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A comment on H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies. Parent comment

Re:H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada s... by nostromo on Monday October 08, 2018 @04:28PM (#18171005)
What the article failed to mention is that Trump and the Republican Congress have called for the US to change our immigration system to be more like Canada's. That is: focusing on skills and merit and limiting extended-family migration.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/trump-c...

Right now the majority of legal immigration to the US is based on having family in the US. The US has a much more expansive view of family unification than does Canada -- for example an adult in the US can sponsor their adult siblings and all of their children, spouses, and parents for citizenship -- which is not something you can do in Canada. Once citizens, all of those folks can then sponsor their extended family for family reunification migration as well.

https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/media/images/US_vs._Canada_1...

This kind of proposal would be good for people currently on H1B that would like to become citizens. However, the cost would be far fewer extended-family reunification immigrants.

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Re:H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada s... by paxy on Monday October 08, 2018 @05:07PM (#18171311)
Every administration and every congress in the last two decades has called for sweeping immigration overhaul. What they actually do remains to be seen.
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Re:H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada s... by vlovich123 on Monday October 08, 2018 @08:29PM (#18172436)
Actually Obama got close with a pretty compelling bill but the Senate Republicans continually filibustered it for 3 years (even those who were originally cosponsors) and that was enough because at the time it required a supermajority to break the filibuster (& in 2011 the RNC took over the Senate & House in the midterms) [1]. I wouldn't say there has been genuinely two decades of calls for sweeping immigration reform; it seems like the calls have only genuinely come from the left on this issue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DREAM_Act

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Re:H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada s... by masonic on Tuesday October 09, 2018 @02:19AM (#18173707)
Democrats did have filibuster-proof supermajorities several times under Obama; Democrats voting against cloture made the difference(0).

The legislation changed significantly over the sessions. Republicans stopped supporting it after Reid reneged on requiring e-verify.

(0) https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_...

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Re:H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada s... by marcell on Monday October 08, 2018 @04:49PM (#18171195)
I've seen this, but I'm skeptical of the approach. I don't think there is a lot of political appetite in DC to help tech companies in general. Both parties would rather use tech companies as a industry to bash, rather than an industry to nurture and grow.

Look at the bi-partisan hate for Facebook and Google. Regardless of how you feel about the privacy issues there, it is clear that neither party is particularly friendly to the needs of Silicon Valley.

While the merit based immigration idea is nice, I think it will fail for the following reasons:

- Trump is not putting his political weight behind it. It was floated as an interesting policy proposal, but he didn't put his weight behind it like he did for say tax reform, ACA repeal, etc.

- As mentioned above, neither party is especially driven to help Silicon Valley

- While it may help Silicon Valley and tech companies, this change also really hurts people who count on family based immigration to bring their loved ones into the country. I don't think it would be politically popular to cut off family based immigration to help tech companies.

I think if Trump (or Obama etc.) wanted to help the situation, the simplest path forward is through executive action. Trump (or Obama etc.) can easily change the priorities and internal policies of INS to make it easier for tech workers to come to America, within the bounds of current law.

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