I'm from one of the countries on the list. Not only is there no way to legally immigrate to the US anymore, but just visiting US once requires me to give an interest-free loan of up to $15k to the US government. Yeah, no, thank you.

I never considered illegal immigration, nor will I ever - I value predictable outcomes.

But looking at these new rules, I can't help but think that it really punishes people who want to play by the rules and sets the price for ones that don't to approximately $15k.

My country is not in the list (Mexico, not that we need to... Americans hate us), but I just cannot comprehend why people would go through all the pain for the immigration process in the US.

Actually, it kind of make sense why only the most desperate try to get into the US , people who have something to lose are naturally repelled by the bureaucracy.

The average American, at least in my state (Washington), does not hate Mexicans. The people running the federal government seem to, however.

We love to paint the US in broad brushstrokes of color, but it more of a muddy brown across the entire country. Washington State doesn't have huge expat communities of Mexicans, but what about if I'm Chinese going to school in Spokane? Or Somali in St Paul, MN? or Pakistani in Chicago? Some "average Americans" seem to hate these people in every locale.

EDIT: Wash. is actually a top 8 destination in the US for Mexican immigrants, with an estimated population of 250-300K people, so not huge but definitely sizeable!

I dunno. The southern parts of SW WA can be pretty racist (Lewis County and south). Rural, much more red, but without the extensive farming more pervasive on the east side.

>Americans hate us

I don't mean to minimize any negative experiences you've had. But as a lifelong American, I've never heard anyone make a negative comment about Mexicans. Even in online spaces like X where there is a lot of racism, it's usually not directed at Mexicans.

If you look at Trump's famous comment about Mexicans in his speech from 2015, he actually points to Mexicans in the audience and refers to them as Mexico's best people. The media cut that part out, of course. (I'm not a Trump supporter.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apjNfkysjbM#t=3m25s

Here is the actual quote you are defending:

    TRUMP: "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best -- they're not sending you [points at unidentified people off-camera] -- they're not sending you -- they're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us.  They're bringing drugs; they're bringing crime; they're rapists and some, I assume, are good people."

There is no apparent indication in that video that the people he's pointing at are Mexican.

Among other issues, countries are not generally 'sending people' to immigrate to other countries. Most countries are in general keen to avoid emigration.

>There is no apparent indication in that video that the people he's pointing at are Mexican.

But it seems like the most natural interpretation.

The most obvious, good-faith interpretation of this quote is that Mexico has a mix of good and bad people, like every country, and the ones immigrating illegally tend to be bad. The fact that the media didn't even consider this common-sense interpretation contributed a lot to Trump's popularity.

Cool. Here's something he said today:

  TRUMP: "They're all crooks.  The Somalians are -- what they've done to Minnesota -- the Somalians.  They're crooked as hell.  Ilhan Omar.  Crooked as hell.  They're all crooks.  And we got 'em."

Really earning that good faith!

> But as a lifelong American, I've never heard anyone make a negative comment about Mexicans.

What an absurd statement on its face that comes from a place of extreme privilege. I am a brown-skinned man in America and I lost count of all of the times people that look like me have been denigrated and lambasted in this country.

>What an absurd statement on its face that comes from a place of extreme privilege.

Oh boy, here we go again. I even said "I don't mean to minimize any negative experiences you've had" and I'm still getting the privilege discourse. You are really determined to prevent the Democrats from winning elections, aren't you?

Even assuming I am privileged, then what I'm telling you is that privileged white people like myself aren't shit-talking Mexicans behind their back. Wouldn't that be relevant information? Why would it be an absurd statement?

>brown-skinned

That's not the same as Mexican.

When was the most recent time this happened to you in person? A recent, representative concrete example would be a lot more compelling that performative outrage.

It can't be online. White people catch lots of crap online too: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G88oMOwWAAIqBUp?format=jpg&name=...

Yeah, I'm brown. I'm not even going to visit the US while the turd reich is in power. I had always wanted to visit the Smithsonian.

I've always thought I'd end up in the US at some point, but as someone who prefers to make things rather than spend years at some faceless megacorp (writing up cover sheets for TPS reports), it never seemed hugely viable, even starting out from a first-world country.

Now it doesn't seem viable at all. Meanwhile, anyone who shows up illegally is merely "undocumented", and half of US politics consists in coddling them (the other half in enforcing existing immigration laws capriciously). Even for someone who's quite pro-immigration like myself, that's just bizarre. There's no way this is a functional system.

