I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed
vox.com
vox.com
I know at least 6 other people who have had similar experiences: well qualified people in great skill-specific jobs who were caught up in bureaucratic nightmares. Unlike the subject of the Newsweek article, these people had employees who could afford to keep them on the payroll.
New York Times also ran an article on this issue, of a Google employee who had to move to Canada because of arbitrary bureaucratic rules concerning the work visa. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/business/12immig.html?page...
Further, green card applications have country quotas, which, in the context of citizenship were deemed unconstitutional during JFK/LBJ's civil rights actions.
In spite of such iniquities, there seem to be no political efforts to fix the system.
The other part is that people who've suffered through the process don't turn around and try to fix it, I remember when my wife was going through the process almost 2 decades ago (and it took us something like 2-3 years to get through it), not one of the employees in immigration we dealt with were obvious former immigrants. If people who finally made it in turned around and went into government service and tried to fix the hellscape they went through, it would probably be better. But most people seem to be glad to get through the process and then get as far away from it as possible.
All that being said, people who I know who've gone through the process recently report a vastly simpler and streamlined process from the one we went through. So there is improvement being made.
For better or worse, the difficulties around immigration come purely from limiting the number of immigrants. If immigration entry was virtually unlimited, these stories wouldn't happen. I'll leave it up to you to decide if unlimited immigration is a good or bad thing.
I do this knowing that it may even result in driving down wages in STEM fields. Because I think it's too important over the long-term.
More tech immigrants. No indentured servitude.
Everybody wins. Except for the tech corporations who are suppressing wages--which is all of them--which is why it never happens.
This is not true. I'm on an H1B, and I can change jobs freely. Employers can't prevent you from changing jobs. Employers have zero power to suppress wages if you have an H1B -- because you can get a better paying job. (This is unlike the L-1, which locks you to your employer.) The only thing preventing someone from getting a better paying job is how good they are at what they do.
What's funny is that a lot of the engineers that outsourcing companies (like TCS, Infosys) bring over, end up leaving their poorly-paying sponsor soon after getting to the US (usually in 6 months), for a higher-paying job elsewhere. The only people left behind are those who can't find a better job...
To another employer willing to sponsor your H1-B. Correct?
However, doesn't this cause timeline issues? There were lots of problems with changing companies resetting your timeline. When did that change?
If your company hasn't applied for a greencard for you, there really is nothing tying you to them.
If they do apply for your greencard, you are tied to them for about one (or two) years.
I suspect that people who are persistent and qualified enough to get through that legal system have opportunities to pursue better job opportunities. And at the other hand, I wouldn't expect them to be wealthy and successful enough to easily sacrifice their careers to work for a public cause full-time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Treaty#/media/File:Sv...
> I like it here.
This is the real problem, you have a severe case of non-reciprocal love. In that case the answer is obvious: move over, find another love, come to Canada or go to Northern Europe.
U.S. immigration is an American problem,since they are the ones loosing talent and entrepreneurial people. It is not an immigrant's problem, since they don't have the powers to fix it.
Here in Canada we have a much more open immigration policy and, IMHO, better quality of life. I strongly suggest you considering coming to Canada.
The U.S. immigration system is so far gone that not even American citizens have the power to fix it. It has become a plaything in the hands of professional politicians. Just like many other things in the U.S., you won't get anything remotely like fair treatment unless you have rich or influential sponsors acting on your behalf.
Even if you do ultimately still have your heart set on the U.S., being a Canadian PR will also make that easier, due to Byzantine and Kafkaesque reasons that I don't fully understand myself. And if you don't ever make it, hey, Canada's not too bad a deal either, eh?
If you're Canadian you have an advantage over any other non-American, no question.
With Bill C-24, whether you were born in Canada or were naturalised, if you qualify for another citizenship or hold citizenship from another country, the government can take away your Canadian citizenship if it considers you to be a terrorist or threat to the country.
I'm against it.
The new provisions allow officials to take away a person’s citizenship based on criminal convictions that occur outside of Canada, regardless whether the regime or judicial system under which the person was convicted is undemocratic or lacks the rule of law.
The last place I would have guessed would tier class to provide unequal protection under and application of the law would be Canada.
Are they really more worried about the abstract idea of Jihadist Muslims than America?
C-51 allows them to brand people as terrorists, and C-24 lets them ship'em out to one of the USA's torture facilities.
That's why they ask (at least in the US citizenship application) "Have you ever been a member of a terrorist organization?". If you answer "no" and turn out to be one, they say you lied on your application and your citizenship is revoked.
Prior to C-24 there was a mechanism for stripping citizenship for treason and terrorism, but the bar was higher and at least potentially less political.
http://www.ibtimes.com/french-court-rules-its-not-wrong-revo...
Britain: Britain Increasingly Invokes Power to Disown Its Citizens
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/10/world/europe/britains-powe...
Other countries include: Netherlands, however it looks like many don't as well.
http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/networks/eur...
As far as anyone can tell, this is simply not true. Hence, average American people can like someone without that acceptance being written into policy.
It is, the average American doesn't like open immigration and they don't want immigrants taking their jobs especially after years of recession. Our immigration policy sucks because our people suck.
After years of trying without any success I started looking into other options, only to find that it's significantly easier to immigrate into other countries (like Canada). Two months ago I got an offer from a Dutch company (even with them knowing about my degree issue), and I'm moving to Amsterdam next week.
Last month I spent two weeks in California, and, with this new reality, saw the whole place with new eyes. After the glamour wears off, you realize that the other options might be even better, specially after you see that some countries are much more welcoming to immigrants.
Rotterdam is so huge that it really depends where you look :) I've heard an equal amount of love and hate stories :)
And other recommendations ... as I try to think of some, I realize it's pretty much a list of the rest of medium-large cities in the Netherlands. Unless you don't like cities, in which case maybe check out a tourist or bicycle guide. Try the province of Friesland for some real pretty non-city places? But there's so many others, just pick a spot, any spot, then Google it. The Netherlands isn't that big ;-)
I am from Brazil and want to go anywhere but here (or countries like here...)
I even did some interviews for companies in Amsterdan but they didn't went well :(
I am Venezuelan and let me tell you, this country is the anus of the world and we don't even have toilet paper.
Please be compassionate.
Disclaimer: I'm from Amsterdam ;)
I have a portuguese grandpa (as in, actually from Portugal), my family even owned stuff in portugal, but somehow all the documents proving it disappeared. My sister and some cousins will try to figure it out, if that fails option B is travelling to portugal in person to ask for a copy of the documents there, if that fail, then getting a job in Portugal and hope they will give a citizenship...
But seriously, most of my family that are portuguese descent are retretting that their ancestors left Portugal and want to return to Europe, even with all the crisis there, it is still better than Brazil (or most other south-american countries).
This is interesting. Must you have a degree to immigrate if you have a strong work history?
Where I come from most candidates have 4 year degrees and the ones with 3 years generally have trouble if it is not directly job related and if they don't have sufficient job experience to make up.
"Much more open" is a relative term, I suppose. I am a Canadian citizen, born in Canada with all my family (save my wife) living in Canada. I live in Japan with my wife who is Japanese. A few years ago my wife wanted to move to an English speaking country so that she could improve her English and live abroad.
I'll just be plain. It was easier for me to get a visa for myself and my wife to work in the UK than it was to get a visa for my wife in Canada. Had we decided to go to Canada, she would have had to come on a tourist visa. She would have no health care coverage, nor ability to work. After 6 months she would have to apply for an extension to her tourist visa on humanitarian grounds. Her application would be reviewed by a single border guard and could be denied for any or no reason. There is no right of appeal. If her application is denied, she would be barred from entering Canada again thereafter. If she is granted the extension, then she gets another 6 months. After the 6 months are up, she gets to apply for another extension on humanitarian grounds with the same restrictions. After a total of 18 months (and after paying $1500 for the application plus submitting all of our emails together for the last 3 years plus pictures of us together for the last 3 years), she might be granted permanent residence status.
That's for my wife!
In constrast Japan gave me a 3 year working visa after seeing the paperwork showing that we were married. The application was free and took 1 week to process. I can renew after 3 years. The last time I renewed my visa in Japan (before I was married) they just wanted to know if I was still working and after that gave me a renewal (the entire process took 1 hour and cost the equivalent of $60). After 5 years in the country I can apply for permanent residence status (which is similarly rubber-stampy). In the meantime I get national health care insurance and even a pension. (Note: citizenship is generally difficult to get in Japan, though. You must live in Japan for at least 10 years and you must show that you have integrated with the community).
Having said all that, being an immigrant myself I feel that immigration is a privilage not a right. If a country doesn't want immigrants, then that's their business. If you come on a student visa, or on a work visa that is intended to fill gaps in the local economy, then you are expected to return to your home country some day. That's just the way it is.
I feel for the guy because I would be devastated if Japan decided not to renew my visa for some reason. I love living here. I hope they invite me to stay permanently, but I still think that it's Japan's right to decide what they want to do.
In most Anglo countries, you'd have to wait for its approval (about 6-9 months) before your wife moved to that country. Is that what you're trying to avoid?
You can apply after five years, but it only gets 'rubber-stampy' where you are basically sure to get it, after ten. YMMV though - this is only what I've heard and is not from personal experience as I've yet to actually apply for PR despite being here for well over a decade now.
By the way you are definitely missing some steps in moving to Canada with your wife. It is not nearly as hard for her to move there with you as you're making it out to be. Do some more research.
What you've written isn't true unless there's some extenuating circumstances you're not disclosing. My wife was automatically eligible for PR, and in fact it was much easier than the reciprocal process (me applying for PR in Australia). It took about $2000 all up, and took about 8 months in total. Easy!
Now, we ended up settling in Australia instead (it was easier in the end for me to emigrate here instead) but Canadian immigration wasn't impossible. If anything it was just slow.
AFAIK, IANAL, you can get a permanent resident after 5 years on a preferential/highly skilled visa. This may be difficult for some people to get. See this Excel table:
http://www.immi-moj.go.jp/newimmiact_3/en/evaluate/index.htm...
To get permanent residence on a normal visa, you have to stay at least 10 years. That is problematic for people who stayed in Japan before the preferential visa system was introduced: previous stay does not count towards the 5 years of preferential visa.
See here:
http://www.tokyoimmigration.jp/eng/eijyu.html
Furthermore, Japanese permanent residency is much weaker than other countries. Children born to permanent residents do not get citizenship (this is okay if you are from a 1st world country, but problematic for those from 3rd world countries who want to improve their situation). In Australia&UK, permanent residents' children can obtain citizenship. In Canada, USA it is unconditional.
And getting citizenship, when not married to a Japanese person, is next to impossible.
The U.S. is not a country that loves anybody -- not in the way that countries like Denmark does. The U.S. works by mostly just getting out of the way and ignoring you at least compared to other advanced countries. You have more room to succeed or fail here than most other countries, but the government really won't do much to help you either way. Most interactions with the government here aren't all that wonderful no matter who you are.
Other countries offer better protections but can be more intrusive in ways that prevent both vast success and failures, with the tradeoff of creating more social stability.
The good news is that it seems like both approaches have managed to create great places to live provided you have some baseline understanding of what the place is like. There are a large number of well developed countries I'd be perfectly happy to live in, Canada included, because they offer great (if different) and reasonable living conditions.
Not everyone comes from the EU.
After the new immigration minister came up in July 2013, the government has changed policies to make immigration slow and the path to citizenship much harder.
1) A Labour Market Opinion (LMO), which is required before a work visa, itself used to take 6 weeks in 2008. This process now takes about 6 months (my case, which is not too slow) to 1 year (another friend's case, and plenty of people in forums). For the work visa, add another 2-6 months on top of it, and then you have to apply the temporary resident visa.
2) Path to citizenship (having work visa => permanent residence => citizenship) used to take a total of 4 years (roughly), now is changed to 1 + 2 + 4 (7 years), a significantly longer time frame.
I get the feeling that Canada is changing its opinion of welcoming immigrants.
Disclaimer: Used to live in Canada, but have left.
(is it still called emigrate if it's from a country not your own to another?)
Well, our government is at any rate. As a Canadian by birth I don't know that I feel we (the citizenry) have had a lot of input into the matter. :/
In Canada we elect representatives to a legislature, and those representatives effectively elect a government.
My representative won his seat with about 48% of the riding's vote, which is actually an extremely decisive victory for a representative, most of whom win on pluralities more in the range of 30-45%.
In total, approximately 39% of the 61% of the electorate that voted (or 23% of all eligible voters), voted in a legislature where the winning party took 53% of the seats and secured themselves virtually absolute power to enact their legislative agenda for up to 5 years.
I won't say we don't live in a democracy, but I do think we live in one that is only barely functional.
But to really specifically answer your question (which is actually two questions): I live in a democracy that elects its representatives. I do not live in a democracy that elects its government.
In short order they had setup a thriving massage studio based on traditional Chinese methods, had a child, and were able to afford a nice apartment and car. Apart from the the private Christian group that helped them enter Canada, they were entirely self-reliant.
