Let’s face it, US’s immigration system is antiquated shit.
H1B is lottery based due to which lot of employees from body shop companies end up getting visa though they make peanuts, while even FANG engineers don’t get it.
Green card allocation process is even worse, it’s just an old school FIFO scheduler without priority (and with country cap). And there’s this chain migration bullcrap that ends up bringing highly unskilled population to this country who end up driving uber, working at a restaurant.
Those are the people who steal Americans’ jobs in reality (along with indian bodyshop workers).
Look at the immigration system of Canada, Australia and New Zealand. When will we learn from them?
Compared to them we seem to be illiterate in terms of immigration policy.
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I arrived here and got a Green Card in 18 months. Me and the family together.
I love this system and this glorious country.
But we do need to think about how fast we can bring people in and make sure they don't just come to one industry or from just one country.
If we removed the country cap it would solve YOUR problem, but it would create many others.
It feels like some random guy telling you that whatever you’ve achieved so far is due to some loophole. That just sounds weird to me.
I could have survived anywhere, if I didn’t have the US visa. And yeah I might have made less money, but it wouldn’t have been so different.
Be it asylum, employment or family based.
As for having nothing without US visa, well I too sometimes question those who are legally here and complain that the US immigration system is not giving them what they want /deserve, but remain here nonetheless. They give the impression that they do not have any options better than the US. I'm not saying that that is your case as your comments to the other guy have been of a personal nature different to the original post.
But I hope you can appreciate the perspective that I am presenting...
Hahaha what the fuck? That is all this is about?
It is just a term. There is nothing that discredits your hard work based on the label “economic refugee”.
We get a lot of distinguished economic refugees. Heard about Albert Einstein?
I think you are just too biased to realize that. It’s OP who was complaining about that not me. The beef started when a Salesforce guy said “you technically don’t have freedom of speech “.
I am fine with the current process, if I have to leave if my visa expires, then so be it. I will go stay somewhere else .
So while skill is important there is a fair amount of luck that came into play. Not just in your case. That's simply the reality with skilled migration. Or any migration for that matter.
But to discount all the parameters that came into play in your being here and just focus on the skilled aspect of it, is to be disingenuous.
Yes, you could survive any where else, but you don't want to be any where else, you want to be here. Or else you would not have gone through the complex process to be here.
The premise of the post is that because we are now here, if we are unable to remain it is the fault of the US system. And not only that, the US system is flawed for not enabling us remain here. That is simply not the case.
Also, no one sees economic refugee as a slur.
And yes I want to live here as long as I am respected and have a VISA , if everyone started looking down on me like Amazon i will think about moving out.
Also, immigration is a broad topic, there’s no real right answer. OP posted his opinion, as he thinks it’s “unfair “ to him. I understand he used strong words, but it’s just his opinion. Just like Amazon is putting his. So no point in being so bitter towards him.
How would Indian politics behave if millions of Americans would be trying to relocate to India?
Would they open the doors happily? No restrictions?
> “Immigration is a privilege, not a right”
I’ll tell you what’s wrong with this. Agreed, immigration is not a right. But, citizenships is a right of “privileged” people who were lucky enough to be born on American soil. So, they literally did nothing to achieve it.
On the other hand, there are people who were born in countries where human rights is nothing more than just two words. They go through all this humiliating immigration procedures to get here. And all you have to say to them is “immigration is not a right.” Technically, you’re right – it is exactly how you put it. However, this does make you a shitty person who brags about their privilege and feels good about it.
And not every citizen has what it takes to keep the US the #1 country the world. In many cases immigrants contribute more (look at Elon Musk, Mark zuckerberg: he is a son of an immigrant)
And tards like ghjshsjsu who don’t contribute shit to this country says offensive things to immigrants.
From his username seems like he studied at SJSU (shitty university) and working at Salesforce which is a trash company. He wasn’t able to get a decent university/company due to his incompetence and is now blaming immigrants.
There are many citizens like him who are dumfucks but take pride in being Americans. But US isn’t the US because of people like them, they don’t have what it takes. They are just jealous to see thriving immigrants.
