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Comment by BeetleB | Hacker News Reader

> Now this hypothetical version of myself waits as short as two years (China-born) and as long as eleven years (India-born)

China and India are the outliers. For most people, pre-pandemic (and post financial meltdown), the wait was under 2 years - almost everyone I know got it in under 2 years (EB-2, MS or higher degree).

If you weren't born in China/India, and had an "advanced degree" in a STEM field (i.e. MS or higher), the green card process was/is fairly smooth. The real bottleneck is the H1-B visa quota/lottery.

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>China and India are the outliers

They're not outliers in the sense that a significant percent of the world's population come from those two countries, so disadvantaging them disadvantages a significant fraction of the world's population.

As long there are countries boundaries there will be disadvantage. I don't think we are implementing that total amount of earth's resources be divided equally among total number of earth's inhabitants.

I suppose majority is factually true, but I think it’s worth being specific that nearly three billion people are in that situation.

How many of those 3B would qualify for an H-1B absent any caps? How many more STEM professionals could the US absorb at something close to current salaries?

For India alone, Wikipedia says ~8% or ~100 million have a BS. I was more focused on PR/citizenship in my post. I do not know what qualifies you for an H1-B.

In the second point, I only have an imprecise opinion which is that I’d rather suffer some loss of quality of life personally if the median human experience is raised.

Would you support kicking out someone who doesn’t qualify for an EB or H1-B (in practice, you’re kicking out non degree holders) for a foreign born person who does qualify? If not, it seems to me we are embracing a lottery of birth place. To be clear, I’d like to see substantially more freedom of movement even if it means reducing my quality of life.

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