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Comment by colanderman | Hacker News Reader

Who lobbies for our awful travel system? I mean, of course there's a large contingent of Americans who are xenophobic and nationalist, but such pseudo-fascist bureaucratic red tape doesn't come into being unless powerful entities who stand to benefit from the bureaucracy take advantage of the populist zeitgeist to bend political will to their favor. Who gains power by arbitrarily rejecting random Swedes' visas and ultimately chilling international intrapersonal relationships and flow of culture?

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> such pseudo-fascist bureaucratic red tape doesn't come into being unless powerful entities who stand to benefit from the bureaucracy take advantage of the populist zeitgeist to bend political will to their favor.

I assure you it can arise entirely out of negligence, ignorance, and the mindless application of poorly thought-out rules. The impulse to look for the hidden "powerful entities" behind the curtain is an understandable but unfortunate form of conspiracy thinking, and it's unlikely to guide you to the truth of situations like the author's.

In principle I don't disagree with you; the US certainly had its share of purely bureaucratic boondoggles (e.g. Veterans' Affairs). And were it not for the TSA, our almost systematically acerbic customs officers, overbroad do-not-fly lists, the excessive systematic distrust placed on foreign visitors (e.g. by requiring visas even from close allies), and (most recently) travel bans designed to cut off families from each other, I would agree with you in this specific case. But these aren't just happenstance resulting from bureaucratic fumbling; these are conscious policy decisions.

We did after all just experience a national episode of confusion by a seemingly organic process (fake news) which turned out to be orchestrated by a foreign power for its own benefit. It's not unthinkable to me that (purely as an example) Russia also tilts public discourse in such a way as to make it politically untenable to dismantle, or even let stagnate, these self-destructive security apparatuses.

It's entirely possible the answer is very simply, "the xenophobic voter block really is so committed and influential." No conspiracy there, and that's a very useful answer. It tells us exactly where we need to focus our energy to fight these policies. I personally doubt that xenophobes are so educated about international travel as to pay sufficient attention to the workings of the visa system that it matters to them in the voting booth that Swedes need visas for nerd conferences, but I could very well just be biased.

My first guess is that a lot of this happens somewhat behind the scenes. Senate committee asks what's been done to keep the bad people out, bureaucrat replies with new 20 item checklist. Next year it's 40 items... Insane senators certainly want lots of public showboating, but also probably believe in their mission and try to apply the screws even when voters won't know.

That's my fear... It's scary when someone with a private, nationally destructive agenda ends up in a position of power, buoyed by voters who only care that they make a show of loyalty over some unrelated and pointless hot-button issue. Politicians have gotten really good at identifying and exploiting those lately...

> Who lobbies for our awful travel system?

American voters. American paranoia causes things like "Extreme vetting" to be totally acceptable. The consequence is global businesses need to move things out of the country.

Global businesses love hiring people from outside the US because they love paying them a far lower salary than a US citizen would command.

> Global businesses love hiring people from outside the US because they love paying them a far lower salary than a US citizen would command.

In other words, they don't want to hire workers who want high pay but not be world class. Global businesses want people who are exposed globally, are sensitive to global markets and people and are worth the global salary they command.

Why would a "global" company hire an entitled person of any nationality who just wants higher salary while looking down on people of other countries?

You think all the workers brought to the US on programs like H1-B are "world class"? They are generally good people and good employees, but for the most part they are operating at a level many US workers are capable of working at, with skills US workers possess. Companies bring them over because they know they can get away with paying them less.

Global competition among labor for work is one of the driving forces behind the erosion of the middle class.

>Global competition among labor for work is one of the driving forces behind the erosion of the middle class.

Erosion of the _American_ middle class, creation of the middle class in developing countries. I fail to see why an American deserves better compensation for their work than e.g. a Chinese doing similar work, just because of the luck of where they were born.

> You think all the workers brought to the US on programs like H1-B are "world class"?

Have you ever considered questions such as:

- The program itself might be flawed? US needs to improve its processes (ties to the original post)

- Why are Americans letting companies do that? Have you asked for something different from your government or are you just blasting a system from the last century?

- Why are CEOs allowed to gain the riches of global profits while being taxed lesser than middle class?

Globalization wasn't just "job stealing". It brought ungodly profits into corporate America. So many American companies have revenues more than GDP of entire nations. That goes into your 401k. So you have a share of work done in other countries.

Ever asked why middle class Americans are not getting a larger share of it from American rich people? Why isn't the money trickling down as promised?

At the end, you vote for your representatives. Your representatives seem to make the rich richer and create inhuman systems like H-1B instead of merit based systems. If you just elect someone who shuts the whole system down without an adequate replacement, forget about talented people, like OP, coming into the US.

Immigration laws have largely been unchanged for decades and are severely out of touch as a result. Nobody with actual power (i.e. Congress) wants to touch immigration as it's a politically charged subject. Politics is ugly in the US nowadays, everybody knows this but it's hard to break out of the deadlock.

It is a tactic common to abusers to cut victims ties to the outside world. Here we see the same psychological dynamic at work at the level of nations.

The truth is much worse: nobody is in control, nobody knows what they're doing, everybody is just kind of doing something.

Lots of ugly and false assumptions you're making in this comment, but I'll bite.

Billions of people want to come to the US. Many more than want to go to, say, Argentina. So our immigration laws need to be a bit more strict to restrict what could be a flood of immigrants to a more manageable flow. This is necessary for cultural and economic reasons, to promote unity and stability, which make America great.

Second, we are understandably paranoid about security, which also leads us to more restrictive immigration laws.

That said, nearly a million people immigrate into the US each year. Most Americans like legal immigrants contrary to what propoganda you may read or hear, considering we are a nation of immigrants.

> Many more than want to go to, say, Argentina. So our immigration laws need to be a bit more strict to restrict what could be a flood of immigrants

I disagree with this statement. The immigration laws of the United States need not be more strict; if anything, they should simply be more fair. The biggest problem with our laws is that they leave far too much up to discretion. If you turn in this stack of paperwork and if the person reviewing the application finds that you have met the requirements and if the person reviewing the application doesn't simply say "denied," then you may receive a visa.

Decisions of immigration, visa, and consular officers are not reviewable by any court or administrative body. You are not even entitled to know why you were denied. The reviewing individual may simply deny you for no reason at all.

That's not fair.

> Second, we are understandably paranoid about security

I also disagree that our paranoia about security is "understandable." I don't believe that it is. Virtually every action we have taken since That One Big Attack By Terrorists That Everyone Cites has shown that we're less paranoid about security and more paranoid about looking secure. Those are two almost totally different things. This means that our government takes wild actions that make us look secure--like simply banning all nationals of several countries, even people who happen to be dual-nationals of those countries--while accomplishing little.

That's unwise.

I can go to Sweden (and thus the entire Schengen zone, i.e. most of Western Europe) with just a passport, no visa. Why is the reverse not true? Europe is just as popular a destination as the States. Is there a flood of Swedes trying to illegaly immigrate?

"Unity" and "culture" don't "make America great". (Nor does the US even have a single culture. There are dozens within a mile radius of where I sit.) Greatness is only bestowed by others, and, non-Americans have really started looking down on America thanks to its antagonistic travel policies that strain friendships, families, and business ties.

Not a flood of Swedes, because Sweden is a functioning state than can provide comfort and security for its people.

But 4 billion people live in nations where the average standard of living is significantly worse than in Sweden.

So, why should our Swedish friend Daniel need a visa and be subject to bureaucratic purgatory?

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