They showed greater entrepreneurism and work ethnic than the majority of Canadians, by far. Despite their many challenges (including the presumed murder of their families in DPRK), they remained delightful, generous, and happy people that were a pleasure to be around.
I'm getting a little emotional as I write this because I was shocked -- disgusted really -- when I learned that the Canadian government was kicking them out of the country. They were forced to apply for citizenship in South Korea, and told only to return if they were rejected from S. Korea.
Unfortunately, I don't know how the story ended because, somewhat alarmingly, we've lost contact with them although my wife was speaking to the woman almost daily via WeChat before they left. I hope they are able to establish a more permanent home for themselves in S. Korea or wherever they ended up.
So, yes, I would say the government has changed its policies recently, and not for the better. Why these people would be forced to leave is beyond me.
Apparently Quebec makes it much easier for citizens from a select list of countries to obtain permanent residency, as opposed to what you'll find elsewhere in the country. It still takes a long time dealing with loads of bureaucracy (especially the requirement for basic French language skills which can be handled via courses while here), but I haven't yet met anyone who has had to leave before they manage to obtain their permanent residency.
Random aside: Moldova has proven to be the source of my favourite people. There are so many Moldovans here due to a simplified immigration process for their country. There's just something so refreshing about how they carry themselves: friendly, humble, utterly proud and self-confident, and without ego. It's nice to meet people who are pleasant without plastering a fake-ass smile on their face all day long. When you see them smile or hear a laugh, you know it's genuine!
tldr; I believe Quebec is conditionally easier (based on country of origin) to immigrate to than other Canadian provinces. And, um, Moldovans are genuine people - more of you need to move here so I can eventually find a lifelong mate. :p
I agree, I wanted to go to US from India but realized that its not going to happen so I went to Australia. Aus immigration is fairly simple process if you have tech background.
Aus immigration is equally as broken.
Why did your PR take 4 years?
Very true... same thing happened to me in Thailand -- 16 years there and finally got tired of the government's xenophobia and relentless efforts to push foreigners out of the country.
I am an American citizen, and the more I think of it, that is one reason I left America too....
Best to embrace a personal identity as an expat. It's a tribe or sorts, but it's more a state of mind. You lived in America as an immigrant. Live there as an expat, the attitude will free you, safe in the knowledge that if things really get bad, you can always find another place that /will/ love you... until they don't :)
What is a real head scratcher to me is the US policy on highly-skilled immigrants. There are certainly some political constituencies in favor of those, but I can't think of anyone against, at least not one with a modicum of political pull.
One could imagine a regulatory capture scenario where large companies benefit from the regime, because they have an easier time obtaining visas than their smaller competitors, but in practice even those lobby for more, not less immigration.
So who's lobbying against this exactly?
What's so important about an ethnicity that it has to be kept at all costs? Culture is probably worth preserving, but often culture is simply "the way it's always been" -- I'd argue the opposite, bringing different cultures together, if done right, will promote creating new culture that make more sense for today's reality, and not some 19th century status quo. Creation of culture is more important, imo, than maintaining culture -- as the latter can be done with history books while the former is a real policy that might enrich the lives of citizens.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/mar/05/france-...
In summary: the very culture of tolerance and openness towards others itself is sometimes threatened by those it wishes to welcome, and that's a hard problem to solve.
One of the side effects of totally open borders is that human culture might homogenize, with strong bias toward the developing world where birthrates are exceptionally high. I think Indian and Bangladeshi culture are both wonderful, however I do not think they are necessary worth more than Norwegian, Japanese, etc.
If you're from a country that has a great history and traditions, and you are ethnically related to that, then your DNA constitutes a cultural artifact, just like some carving in a museum in your capital city or a traditional folk song. Through ancestry, you are related to the people who made those things.
It would be stupidly inconsistent to preserve those other artifacts, yet to deny that your living DNA has value in connection with them.
There is something about the US that makes it desirable for people to move to the US. When proposing changes to the US, you need to wonder about that that thing is, so you can figure out if/how it will be changed by your new policy.
Let's take those one at a time.
Language: Sure, granted, there's a tendency to gravitate towards more common languages. Arguably that's a net benefit for people who would otherwise have grown up only speaking a less common language; learning a more common language grants access to a much larger set of speakers, information, and opportunities. That said, language doesn't tend to be lost, just not kept as an exclusive cultural barrier. Witness the massive efforts to internationalize information, to improve accessibility. And it's still common in many countries to look down upon anyone not speaking the native language, if that can be considered a feature.
Ethnicity: What do you have in mind other than language and culture, here? Because I hope you're not suggesting "racial purity" as a property worth preserving.
Finally, culture: Only if that culture is unable to propagate itself on its own merits, or in other words, if that culture has merits worth propagating. Some cultures have incredible history and traditions, and those have typically been preserved and spread further than they ever would have been otherwise. On the other hand, there are cultures built on oppression, indoctrination, suppression of dissent, lack of opportunity, and other undesirable properties; those cultures don't tend to survive exposure to broader information and the outside world (as well as the visibility of those cultures and their traditions to the outside world), which is all the more reason for such exposure. Not all traditions are worth preserving.
You're right that not all traditions are worth preserving, but Darwinism isn't the best way to choose which traditions are worth preserving. The problem is that ability to propagate does not imply merit. If you put a bad guy and a good guy in a room together, sometimes the bad guy just beats up the good guy, and you realize that you shouldn't have put them together. This is the same kind of fallacy as "if a company went out of business, it must've been a bad company", and also "the invisible hand of gravity means it's good that the vase broke".
For example, there's tons of cultures that think murder for personal grievances is okay and praise-worthy. I've seen first hand what happens when such a culture meets a gentle Western culture, when the latter doesn't have an overwhelming force advantage. It's not pretty.
You can't hold a global referendum on that, because their votes would be vastly outnumbered by those who don't care or who want to trample on them and help themselves to their resources or whatever.
Some cultures have long and proud traditions of oppression, suppression, subjugation, racism, sexism, murder, genocide, and similar; those cultures don't get a vote in whether to continue those traditions.
But with the exception of that, then of course, any culture gets to choose whether it wants to (collectively, rather than just individually) participate and interact with the rest of the world.
And this has nothing to do with resources; we're talking about culture and traditions here, not about land and strip-mining.
Eh, that's just cultural conservatism, the rallying cry of racists and skinheads the world over. Are you also afraid they might marry your women and corrupt your children?
It's really quite fascinating... Europe, for generations, colonized the rest of the world, imposing their own cultures on indigenous populations (and I say that as a Canadian... we spent 100 years trying to wipe out our own indigenous population).
Now that the tables are turning and Europeans are struggling with immigration into their own countries, violent xenophobia is springing up like a vile weed.
Ironic, really.
Now, that's not to say large, unintegrated (and note, I say unintegrated, not unassimilated... those are different things) immigrant populations aren't a challenge. They most definitely are. Any isolated population, particularly if they're disconnected from government, law enforcement, or the social safety net, are a difficult challenge (my own city struggles with pockets of unintegrated north african immigrant populations, for example). But it's a challenge xenophobic europeans created for themselves, by allowing these immigrant populations to remain isolated in the first place... ironically, in part specifically because of that very xenophobia.
> Now that the tables are turning and Europeans are struggling with immigration into their own countries, violent xenophobia is springing up like a vile weed.
> Ironic, really.
Why? Do you think the indigenous populations meekly surrendered to the Europeans? They fought and lost (some because of diseases, some because of inferior weaponry). The Europeans are now are superior in weaponry, they have working (in theory) immigration controls. Why is it wrong if they fight?
(note: I am not European. From a former European colony.).
First, get everyone not to lock their front door. Then, ban all fences and "no trespassing" signs.
If that pilot program is successful, then think about opening the borders.
It occurs to me that any country that opens its borders will be instantly flooded with every murderous scumbag that is fleeing from the law elsewhere. You will also be an instant transfer point for the trade of weapons, narcotics and so on. Not to mention human trafficking.
I guess how you deal with that is that you open your border to foreign law enforcement and give them a carte blanche about to conduct their investigation how they see fit, and make arrests.
Speaking of arrests, open borders means that someone can sneak into your country, kidnap someone, and sneak out.
Private property != public property. There are things called roads, parks, forests that are public - these spaces are designed for common use. Separately, there is private property. Like your house or your real estate. That's yours. Just for you.
Open borders is about removing borders between our public spaces. Allowing one to drive from e.g. a US road to a Mexican road without a passport. Open borders isn't about letting someone stay in your house. It's about letting someone rent or buy a house in America and inhabit what would then be their private property. It's about letting them take a job in a foreign country or hire a foreigner to work in their business.
See my other two comments for more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632
The claim was "countries that are based on a unique language, ethnicity and culture, [immigration] is damaging."
Again, I ask the question: damaging in what sense?
'course, when you get right down to it, it's just bald faced xenophobia, dressed up in nationalist rhetoric.
Judaism is alive and well as a minority group in many many parts of the world. "Dilution" has never threatened the existence of Judaism.
The one thing that did was actual genocide, as a result of racism and xenophobia because of fear that the Jews, the minority group, were destroying German culture. Go figure.
But a few immigrants? I think Judaism, or really any culture, is stronger than that.
Another interesting example is indigenous populations in Canada, Australia, and the US. Those cultures have remained strong with the exception of those where active attempts to extinguish them have occurred. The Canadian residential school system is a disgusting, shameful example of the latter.
Frankly, I'd be very interested to see an example where simple "dilution" has actually led to the destruction of a culture. I can't think of one.
If the person you are talking about is such a horrible person, and there are so many horrible people like him in America, why do you want more people to be subjected to them?
I never once claimed folks with these extreme xenophobic views represent any kind of majority in any given nation. They're a vocal, often violent minority. Their voices are getting louder these days, but so it goes with squeaky wheels.
I also never once claimed he was American. In fact, if I had to make a guess, I'd say he's a right wing European. But that's just a guess and isn't terribly relevant.
Such a country can assimilate some number of immigrants each year while remaining mostly unchanged. The immigrants learn the language, the culture, and marry into native families.
But as you increase the number of immigrants, the country can no longer assimilate them. They don't all learn the language, they don't know the culture, they form social cliques with other immigrants from the same country. They begin to change the face of the host country.
Personally I've never been thrilled by immigrants who say "Elbonia sucks, let's go to another country that is better and make Little Elbonia".
Things change. That's called life. To assume all nations and all cultures remain static over time is absurd. Hell, the nations as they are defined today are a very recent phenomenon. Some have only existed for a few decades!
The host country will become a new, different, more diverse country. That doesn't mean the culture of the host country is completely destroyed. Altered, yes. Destroyed? Almost certainly not.
And the detrimental effects can be mitigated if the host country works to actively integrate (note, integrate, not necessarily assimilate) immigrant populations, rather than isolating them through xenophobic policy and politics. It's the very fear of change that exacerbates the challenges of immigration.
As an aside, your characterization of immigrants as from "Elbonia" coming to make a "little Elbonia" is precisely the kind of xenophobic tendency I'm talking about. I'm sure folks said the same thing when Little Italy or China Town showed up in New York City, and yet today those areas are considered cultural jewels, contributions to society rather than infections that must be dealt with, components that have been integrated into a modern American identity.
Maybe don't assume immigrants are foreign invaders and they'll be more likely to integrate rather than isolate...
damaging in what sense?
I don't assume all immigrants are foreign invaders, thank you very much. On the other hand, I have known some immigrants who expressly wanted to get rid of the people in the town they had just moved to and import their old country's people, culture, and government. That's not my characterization, that's what was said.
China Town et al are great because they are integrated. You don't have to be from China to go there. But not every immigrant wants to integrate. Does that mean we repel all immigrants? No! Does that mean we embrace every immigrant no matter what? Also no. I see no reason to welcome people who want me gone, and say as much to my face.
It is possible to understand both these realities at the same time. We don't need to get all black-and-white, "all immigrants are evil" or "all immigrants are God's gift".
And what percentage of immigrants do you suppose those folks actually represent?
Are they really such a large group of people that they could actively "damage" a culture? Are they really so large a group that they could actually "dilute" the culture of the host country?
Again, I already concede, dealing with unintegrated immigrant groups is unquestionably a challenge (though it's notable those same challenges occur with local minority populations and the poor). You'd be a fool to believe otherwise.
But this narrative, that small, homogeneous countries are in danger of being overrun by an immigrant horde hell bent on reinventing their home country within the borders of the host nation strikes me as nothing more than rhetoric, a caricature, and nothing more.
Ultimately, I agree, immigrants are neither evil nor "God's gift". They're just people. Some of them are good. Some of them not so much. But I'm willing to bet the vast majority don't have cultural occupation on the top of their list of personal ambitions. Like all people they have more important things on their minds... jobs, family, food, a roof over their heads, those basic things that we all have in common.
