwed by this under the justification of labor market competition and public charge risk.
I hope she is white
The political leaders (not just Trump) and their backers clearly are thinking that AI and robotics will replace most of the work force, so why keep importing new ones. The issue is American citizens will likely face similar but different developments. A future with almost no work in a country and political elite that detest social safety nets will lead to a societal breakdown.
> closed for training
So like the DMV then?
I want to give some context to this because I know a lot about this system. You have to see it as part of the larger moves thi sadministration has made to restrict legal immigration.
The most important thing to note is this for immigrant visas ie green cards. As yet, nonimmigrant visas such as visitor, student and employment visas are unaffected. That may change. It's also unclear if K1 (fiance) visas are affected because they're technically nonimmigrant but they'll probably be treated as immigrant visas.
This has the most effect on family-based green cards. The most common type is a marriage-based green card but there are also green cards for parents, children and even siblings of primarily US citizens but also lawful permanent residents ("LPRs").
When a US citizen or LPR marries a non-resident and they wish to live in the US, you broadly have three routes to make this happen:
1. If they're within the US, you can do an adjustment of status ("AoS"). This is where you file an I130 and an I485. Generally you do this concurrently. If you're an LPR and not a citzen then you might not because you may need to wait for a visa to become available. There can be other reasons depending on the foreign spouse's immigration history, whether they're in removal proceedings and what other immigration benefits they've applied for;
The I130 is filed by the sponsor (ie the citizen or LPR) and it basically shows that you both are free to marry and the marriage is legal. If neither of you have been married before, this is relatively straightforward. It can be difficult otherwise but an I130 is generally considered routine;
The I485 is filed by the immigrant to adjust status. It can be based on an approved I130 or filed concurrently (within the US only). This is where USCIS will determine if they believe the marriage is bona fide, meaning there's no fraud taking place. This includes the submission of marriage evidence (eg joint bank accounts, bills in both of your names, a lease or deed in both of your names, photos, proof of the relationship and so on). USCIS makes a holistic determination based on the totality of your case and prior immigration history. For various reasons, you may have a bar on adjusting and may need a waiver;
2. If the foreign spouse is outside the US, you will generally need to do what's called consular processing. You file the I130 as per normal and once it's approved you apply with the consulate. Depending on the country it may take over a year to get an appointment and the embassy and/or USCIS may end up sitting on the case. This whole process can take years. If granted, you are granted a visa to enter the US. Upon entry, you get a green card; or
3. The so-called fiance visa (K1). In this case you are unamrried and the foreign fiance is outside the US. It's similar to consular processing. If granted, you get a visa stamp and can enter the US. You need to marry within 90 days of entry and then you apply for adjustment of status within the US.
So, what has this administration done to block legal immigration? A ton, actually:
1. They've placed various bans on the issuance of visas to citizens of certain countries. There are 3 such bans in place now and they're called the 19, 39 and 75 country bans. I honestly forget which is which. What happens in consular processing and fiance visa cases is that you go through all the above steps including a consular interview and then... nothing. The consulate is forbidden from issuing you a visa by executive order.
Although it's never been estated, the administration tends to take a broad view of citizenship. For example, if you were born in Afghanistan and your family moved to Canada when you were 1 month old and you've never been there in your life, this administration treats you as an Afghan for the purposes of the bar.
