Would have thought this was obvious.
It’s fairer to the rest of us.
If there was zero discrimination on country of origin, each qualified individual applicant within a given VISA category would be situated equivalently regardless of nation of origin.
India, China, Mexico, and the Philippines (I may be missing one or two other countries) would see an increased number of total immigrants to the US and other countries less, but that's because the per country of origin limits currently put individuals of those countries in a worse position, not because the present system is fair and removing the per country limits would be unfair.
If whole of Europe gets a single EU passport, does it suddenly make them any less diverse?
If race does not matter, then why does "diverse" mean as many races as possible. Shouldn't it mean diversity of thought instead? If nationality does not affect personality, then why should diversity be about diversity of nations?
If you remove the national origin quotas (it has little to do with race and everything to do with where you were born), then it would be the exact same process for green cards except you only have a limited number of chances before you cap out the time on your visa and get sent back. How is that a better, less capricious system than the current one for anyone who isn't Indian or Chinese?
The US political system gives disproportionate power to states with smaller population. The US immigration system is disproportionately more difficult for countries with lots of applicants. That's what the US looks at as fair - giving each state or country a fair shot, not each individual.
Yeah, those things aren't correlated at all. Come on.
> then it would be the exact same process for green cards except you only have a limited number of chances before you cap out the time on your visa and get sent back.
No it wouldn't. There's a different system in place for permanent visas than for temporary ones. Viz. a waiting list. The grandparent post linked the visa bulletin which explains how it works. You have the tools at hand to educate yourself, there's no excuse for ignorance.
> How is that a better, less capricious system than the current one for anyone who isn't Indian or Chinese?
Because human being are human beings, not 1 billionth of India or China. It is a bedrock principle of contemporary liberalism (small l) that people ought be to treated as individuals. The remnant of the pre-1965 racist national origin system is a disgusting anomaly of a worse time.
> The US political system gives disproportionate power to states with smaller population. The US immigration system is disproportionately more difficult for countries with lots of applicants. That's what the US looks at as fair - giving each state or country a fair shot, not each individual.
One terribly unjust system originally put in place to protect slavery doesn't define the United States' entire notion of fairness.
In any event it is nonsensical to talk about giving a country a shot. Countries aren't going to immigrate to the US, people are.
You should perhaps learn a bit more about the history of the country which you want to immigrate to. Slavery had nothing to do with representation in the senate. It had everything to do with protecting Connecticut, Delaware, and New Jersey from New York, Georgia, and the Carolinas.
The green card diversity lottery is based on exactly the premise I mention. Applicants from countries with low rates of immigration to the US have a great chance of winning. Applicants from countries with high rates of immigration to the US are ineligible to apply.
Sure. But that has nothing to do with employment-based green cards.
By all means, choose for diversity when it comes to other types of immigrants (extended family, lottery, etc). But it makes no sense to consider country of birth for skilled worker green cards, where employers hire based on talent - and especially so when the beneficiaries already live here and pay taxes here.
> The alternative is to turn the green card backlog into a problem for immigrants of all nationalities rather than a problem for immigrants of some nationalities.
Sure, but a 3-4 year wait for everyone (while living here) is literally an order of magnitude lower than the current 60-year wait for those born in India. Problems like not being able to switch jobs, kids having to leave when they turn 21, etc, are just less likely to occur when the wait is shorter and more transparent.
In order to prevent a shock to the system, per-country caps should be phased-in over 2-3 years. That way, those currently in the system will all get their green cards in the expected 1-1.5 year timeframe, while future applicants will know, prior to applying, that the wait will be 4 years for everyone. HR392 does this.
Think a 4-year wait would be too long? First, let me point out the hypocrisy. Second, a solution then is simply to increase the employment-based numbers, from 140K currently, to around 220K (these numbers include immediate family: spouses and minor kids). This is hard politically, because Democrats would also want to increase chain migration and other categories.
The fact is that the backlog will get longer in every year that more foreign temporary workers apply for green cards than there are green cards available. So what might start out as a 4 year backlog in (say) 2020 will get longer each year by as long as 1 year (if there are, say, 280,000 H-1B petitions every year and the worst case of 100% of them applying for greencards occurs).
If it really is a matter of going from <2 year wait for non-Chinese, non-Indians and a multi-decade wait for Chinese and Indians to a <4 year wait for everyone, forever, because there will no longer be an accumulation of a backlog, then it is a no brainer for the US to make that change in policy. I believe that that scenario is a fantasy and the actual result of HR 392 will be a multi-decade wait for everyone. The solution to that will, IMO, turn into a lottery similar to today's H-1B process.
Because no one could possibly be opposed to per country caps unless he were a disgruntled Indian.