The "immigrant horde hell bent on reinventing their home country" is not the narrative I was trying to present. I was mostly talking about the simple fact that a small homogeneous country that admits a very large number of immigrants (of any type, wanting to integrate or not) will be unable to integrate them all without experiencing significant change, which is concerning to some people. (You have already shared you believe it is a real effect but 'too bad'. I am clear there)
Also, so what if anyone can come and go. You live in a town or city, right? So the adjacent towns, they let you just waltz in and out of them right? They "don't control who comes through." Is that so terrible? Do you think your town should have a big wall around it and strict security cause you're worried about a potential fugitive slipping in? No, that's stupid. It's just a really inefficient/cumbersome way to deal with the problem of criminals. Instead, you leave society open and free, and when a criminal pops up, you track him down, arrest him, stick him in jail or whatever. You don't wrap everything up with giant walls and security just cause sometimes there are criminals.
"I'm totally against an open borders policy." That's cause you're severely underinformed. Please see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632
Where are these places? Very few countries are based on a unique language, ethnicity, or culture, and those that are have generally only become so as a result of active suppression of minority cultures and languages.
In fact, apart from a few microstates and isolated islands, I can't really think of any monocultural nations.
And let's not forget software engineers - just see what happens whenever H1-B comes up.
Lawyers have that nice shield that is the bar exam, but that is also de facto immigration since only ABA accredited schools qualify. So in one sense you're right, the legal profession does not need to lobby against high skilled immigration. However, the reason they don't need to isn't for any moral reason but rather because they can just lock out immigrants through non-legislative means.
But that's beside the point since I was specifically addressing highly skilled immigration.
So no, sterilization isn't really an issue because what is considered high standards for living by the second generation go up, but for those based on the old standard, they end up leeching off the system where there is an unspoken social contract for natives that you contribute or always try to do better than the bare minimum and improve one's self. You can't assume that cultural value is instilled in immigrants from other countries, especially when the society has an honor system more or less based on that principal.
http://www.thelocal.se/20120907/43078 http://www.thelocal.se/20140829/reinfeldtrefugee-focus-puts-... http://www.thelocal.se/20131224/13060
There isn't shame in using welfare as a safety net, its there to catch you from following in to absolute destitution from which there is no climbing out of in many cases. There is shame or stigma with staying on it and not finding work, or not retraining to find work. Their is shame in unnecessary long term dependency of an able bodied person being on it. There is shame if everyone just up and decided everything I want is already being paid for, why should I bother. That's abuse, by doing so, you take away from others who truly need welfare to survive and aren't capable of finding work or disabled, you take money from other areas that need it like healthcare, parental leave, education, etc. That's finding a candy jar of free candy and just dumping all the candy in your pocket.
There is no welfare system in existence, theoretical or otherwise that could sustain a disproportionally large number of people dependent on it by active choice, where there is more being taken out then being paid into it. There isn't a socialist democracy that can function that way.
A safety net is exactly what a welfare or other charity system should be. I'm simply suggesting that ensuring it's no more than a safety net should be backed up by more than just shame.
To be clear, the reason to not do something wrong shouldn't just be "because I'll get in legal trouble if I do"; laws should reflect morality. But that needs to be around as a backup for the sadly large number of people who will only pay attention to that and nothing less. Some people avoid littering because it's wrong and disrepectful to others; others avoid littering because it's illegal and will cost them a fine. Some people avoid drinking and driving because it could hurt or kill people; others only avoid it because it's illegal. Some people turn down charity because they actively want to be self-sufficient and contribute something; others will only do so if it is limited to need.
> There is no welfare system in existence, theoretical or otherwise that could sustain a disproportionally large number of people dependent on it by active choice, where there is more being taken out then being paid into it. There isn't a socialist democracy that can function that way.
Agreed completely. There isn't any governmental or societal system that can function that way.
That's a truism. Investing money in one sector necessarily means it doesn't go to another. All that money spent on education is one that isn't going to space research, but most people would find that sort of statement abhorrent.
I think the key is picking a bare minimum standard, and any work beyond that is better. People need the incentive. Maybe it's just to buy booze, who cares? Working 5 hours a week must be better than actively avoiding work.
(perhaps not basic income, but that captures the idea of incentive to work while providing a worst-case floor for people. Perhaps the Scandinavian floor is unsustainably high.)
The non-workers still contribute to the economy with rent, food, bills, they're just horribly inefficient. Furthermore, 1 J.K. Rowling offsets a whole lot of people who actively avoid contributing. The possibility to live in poverty and create art has some pretty profound cultural effects.
I won't support my taxes going up in order to let people stay home and not work. I wouldn't even pay for that for my own kids, I'm surely not going to do it for some stranger's kids.
There are three cases that are far far more common, i'd guess 2-3 orders of magnitude. First, the person having a bad time. We've all worked with the guy who got cancer, or is going through a bad divorce, who just becomes worthless at work. Not everyone gets that bad, but some people can't keep it together. Those folks just need some time. In a year or two they'll get back on their feet and be amazing productive members of society.
Two, the crazy homeless guy. Part of that is not really being capable of asking for the help they need. I'm not sure what fraction are (i hate to say it this way, but there it is) fixable. I do know that getting drunk, passing out when it's 10 below, and going to the hospital consumes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Third, it's not true of everyone, but there are certainly people that just can't work. Hellen Keller, perhaps some disabled veterans. Maybe someday, but there's no hope today.
A zero tolerance policy might be best. I'd say, we're better off as a civilization recovering as many people as we can, and just suck up the fraud caused by the handful of losers. I don't know how to avoid that, but i agree with you, fuck that guy.
"Poor" isn't an intrinsic human attribute, it's a bad thing that happens to people. Forcing someone who's paid taxes for 20 years to undergo a forced medical procedure in order to benefit from the programs they helped directly fund is insane.
Open borders means the US should make it trivial to get a tax id and work. Fundamentally, that's what people want to do anyway, work. Some people may get small handouts for food, or perhaps more expensive handouts for healthcare. The dominating factor by far is the infrastructure. good roads, reliable power, access to good food and clean water, contract enforcement. That stuff costs way way more than a $50 food stamp.
You'd be hard pressed to find an economist that thinks adding more people to the market makes the market worse. I understand the concerns about open borders, but making things so fabulously difficult is just blindingly stupid. If people want to come and work, it's literally better for everyone.
EDIT: I think I should point out that the tradeoff is that this way of doing welfare is less efficient but requires less trust.
Source: US immigrant, did the paperwork.
However most visa categories require you to leave the US within ten days if you no longer meet the visa requirements. So it's difficult to claim said benefits without messing up your future immigration chances.
I'd be interested in knowing if anyone else has.
What I was talking about was where a government agency sues to recoup funds when a beneficiary uses in a means tested program. That I've never seen and google doesn't seem to come up with any examples.
Reality check: (1) Immigrants are actually NET CONTRIBUTORS to the welfare system. (2) Immigrants (at least the poor ones you're apparently worried about) are hard-working and yearn for financial stability; leisure is an utterly alien concept to them. (3) As societies become more heterogenous, welfare systems decline, because of inherent racism/xenophobia. The various elements of the population don't want to contribute to welfare cause they don't feel in communion with those "others". (4) If the welfare system becomes overburdened, I say Great! It just forces us to fix our broken system sooner than we otherwise would have. (Although again mainly because of my points 1 and 2 this would never happen.) (5) We can charge immigrants an entry fee, or a tax premium, or we can exclude them from benefits altogether. Any of those options would be vastly more humane than the status quo where we keep these foreigners trapped in their unproductive backwaters making ~$1 a day, starving.
Please see my other comment on this thread here for more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632
First, I think we should seek bilateral treaties such that we can enter their country as much as they can enter ours and that both parties have reciprocal rights. This should allow all parties entering an agreement to slowly stabilize, or reach some kind of equilibrium.
One of the downsides is that this adds to globalization and homogeneity of culture, language, etc. Although personally, I don't think that's a big problem --it's mostly an emotional issue rather than actual, but it's still an issue given how people cry 'globalization', 'imperialism', 'monoculture', 'mainstream', etc.
From Europe, where people share some culture, they never the less still experience integration issues where locals resent foreign populations, example France and polish workers, or Germany and Serbs or Turks, or Spaniards.
Maybe grant larger quotas based on population would be fairer and then harden the borders, else the closer neighbor has an unfair advantage. So say Italy booms, quotas would make living in Croatia no better than new Zealand or south Africa in terms of odds of getting into Italy (or Canada the US or Nigeria.) But politics would never allow a fair quota system to work.
It's not really foreign populations per se. The resentment is really mostly socioeconomic. Nobody resents Persians in the Netherlands because the Persians who migrated here are mostly upper-class with a long tradition of higher education. Whereas the Turks you mentioned were considered guest laborers, Dutch companies literally drove busses to the poorest little villages in Turkey in the 60s and found the people with the least education, who couldn't read or write and had perhaps 2-3 years of primary education, then offered them a job working unskilled labour in a factory hoping they'd go back home after 10 years, basically the 1960s equivalent of off-shoring production to China at a pre-globalisation time when the factories were still back home.
Knowing what we know of lower-socioeconomic classes (higher rates of crime, lower rates of education, higher pregnancy rates, more conflict with authority etc etc), it's no real surprise it turned out this way. The sad thing is that in Europe the debate about these problems acts as if it's a cultural issue (e.g. Turkish culture or Islamic culture), when it's really a socioeconomic problem (taking the least educated people from an already poor country, putting them in factory housing and not teaching them the local language, and expecting them to go back home or thrive), not a cultural one. And this debate has essentially created tons of animosity because it invites all this 'class of civilisations' bs rhetoric and turns it into what in the US is referred to as a 'racial' problem.
It has sentimental and historical value, but I don't think it's particularly important. We can argue cultural identity, but that's only important so long as there are various cultures. In a monoculture world, the idea of cultural identity would be a lost concept.
Cultural anthropology, which while highly interesting and informative of human relations, isn't very highly valued by most people. The jobs are in such low demand (and with such low salary) that I decided not to try and get a job as a cultural and linguistic anthropologist. Which, while I'd have loved the work and have found it interesting, I can't exactly say it has much "meaningful" merit.
As for CanCon laws, I've yet to speak to a Canadian that was supportive of them. I'm sure they exist - or the laws wouldn't. A large number of Canadian Netflix users mask their IP to be from America to get "better content" [0]. It seems that Canadian nationalism is mostly a 60's/70's generation thing.
[0] http://o.canada.com/technology/internet/thousands-of-canadia...
It's not something magical about the soil that makes people want to move to the US. It's the culture. The more people that can use it, the better, but add too many new people too fast and it suddenly stops working.
No dude, it's the money.
I have at least a dozen friends who are on H1Bs working in SV for different large software companies. They're either going there because that's where the best-paying jobs are or they're staying for just a couple of years to save some money.
If you were to beam all the Americans into space and them beam all the Mexicans into their place, they wouldn't magically achieve US levels of income just because of their physical location.
It's true that just swapping people places right now would not substitute anything. But you can bet that the immense natural resources, available land and influx of immigrants through the 20th century have impacts as much, if not more, important than whatever contemporary cultural trends exist.
Culture has a lot to do with it. Brazil had the immigrants (and still does have LatAm immigrants). On the other hand Japan has been very averse to immigration.
It's almost entirely money/opportunity. That drives everything.
Why do you think North Africans move to Europe and South Americans move to the US? Because it's the closest country with the best economic opportunities.
Economic immigration is huge. Cultural immigration is tiny.
In fact American culture is the joke of the world (its media can be consumed from wherever and is quite popular, but its values and policies on things like health care, sexual education, religion, crime etc are mocked by more than a few modern economies) and its institutions (e.g. ensuring freedom of speech, freedom of the press, gender equality, life expectancy, racism, gay rights) usually don't find themselves ranked among the top 20, let alone top 10 of countries.
In fact, it's one of the main reasons I wouldn't want to move to the US. I'm in the Netherlands, my partner is American, we could move anytime. But I much prefer the politics, institutions and culture here. (and it's far from perfect here).
I mean you write 'share a wide agreement for rule of law, want to resolve issues through the political process, can usually be shamed into supporting freedom of speech, and don't want to kill their neighbors for having the wrong religion' as if the US is unique in this regard. You write it as if the poorest people on the planet simply want to move to a country that 'doesn't kill its neighbours for having the right religion', as if this is the nr 1 thing on their mind, if only they could move to such a country! That's ridiculous, as opposed to wanting to move to the US for economic opportunities to get a decent standard of life for them and their family.
In Asia, however, the cultural exporters, at the moment, are Japan and Korea, not so much China, despite its economic size. Fortunately and unfortunately, Asia is more pragmatic about cultural imports. There isn't the OMG our indigenous culture is being subverted and devoured!!
The pragmatism is in the form of foreign ideas with Asian values which seems to make the ideas less problematic.