2. The administration implemented a rule whereby you have to consular process in the country of your birth regardless of where you live. There's really no reason for this rule other than to make it harder for people from "shithole" countries to get visas because certain countries have incredibly long wait times for consulate interviews. And if your country of birth has no consulate, they'll assign you to another one and that may not be convenient or even possible (ie you may not be able to enter that country);
3. The administration released a policy memo that stated that adjustment within the US was an "extraordinary" rememdy and that most cases should consular process. They like consular processing because AoS can be challenged in federal court whereas the Supreme Court has ruled that the president has broad powers to limit immigration so consular decisions generally can be reviewed by any court. So the various bans will likely stop issuance of visas to citizens of those countries outside of the US until, at a minimum, Trump leaves office;
4. They're introducing a new rule that's typically called "public charge". This is a new standard whereby USCIS should reject visa applications from people who have been or they consider will be a "public charge", meaning rely on public benefits. You can guess the skew in what countries this does and doesn't apply to;
5. When you adjust within the US, you can optionally apply for an employment authorization document ("EAD") ie a work card. In earlier times, this would arrive within 2-3 months and allow a person to work legally while their I485 case is being processed. It seems like since January 21, 2025, USCIS has basically stopped issuing EADs to make life difficult for immigrants in most cases;
6. To adjust within the US, you need to be inspected at the border. People without this (eg they sneak across the border) are called entering without inspection ("EWI"). This administration has decided some previous programs under Biden specifically (eg CBP One and TPS) in most cases won't be treated as valid entries. This generally means you need a difficult to get waiver to adjust and if you leave to consular process, you're facing a 3-10 year bar and possibly a permanent bar depending on circumstances;
7. In certain circumstances to adjust within the US you have to maintain valid status the entire time or be in status at the time you apply. This administration is trying to take the view that TPS is not valid status for this purpose. This can be mean you're retroactively out of status and can be placed in rmeoval and/or face a bar if you leave and try and return;
8. Various humanitarian programs to parole in place ("PIP") have been ended, forcing people to leave the country to adjust and then face bans from certain countries, bars for unlawful status and/or inadmissibility;
9. There have been pilot programs, particularly in San Diego, to coordinate removals by ICE when people go an appointment at USCIS for an interview or check-in;
10. Judges in immigration court are not Article III judges like federal judges are. They can be fired by the executive for any rason. This president basically fires judges that approve too many cases;
11. Previously, people in removal proceedings depending on their circumstances could get out on bond. For a lot of people, this has been eliminated;
12. ICE will generally try and get someone out of the jurisdiction after picking them up to avoid getting blocked by a habeas petition in federal court. Often they're moved to jurisdictions with far friendlier judges (eg Louisiana). They can also be moved randomly to make it hard to family or even their attodrneys to find and talk to them;
13. There is a ton of evidennce that USCIS is sitting on cases to delay for really no good reason. For example, they'll approve the I130 and just not make a ruling on an I485. This can force people to pay even more money to go into federal court and get a writ of mandamus;
14. Naturatlization has a requirement for "good moral character". Up until thi sadministration, that's been treated as the lack of bad moral character, such as a conviction for certain aggravated offences. This administration takes the view that an applicant has to instead prove good moral character, which can be letters of support from citizens;
15. Denaturalization has historically been a very rare occurrence. It requires the government to go into federal court and make a case that you committed fraud to become a citizen. Historically this has been a few dozen casea a year at most. Now it's in the hundreds. That's still not a lot but people expect this to ramp up. They're also taking a broader view of grounds for denaturalization. For example, if you committed a disqualifying offence before you naturalized but weren't charged and convicted until after, they isometimes now go after that where they didn't previously;
16. They've implemented so-called third-country deportation. That is, you can be deported to some other country entirely if your home country won't take you or if it's deemed unsafe for you to return to that country. So, you can flee civil war in South Sudan and be deported to El Salvador now. Historically, we didn't do this;
17. This week they announced they were going to revoke the B1/B2 visas for asylum seekers issued in the last 10 years. For anyone who doesn't know, visitor visas typically allow you to enter the US for up to 6 months. It's up the officer at the port of entry and they just make it up, basically.
People who seek asylum are generally forgiven for however they get into the country as long as they entered with inspection. There is a huge backlog in immigration cases from the mid 2010s that are still pending.
Now those visas have long expired so what's the point? I have a theory. When you apply for a temporary visa, you're asked what it's for. So for a visit visa, it might be to go to the World Cup. At any point later on if they find you didn't do what you said you were going to do, they can view that as misrepresentation (ie immigration fraud). This is particularly the case for people who get a visit visa, come to the US and get married within a short window of time.
A finding a misrepresetation can make you permanently inadmissible and that makes you ineligible to adjust.
So what's the point of expiring old visas? I believe they're going to say certain asylum seekers committed immigration fraud to get into the country and they'll find them inadmissible and use that as an excuse to deport them, something we never previously did;
Or, that evocation will potentially break your chain of maintaining status retroactively, making you ineligible to adjust in other circumstances; and
18. The latest: immigrant visas are being paused in consular processing cases, ostensibly for "retraining" in public charge scenarios.
Is this in retaliation for a federal judge ruling three days ago that Trump's pause on Diversity Visa processing was unlawful?
Or is this in retaliation for a federal judge ruling 6 days ago that Trump's ban on immigration from 75 countries was unlawful?
Yes.
Same ruling class that goes on a bunch of tangents about birth rates stops immigrant visa processing for US citizens who married abroad.
They stopped it for those who married men as well
This is classic goomba fallacy.
Right wing oligarchs want infinite immigration because they get a larger labor pool and lower wages. Right wing normies want less immigration because they don't want to compete with the entire world for a job and don't want to become a minority in their own country.
Spend some time on X and you can see the two parts of the right wing attack each other over this issue.
Jobs will just move abroad then: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-11-11/trump-s-h...