But accusing the company of the person who says that is not cool?
The only bad outcome is if you bring too many people too quickly and settle them all in one place, then they create a cultural ghetto and take generations to integrate.
We had that problem with Italian immigration which came too fast all from one place and created all those little Italy's. Now in the Bay area we have that problem with Indian immigration.
What we should actually have is a quota per zip code. We could have many more Indians if we could spread them out around the country instead of concentrating them in a few cities.
I would like to see us bring in five times as many people but with a system that has a zip code based quota so that that don't all go to the bay area.
This would also implicitly make some visas available for other industries besides just tech.
^^^
Just one of those “true for thee but not for me” bs statements.
If you want to know if something is true, invert the actors in a story and check if it still holds.
“Immigration to India will create much needed job positions”
let’s solve world poverty by everyone immigrating and making other countries better
Also, what's that bullshit of prohibiting alcohol consumption in public? Only middle-age thinking people can accept such crap.
I had surgery last year that prevented a medical issue from becoming life threatening. The doctor who performed my surgery was an immigrant who came on a greencard because his country is not backlogged. He couldn't have come on an h1b because people like you have clogged up that system. So he just applied directly for a greencard through his consulate, with sponsorship from the hospital he now works for. Many doctors and many nurses come to America that way, as do many people in a variety of other non tech industries.
Would it really be better for America to give a greencard to yet another Indian tech worker but prevent a surgeon from coming here? Should the surgeon really face a seven year queue, waiting OUTSIDE the US, just so Facebook can hire one more engineer to add some trivial feature to an ad platform?
Indian tech employees have completely clogged the h1b system to the point where it's basically a denial of service attack. You work for American companies in India and spam h1b applications until you get in. That is not a model that works for other professions, such as doctors.
Why would we let you do that to the greencard system?
Doctors and nurses immigrate in a way that spread them out across the US and not all in one area like tech immigration. They tend to go into rural areas and small towns rather than settle into little India's (or in the case of the Bay area, big India's).
They then make friends and business connections with Americans in their new home town, integrate into American culture quickly, and become really awesome immigrants.
You could take 300k people a year like that and that would create less problems than the current 85k a year h1b's from India, because u would be spread out.
At this point, there is no other bill that takes even a step in the right direction for employment Visa other than 392. There is no possibility of CIR anytime soon (especially given the house with Ds, senate and prez with Rs).
392 doesn't solve all the problems, but seeing the bill, it's an obvious compromise to not offend anyone and make an immutable characteristic not source of accepting or rejecting an immigrant. If there were more centrists in house and senate, it's quite possible that we could get more bolder and more merit based bills.
It remains to be seen even if anything will happen next 2 years..
Also, there is nothing wrong in making a line wait based on when they entered a line. Fifo is how the system should work on an employment visa.
W.r.t abuse, I am 100% in favor of stopping all abuses. Abuses can't be fixed by laws, they need to be fixed by the administration. In that aspect, I think what this administration is doing the right things (although their context to reign abuse is very different), but I will take that anyday than a lax previous administration, who has made the scope and complexity of problem even larger.
Also, you will never be able to get any bill to pass that puts any quota - even a profession based quota on h1. The company lobby that gave ac21 life still exists and will do everything to retain it till it's death. I can only wonder how they might have celebrated the ac21 bill passing.
Also, a big backlog of workers with lower job mobility isn't good for US workers. Decade long backlog has compounding effects It depresses wages and will happen as long as the backlog exists. So much that, consultant companies lobby agains clearing the backlog, which is in the interest of American workers. If you don't believe this - I can quote you numbers on what that rate of depression on wages is today.
It used to be that doctors and nurses could come on h1b, and while a few still do, the uncertainty around approval has really stymied that industry.
Unlike tech a hospital can't just relocate a doctor to another country until their visa gets approved. Doctors are board certified in one country and would have to recertify to work in any other.