Most of the people in my circles don't want to go to the US anymore. I suppose I'll ride it out and see what comes next (after 2028 at minimum). If I ever make it, I'll have spent many of my productive years outside the US, since I wasn't welcome during those. Weird system.

Immigrating to the usa is not a right. It is granted.

I don't see the problem, and I'm not even American or Trump supporter. It just makes sense.

That's what I just commented as well, I'm not from the US but that seems so obvious, in which country it's a "right" of some sort? It should definitely be hard, maybe even very hard to emigrate there, to show strong commitment and intent and most especially you should have something special to bring to the table knowing you didn't abed by the same rules growing-up (not the same level of education necessarily and so-on) which is a bit unfair for local citizens.

I don't really understand the position of many comments which seems to be somehow "We should be welcoming the world" but like why? Why wouldn't you prioritize your citizens first especially seeing the job loss lately?

Part of it is cultural due to the origins of our country. We are mostly a country of immigrants. On the base of the Statue of Liberty is a poem “The New Colossus” which says:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

There are reasons beyond the cultural history or being a country of immigrants. Much of the innovation of the US over it’s history is due to immigrants. From modern physics, the telephone, the Internet, mRNA vaccines, etc. 46% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by Immigrants or their children. 44% of billion dollar tech startups are immigrants.

Without immigration, the US would have negative population growth, which is economically probably a disaster. We’d have to achieve impossible levels of productivity to support the larger aging populations. Additionally the job losses you mention are mostly in Technology, Finance and Government… sectors that aren’t exactly dominated by immigrant labor.

Being protectionist doesn’t typically work out from a cost and labor perspective. We already have shortages in farming, construction and health care labor, which are often populated by immigrants. So overall, we’d have more unfilled positions, which would result in higher prices, etc. Native born Americans just don’t seem to want those jobs.

> Without immigration, the US would have negative population growth, which is economically probably a disaster.

Nobody knows what the population growth rate would be without immigration. The two are interlinked; ceteris is not paribus.

> We already have shortages in farming, construction and health care labor, which are often populated by immigrants. So overall, we’d have more unfilled positions, which would result in higher prices, etc.

Letting the price of labor in those industries find natural market equilibrium is fine. For agriculture especially, labor is a pretty small part of a product's final cost, anyway.

> Native born Americans just don’t seem to want those jobs.

The price of labor aside, have you ever worked a job where you're surrounded by an ethnic clique? I don't blame anyone for not wanting that.

>Immigrating to the usa is not a right. It is granted.

It's not about rights, it's about keeping your promises.

"Join the army and get a green card" -- oops did we say that?

But then we have only been fair weather friends (see how we treated pretty much any one who put their lives on the line) so I'm not very surprised at what's happening.

I don't know, some Americans are earning a ton of money in their 30s post-millitary and are retired for life and can even live abroad and keep getting their pension, do you have statistics to back it up?

This is about green-cards for joining US military. What are you on about?

India has the largest backlog of applicants, this will help Indians (and to some extent Chinese) get GCs quickly.

How so?

unused family-based immigrant visas ‘spill over’ to the employment categories the following fiscal year, see link above

Family-based. I am quite certain everyone here talks about visas for professionals, not your mom or dad.

The quota per country isn't being adjusted. I'm not sure what you're referring to?

U.S. Pause on Immigrant Visas for 75 Countries Could Add 50,000 Employment Green Cards—Big Win for Indian Professionals: https://www.visahq.com/news/2026-01-24/in/us-pause-on-immigr...

Family-based. I am quite certain everyone here talks about visas for professionals, not your mom or dad.

We carry the seeds of our own destruction they say. So this is a good thing. America should take care of their own citizens first. It is a good thing. Also there is a school of thought that says prosperity of any country is primarily a function of the kind of citizens they have, and how the country is able to leverage the intellect of its citizens. An important thesis of recent discussions of American prosperity is that a lot of it has been built up by the immigration of enterprising people into the US. So it can be argued that American prosperity is at the cost of prosperity of the rest of the world. And most of these things have compounding effects. The more intellect gathers in the US, that country can leap frog into the future at a far more vigorous pace than other could if most of these people were left inside their own countries. But in any case, these current events give us an opportunity into testing the thesis of American prosperity. Either balance will be brought to how global prosperity is distributed, or finally a country will be able to take care of its own citizens first. Either way this is all a great thing.