Huh, this is rather useless argument. People in US already how companies, sport teams extract exorbitant tax breaks to move or stay put in particular state/city etc and nonetheless still end up moving because someone offered even better incentives. The jobs that are moving will not stay here for long even if all hurdles removed for immigration.
Most right wingers are fine with that. As the recent GTA 6 leak shows, companies that embrace offshoring too eagerly learn the hard way that not all jobs can be sent to the other side of the planet.
Ultimately, there is some value in each position, and in a corresponding set of positions on the left. Unlike many issues in US politics, in the long run this one is not well left-right aligned, and there is no single correct number for how much immigration is best. It's a bunch of trade-offs, which should be made democratically and end up somewhere around the number that the median person wants, such that roughly half of us are unhappy because too many immigrants come in and roughly half unhappy because too few. Arriving at that number and changing it slowly would be far better than wild swings.
> don't want to become a minority in their own country.
Yet in the next thread over, people are crucifying DHH for saying the same thing, except they are spinning it as "denying their right to exist"... somehow.
It's an obvious thing that anyone can understand, any group of people on the planet would behave the same way. It is natural to oppose becoming a minority, minorities are treated poorly and marginalized, by dint of human nature. The data showing it's happening are undeniable, the only way to defeat the argument is to shut it down by labeling the people who make it as hateful.
What? Where is the contradiction? DHH is deplorably wrong for the same reason that these right-wingers are deplorably wrong. (Even more so in the US because none of them are "native" to the country in the first place. Their immigrant ancestors just got here a little bit faster.)
The US seems hellbent on destroying its own economy, immigrants have always played a key part in it. Looking forward to Trump yelling about how the radical left has somehow undermined the US economy in a few months.
Most damage will be realized after he's dead
And in the interim he's positioning his family and cronies to benefit from any rebuilding. Just as he literally sat in the White House and said, verbatim, "My children insider trade all the time".
Everything is someone else's fault. The buck never stops with him.
I’d guess Miller is the main driver of this given what we know about that loser (and freak).
Huge freak
I often think about how far the Republican party has fallen from Truman with his "The Buck Stops Here" plaque on his desk to Trump's "I don't take any responsibility at all" response to poor Covid testing in 2020.
Truman was a Democrat.
Plus he outright stole government money, not even the pretense of some kind of pass-through contracting entity or something, just brazenly stole cash. And later went on a PR tour lying about being destitute to get Congress to give him a big pension (presidents didn’t get one before that; and he was doing quite alright financially without it).
Whatever the party affiliation, he was an actual thief and scam-artist at the public’s expense, so wouldn’t be a great example of some high water mark for public service.
Meanwhile, just this week, he's taking credit for Biden's legislative efforts on cost reductions for pharmaceuticals that every single Republican voted against, and Trump campaigned against.
Looking forward? He never stopped. It's been 10+ years of narcissistic scapegoating, even for times when he was President, even while Republicans controlled congress, and even over trade-deals, policies, and laws that he took-credit for and bragged about. (e.g. USMCA in 2020.)
> Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein had been at work!
-- 1984
The parallels between Emmanuel Goldstein and Trump Derangement Syndrome are impossible to ignore for anyone who's actually read 1984.
To borrow from Baum (The Wizard of Oz): today there's not only a curtain with men behind it, but a man in front of the curtain that everyone is pointing to (a la Goldstein). And if he stops being useful they'll replace him. This has happened several times already while the men behind the curtain and long standing policies he people hate remain unchanged.
Donald Trump: Billionaire in one of the top government roles of one the most powerful countries in the world; puts enormous banners of his own face over buildings; runs a personal distribution network to announce what he hates every day to his followers; regularly "jokes" about being a dictator; triggers perpetual wars with other countries; etc.
Emmanuel Goldstein: An exiled academic in hiding with a death-sentence over his head for criticizing the despotic government.
You: "People like myself who actually read 1984 know that Trump is basically Goldstein! Not any other character. The parallels are impossible to ignore."
If you really read the book, then that's tragic, because all you learned was how to embody doublethink.
You sound like someone who started paying attention to politics in 2016. Trump isn't even an outlier. Foreign policy has been dictated by AIPAC (as well as a lot of domestic policy) for decades.
Do you not remember the two-minutes-hate where they screamed at Emmanuel Goldstein? Apparently not. The point is people rabidly attack Trump when his policies - especially foreign - are indistinguishable from Biden, Obama, and Clinton. You're attacking a dummy setup for that. Your obsession with him makes it obvious. Israel gets whatever they want instantly, and Americans get fancy speeches from figureheads.
You're the one screaming at a figurehead and accusing me of doublethink? Read the book again.