So now the only saving grace is that the h1b catastrophe has only had limited impact on the greencard system thanks to country caps containing and limiting the impact.
Doctors from non India countries can get a greencard in a fairly predictable way, which allows them to invest in US certification with some assurance they can get a job. Doctors from India really have it tough and get stuck waiting years to win the lottery.
The tech industry might benefit from hr392 but it would create an instant crisis for many other industries.
A doctor wanting to get to the US would get stuck behind SEVEN YEARS of run of the mill tech employees many of them doing monkey work. And unlike tech that doctor can't just work outside the US in some satellite office.
This is why hr392 will never pass. It may be popular with Indian tech workers and popular with their tech employers but it's anathema to the healthcare industry.
You'd think health care organizations are and such would be behind this.
There could be any number of reasons why an individual chooses to move to a particular country, why should that exclude them from critiquing the immigration system?
Fix that, before you start complaining about the system. We jugaad the shit out of things and blame the system for not working. We fucked this up, plain and simple.
Need to brush up on those English and reading comprehension skills?
Btw, I see there have been comments to make immigrants think that they are lucky to get a visa to work here. While that’s not wrong, it’s also technically correct to argue that existing citizens are even luckier to get the best visa without much effort, though you can argue about the contributions of your ancestors, that ‘ll be correct, but they themselves didn’t really do much to achieve it (though there can be rare exceptions.)
Since everyone’s posting their opinion about immigration reform, here’s my personal opinion:
Currently, the immigration process serves the interest of existing citizens over the national interest. If you want to serve national interest better, it might be better to cancel birthright/by blood citizenship. Every kid earns his citizenship by making significant contribution to this country and it’s economy. That’ll make sure that the best and the brightest remain in the US, it’ll discard any luck related possibility. Everyone gets a fair shot at being part of the most powerful country. And it’ll be the most “fair” system.
I know there’s zero chance of it becoming reality with the democratic system we have, but it’s just a thought.
Comments? Would like to hear from both immigrant and citizen folks.
How unlucky do your Indian colleagues feel, those who have PDs after 2012?
Well not everyone feels bad, some people are neutral, some people like OP can be desperate. Depends on who you ask. So wrong to generalize.
Honestly, not getting green card/visa isn’t a great deal for everyone. May be for you, but not for many others.
It’s wrong to assume everyone on blind is begging for visa/green card and you have to make them feel lucky.
If I didn’t have green card I would have been in some other developed country , I would be earning lesser of course. But there wouldn’t be a drastic difference in my standard of living. And life would’ve went on.
So it’s wrong to assume getting green card/visa is the panacea for all problems.
You are saying only skill should be the criteria for getting here and I'm adding that in the case where several people qualify for a limited benefit, luck plays a role in who gets selected.
I'm not sure what's odd about that
So the sample set we have on blind is biased. You only encounter people who are looking to immigrate.
So there do exist people who don’t consider US green card to be lucky. So my friend don’t let the blind sample bias you.
I wouldn’t call them lucky at all, sure their making more money, but they are in limbo and under constant stress about immigration status. So the trade off is high.I would call it golden handcuff or indentured servitude for them. Because lucky means most of the things are positive.
So lucky may not be appropriate in all cases.
Getting a green card is an added bonus for sure but not having one doesn't put you in golden handcuffs.
You are as free as a bird if you are in the position you describe
The Indians are not so much in a lucky situation. The fact that you were able to get green card so easily has made you blind to the fact that not everyone considers it lucky.
In the other thread, the way you and the other 2 guys have shoved lucky onto the Indian guy is not so cool.
You know what the best bonus is, getting born in this country so that you’re the boss. So technically citizens are even luckier.
So from a citizen’s/gc holder’s point of view, an h1b visa holder has a negative lucky index (according to theory of relativity). So it’s a not so fitting thing to refer them as lucky when you yourself are even luckier.
you don’t go around and shove lucky onto the citizens, do you? So why do that to some h1b holder?
The luck comes in because they want something, applied for it and received it where others failed. Well positioned and lucky. Maybe I should use fortunate instead of lucky, would that sound better to you?