Never the less, I think in many places, it's uncertainty or inferiority and superiority complexes which give rise to ideas of wanting to preserve culture. A fear of change. In the US people lament the change in our culture for 'the worse', as some believe. In other places, similar local changes are interpreted as 'westernization'. But really, do they want to go to how their culture existed in 1900, for example?
South Korea has laws literally banning Japanese TV and music. One South Korean song was banned from broadcast because it had one Japanese word in it.
Also, while in the U.S. the so called 'old boys net' helps to get things done, in Latam there's something akin to Chinese guanxi (關係) in getting things done. Relationships are paramount and make corruption endemic and inextricable. It's quite diff from U.S. and euro culture.)))
If I had to pick one thing though, it's the outspoken gregariousness. Europeans are generally pretty reserved; you would never approach someone you didn't know and try to strike up a conversation. A European might tiptoe around a sensitive subject, while people from the USA or South America would be very opinionated and launch into an argument -- even if they don't know you very well.
Also, it doesn't hurt that everyone in South America basically shops at Wal-Mart (seriously, they are freaking everywhere; even more so than in the US).
And not so long ago, corruption was inextricable from business in the US and Europe as well. Trust-busting in the US in the early 1900s broke down the networks here, and WW2 smashed them across Europe, but similar rule-of-law revolutions haven't happened yet in other parts of the world. But they are starting to as the education level rises and the middle-class expands and demands a clean-up.
Well, in honor of the harsh reality USA have also is own quota of this cake, supporting some very shady people in South America in the last decades, like Pinochito for example...
I wouldn't try to link the US' foreign policy to our cultural norms. Foreign policy exists in the realm of realpolitik, and every rational actor would likely behave the same way if they were in the US' place. When it comes to setting the global balance of power, anything and everything is fair game. This is why presidents customarily don't criticize those who come after them.
Please see my other comment in this thread for more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632
In particular, lobbying groups for and against having an official status for the millions of currently undocumented Mexicans in the US have opposed any immigration bill that doesn't include what they want.
Lawmaking does not allow cherry-picking bugfixes.
It ought to.
Interesting that the author of this piece comes from New Zealand, because NZ is the country that often springs to mind when I think of a nation that might could change dramatically with open borders.
I haven't been there, but I understand New Zealand is a country about the geographical size of California and Oregon put together (a bit larger), with spectacular natural landscapes, and a very small population (much smaller than the island would be capable of supporting). What would happen to New Zealand if they unilaterally opened up their borders? To keep it simple, let's not worry about malicious people, I just mean honest, hard working immigrants who seek a better life. Should New Zealand open up borders to unlimited migration? Is there a moral imperative for them to do so?
Generally, think about the situation where all (most) countries abolish borders, not just NZ or other small country. Moving is the basic human right, and the sooner we realize the better for mankind, assuming the culture of the host country is respected. Of course the culture needs adjustments to respect human rights as well.
I would disagree that is is for the better of mankind. In some cases, it could be, sure. In most cases, it eventually is not. How is it good for anyone to move from one stagnant area into a prosperous one to the point of dragging it down to be stagnant as well? Never mind the affect this has the people who are currently inhabiting the area.
Plus, it would seem to be that once a level of immigration has happened in an area the newcomers no longer feel the need to respect or to assimilate into the local culture, so they maintain their own. Hopefully they are carrying over their bad habits that led to their homeland sucking enough to force them to move, because they'll eventually want to move again. In the long term, that eventually makes things worse for those that lived there before, much like you pointed out in your first statement.
We have a long road to travel before mankind as a whole can, in masses, move about freely throughout the world without there being local consequences.
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong... 100 times wrong.
Productivity is the root of all prosperity. First read this excellent article: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/02/always_keep_you..... Workers become on average ~20x more productive when they migrate to the first world. Because we are capital rich and we have sane government and law and order. Imagine if you were moved to Haiti and you got stuck there. How much could you contribute to society in Haiti? You could maybe slice some coconuts on the side of the road - is that gonna make the world a lot richer? Roadside sliced coconuts? Nah, much better for you to be in first world even if you're doing a low skilled job here like delivering catering to a high tech startup. That catering company is able to produce food much more efficiently, and in SF or NYC you're able to distribute it much more efficiently, and you're part of this souped-up economic engine that's changing the world. That's why they make 20x or up to 40x more (in the case of the extreme poor) when they migrate to the first world. It's better for everyone! Economists estimate that moving from the status quo to fully liberalized migration (i.e. open borders) would roughly double global gdp - that's an insane silver bullet. That's everyone getting way fucking richer in one fell swoop.
Please see my comment here for more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632
Question, would slicing coconuts on the side of the road in Haiti provide the equivalent in pay as taking a low paying catering job in the US considering and comparing elements such as cost-of-living and whatnot? There are many people living in ways we would consider abject poverty but seem to be much happier with their situation than many of the supposed better off immigrants. It's sometimes about perspective too.
I would also say the current economic status of many countries around the world suggest that "everyone way fucking richer in one fell swoop" is not happening regardless of their immigration policies. Everyone is definitely not getting richer in the US despite the years of people pouring across, what is essentially, our open border.
But hey, I'm not an economist, so what do I know?
That's a huge and unfounded assumption, though.
Poor souls like the author of this article are caught in the middle. They don't have representatives in the traditional views camp and the multicultural views camp considers them to be secondary since they're not as likely a voting block once they come in.
The problem is that the thing is a moving target. When a lot of still alive people where born 'culture' was: 'a black woman was not supossed to sit in the best places of a bus', 'the children roam free with their friends and dogs and can go everywhere' and 'Is acceptable if I slap my wife in the face sometimes because I feel frustrated for the work'. Yes, this was a small part of the tradition not so long time ago.
Each generation have been educated in a different point of view about what was acceptable or not. What 'culture' should be honored for newcomers?. West coast 1966? Sometimes 'culture' is just plain wrong and should not be respected.
Just having an immigration system that is followed legally would be a lesson in culture that we've currently abandoned for political purposes.
Alternatively, should we accept that population groups that have a higher birth rate should naturally dominate future generations, or is it acceptable to fence off certain parts of the world with lower birth rates and a better natural environment?
- I see letting in anyone with the equivalent of a bachelor's degree (or say anyone that anyone is willing to hire for more $40k a year) as basically having no downsides at all. Empirical data on immigration reveals that it has no impact on wages except at the very low end, among unskilled high-school dropouts.
- As you allow lower incomes, welfare tends to become an issue. Currently, people do not immigrate in the US for the welfare (illegal immigrants tend to be net taxpayers, even when including healthcare) but people do immigrate to Europe for the welfare, so it's something that happens. However, if you take a country like France (where I grew up in), welfare payments aren't the biggest drag on the economy. Taxation is high, but other places with similar levels of taxation fare much better. Regulatory drag, in particular in the job market is a much bigger concern. In turns, this creates unemployment which aggravates any welfare problem. Evidence shows that as societies become more culturally and ethnically mixed, they tend to be less and less in favor of welfare. So higher immigration of welfare seeking immigrants may undermine popular support for welfare. It's a whole other discussion, but I'd consider disappearance of state funded welfare as a good thing. In addition, it's also possible to selectively deny welfare to immigrants, or to require a twenty year residency period before becoming eligible.
- Political externalities are often mentioned. Won't immigrants vote for the same policies that made their home country a living hell? I find this doubtful for two reasons:
a) The evidence points that in most democracies, the policies that end up being enacted are the ones favored by a wealthy elite, not the ones that have popular support. If you compare the actual policies of the US compared to the views of the median voter, they are strikingly better than you'd expect. How this comes to be is unclear, but the effect is important.
b) The favorite political view of most people is the status quo, or some very minor version around it
In practice, as more people would emigrate, real estate prices would appreciate, to the point where it wouldn't be economical for immigrants to come in, even if the borders were open.
Maybe we should not be hurting these people.
Not everyone with a bachalors degree is needed. There are plenty of Americans with bachalors that need work.
There are about 200 countries/territories in the world. The isn't the only option and the US isn't obligate to take everyone.
Essentially, it boils down to two issues:
Morally, we all are descendants of immigrants, or at least most.
Economically, most immigrants are willing to work hard. Combined with the fact that our society has a birth rate below replacement rate (1.3 vs. 2.1) we need immigrants just to keep our standard of living. And if we can give them a better life at the same time, it’s definitely great.
`Hard' as in `cheaper' ?
I don't think anyone wants salaries to go into free-fall but that's not a necessary result of easing immigration.
Think about it this way, if two countries were to merge, would everyone be worse off because of the increased competition on the job market? No, people would be better off due to the increased amount of trade.
Take waste collectors, for example:
Very few people want to do it, very few people actually do it. And it is necessary. By our sound logic, their salaries should be soaring, but they're not.
On the other hand, take lawyers in the U.S. A huge number of people want to do it. A huge number of people ends up doing it (I think the number of lawyers tripled in 30 years, for a 40% increase in population), and compared to waste collection, it is not that necessary a profession. But the salaries don't follow. They have probably dropped compared to what a lawyer used to make in the 60's (I'm not sure), but those who end up doing it still make good money.
So it doesn't seem to be a law of nature that is enforced automatically.
What do you think?
If they can land a good job or a partnership. Many struggle[0].
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/business/dealbook/burdened...
As a side note, speaking of governement.. as a teenager, one of the books that were laying around was "The American Challenge" (Le Défi Américain) by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber. It was a parallel between European countries and the U.S.A. It also addressed the Japanese and Swedish models, the technology gap (he warned that if Europe let the U.S. get ahead, there will be a time where the gap is simply too big to cross).
It is a very interesting book.
I wish we could figure out a way of "garboing" council road crews. With them you see 5 people standing around watching the one poor apprentice do the work.
It balances out usually in the positive.
Please see my comment here for more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632
This is not true. Very many things in this country are owned by entities that are not citizens -- foreign corporations and/or foreign individuals.
> and stand to make a bit of cash if there's an influx of new faces looking to buy houses, used cars, rent rooms, etc etc etc.
Sure, some people (some of whom are citizens) own things for which local demand and prices would increase with an influx of new people. Lots of citizens don't own much, and would be competing to purchase those things, and would suffer rather than benefit from the higher prices.
The benefit here is pretty much directly in proportion to current ownership of capital (just like the benefit from greater supply, and therefore lower prices, from labor.)
Please see my comment here for more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632
Aggregate growth doesn't mean everyone gets more; we have a system in which the major holders of capital are very good at capturing output growth.
Policies favoring aggregate growth aren't good for most people without policy reform that alters the way gains from such growth end up being distributed.
All this current immigration system leads to is more Islam and more 3rd world in Europe.
The best argument that I have ever heard against opening up our border is that we are big, but size does not equal the ability to support a decent quality of life. Some argue that if we open up our borders, dreams of higher incomes will compel lesser skilled people to move to Canada. These people often will not understand basic labour laws like minimum wage, or the need for benefits and so they will drive down the cost of labour. Others argue that adding even five million people sounds like a good idea, but that it would require massive investments in health care, housing, and basic infrastructure.
Like I said, I mostly support open borders but have never been too impressed by the moral arguments. Canada is a great country and I love it dearly, but I have spent a little too much in some bad neighbourhoods and become friends with too many unhappy immigrants. Rather, I would argue that we are an amazing country, but that many immigrants who bought into the hype, came here and live in poverty far worse than that which they escaped. I say 'far worse' because, while our social safety net is fairly good, it involves navigating an intense bureaucracy that is difficult for native English speakers and near impossible for immigrants, especially those with more limited English language skills. And, unfortunately, parts of our population are very anti-immigration and argue that they should 'stay home' instead of clogging up our social services.
Morally, I think that I could just as easily argue that we should stop all immigration entirely until we can do a better job of caring for the immigrants that we already have.
My all-time favourite argument in favour of opening up our immigration system is that it is one of the best chances that we have of saving our manufacturing industry. Since the 2008 financial crisis, much of the manufacturing industry has been in a horrible shambles and years later, factory jobs simply have not returned to eastern Canada. Factory jobs have mostly been a victim of cost and so the theory goes that opening up borders to lesser skilled people will drive down the cost of lower skilled labour. If you drive the cost of lower skilled labour down closer to minimum wage and get rid of the often union negotiated benefits, suddenly the cost disparity between producing in Canada versus China or Mexico looks a little better.
Another argument I love is that the last time our borders were mostly open, we allowed an influx of mostly eastern European people to come into our country. (My last name is Hluska and my great grandfather was one of them). There were some growing pains and for many people (my great grandfather included), the move to Canada was really difficult. However, after a few generations, these immigrants' children and grandchildren have become important entrepreneurs, business and political leaders.
So, the argument goes that in our history, mostly open borders lead to a difficult decade or two, but that the kind of person who will immigrate tends to be resourceful enough to bring enhanced opportunity for many generations after.
even if one were to reduce labor costs to china level, china has the infrastructure (technological and industrial) to build things and the countries that were abandoned 20 years ago do not, not anymore and not at the level they have.
it is not about, say, producing mobile phones or cars, it's about the steel and plastic they need. and at least all around my area all refineries and mills are long gone. even if we drive down labor prices, china is now technically more advanced than us and at a scale we would never reach.