[delayed]
Well, others can bent in other direction and boost their economy by taking in all immigrants that were US bound.
And they are. I read somewhere a few days ago that France is vacuuming up academics and advanced students that have been displaced by various recent policy changes that have proven to be hostile towards academia and research.
As a former academic scientist, I suspect it's not gonna work out like they think it will--the process will self select for mostly lemons.
Ah, vacuuming academics and advanced students is same as taking million immigrants for low skill jobs.
I don't know about vacuuming good students ... you probably have no idea what kind of students get hired in the USA nowadays.
The recruiting at a typical research university has an woke dimension to it - and I am reporting my personal experience, not hearsay:
Out of five scores each student was graded on, three were basically pure wokism like: describe how you overcame a difficult prejudice in life, or talk about how your presence will contribute to an inclusive environment ... only one was probing actual skills ...
PS: I have nothing against immigration - I am an immigrant myself ... a former immigrant student at that ...
I am against the selection process that ignores talented, skilled people and replaces them with mediocre people with some (probably made-up) nice woke story.
If you can't understand the utility of having welcoming and creative/tenacious people involved in your science (which your questions listed are asking about) then you are not nearly the expert in qualifications you think you are.
You misunderstood my reply completely.
I am saying we are not selecting for those people.
When we hire at the university, we ignore creative, tenacious people and instead select mediocre people with a nice woke story that meets the woke requirements.
>When we hire at the university, we ignore creative, tenacious people and instead select mediocre people with a nice woke story that meets the woke requirements.
Which university? Name some "creative, tenacious people" who were rejected by said university.
There's nothing in your HN profile to out you to anyone, so have at it. If you are unwilling to do so, I call bullshit on your anecdote. Or as they say, "pix, or it didn't happen."
I would encourage you to reflect on what you think "woke" is, and why things that you think are woke are mutually exclusive from the skills and qualities you value.
"Woke" is a nonsense scare phrase at this point, when what you're actually taking issue with is valuing people's lived experiences and backgrounds as a part of what they contribute. Understanding where people come from and how that colors their world view is simply a good practice when doing anything, but especially when you're trying to do science/academia. Too many similar minds in a room will never produce what one with a diverse group will. Diversity is good science, and valuing it is not "woke".
Pretending the word doesn't mean anything is the most obvious sign that the person saying that is one of them.
If you don't like the term given to your basket of political beliefs give one that encapsulates it that you like better.
"MAGAts" is the obvious 'other side' parallel. Both sides have their crazies and denying that one exists means you're obviously one of them. As a Pacific Green I don't even like the fact that I can say "both" and people both know what I'm talking about and perpetuates the misguided notion that only two parties exist.
I'm sure you can name this university, then. So we can compare the actual questions versus your weasel wordy, "basically" "like".
As noted clearly in the article, this is a temporary pause while personnel are brought up to speed on the protocols. The real question is how just or unjust the refusals will be once it is unpaused. It's bad enough that the process is excruciatingly slow.
Users keep downvoting my comment even though it is the only literal interpretation supported by the evidence, without any evidence to the contrary. I would rethink only if it lasts over three months.
Note also that courts would easily overrule Trump if the pause became unreasonable.
You're obviously wrong, it obviously doesn't make sense to close down instead is implementing the training for the new protocols in parallel. And the current disruption is just as real of a question as the future refusals. And obviously courts couldn't do it easily.
By the way, you also haven't provided any evidence for your opinion, why would you burden type replies with it?
The evidence is the title and the content of the article, so read it. I am not the one to jump to conclusions.
Or as the saying goes: nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution.
Also, lol @ "the courts will fix it!" Fat fucking chance. I'm looking into my crystal ball: I see a 6-3 supreme court ruling supporting the administration's executive order to liquidate congressional power and fold it into the executive branch (as the founding fathers intended...)
If you believe such nonsense, go bet on it on Polymarket. Put your money where your mouth is. Don't post such ridiculous assertions here.
Consular staff are trained on this as-is. It is hard to imagine a re-training on process that could take any more than two days.
And yet we have an entirely open-ended "We have nooooo idea how long this will take!"
Garbage. This is the same administration that paused all immigration from Africa except for "Caucasian South Africans" who were classified as refugees by default, regardless of their motivation on immigration.
This is just Stephen Miller doing exactly what he said he intended to do, and exactly what Project 2025 said the government should do (meanwhile, Trump, "What's that? Never heard of it").
> "We have nooooo idea how long this will take!"
It will take about two weeks. Is that right, two weeks? We'll have it done in about two weeks I'm told by some, very intelligent people.