If you say US citizens are lucky to be born US citizens would you also say Indians are lucky to be born Indians wrt to Bangladeshi's who want to live and work in India?
I won't comment on the luck of Indians, India has over a billion people. I will comment on those who get frustrated because they are in a backlog and turn around to resent the US for it.
Being in a backlog is not the whole story, if you are on h1-b and earning a good living then you are in an extremely fortunate position.
What is so wrong in appreciating that? What does it matter that some have green cards or are citizens and some aren't?
Or are you just against the message because it comes from a citizen or perceived gc holder vs from a non-immigrant affected by the backlog?
But I didn’t like the way it was shoved onto the other guy. It sounded a bit hypocrite that bunch of lucky citizen and gc holders forcing an h1b holder to think that he’s lucky. And it was done in a deregatory way. It almost felt like you are forcing him to give in to you because you guys have better immigration status than him.
This is why I'm talking with respect to facts not emotion.
You're thinking that because the message is coming from a US citizen or permanent resident, it must be condescending and therefore tainted.
Why is that? Is it any different than if it were coming from an h1-b holder?
To pass a bill that improves - you need all 3 legs agree (house Senate and prez)
Bills however aren't just decided by all house reps/senators entering hill and reading through every bill and voting.
Bills instead are usually based on concerned parties agreeing on compromises. For example, in an immigration bill for high skilled, companies lobby, such as chamber of commerce, anti Immigrant and Immigrant groups. Each have extreme positions on the issue and prop up either or both of the parties.
This is why, large changes are highly unlikely unless either of them are willing to make large compromises.
For example, while merit based Immigration reforms have been spoken for a long time in press, there are no bills that are written by moderate folks in the hill. This simply tells that merit bills will never pass anytime soon. Sen Perdue and Sen Cotton are fringe (extreme right) whose position is to stop all Immigration. Their bills main purpose is to stop all Immigration. Just writing a bill to reduce Immigration is never going to be acceptable, even to their staffers. So the second best is to serve a bitter pill sugar coated - how? Make up a merit based Immigration and use it as a reason to cut down immigration.
Since there are so many parties to any Immigration conversation and every one has to come out winning - the political system has good chances of changes only if folks elect more centrists.
Unfortunately, that's a rare breed of politicians who are going extinct in the trump / ultra liberal left era. 🤦🏽♂️
These wild swings left and right isn't good for the political system and will ensure more deadlocks. (In some sense, the constitution was written that way to prevent take over by any branch, so it's by design).
(Oh and BTW, pointing out merits and demerits doesn't mean someone doesn't want to follow the laws of the land).
Constitution was designed in such a way that - based on constraints at the time of it writing - it makes it hard to make progress unless all parties to the change agree on the change and not a single group can ram their way through. The separation of powers ensures that no single entity in the system can run the system to ground and the counter to that is it also makes it very hard to make drastic (positive) changes to the system - often only incremental changes.
Think of it like a consensus system rather than just winner takes all.
For such a set up, more moderates make the system efficient, since there are greater chances of compromises. Folks who are anchored with extreme positions are less willing to compromise than folks who are moderate.
Folks coming from other countries have not experienced the law and constitution and think those were created to hurt human beings, that's understandable.
What I would like to see is more parties, liberals and rights are not making a progress.
In a democracy yeah, nothing happens until you can get a lot of people to support an idea, and that's hard, and will require compromise, and then it'll be watered down.
But it's the only system of government that won't ultimately enslave you, which makes it absolutely the best form of government. But it sure does have problems.
We will get immigration reform only when it becomes a big enough problem that lots of people want it done.
I can tell you what WON'T appeal to the majority of voters: rich foreign elites earning 250k+ salaries claiming to be slaves and insisting that they are victims and hard done by.
That is just so politically tone deaf.
Majority of Americans want to give some reprieve for DACA kids. Even that isn't happening. Dems will pass a bunch of house bills for DACA next session, but will never pass senate. Only if the president gets something in return, will something happen (or likely scenario is that supreme Court forces the administration to do something).