However, latest labour force survey indicated that ~ 1.7 million people still work in manufacturing. While this is the lowest number of manufacturing jobs in Canada since 1976, it still employees a relatively large percentage of our work force. The issue that worries economists is that a large percentage of our remaining manufacturers operate below capacity. When our dollar declined relative to the U.S. dollar, some economists thought it would slow the slide, but the issue remains that manufacturing still costs too many Canadian dollars. Since NAFTA prevents our government from directly subsidizing manufacturing (in most sectors), lowering labour cost is the best tonic left.
"unhappy immigrants" - surely they're no where near as unhappy as the extreme poor. The moral case for opening the borders is an absolute slam dunk.
You might want to do some research about New Zealand's current housing crisis and other socio-economic issues (such as Māori being significantly over-represented in poverty statistics) before unilaterally advocating a country that you admit you have never been to and know nothing about (other than its size and population) open its borders because you won't have to deal with the consequences.
I was a little surprised by this comment and wondered how true it actually was. According to Numbeo, rental prices in Auckland are 67% lower than SF. Likewise property purchase prices are between 66% and 71% lower on a price per square metre basis. Something worth noting these figures are for SF on average, not just the Bay Area.
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
Edit: Formattting
1. Arguments against immigration stem not from moral imperatives, but from survival instinct.
2. If we open up immigration, America as we know it will change dramatically, in either a good or bad way. I think what we have now is already pretty good, so why change the status quo?
I'm a descendent of immigrants born to poor circumstances. I'm lucky to be here as a result of getting past strict immigration policies. But I gotta be real, If America tried to "save" every one on the face of the earth by letting everyone in need into this country, we'd probably triple our population, and change the state of everything.
Secondly, what are you referring to by "what we have now"? Immigration law in particular, or U.S. policy on a macro level?
It's been changing, sure, but the change you address is different from the change of say dropping a nuclear bomb on all our major cities or discovering sources of unlimited, zero-emission energy. The change I'm talking about, which is eliminating immigration law completely by making ANYONE able to come here is entirely different from the "continuos change since inception" that you're addressing.
By "what we have now" I mean the state of everything as it is today. The economy, the people, our values, our resources. When you increase the population and let ANYONE in, all of these things will change.
Therefore it's worth asking if that "whatever it is" will remain good in the face of any proposed changes.
About a decade ago I attended an internal presentation at Microsoft, made by a person who was lobbying immigration changes on behalf of that company. He explained this phenomenon - in some parts of the country the voting public does not have the attention span to listen long enough to make the distinction between "immigrants" and "high-skill immigrants". For that reason many politicians who are privately supportive of high-skill immigration still prefer not to try the patience of the voters, and come out against all immigration in public. Especially when there is an opponent who is ready to yell "he's soft on immigrants!".
Please see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632
My guess is that a massive influx of foreigners would likely destroy that culture.
Is there any way to open borders and still preserve a place's culture, at least the good parts, or is that just doomed?
Cultural enclaves don't say anything about crime like the fact that 19 times out of 20 if you lose your wallet in Japan you'll get it back with all the money in it. It's hard to imagine that would stay true with a much larger percent of non Japanese culture people.
If you've ever come across any posts on HN regarding immigrant workers in technology (who are on the same visa, the H1B†, that the author of the Vox article was on), you will see a shockingly offensive amount contempt and hatred for highly-skilled immigrants.
To answer your question more directly, despite high support for skilled immigration reform, there are currently 2 senators who are hell-bent on making life hard for highly-skilled immigrants. One of them is Chuck Grassley, chair of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and the other is Jeff Sessions, chair of the Subcommittee on Immigration. Both senators (esp. Sessions) thoroughly hate immigrants of all kinds, and have avowed to do everything in their power to block immigration reform from passing, and the committee and subcommittee they chair are key to immigration reform passing in the Senate.
Jeff Sessions has even go so far as to write a document full of half-truths and lies, with the goal of convincing other Republicans that even the tiny trickle of high-skilled immigration now permitted is detestable, and must be put to an end. The Cato Institute has an excellent fact-based rebuttal of it: http://www.cato.org/blog/rebuttal-sen-sessions-anti-legal-im...
Opposition to immigration itself is pretty hard to believe in country like the U.S., but the opposition to economically beneficial high-skilled worker immigration, is even more shocking.
† Note: there are really no other alternatives than getting a work visa, if someone wants to immigrate as high-skilled worker. I've read ill-informed people on HN say ridiculous things like, they do not have a problem with people "coming to the US normally", but they hate to their guts anyone on a work visa. Ridiculous.
Well, that's probably largely because the system is being abused to bring in questionable workers and drive down wages.
Most of the points stated on those hateful comments are either factually wrong, or overstate something as being the norm, when it probably happens less than 10% of the time.
For one, if you are even decently good at software development, and live in any major city in the US, you really have no excuse for not being able to find a job. (Apart from being really bad at interviews.) Demand far outstrips supply.
Secondly, although work visas are used by outsourcing companies a lot, they are also used heavily by companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, a lot of tech startups, etc, and other companies that are looking talented engineers.
Finally, the work visa requires the employee to be paid at least the prevailing wage for the position, and most of them get paid well above the prevailing wage, so the "driving down wages" point isn't valid either.
Most of these commentors also fail to realize that there is really no other way to immigrate, besides a work visa, unless you want to go the family-based or refugeee route (not an option for most). They also show a total ignorance of the lump of labor fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
When someone heaps abuse and hatred on highly-skilled immigrants (like those on HN), and call for an end to skilled immigration, they are really calling for an end to all immigration. It's noxious xenophobia and perhaps racially-motivated hatred, plain and simple.
Immigration is a complex issue. Name calling doesn't solve anything.
The whole idea that it would be wrong or humiliating to have to train someone who had the gall to be born in a different (and generally poorer) country is based on the notion that Americans should be treated with more regard than people born elsewhere. If Disney had fired 200 Americans and replaced them with 200 other Americans, would there have been an uproar? Almost certainly not. Since they only difference is the new workers' nation of origin, how is this not a xenophobic or racist reaction?
Lots of issues are complex but complexity is not an excuse for xenophobia.
Let's say the foreign workers would have made the equivalent of $20k in their own country but will now make $60k for Disney in the U.S. vs. the American workers who made, say, $80k but will now end up settling for new jobs that only pay $60k (in addition to their unemployment, social security and subsidized health insurance and other social safety net features that the foreigners wouldn't have access to in their home countries). Are you really sure this is a bad thing for the world?
(By the way, the stylized figures above are very generous to your anti-immigration case, since while there is plenty of evidence that immigrants 2-3x their incomes by working in the U.S., there is no reason to believe that American's actually suffer 25% income losses to do competition from immigrants. Most studies show no change or a positive impact to native workers' wages and the few that show a negative impact show at most a ~5% decrease.)
Why do you think Disney would replace a ton of workers with inexperienced ones unless they're saving on wages?
If their replacements were white guys from Texas it would still be equally humiliating and offensive for people to be asked to train their lower-wage, less-skilled replacements as a condition for receiving severance. Come on. And unlike citizens, people on work visas have no real leverage to negotiate for higher wages (since their work visas are tied up with the company they work for or at least their ability to find a new sponsor), so the idea that they couldn't possibly suppress wages seems silly.
I don't think that's true, but I don't expect we'll be giving programming tests to each commentor to get hard data
Most of the points stated on those hateful comments are either factually wrong, or overstate something as being the norm, when it probably happens less than 10% of the time.
If you are accusing others of not using facts and citing sources, then you should do the same with your 10%
Secondly, although work visas are used by outsourcing companies a lot, they are also used heavily by companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, a lot of tech startups, etc, and other companies that are looking talented engineers.
Here, the stats are available http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2015-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx
Looking at the top 10 list the vast majority is body shop consultants. Depending which area in IBM the H1Bs are going to, it could be the entire top 10 is outsourcing companies.
Finally, the work visa requires the employee to be paid at least the prevailing wage for the position, and most of them get paid well above the prevailing wage, so the "driving down wages" point isn't valid either.
That certainly wasn't my experience in the 90's and I suspect given the numbers given on the previous website, it isn't true now. I don't really have the time to check the state-by-state to see.
Most of these commentors also fail to realize that there is really no other way to immigrate, besides a work visa, unless you want to go the family-based or refugeee route (not an option for most).
I certainly realize that, but that doesn't mean we have to like the H1B's version of immigration, and it doesn't mean hating H1B means we are anti-immigration. It does mean if painted in those strokes, most people will respond poorly.
When someone heaps abuse and hatred on highly-skilled immigrants (like those on HN), and call for an end to skilled immigration, they are really calling for an end to all immigration. It's noxious xenophobia and perhaps racially-motivated hatred, plain and simple.
That is the crud political argument that I dearly hate. Paint all of your opponents as the devil with things they don't believe. It serves no one but talk show hosts and is a major reason why immigration reform is impossible in the US. Hating the H1B program or any other program run by the US is not the same as hating immigration or immigrants. Disney is not the only company to abuse immigration and it seems to be a common experience is some areas of the country.
Hell, asking for the borders to be protected has very little to do with immigration but it is heaped in there with being "hateful" when it is a basic security problem.
I cannot imagine why we don't have a system for taking students who come to this country to be educated in college and give them a work visa not tied to a company. I wonder why we don't allow a pool of skilled workers into the country under circumstances where they have a job waiting but are not tied to that employer. Neither of these beliefs will make me not say the H1B program should be abolished as a failed experiment that was gamed and needs replacing.
> I cannot imagine why we don't have a system for taking students who come to this country to be educated in college and give them a work visa not tied to a company.
This exists already. It's called "F-1 OPT". It allows students to work in the field of their major for 12 months normally, but if they had a STEM major, for 29 months.
> I wonder why we don't allow a pool of skilled workers into the country under circumstances where they have a job waiting but are not tied to that employer.
That's what the H1B is. You need to "have a job waiting" but you "are not tied to that employer"†.
The only thing preventing an H1B holder from getting a better job is how good they are at what they do, and whether the company they want to switch is willing to handle an "H1B transfer".
Most companies in tech are willing to do perform an H1B transfer, and there's great job mobility in tech, especially for the most talented H1B holders, who are widely sought after.
†Note: Before the year 2000, you couldn't change jobs on the H1B, and you were tied to your initial visa sponsor. This changed after Congress passed a law (called "AC21") that enabled H1B visa holders to change jobs.
So this idea that H1B visa holders can't change jobs is a myth. Also your pining for work visas to be "abolished" without offering a meaningful alternative is equivalent to pining for no skilled immigration. Without work visas, the only people coming here would be refugees and family members. What you should've said is "we need better work visas" or "we need to lift the quota on them".
A lot of international students who study here, and graduate from U.S. schools end up effectively getting deported because of the quota on H1B visas. Here's one HNer who's getting kicked out thanks to the H1B cap: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9767627
By all accounts, it doesn't work worth a crud in its current form.
> That's what the H1B is.
My friends on H1B's couldn't switch jobs freely. H1B transfers are just trading indentured servants and not a good thing for freedom of the person.
> Also your pining for work visas to be "abolished" without offering a meaningful alternative is equivalent to pining for no skilled immigration.
I have never heard of anyone advocating abolishment of the H1B without a transition for those in the system and having a replacement. Don't try to phrase it like I am against immigration. The current systems don't work for people coming here or US workers.
> A lot of international students who study here, and graduate from U.S. schools end up effectively getting deported because of the quota on H1B visas.
Seems the F-1 OPT isn't working.
You insist that F-1 OPT "doesn't work", but you the fail to give the slightest explanation as to why.
OPT allows students to work a certain amount of time after they graduate, and most students cherish being allowed to do so. After OPT expires, they have to go through the H1B lottery. You can start a startup (i.e. be self-employed) on OPT, so it's actually less restrictive than the H1B.
I'm not saying that any of the work visas / work authorizations in the U.S. are perfect and without flaw. Far from it. Ideally, it would be good if students were allowed to transition to permanent residency after their graduation. But OPT helps a lot of international students, and it isn't fair of you criticize it without explanation. It is arrogant and asshole-like of you to do so.
> My friends on H1B's couldn't switch jobs freely.
Ask them why.
Nothing prevents a person on H1B holder from moving to another employer that sponsors H1Bs. Practically every company in tech is willing to do a transfer, and there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to switch. A transfer costs a company at most $4000 in total (application fees, attorney fees) which is not much if you're paying the individual $100k+/year.
Other folks in this thread have pointed out it doesn't work
> Ask them why.
Because they need a sponsor to switch - that is not freely - and as you say it "costs a company at most $4000" which is not free.
F-1 OPT isn't mentioned any where else in this thread. So you still haven't explained why "OPT is broken".
