> these are not an offer of citizenship

No one said that it was, but there is a difference between submitting for an extension X months ago and fully expecting to get it, and then the rules changing out from under you and being told "No. I understand you've been here for 10 years, but pack up all your shit and leave".

5 years ago it was technically "and leave tonight" (which I'm sure you understand is unreasonable). Luckily now there is at least a 60 day grace period to look for something else, but still.

You are being rather unsympathetic to people who find themselves in this situation.

They should change visas to be auctioned off, so people who wish to stay can do so.

I dont think an H1B holder can stay for 10 years, unless the rule changed since I had one, but 10ish years ago it was 6 years max.

AFAIK if you are a valid green card application with a valid priority date you are allowed to.

Considering the backlog for green cards if you're from india/china, there are _tons_ of people in this situation.

Good point, but then would you lose your status even if your h1b ended? Wouldn't the pending GC petition be enough to keep you in status?

It happened to me, I lost my h1b a few weeks after filling for my GC and I had no problem staying in the country. It was a GC via marriage though, rules ma be different for employer sponsored GCs

>It was a GC via marriage though, rules ma be different for employer sponsored GCs

Rules are indeed different for Employment based green cards. Marriage based green cards don't have a limit while the number of employment based Green cards that can be given out in a year is fixed ( in total and within that there is a 7% cap on how much each individual country can receive)

People stuck this way from India & China aren't even able to file for GC's. You can only file for a GC if your country's date is "current" (which is not the case for marriage based GC)

Their only legal basis to stay in the US is the H1-B which they can keep on renewing because they have an approved I-140. In my current situation, i have an approved immigrant petition and i will have to continue to get H1-Bs approved till i get current (which current projections are about 40-50 years). I've been in the US for a decade and it will be many many decades before i can remove the dependence on the H1.

The math is simple - there are about 400K Indians with approved immigrant petitions. And across 2 categories the maximum number of green cards that Indians can receive in a year is about ~6K. Each petition is roughly 2 green cards

So if an Indian gets an immigrant visa approved today in 2020 , they're looking at wait of 800/6 (133) years even be able to file for a green card.

One thing is a lot of Indians got GC's in EB-1 in the last decade(2000-2020). There were some Indian IT outsourcing firms that promoted people to higher roles for EB-1 GC purposes and then demoted them after they got GCs. Thousands of people got it(thanks to mind boggling levels of office politics), now the EB-1 queue is flooded due to his abuse(fraud?). EB-1 used to be current, now the wait is again in a few years(<10).

Part of the problem here seems to be at least to some extent everyone(us Indians) flooding these queue's while native population keeping these quotas fixed(to control they don't change their society too much).

One also needs to realize there will always be limits to these things. Now given every one wants to come to US, they can't accommodate everyone. There will be limits. Limits to number of H1B's, limit to yearly GCs. What should the limit be? 6K, 60K, 600K? How much?

Imagine India doing this. We recently passed laws to restrict immigration. For some reasons we expect to shut doors to everyone, while simultaneously expecting the whole world roll out red carpets for us.

You do loose status after 60 days in case of employment based green card applications which are approved but the so called priority date is not current. For 100s of thousands of people these priority dates will take literally decades to become "current".

I believe it is enough, as long as you have received an I-140, but I'm not sure. This is something that should be answered by an immigration attorney.

Edited to correct the form number

> If someone were to bring their family, they have done so with the explicit knowledge that the situation could change at any time.

I don't disagree - and I'm a US citizen, who previously was a greencard holder, who previously came here via the H1B process.

But look at it this way: the whole greencard approval process sometimes takes years, or even over a decade. When people spend 10 years in some place, the perspective changes a bit. It does become a complicated issue, with moral overtones too.

Make the goddamn greencard approval (or rejection) faster. If processing the papers took a few months, instead of years, after which you got your yea or nay decision, then the whole issue would be much simpler - and, indeed, as you say it would not be a moral issue at all.

But think of someone who spent here 10 years, brought their spouse here, had a couple kids (that clock doesn't stop ticking just because you're waiting for a rubber stamp to hit the paper), the kids go to school, and from a cultural perspective the kids are American - and then they are all told to get the hell out of here. That's terrible.

Speed up that stupid process. Then sure, tweak the rules any way you see fit.

How many years do you think is the limit to being temporary and still being honest?

If they were giving 50 year H1B visa that are not guaranteed to be renewed, would you still say that it is the visa holder's fault for bringing their family?

If not for 50 years, then when should we start blaming them? How many years is a reasonable amount to put someone at fault for putting down roots?

I don't think you can dismiss the moral issue. The fact that there may technically be no "guarantee" does not mean that people ought to be treated unreasonably. The fact that some people may not care about the effects American policies have on people who are not American is not the same thing as it not being a moral issue.

People oh H1B are either very friendly to constant moves or are banking on a path to citizenship through it. The latter category is the vast majority, let's be honest here.

> People oh H1B are either very friendly to constant moves or are banking on a path to citizenship through it

BY DESIGN, as H1Bs (as well as L1s and a couple others) are dual intent

Damn, your lack of tact is seriously depressing.

It's the rules!

The decision would be ok in most other countries, where the land is some ethnic group's birthright. America, however, is unique in that it's everyone's birthright. The only reason most educated people don't support totally open borders is because there's so much poverty outside the US, but H-1B holders are not poor.

On what basis are you deciding what someone's (or some group's) birthrights are?

I think they may have been referring to varying citizenship laws across the world. The USA has citizenship by soil and blood, meaning that the country belongs to the people born here and the children of it's citizens. (Let's set aside naturalization for a moment, as that is not a birthright.) Some other countries have citizenship by blood only, so in a sense, those countries belong to their ethnic groups, wherever they may be. So in essence, the USA is more inclusive in bestowing the birthright of citizenship, which befits a nation of immigrants.

I support the free movement of people, but also the sovereignty of individual nations to decide who that country belongs to. For a strange example, the UK belongs to the queen, but she's nice enough to let her subjects have the use of it.

And back to naturalization, these H1b changes highlight why naturalization is important and should be achievable for anywho who ties their life to the USA. Citizenship confers privleges and protections and asking people to make life altering investments into a country without offering citizenship in return is exploitative and immoral.

Boe is America everyones birthright more than Chile or australia?