Also, even among the elites you are pointing out, majority are Dems. Only the vocal minority among them are those you see on blind. Most do support DACA kids.
DACA should have been a no-brainer (the jury is still out on their parents though), but the separation of powers will make it mostly impossible unless folks compromise on both sides.
The system is meant to serve Americans, not non-Americans.
What you really mean to say is "why can't I get the US immigration benefit that I want?"
The truth is no perfect immigration system exists because immigration is a necessary evil and not a desire.
If you are not American then the state of the system does not concern you.
If you are American you know that Blind is not the place to register your displeasure. You can vote.
And not every citizen has what it takes to keep the US the #1 country the world. In many cases immigrants contribute more (look at Elon Musk, Mark zuckerberg: he is a son of an immigrant)
And tards like ghjshsjsu who don’t contribute shit to this country says offensive things to immigrants.
From his username seems like he studied at SJSU (shitty university) and working at Salesforce which is a trash company. He wasn’t able to get a decent university/company due to his incompetence and is now blaming immigrants.
There are many citizens like him who are dumfucks but take pride in being Americans. But US isn’t the US because of people like them, they don’t have what it takes. They are just jealous to see thriving immigrants.
A bunch of immigrants came to this country and built America what it is today.
And US still needs immigrants to sustain in the future. That’s why it has various immigration schemes. Please don’t tell me that you don’t need immigrants now, as it’s your leaders who have started and kept that policy, and Americans voted them.
Just because someone is an immigrant doesn’t mean you are entitled to throw racist comments like “you don’t have freedom of speech” , “get out of here “. That’s inhumane.
Your forefathers were immigrants at some point, they might even have immigrated after America became great. Imagine what would they have felt if somebody threw those offensive comments at them.
Also, I feel a few Americans claim that they built the country and can get away without immigration, that’s simply not true.
You guys NEED immigrants to stay in power, that’s a fact. And everyone overlooks their contribution. If you don’t need them then just cancel immigration policy, why keep the scheme at all. So be respectful and don’t feel overly entitled.
There are Americans who are living on the street and earning minimum wages. Some immigrants earn a lot because they have the skills. So it’s a mutually beneficial relationship. So why some Americans feel like their doing kindness to the immigrants. They can earn well anywhere (though a little less than what they make in the US). And if no one immigrate to US it will deteriorate slowly
PS: I am not complaining about the existing policy or anything.
Similarly hopefully no one of arguing an extremist position like "we need unlimited immigration, let's remove all the quotas and caps".
We need the right amount of the right type for the right reason in the right place.
We want immigrants to join the existing culture, integrating with it quickly. That puts a limit on how fast we can take immigrants from the same source country before they create little bubbles and don't integrate.
That's the reason for the country cap, to prevent what's happening right now in the Bay area, which really is the result of people finding a loophole to get around them via h1b+i140.
However I think there may be creative solutions to this problem that could be achieved. Maybe we can have a country cap on immigration PER COUNTY, eg King County WA or Santa Clara County, where the greencard is conditional on living in that country for a period of time, say five years.
That would allow us to take many many more Indians but require them to spread out around the whole country, likely meaning not only into tech jobs, and not congregate in one place.
That would facilitate immigration while alleviating the queue.
I was just answering that. I don’t give a shit about US green card personally. So stop assuming that I am begging for green card and stop posting lengthy posts about how to fix immigration. I don’t care about that.
By definition eb2 and eb3 are not best of the best, just people meeting some minimum standard. We actually do need people like that, and a lottery is a good way of picking people from the list.
EB1 is supposed to be the best and we should fix the so it is the best. For EB1 only I think we should get rid of country quota and use as points system, then take the people with the highest points. Get truly the best.
But there is no claim that eb2 and eb3 are the best, just people with an appropriate degree and X years experience. There are lots of people like that and we should just randomly pick some.
I'd also like to see is new college grads get a chance. Maybe make the requirement for everyone just degree with a high enough score on a standardized test and then use a lottery to pick some. Bringing young people is great.