> Because they need a sponsor to switch ... which is not free
Practically speaking, for people in tech, this isn't a problem, because most/all companies sponsor, and are willing to bear the $3-$4k cost.
So what if anyone can come and go. You live in a town or city, right? So the adjacent towns, they let you just waltz in and out of them right? They "don't control who comes through." Is that so terrible? Do you think your town should have a big wall around it and strict security cause you're worried about a potential fugitive slipping in? No, that's stupid. It's just a really inefficient/cumbersome way to deal with the problem of criminals. Instead, you leave society open and free, and when a criminal pops up, you track him down, arrest him, stick him in jail or whatever. You don't wrap everything up with giant walls and security just cause sometimes there are criminals. So if we don't want walls around towns or cities or counties or states, why do we suddenly want them at the country level? What the hell is so special about your country? Does no one commit crimes there? No, of course they commit crimes.
And by the way, you can get smuggled into the US via the Mexican borders for like a couple thousand bucks. There's a whole industry around this. The people who do the smuggling are called 'coyotes". Any serious terrorist is already here, via that border.
Please see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632
Nope. The border needs to be secure. There are people who hate the US and have committed violence against its people. This is a basic security problem and open borders would be a disaster. Your city argument is bunk, we are a country under a common Constitution, not a collection of city-states.
> And by the way, you can get smuggled into the US via the Mexican borders for like a couple thousand bucks
Yep, and the government needs to do everything in its power to shut that down. Illegal immigration hurts the chances of any legal immigration package.
> And by the way, you can get smuggled into the US via the Mexican borders for like a couple thousand bucks. There's a whole industry around this. The people who do the smuggling are called 'coyotes". Any serious terrorist is already here, via that border.
You're making this sound easier than it is. Lots of people die trying to do this now.
Overall my point is that the technical world is such that today nobody wants to buy an iphone 3GS today. Even if there are some buyers then they definitely do not want to pay $600 to buy it
Or close them. The moral imperative is to have a consistent and fair rules. You can't really be the US and let people live for decades in a grey state with all the obligations of a citizen but little of the rights. You take them in or not but that should a quick and permanent decision (i.e. no 3 year limit nonsense)
That's by the way not a US-only problem. That is the same in the UK and most of Europe, even worse, I believe, in Japan.
Other explanations are inertia (the system started out restrictive, and has been gradually loosened), or appeal to voters regarding either jobs or general dislike of immigration.
A few months ago, I came very close to being deported due to the business unit I worked in being divested to another company - this isn't a problem for H1B employees, but I had an L1 which is non-transferrable to a new company, and since my job at my existing company was no longer present I would be made redundant if I couldn't get employment at the aquiring company. Luckily for me, my residency application became current 2 weeks before the aquisition closed (I had been waiting on this application for almost 3 years), so I was able to move into another immigration status that allowed me to move over to the acquiring company.
If that hadn't happened I would have been left with no job, A pregnant wife (who would also lose her job - as her work auth is tied to my visa) and facing an expensive move back to NZ (relocating a family internationally is really expensive btw). Fortunately for me I'm now on the home stretch (I hope) and I check my mailbox religiously waiting for the day my greencard turns up, and I can start living life on my own terms.
NZ has its good points with regards to being able to have a more relaxed lifestyle, and its great for outdoorsy types - but skiing, hiking etc. doesn't really interest me that much, and I kind of like the bluster and hustle of the bay area.
We (my company and I) are desperately waiting for this to go through so that I can get the clearance to work on a wider range of unmanned air vehicles.
He did in fact go for another job, which has fallen through. And so he must leave the country.
Quote:
Additionally, an H1-B visa (the most common form
of work visa and the only form available to most)
is only valid for three years and renewable only
once. This means that the skilled legal immigrant
must obtain permanent residency or a green card if
he or she wishes to stay for more than a few years.
Again, an employer can sponsor an employee's green
card, but the employer must again bear the costs,
which can run to the tens of thousands of dollars,
and again the employee cannot offer to pay the cost.
Unlike OP I had no money to pay for college, so I found Austin company, worked for them as a freelancer and then convinced to sponsor H-1B visa. Unlike OP I had no way to just come over to talk with potential employers while on tourist visa - US embassy twice refused to give one to me because of a high risk me staying illegally in their opinion. So, sorry, but this story is just a story about "how privileged i feel, i got two degrees", not about "impossible to get citizenship". It is weird that after obtaining two degrees OP still could not follow bureaucratic process...
Job opportunities in the legal profession have decreased drastically in the last decade, and for all his rhetoric of "America wanting the best and brightest", it may have been hard to justify letting him stay when there is a glut of lawyers. This probably factored into the decision of his bosses not to pursue a green card for him.
They'd have to really want to keep the employee, and to have exhausted all other visa options.
For example, let us say you are from outside US and got an admission to Harvard for MBA. Now what you have to decide is whether it is fine for you to spend ~$200k in 2 yrs in education at Harvard and then potentially returning back to your country since if your name doesn't come in the H1 lottery - that is what you have to do. There is no 2nd chance. These kind of decisions is what is keeping out a number of bright ppl from coming to US and look elsewhere for opportunities.
However, I'd argue you're still a net gain for the US, because your work - the value derived from it - is very likely quite a lot more valuable than what you're charging for it. In tech, often worker input is worth several times what they're paid for it. You're making a valuable net contribution to the US economy.
Not as much of a net gain as it would be if you were here also paying taxes.
scratch that -- i contribute a little by traveling to the us every once in a while (on vacations).
and even that visa, business/vacation was a big pain in the ass to get because for the us gov't i was going to stay in the us forever and ever because i happen to do work for american companies. i had to show the us gov't a ton of documents (from my marriage certificate to my tax returns and bank statements) to prove that not only i lived here but i also would go back.
and you know what the guy that was interviewing me said at the end of the visa interview? "i'm going to trust you". even after showing a ton of documents, it came to that -- a guy trusting me or not.
(btw, my wife also got her visa but it was way easier. she basically showed my passport with my visa and entry stamps and they said "ok!")
(btw 2: i was never more scared in my life than when i went to us for the first time. the border control point inside the airport was just insane, it felt like i was going to get arrested and deported at any time. there, i also had to provide a good reason for coming into the us + show the border control office my plane tickets, hotel reservation, money i had with me, credit card statement... otherwise i would get deported).
So you're actually still cheaper for those employers than having an employee in the United States; ergo, you're undercutting American workers.
More to the point I stopped trying, seeing that the system was structured against me, and that my ambition of starting my own company(s) was not going to be doable in the USA. (I'd previously started a company in Canada, and already knew that stable immigration status is a prerequisite for a stable/growing business.)
I've been in New Zealand since 2003. It's increasingly wonderful here.
It's so easy to start businesses (I've co-founded several), to invest in businesses (over 20 so far) and to get things done. The early stage eco-system is taking off, led by companies like Xero, Trade Me, Orion Health and Vend, and with others like Timely (@timely), Raygun.io and a growing ecosystem around Xero following. We have seen successful start of crowdfunding, but raising money is still not as easy as it could be (I'm trying to help change that).
Meanwhile the politicians are accessible and not corrupt or extreme, the country is staggeringly beautiful, the food delicious and nutritional, and the economy floated through the GFC as our bankers were sensible and bolstered by solid laws. Auckland is increasingly multicultural and we have free trade agreements with China and many other countries - over 2 billion people worth. And we consistently get near the top of the World Bank's Doing Business rankings and Transparency International's (lack of) Corruption Index - justifiably. I hope the author comes home - NZ is a different place 15 years on.
Investor in some of these, directly or through Punakaikifund.co.nz.
The European Union is a Union until you need it to behave like one, and then it isn't.
Schengen was originally a treaty outside of the framework of the EU but has since been taken over by it. There are EU countries outside of Schengen (GB, Ireland) and there are non-EU countries part of Schengen (e.g. Norway, Vatican, Switzerland). However all countries that join the EU now eventually have to join the Schengen area.
Besides Visa free travel for residents of these countries Schengen also includes a common Visa for foreigners traveling to these countries (so you only need one Visa to to travel to France and Germany) and allows the police to cross the border when perusing suspects and detain them on the other side.
His employer, unlike the author, sponsored him. However, two separate lawyers were unable to secure him a place in the country. One made a costly mistake and was fired, however the damage was done. My friends roommate made it back to the company for a month or so, before having to permanently relocate to one of the other offices, again, this time permanently.
These stories are not unique. People who are well educated and top performers in their sector are being turned away. Look at many successful entrepreneurs, Levchin, Musk, Collison, etc. and it is obvious the US benefits extremely well from allowing well qualified individuals immigrate.
The academic literature* shows much, much larger productivity and income gains to those who migrate to richer countries than any negative effect to native workers. Even if an influx of immigrants depressed some existing Americans' wages by a small amount, that delta would only pale in comparison to how much better of the immigrants would be.
Do you oppose efforts to educate more American's as computer scientists? This too would "depress" the wages of existing computer scientists but you would (hopefully) find it abhorrent if someone used your "wage depression" logic to stop teaching CS in inner-city schools.
Unless you think that the lives of non-American's are not worth considering, these hugely positive impacts of immigration should be part of your calculation.
* http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~jkennan/research/OpenBorders.pdf?ne... http://www.cgdev.org/files/1425376_file_Clemens_Economics_an...
Frequently calls for equality are made by those who imagine their own situation could not possibly worsen; it's always some anonymous others who will pay.
Do you honestly think there would have been a national uproar against Disney if they'd asked their employees to train other Americans?
Try replacing "foreign H1B worker" with "person of another skin color" and see if your arguments don't sound abhorrent. If you think the later sounds racist, the former is xenophobic.
>> it's always some anonymous others who will pay
Couldn't agree more. In the case of immigration and labor policy, the anonymous others who pay are those that didn't have the good fortune to be born in this country.
It is probably noble to say that you would personally hand your own job over to somebody else. But of course it is never framed that way even though that is what is actually happening.
There is some exploitation that happens, but by and large people are going to pay market rate +-15%, minus administrative costs. Administrative costs for hiring immigrants are extremely high, so it makes sense that their wages might be a bit less. (The best way to raise their wages is to reduce the administrative costs.)
The system as it is structured right now is basically designed as a foreign aid program. It encourages foreigners to come to the US, get a degree, work for a few years while saving a lot of money, then go home and invest it in building a new business not in this country.
They are taking money from their home country and spending it in the US. It is like anti-foreign aid.
From the perspective of the students, yes, there is a financial transfer to the U.S. However, from national perspective, there is an economic transfer to the other nation. The U.S. university system represents the product of decades (centuries in some cases) of public and private investment. Foreign students and the societies they return to get the benefit of that investment - a better educated than could be trained locally - without having made it themselves. Hence, an economic transfer from the US to the other nation.
Having these type of students go back is not a lose. In fact they bring with them a demand for American goods, and culture.
I think it would probably be better for everyone if we streamlined the process of transitioning from an H1B to permanent residency, and it would definitely be better for the US economy.
Levchin's family got political asylum in the US. Levchin was about 16 yers old at the time. Unless you include political/religious oppression as one of the qualifying attributes, his immigration to the US wasn't due to 'allowing well qualified individuals [to] immigrate'.
Sergey Brin's family also decided to move to the US because of political/religious oppression. His father had a PhD in math and a job at GOSPLAN, then a temporary research position at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques. Did that make him well qualified?
I totally recognize my own friends in this. Americans have no clue how difficult it is to obtain a green card or a citizenship.
One of my friends was dating a girl from Asia, she was in the US under a work or student visa. She decided to attend a school in Europe for 2 years, their plan was to do the long distance thing for 2 years and then she would come back. I told him many times "Dude, if she leaves and gives up her visa she won't be able to come back". They ignored me, naively thinking that she would just get a new visa. 2 years later, she couldn't make it back to the US and stayed in Europe (or moved back to Asia, not sure).
US immigration might be broken in different ways than some other countries, but from the many stories I've heard of friends moving all over the world, they all pretty much suck.
It's not a perfect system but way better than most countries.
Singapore used to be ridiculously awesome (work visa approvals usually processed in under 24 hours), but they've really tightened the screws in the last few years, particularly on granting permanent residence, due to political reasons.
I moved from India to Aus on PR visa.
Changing the H1B so it a) it cannot be used to transfer jobs outside of the US and b) provides a path that after the first 3 years the employee can apply for a green card without sponsorship.
Both those things would largely solve a lot of the current H1B issues.
How do they do that?
"some of the most active users of visas for visiting workers are Indian outsourcing firms, which appear to be training workers in the U.S. and then sending them home"
http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2007/02/outs...
The immigration system here is really broken. I wish people would recognize that more, and fight for change.
Drawing on this story and [others](http://politicaloutcast.com/2013/02/usa-trying-to-deport-chr...), it seems immigrants are only protected if they are willing to break U.S. law. It is a very dangerous incentive to deport those not breaking the law and welcome those who do. People might get the wrong idea.
