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Comment by welshwelsh | Hacker News Reader

"American citizens" are usually just people who, by no fault and no merit of their own, happen to have been born in the United States. Frankly, this shouldn't give them the right to decide who else gets to come to the US and on what terms.

But putting that aside, when Americans issue a visa, they are forming a contract with another person that they are obligated to honor. When someone uproots their life to come to the US by following the rules created by Americans, it would be unconscionable to exploit them and then fail to honor the visa.

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> "American citizens" are usually just people who, by no fault and no merit of their own, happen to have been born in the United States. Frankly, this shouldn't give them the right to decide who else gets to come to the US and on what terms.

As an immigrant to the US, I disagree, it's the right of existing Americans to decide how many and what type of new immigrants they accept in their own country. The same way a person born into a rich family -through no merit of their own- has the right to decide who they want to marry and benefit from the riches.

Sorry but I have to take a strong disagreement with the claim that anyone has just as much of a right to live in America. Maybe in some highly abstracted form you could say that is America is just job opportunity but for those of us who were born here, it is our home. Our families are here, our lives are here. I'm sure lots of people are more qualified to write Java apps than the native population of America, but America is more than a factory for Java apps. It is communities, cultures and people. Saying that those communities should please make room for anyone who wants a job is just really insensitive and entitled. You see the same thing play out at a local level with gentrification. The people who have built a functional community are squeezed out the moment a large tech company wants to take over the housing stock for a bunch of transplants. The locals are pushed to the margins and a bunch of yuppy tech workers puzzle over why everyone hates them. There is an element of fairness in thinking that we are all the same, but I think you would feel differently if it were your family and friends getting pushed out from the home they built up for a generation.

> Frankly, this shouldn't give them the right to decide who else gets to come to the US and on what terms.

Who should decide, then? This view is both undemocratic and anti self determination.

Yes that is how citizenship mostly works. That is life. Americans absolutely should have the right to decide who comes to work in the US and on what terms. Unbridled immigration and open borders would be a disaster for everyone involved. America isn't a welfare state for the world.

Additionally, H-1B visas are nonimmigrant visas. Workers are aware of this. They are not permanent. If they treat it like its permanent, that is their own fault. Would it be better if USCIS was streamlined? Absolutely. Thats why fraud needs to be cut down and bureaucratic bloat needs to be reduced.

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