Comment by umeshunni | Hacker News Reader

Comment by umeshunni | Hacker News Reader

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This has nothing to do with H1B denials -

It has to do with the fact that green cards are allocated based on a per-country quota. Other visas, especially H1B are not.

So, to simplify:

- Assume there are 1000 H1B visas and 1000 green cards allotted each year and that an H1B worker can apply for a green card after living in the US for a year.

- 50% of H1Bs are from India, so there are 500 H1Bs a year from India

- But green cards are subject to a 100/year/country quota. So, the next year, only 100 of the Indian H1B workers can apply for a green card.

- This creates a backlog of 5 years for all the 500 to get a green card

- The problem keeps getting worse because the next year, there are 500 more Indian workers applying for a green card but the queue only has 100 more green cards to allocate, so now the wait for the last applicant is now 8 years.

- This process then repeats for a few years and workers from India now have a 100+ year wait for a green card.

In reality, not all H1B workers apply for a green card and there have been some temporarily relief mechanisms passed in the past to mitigate the delays, but you can see why the problem is especially bad for workers from India. In the past, it was a problem for Chinese workers as well, but with the economy in China improving in the past few years, there is lower demand from Chinese workers for green cards.

Yup. compare this to i.e. Philippines. I only had to wait 2 yrs for my GC while a lot of my indian colleagues are still waiting. Due to the extreme backlog, they couldnt really plan long term for their families.

There’s always an option to marry a US citizen (genuinely if it happens) and get a GC without being subject to a quota.

As described with those numbers, it is clear that Indian nationals are especially favored, not discriminated against as was claimed. Thus the complaint is really that India, favored above all other nations, is not favored enough. Same chance at green cards as other countries, and massively more chance at H1B, utilizing 50% of all slots, and therefore more than any other nation.

If one wishes to establish a balance between H1Bs and Green Cards on a per nation basis, the H1Bs could likewise be limited on a per-country basis, matching that of the Green Card allocation.

So Vatican City with its 1000 population is being heavily discriminated against in favor of India because there are basically no H1Bs from there? Stop the press.

Let us restrict work visas to one or less than one per country to make it fair to Vatican City.

Interesting example.

Vatican City was granted 0 H1B visas in all of 2018, as well as all previous years I could find. Are you aware of any years where Vatican City used the H1B visa? You must be since you use it as a counter example.

2018 Vatican City was granted a total of 42 non-immigrant visas across all categories. Most of these were consular visas for embassy staff and government officials on official business. H category work visas are totally non present.

In 2018 India was granted 125,528 H1B, 111,242 H-4 (family of H1B), 42,694 F-1 (student), and others coming to a total of 1,006,802 non-immigrant visas.

Only Mexico and China had more visas overall, with Mexico at 1,372,420 and China with 1,464,810 non-immigrant visas. Nearly all of China's and Mexico's visas were B-1,2 which are for very short tourism and business trips. This was also the case with India, with 616,312 visas being B-1,2. As to H1B visas, China received 27,482 and Mexico received 2,524.

Looking at work visas, India dominates all other nations by a large factor.

Bringing up the Vatican is an amazing argument given that they receive zero temporary work visas each year.

Yet you still continue to argue that India is being unfairly discriminated against by the United States. You are privileged to argue this, and also disingenuous.

I think what you're missing is that it isn't the absolute numbers of green cards and H1-Bs that matter, but the number per qualified applicant or per source country population. If each country has 1000 green cards allotted, it's going to be far easier to be a top 1000 applicant from a country of 1,000,000 (or 1,000) than from a country of 1,339,000,000.

Or put another way - India, the country, might not be discriminated against, as it gets the same allocation of green cards as everyone else. Indians, the people from India, are discriminated against, as there are far fewer green cards per person allocated.

(the situation is of course more complicated than each country getting a flat number of green cards, but the idea holds)

All right. We can do it as a proportion of population, as you wish. Given that zero Vatican citizens receive green cards or H1B visas in the US each year, the population corrected ratio of H1B visas and green cards granted to India vs granted to Vatican, having zero in the denominator, is actually "infinity" for both. Indian citizens receive infinitely more green cards and infinitely more H1B visas than Vatican citizens. Those are the actual numbers we get when using Vatican as a counter example. India is infinitely more privileged and favored here.

And I think you're missing that this is caps, not minimums. The actual selection process happens before these caps are applied, which is what leads to the waitlists - people pass the selection process, and then get stuck in line due to the per-country cap hitting India but not Vatican City. (Or Germany, or Japan, or the UK...)