Edit:
I think it's sort of important to note that I came to the US in 2010, which was a weird year for H1-Bs. The economy was bad, and I was able to file for an H1-B in August after I graduated. This lack of H1-Bs in 2010 probably resulted in fewer GC applications down the line as well, so your mileage may vary.
I realise I was very fortunate in three things: timing, nationality (British) and education (two Master's degrees, so EB2). During this time I was paid market rates, though I did go through a period of minor panic when I realised I basically couldn't leave Google while my green card application was pending and I had no idea how long it would actually take. But articles like this make me extremely sad that others can't be so fortunate, and I wonder what it is we (non-voting residents) can actually do about it...
Adjustment of status is where a lot of people get stuck. Really this should take about a year, but if you come from a country with a lot of migration (Mexico, India, and China) you could be in for a lot wait, especially in EB3.
At best you are looking at 2 years, at worst I've heard upwards of 10 years. A good immigration lawyer should be able to give you a good estimate based on their experience and current USCIS workloads.
Getting the green card is the hard part.
At the least, if you find yourself in the author's position, consult an immigration lawyer.
The lawyer didn't raise any concerns based on historical precedence, but immigration had decided to apply their rules with increased strictness: her firm was not large enough and she would have to leave within 3 months, and could not re-apply for 6.
Good use of $20k.
I believe it's the category my colleagues have gone for, but meeting 3-5 items in that list comes as a result of graduating from a PhD program.
"This is a defense of a policy of absolutely open immigration, without border patrols, border police, border checks, or passports."
Here is what I got so far (a gist is here: https://gist.github.com/ayush/6efe681ba968123605fd):
US 108 Canada 42 America 42 U.S. 25 Zealand 20 Europe 18 NZ 17 Japan 16 China 13 France 12 India 11 UK 10 USA 10n Australia 10 EU 9 Germany 9 United 8 Switzerland 7 States 6 us 6 Netherlands 5 Korea 5 South 5 Asia 5 area 4 York 4 Auckland 4 Mexico 4 California 3 Italy 3 Spain 3 china 3 U.S 3 Bay 3 Brazil 2 bay 2 London 2 Ireland 2 Norway 2 Denmark 2 kameez 1 Usano 1 america 1 Francisco 1 Arabia 1 North 1 Vatican 1 Colombia 1 devouredSouth 1 Berlin 1 Africa 1 Britain 1 U.S.Another 1 City 1 Hollywood 1 Turkey 1 Saudi 1 Tesla 1 Honduras 1 U.S.A. 1 S. 1 Amazon 1 Oregon 1 San 1 south 1 shalwar 1 Pakistan 1 Amsterdan 1 PERM 1 Amsterdam 1 Numbeo 1 Nigeria 1 Croatia 1 Philippines 1 StatesFolks 1 Samoa 1 States7 1 GOSPLAN 1 earth 1 Israel 1 Schleswig-Holstein 1
Instead of choosing a profession like law where there is a surplus of lawyers, he should have chosen a job like nursing where there is a shortage and then he could have been a US citizen.
Simply baffling to me that this guy chooses a career like law where there is a surplus of Americans looking for jobs instead of a career like nursing where there is a shortage and then he complains!
[1] http://www.schengenvisainfo.com/schengen-visa-types/ [2] http://www.schengenvisainfo.com/frequently-asked-questions-s...
No, they generally don't.
I named their permit incorrectly: should be "residence permit" instead of "residency and work permit". The point remains that EU citizens generally need an official permit to work in Switzerland.
You still need a job offer to first enter the country, but changing jobs will involve less bureaucracy than in the USA, and after having been employed in the country for 5-10 years, and speaking a local language, you can apply for permanent residency or citizenship yourself, so the hassle of needing you employer to do it for you, does not exist.
So there are some differences from other countries but no 5-10 years wait.
I mean, having been in the country 5-10 years, depending on the country, is a requirement of getting the citizenship, not just to to get the process started.
As an Australian working for a large tech company, I totally feel this guy's position. It never leaves me, the sense of being an imposter in this country on limited time. I've paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes in this country, hired dozens of Americans as a manager, and mentored many of them to greater heights. I am lucky to work for a company with deep pockets that wants to invest in my green card process, but if I step outside this bubble I step immediately into the world this author describes.
It is madness for the United States to put road blocks in front of skilled immigration. As a hiring manager, I can tell you that I always prefer to hire a local American where possible, simply because it's easier. That in itself is not great - to serve this large American company's interests on American soil, I should hire the best possible talent, not the most convenient talent, no matter their origin.
But in my case there is little American talent to hire. It is not because I'm a picky arsehole (although some would say I am), but just a function of the kind of positions I hire for and the place I do it. Once you cut it down to:
1) people who want to relocate to the Bay Area
2) people who want to work in the South Bay
3) people who want to work for this company
4) people who want the job
5) people who can actually do the job
There is just a tiny trickle of people left, and frequently I'm in competition with other tech companies to acquire them. And for foreign candidates, you can tack two small items on to that list:
6) people who want to move to the United States
7) people who qualify to get a work visa for the United States
Folks carry around this assumption that foreign workers are cheap Indians on H-1Bs who can blow in and out of the country on a whim, and that a large % of unemployed Americans are waiting in the wings to swoop in and take those positions if tech companies only paid the prevailing wage to attract them. The reality is way more complex than that. Not every immigrant is an Indian and not every unemployed American is a reprogrammable robot, able to do any open position I have on my books.
What I want to bring to this country - not that the United States government factors this in to my immigration status - is growth. That is what gave me the opportunities that got me here, and that is what I want to give back. Right now, I can go talk to my boss and create a job. I can create a job out of thin air! That pays >$100k a year! Me, a foreigner, I can do this. There is always more work to do.
And if I can hire the best and brightest then I can be more successful, and create more jobs. I stand a decent chance to create economic circumstances that bring opportunities across a spectrum of skills inside and outside my company. With more jobs, I can take risks on hiring under-qualified Americans to train them, just like people took a risk on me, a university drop out. And with more success I can attract more of the best and brightest Americans too.
My tangible contribution to this conversation is that work visa holders should have a full year to find another position, and should be allowed to start companies during that year. That would enable valuable economic risk taking for the people already here. For those trying to get in to the US, that's a diatribe for another day.
I have an Indian guy on my team going through the visa process just like me, so slandering of Indian workers hits especially close to home. He's the only other person in my entire office who knows for sure that cricket is the superior sport … without him I'd be alone and defenseless amongst baseball nerds!!
Part of US diplomacy is to educate foreigners and let them go back to their own countries so that those who are improving/leading said countries are more friendly to the US. It also is part of diplomacy to spread education so that the rest of the world can buy into our model of functional capitalist countries so we can have trade and not war or famine.
My heart goes out to anyone else who is going through or will have to go through what I had to for the last 2-3 years, trying to work on my startup remotely as a digital nomad. It sounds like a romantic lifestyle, but it's wrought with difficulties leaving one on the edge of depression the whole time.
I'm happy to lend an understanding ear to anyone going through this right now. Having a government whimsically decide what direction your life takes professionally, socially, and culturally with no say of your own really makes you feel powerless.
Even so, by the end it will have taken almost 4 years. This isn't bad by the standards of what others have gone through but it's terrible we're in a situation where 4 years for PR is defined as "not terrible".
So I sympathize. I want to stay here too. But there are three things I want to say here.
1. As another poster said: maybe this is how it should end up. There is, after all, a glut of lawyers. This makes it difficult for an employer to justify the expense of going through the process;
2. Job losses and an abundance of qualified applicants make getting an LC far from certain. This isn't really a problem for tech companies. I imagine it's a huge problem for a law firm;
3. I see no mention of the DV lottery. I don't know the exact probabilities but applying 10-15 times from New Zealand must have a decent chance of your number coming up. Did he ever apply? If not, why not?
Contrary to what at least one poster said, it absolutely has zero impact on your nonimmigrant visa applications to have entered the DV lottery. over the years I applied probably 6 times? My number never came up. Not unexpected. I've met several people whose number did come up.
How long is the typical career in corporate law? How long does a job typically last with a law firm? I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. Is it 5-10 years? If not, will the employee still be around at the end? It seems reasonably likely they won't be.
So, my sympathies. It's a shame you're not Australian, because we have it easiest of probably anyone barring arguably Canadians.
I still love the US and would much prefer to be building my company in the valley, but apparently I'm not wanted even after paying over a hundred thousand in taxes within a year of being there. The stress caused from not being able to stay in the country where I was building my life due to purely random chance, with nothing I could do about it, was massive.
I do hope to return to the US permanently at some point and that the system will be improved, but it seems that will take a while.
Source: I did it.
It is also difficult to get visas for non-EU spouses. Unless you can demonstrate sufficient funds to support them. You either need a good chunk of cash in the bank or a job paying at least 25k GBP per year (more if bringing children). This has made it difficult for a lot ExPats to return home with their families and has caused a lot of anger in that community.
There is also talk of further restrictions on non-EU immigrants such as requiring non-EU immigrants who aren't earning sufficient amounts to leave after 6 years. At the moment its just talk but given the current government it could easily become law.
I ask this to everyone else too
I think criticism of the immigration system is warranted and valid, just that potential immigrants need to understand the flaws in the system before they invest in a new life within America's borders.
Most people don't plan their lives out like you are suggesting. They take opportunities as they come, and build their life as it comes along. He attended Yale, liked America, stayed, worked and built a life for 15 years. I find this reasonable, and consider it unrealistic to expect him to, at any point during that time, to just abandon his current life because he might not be able to stay.
It's one thing to attend university for 4 years, get a job and then head home. Quite another thing to base/commit your entire life/career in the US without a clear path to citizenship.
I'm not saying the author should "suck it up" but rather it seems many take this risk, knowing the dangers and therefore shouldn't be surprised or shocked to eventually have to leave (given a gap in employment)
People like the author and me are not surprised, but rather disappointed (and sad).
Also due to the duration of time involved changes in the law can both screw you up or make it possible. Can you predict what the legal system will be like 6 years down the road ?
There is not much more he could have done.
Vox has other articles on those from mexico/latin America.
You imply people and organization are racists without even knowing the facts. Maybe check your own bias.
Even when we know the odds are against us we want to think we will be special and make it even if we know it isn't realistic.
I have seen some in the past with "entrepreneur" or "retirement" visas: you are allowed to stay in the country if you promise to spend a lot of money, but that doesn't seem optimal for this kind of case. I've also heard of places desperately seeking workers, but that also doesn't seem to fit the current American situation.
Then, you wait a while and once the application is granted, you directly get PR. You have a period of time - say 1 yr - to move to Canada, and another period within which you should find a job.
i.e. - when you apply for a job, you are already a permanent resident.
Now that's what I would call a humane immigration system that also manages to attract 'desirable' immigrants. If Canada had America's weather, I would have never moved to the US.
No other country does that. The Canadian immigration system is one of the most generous around.
It's easy to be "generous" when you have fewer people trying to immigrate to your country. I can remember maybe a decade ago Canada had an immigration target of 1% of population (~250K) and that many people didn't even apply.
Compare that to the US where there are 20 year waiting lists for some visa categories. The US has lower, but not that lower, immigration targets compared to Canada.
It's interesting because you'll often see people complaining about how immigrating to Japan is hard. It usually gets brought up when news about their declining population hits the front page. "Well maybe if they made it easier to immigrate they wouldn't have a problem!" is a common comment to see.
Only, that's wrong. Their immigration is pretty standard. It has nearly identical requirements as the U.S and Canada. In fact, it's actually easier to become a Japanese citizen than it is to become a U.S citizen. Japan allows immigration from more countries than the U.S.
Another thing is that if you're married or have a job in Japan, they'll let you stay with a green card indefinitely. No need to become a naturalized citizen. It's incredibly rare for them to "change their minds" and revoke a green card. It's practically unheard of unless you commit a crime of some sort. Even then, there's still a good chance they won't unless your crime is severe.
My point is that most countries have similar requirements for immigration. If you've only tried immigrating to a single country, you have nothing to compare too. Immigration isn't supposed to be easy and you should expect tedious and head banging bureaucracy.
There's a discussion about labor to be had here and it should be focused on domestic labor abuses. Unfortunately, these things are rarely discussed and H1B and other abusive programs only rarely flare up in the news, everyone sees them for what they are, but there's no political will to fight them.
Immigration's external costs are ignored as well. The source country is constantly having a brain drain, for example. Its amusing to me to see HN'ers with this pretentious global perspective who have no problem taking the top 20% of the people from countries that need them and thinking themselves humanitarians because they got them a coding job in the valley.
If we started being serious about cutting immigration, there would be more political pressure for these foreign countries to get their shit straight. More local entrepreneurs, more devs focusing on local problems, etc. The status quo right now of fleeing to Western ecomomies just guarantees poor outcomes in poorer nations. We shouldn't be proud of that. Jogesh shouldn't be writing disposable freemium games for some rich guy's son who thinks himself "the next Steve Jobs," he should be helping Indians and the Indian economy with his skills.