US may be a great country or not but the fact that one wants to get in and is complaining that they can't, means they consider US residency something that they really want to attain.
That's just the fact. No logic complaining that you can't get US visa then turning around and saying the US is not worth living in because of reasons xyz.
It's like a comic paradox and you are the butt of the joke.
Is the system medevial just because or because they want a green card and don't yet have one?
Not sure what your goal is. You complain and whine but then tell everybody else there is no point to discuss things on blind.
Take your own advice.
What I’m saying that just because you’re a citizen doesn’t give you the right to say mean things. There are some citizens in this thread who think they are privileged enough to make fun of every immigrant who has an opinion. They think they are doing kindness to the immigrants here.
Your company’s CEO is an Indian immigrant you dumbass.
How the F did you into Google?
They enjoy all the benefits and steal jobs from low skilled Americans.
2. If no country quota, everyone will suffer from backlog including the people from India. So Indians will still have a backlog. The wait time might become shorter for the moment but more and more will apply and will be indefinite years soon for everyone because of 1.
3. Country quota diversifies the people from different backgrounds. We want software engineers and doctors from various part of the world instead of a single country. I am an immigrant myself and don’t want most of the immigrants are from my home country because that means this country will become no different from my home country.
4. Some countries are good at producing people of certain job professions. Country quota diversifies the jobs because of this reason. India focuses on software engineers disproportionately. Therefore, most of immigrants will be of one profession if no quota. For example, no basketball players or no classical music players or no journalism professors. Per job quota can be a solution but then it will be even worse effect for India.
5. I found it is interesting that it seems India is trying its best to send their educated elites to US rather than caring for improving the country itself. If no quota, brain drain would even be worse and underprivileged people will suffer. If US goes by merit based and import whoever qualifies, the world will not be in good shape and US will become busy taking care of International issues due to so many screwed countries.
6. Indians benefit from network effect as there are so many software engineers already working for tech companies in US and they would prefer hiring for other Indians. It also means there are more people with less qualifications coming in thanks to this effect. Domination of one job from a single country is not good for variety of reasons. No Americans would even want to try as they know they can’t get in as people in the job are from different backgrounds and use hiring and promotion method that do not favor them. If this job is high paying job, Americans will not get the benefit.
7. If we want to abolish the country quota, I would want some form of diversity requirement in place. Immigration is not entirely for pure benefit of US. There is a humanitarian component as well. We don’t just want people who are privileged to have brain, family support, wealth and opportunities. There are many other areas such as music, art, social science, psychology, athletics and etc. We want people with disabilities who wouldn’t have any opportunity at their home country but can be an inspiring icon. Person who has average skill but had endured political injustice for standing up against bad government. It goes on and on. If US really is in shortage of software engineers and people from a single country is so talented, it could very well move the development center to the country instead of lobbying for the increase of quota.
8. Americans are privileged to born in such a blessed country. However, software engineer immigrants are also privileged in their own countries to have such ability. Many Indian engineers are from a very privileged family as well. So while it looks unfair for people born in a poor country but you are mostly likely to have unfair advantage to have such an supporting environment whether it be the wealth, family support, great neighborhood, brain, health or genetics. Many are more fortunate than most of Americans.
9. Education quality is different for doctors in each country. It is not just about learning the textbook. I have seen many doctors from different countries and quality drops significantly if they didn’t get the training from US medical school. Education involves learning from home education through what goes on in the country etc. You may think the quality is same, but that is unconscious bias people get for home country. It may look the same for the people from the same country but it is not for the others. If they all function at the same level of competency, those countries would not be in a situation where people want to leave.
US is different from other countries in that it has a huge impact globally. Small nations such as Finland can use all the tactics to attract brain for example - only the most educated. If US does it (eg total merit based), it will be a sad day for the world. Just like it takes some refugees, it needs to import from various countries for later chance of influencing on those countries.
Also h1b is non-immigrant visa. Using it to get green card is actually violating the purpose.