The cap for Vatican City is far larger than the population. This does not change just because no one used it.

> Yet you still continue to argue that India is being unfairly discriminated against by the United States. You are privileged to argue this, and also disingenuous.

There is certainly reform needed in how, to whom and with which companies H1B visas are granted. However, let's put that aside as a separate issue and assume for now that H1B visas are granted in a fair, non-discriminatory fashion.

How does it make sense to limit the total green cards for any country to 7% of the total, regardless of that country's desire to immigrate to the US or even that country's overall population? What legitimate, non-discriminatory reason is there to cap green cards this way? (Vatican city is brought up because has the same cap on green cards that India has, despite much lower population and non-existent demand.)

The cynical view here (and one I suspect is at least partially correct) is that the relative inability of Indian workers to get green cards makes Indian H1B workers more cost effective and valuable to the companies that bring them to the US to work precisely because they are easier to exploit.

A truly fair system would impose identical caps on both H1B visas and green cards. (Ideally, this cap would scale somewhat with the overall population of that country.)

As it is, we have system seemingly designed to provide companies with low cost workers who are more easily exploited. This is bad not only for Indian workers, but for those worker's American peers and labor force competitors.

What we should have is a system designed to bring high quality, diverse workers with needed skills into our country and provide all those workers with a fair and realistic path to citizenship.

> Ideally, this cap would scale somewhat with the overall population of that country.

You bring up good points. Focusing on Vatican City is a funny example to pick and doesn't work well when we look at the facts.

So let's instead look at populations of each country and distribute caps that way. This seems reasonable and democratic, though different from the current system.

In 2017 there were 179,049 new H1B visas issued to persons of all nations globally. There were also 136,393 H4 H1B spousal visas issued.

Of this number, 129,097 new H1B visas were granted to Indian nationals and 117,522 spousal visas (which allow the right to work) were granted to spouses of Indian nationals.

Indian nationals received that year 129097/179049 = 72.1% of all new H1B visas. Indian spouses received that year received 117522/129097 = 91.0% of all H4 spousal visas.

I agree with you that these numbers are vastly disproportionate to population. You are right. These numbers are incredibly unfair to people of most nations, all but one in fact. Can you state what you have learned here which nations are receiving unfair treatment and which one single nation is receiving vast privilege and preference completely out of proportion with their population, based on documented verifiable facts? Please state what you have learned now that you know the actual facts regarding distributions of H1B and H4 visas population as they pertain to national origin. Thank you!

Vatican citizenship is based on having a job inside the Vatican, or at an apostolic nuncio (ie, embassy), or very rarely, being married to someone with such a job. Quitting the job means loss of citizenship. So it is no surprise nobody applies for work based visas with a Vatican passport.

I'd think that Vatican City, as the theocratic seat of worldwide Catholic Christianity, would mainly use a visa category reserved for clergy and religious workers (R-1), anyway.

The Vatican applied for and the US granted 0 R-1 visas in 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014.

I can go back further if you wish. Do you wish me to research and list more years? The data is available from the State Department, going back to 1997.

It doesn't really matter though does it? If the number is 0 back to 1997, will the argument suddenly be that 1996 and before were the huge years when lots of Vatican R-1 visas were issued? It is clear from the statistics that the claims being made about the US being racist, biased and unfair to Indian citizens are not only completely false but the assertions are the exact opposite of reality where Indian citizens are more privileged and favored than any other nationality. These are the facts. But facts don't matter these days. All that matters is race baiting and fabricated claims of hate incidents. It doesn't matter that Justin Smolley and others lied and the lies have damaged the US and create an environment in which people are terrorized by people making false claims. All that matters is the false narrative of chanting racism and denouncing America. Incite that mob. Create division. Truth and reality are unimportant when the violent revolution must be had by those who benefit from it.

I was being sarcastic. It's disingenuous to use outliers as though they are apples-to-apples comparisons.

It is especially deceitful to compare absolute numbers from a tiny city-state with among the lowest populations againt a giant country with the second-highest population. At least divide by each country's total population to get per-capita numbers.

Vatican City is an atypical country. As other posters mentioned, there are many reasons why no-one with a Vatican City passport wants a nonimmigrant work visa for the US. Every individual who might possibly be eligible to have Vatican City citizenship and who wanted to work in the US would likely use their primary passport--probably Italy.

You're cherry-picking. And the cherry you picked is rotten.

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