I was born in New York. My parents were born in New York. Three of four of my grandparents were born in New York. The fourth grandparent was born in Germany. His parents died in a concentration camp because they couldn't come to the US with their teen children. You see they had be been born in Eastern Europe and the racist national origin system was designed to prevent too many people born in Eastern Europe from coming to the US. Kind of like how you don't want too many people born in India or China to come to the US.
> The green card diversity lottery is based on exactly the premise I mention.
With your encyclopedic knowledge of American history I'm sure you are aware of the political origins of that program.
That's not true - anyone with a submitted I-140 can renew their H-1 or L-1 visa indefinitely in yearly increments. See sections 104 and 106 of AC21.
If there weren't country caps, then someone born in India would have an equal chance as someone from Sweden.
I argue what you're proposing isn't fair at all - it's clear that limiting by country is discrimination, not the other way around.
Now what I will grant you is that it'll skew population statistics for immigrants to the more populous countries. But that's just a function of global population distribution by nation.
Which again, isn't the fault of the applicant.
Or to put all this another way, should someone born in Vatican City have an extremely high chance to get in, versus someone from a country with several million in population? No.
That trope is uncivil, shallow, and predictable, so please don't haul it out here.
I disagree with this statement, or at least your belief around the sentiment. To me, the angst seems to come from the United States putting out a welcome mat saying "please, come here and enrich our economy" but then, once someone does arrive, he or she is treated with near-contempt, especially if the person is from the "wrong" country like India or China or Russia or basically anywhere not western Europe, Australia, or Japan.
Debate the number of arrivals or permissions to be given all we want. That's fine and reasonable. But once someone has taken up the United States on its offer to have the person relocate halfway across the globe, TREAT THEM WITH RESPECT. My spouse is a green card holder and has been for many years (and is not a green card holder by virtue of being married to me). If any US citizen had to regularly deal with the USCIS, it would be disbanded within a week. The IRS is more warm and inviting and has better understood rules and processes. And my spouse has the benefit of not being from the "wrong" country but, still, even doing something as simple as renewing a green card involves a trek to the most depressing-looking office building on the planet, a bag and person search that rivals going to an airport, and meeting with a dour clerk who wants my spouse to be in the country almost as little as the clerk wants to be at work that day.
That's just for someone who's already made it through almost all of the hurdles of the U.S. immigration system. To be here on a "temporary" visa like H1B or on TN status is even worse since one wrong word from an immigration officer means you have ten days to self-deport or ICE is coming for you.
It's one thing to say "potential immigrants keep out." It's quite another to abuse the immigrants who have arrived until they give up and quit the country.
(To establish that I'm not ranting because I'm caught by this: I am a natural-born citizen of the United States who, through one parent, has a line of ancestry that traces back to the Mayflower. And I think our immigration system is obnoxious.)
To be fair we like New Zealanders too...
I think locals should follow the same advice. Don't like political lobbying, high house prices, the president, etc? Move to Canada. I personally moved to a country that suited me better. Americans are very reluctant to emigrate for some reason though.
I came to this country for about 13 years. I know I dont have a right to live here. But after paying college fees, taxes, various visa fees, etc, I feel some entitlement. I have lived here longer than any other country in my life. Definitely consider is a home, but it is clear most people dont want us here.
Ah well, thats life.
And this is not new with trump. Been on h1b for years. It just got worse over time under obama. Americans dont care about indians. Either we don't get our voices heard too much, or we are just a slightly wrong shade of brown ("people of color" - ha!). Go care about illegals.... I'm just tired of dealing with immigration and then getting shat on by "pro immigration" people who dont care about Indians (and frankly Chinese).
To my american friends, you dont realize how racist the immigration system is currently. Forget refugees and "muslim bans". Those are really nothing compared to how Indians and Chinese are treated. I'll show you: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...
Do a search for "FINAL ACTION DATES FOR EMPLOYMENT-BASED PREFERENCE CASES"
See that table. There are a few salient points:
1. That table shows where the queue pointer is right now. "C" means at the head of the queue (no entries, everything being processed). If it is a date, that is the date that is currently being processed (for all intents and purposes).
2. Notice the special columns for the different nationalities. So they discriminate based on national origin. But, only 5 to 7 countries are special cased. Everyone else (including all refugee countries, muslim countries, etc) fall under "Rest of World" ("All chargeability areas..").
3. Now notice the INDIA column. The date is 01Jan07 for EB3. This means, for someone with a Bachelors degree, they have to process people who applied 11 years ago. Let that sink in. No other race has to face this discrimination. EB2 (masters or phd) is not much better either. You have to be a genius (EB1) to get a greencard 'now' without a queue ... at the same level as a Bachelors graduate from Iran, Saudi, Somalia, whereever. .
Anyway, hopefully you can empathize a little bit with Indians and Chinese who did things by the book and stop focussing so much on illegals.