Do Fortune 500 companies trust you to represent them?
The job will just remain unfilled when the author leaves the US...
If they pay H1B-esque wages and conditions, yes. Pay competitive salaries and benefits and you'll have qualified people. The idea that we can't fill that position with US talent is completely asinine.
So now labor is also globalized. And hence you have a cheaper larger pool of resources which is killing the local entitlements. If you want to fix it you really need to become more socialist, create unions, and start lobbying your government.
But here is the thing - most Americans aren'y actually in the same shitty situation as the people in other countries who had just gotten out of colonial rule and ended up with globalization before being prosperous. Most Americans are still driving gas guzzlers while being 'unemployed'. Pray that they grow a brain before the tide swings too far to the other side, like it has in most other countries where USA is trying to destroy local markets.
Spoken like someone who never had the idea of moving to another country.
Here is the problem - those 12% unemployed will still walk around pretending that USA is the bestest country in the world where people have 'gotten their shit together', than to move to a different country and get a job - something that is unbelievably insanely easy if you are an American citizen.
Its a cute fact that you and the hiring manager were both lucky enough to have parents who lived in the U.S. when you were born, but that doesn't make you a better or more worthy person than someone born in a poorer country. (You already have access to a stronger social safety in the form of unemployment, social security, subsidized healthy insurance, etc if you find yourself unable to compete with foreign talent.)
The idea that some people should be considered more worthy than others by our society just because of where they were born or who there parents are is the definition of xenophobia and racism.
You should read up on the literature on brain drain. In addition to your comment being morally abhorrent ("people born in poor countries should be forced to stay there and fix shit so people born in rich countries don't have to deal with it") its also not well supported by the facts. Giving people the chance to get high returns from their education incentivizes a much larger group of people to invest in their education than end up leaving the country.
Given that the same worker ends up making 2-3x in a developed country what they would with their exact same skills in a poorer country and ends up sending much of that extra money back in the form of remittances, immigration is generally a positive force for those "left behind" (not to mention those who immigrate).
It's not a hidden process either. If staying here matters to you better work tirelessly to put yourself on a path to permanent residency and you better be the one to push it daily or it won't happen.
Here we have a highly educated, Ivy Leaguer with a LAW DEGREE, who didn't.
But about 500,000 people a year do and I can guarantee that very few of those people have the kind of education chops this guy has.
> From college to law school to professional life, from student visa to work visa, I have scrupulously followed every immigration regulation, paid all my taxes, filed all the papers I had to file, and have not so much as received a parking ticket.
Fantastic, thanks for being a conscientious visitor. None of these things are part of getting permanent residency.
It sucks, but here's the options for somebody in this pickle:
1 - Only take a job that's willing to put you on a path to a Greencard. It costs your employer money, so be willing to take a pay-cut to compensate. It might suck, but deal with it because once you get your papers you're home free and can go out and pursue other work on the market at higher pay. It might take years to get it, but you need to keep pressing this issue if it matters to you. It mattered to the author, and he left it up to the whims of other people.
2 - Marry a citizen/permanent resident. Welcome to America, we have literally tens of millions of prospects for you. In this case the author had 15 years to hit the dating scene. (this is how my wife immigrated, and we were stupid college kids without a lawyer or any degree, before there were several major simplifications to the process and we managed it on our first try by using the novel technique of reading instructions, following them, then following up with immigration to make sure things were progressing. It took us about 3 solid years, but we managed it. I understand from other people who've been through the process more recently that it's much simpler and faster than what we went through back in the stone age)
> But if you wish to follow the rules, as I do, then it must be a bona fide marriage. And if you take important personal decisions such as marriage seriously, then you may not wish to have their timing dictated by Homeland Security...And now is not the right time for marriage.
Insert snarky response about not finding somebody after 15 years of hitting the dating scene. It can't be that bad.
3 - Apply for the Lottery. 50,000 Green-cards are issues yearly.
It doesn't appear that in 15 years, the author bothered to do that. [2]
Sorry that's the way it is. But it is what it is. I have a hard time stirring up any more sympathy. This is an essay of excuses.
So given the three available options, two of which the author appears to be aware of (and learning about the 3rd took me all of 35 seconds), he didn't strongly pursue any of them? Part of the American Religion is figuring this stuff out. And the hundreds of thousands of issued green-cards per year, often to people who don't even speak the majority language, is testament that this is not only achievable, but is regularly achievable -- it just takes a little tenacity.
It's a terrible system, possibly the worst in American government, but it's not like it's unknowable or unachievable. In fact here's the website to do it [3]
Reading is hard, action is harder.
1 - http://immigrationroad.com/green-card/immigration-flowchart-...
2 - http://www.uscis.gov/green-card/other-ways-get-green-card/gr...
There are people screwed by the immigration system, by Homeland Security, and by pure bad luck. This kid does not sound like one of those people. He left the job tied to his work visa - awesome, that's your choice. Your altruistic job fell through, leaving you high and dry? Where was your back up plan? I find it very hard to believe someone with an Ivy League education can't find a job in this country.
Never leave things that matter to you up to other people.
I think it's fair to complain that this option doesn't exist, I'd like it to exist. But it doesn't and options #1-3 are what the author had to work within, yet chose not to pursue any of them.
If he still wants to get in, once he's back in New Zealand, he's free to continue pursuing permanent residency. Going back to New Zealand doesn't prevent him from continuing to pursue these options. But he simply doesn't have the tenacity to do it, not while he was in the U.S. and probably not once he returns home.
You can't simultaneously say that it's fair to complain and argue that people are "just complaining". Or is it only fair for people not affected by these laws, who have no incentive to complain, to do so?
The author had choices available, but chose not to avail himself of any of them, then wants sympathy for not pursuing. Immigration was simply not as important to him as other things, and those are the choices he made. I don't feel any particular sympathy for him having to suffer from the consequence of those choices.
I wish he had better options available to him, but he didn't, so he didn't even bother trying.
Your reasoning sounds to me a bit like the (common) argument that a bicyclist that is injured by a car and then complains that the roads aren't accommodating bicycles shouldn't be taken seriously because he didn't wear a helmet, and everyone knows that bicycling is dangerous. Whether or not he should wear a helmet as a precaution doesn't change the fact that bicyclists have a basic right to argue that they should not be subject to this risk.
Lottery is out if he intended to stay. I am wondering if you are a troll for even having suggested it. It is meant for people outside the US - with no intent of ever visiting. It signals immigration intent, so even tourist visas can be denied on that alone. It is a lottery, not an application. Very low odds that would actually make it harder for him to stay in the country. He seems to have a couple of brain cells, so he didn't go for that.
Marrying may not be an option, or maybe not yet. He may not want to, he may not have found someone he truly wants to marry (and doing it for the sole purpose of getting a visa is fraud), he may not even like women. I don't know why he didn't, and you don't either.
Getting a job that will want to sponsor a visa only really works if the demand is truly ridiculous to justify it - such as computer science or engineering. Changing what appears to be a successful law carreer for another in, say, computer science is not really an option without leaving the US, which the author did not want to do in the first place.
So, once he's back in New Zealand, what are his options? Other than the lottery, which is a lottery, not a guarantee. There are a few avenues he could try, but I can think of none that don't have the risk of rebuilding his whole life and getting deported a few years later, once again.
No matter how tenacious he is.
The fact that none of his employers wanted to sponsor him for visa tells you how valuable he was to those employers. Full in cost of employment-based greencard is only 5k-10k including legal fees. All company has to do is to provide financial information and to sign several forms - everything else is done by outside lawyers. I could not imagine any company refusing to do it for any professional employee unless he was extremely replaceable.
Can you back this up? It is open to interpretation as far as I know.
US immigration assumes you intend to immigrate by default. It's up to you to prove that you have no interest in doing so. It gets harder to claim that you have no intention when you are, in fact, participating in the lottery, so you want to immigrate after all.
Perhaps your parents had enough ties to their home country that it didn't matter.
Applying for the green card lottery does nothing to hurt any current or future visa applications you make. Visas with a nonimmigrant intent will ask questions like:
"Do you have a current I-485 application in process?"
"Have you previously applied for an I-485?"
"Have you been rejected for an I-485?"
For those that don't know, an I-485 is an AoS (adjustment of status) application.
You can truthfully answer "no" to all of these questions because an I-485 is something very specific and entering the DV lottery is not that.
So you have to be really careful about what is said (eg nonimmigrant intent for a visa) and what are the actual rules. If the form simply asks about I-485 applications, you can truthfully answer "no" even if you want to stay here forever.
By the time you get to filing an I-485 you're basically done with a PR application. You're just waiting for it to come through. It may take 6 months or 12 months but it won't randomly take years (like a Labor Certification can).
Now as far as work visas go, the H1B allows an immigrant intent so none of this is an issue.
For visas that don't (eg Canadian TN, Australian E3), even there the rules are murky. USCIS says that, for example, filing an I-485 shows immigrant intent but they've also issued a ruling saying that filing an I-485 can't solely be used to deny a renewal or the issuing of those visas. So what does that mean in practice? Well, nobody really knows.
That too is a problem.
But I digress...
My main point is you are 100% incorrect when you say applying for the DV lottery impacts your ability to apply for a nonimmigrant visa in any way. It does not.
Military service was potentially another route though, but may have been intractable due to circumstances like student loans or military fitness requirements relating to a disability or some such.
Military service only gives you green card and residency if it is war time. During non war time, it allows you to apply for citizenship after you served (instead of waiting 5 years), but you need a greencard before that.
I know plenty of people who screwed themselves out of a GC because they didn't do both of those things.
The author seems to have a very specific mindset, that possibly only some New Zealanders and North Europeans have, that they feel it's morally wrong to try to game the system.
He tried to play by the rules. Not only in letter, but also in spirit, and he assumed the system would respond in kind.
If you are from a country where gaming the system is the social norm, this mindset may be very difficult to understand.
Capital can move to where labor is cheaper. No need for USA to have population density of Japan, China or India.
I can't blame people for wanting to flee corruption, but some people staying and fighting is a better way to make the world better.
Why don't you just reimburse the employer the costs?
Is it because petitioning for a candidate without a STEM degree is that much harder?
It's exploitative to hire somebody brilliant with full knowledge that you can simply do nothing and you won't have to deal them into partnership.
Also there are restrictions on when a company can file. For example if the company has gone through layoffs then generally it can't sponsor people for several months.
This is something I can believe. There definitely is a bigger percentage of US citizens and PRs going to Law School, even in the small sample set I have encountered.
Luckily us Canadians have NAFTA so its easy to get a work permit. It's sad that this great country is turning really intelligent people away.
You got 2 degrees, were here for ~15 years.. surely research was done to find out how to immigrate? If you spent the time to get 2 degrees, I'd figure getting a masters would have been the more obvious choice...
I am not saying they have better prospects, than us, tech workers, just that they should know the system better than us.
Also, the visa itself is not a guarantee considering it is a lottery. So even if you have a masters degree, it won't help you a lot in terms of getting you through the H1 lottery.
Also:
> The national interest waiver applicant sponsors him or herself and is not required to have a job.
And my wife has actually gone through the whole naturalization process and is a citizen. It is not a fun process, and is definitely lengthy, but for anyone that is motivated is totally doable.
TL;DR: Get a job offer for a "skill in demand" (like IT), live in NZ for five years on a work visa, and granting citizenship is almost automatic.
So you obviously deserve to come here, while the people living on $1 a day in extreme poverty and under oppressive regimes, they should be kept out? No, you didn't say all that, but I'm passionate about the cause of open borders (http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/08/the_efficient_e...., http://www.openborders.info), and I can tell you a lot of Americans think exactly that way - they have a poor understanding of economics and they imagine that importing relatively unskilled laborers into our country would somehow 'taint' or bring down our economy toward their levels of poverty. (See here: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/02/always_keep_you.... if you have yet to be disabused of this fallacy.) And your suggestion that you should be allowed in because of your degrees is suggestive of that kind of broken thinking. Productivity is the root of societal prosperity. And labor, whether skilled or unskilled -- in fact, especially unskilled labor -- is able to be much more productive when allowed to move to the first world. That extra productivity benefits everyone. Economists estimate, on average, that a move from the status quo to fully liberalized migration (open borders) would result in a DOUBLING OF GLOBAL GDP. That's an INSANE silver bullet.
And most of those gains would go to the extreme poor: in fact, it would be by far the most effective step we could take to reduce extreme poverty - which a lot of people don't realize is the single worst humanitarian crisis of all time, killing ~10 million people per year, a higher rate than WWII, which was the deadliest war ever. Open border should be foremost on every smart, informed, ethical person's mind, and it's a crying shame that it isn't. Instead you see people whining about the plight of 1st-world Uber drivers and middle class Americans and not being able to stay in the US with their Ivy League degrees. Spoiler alert: all those people are crazy rich relative to the extreme poor. There are ~1 billion people, 1/7th of the world's population, living in extreme poverty, which is defined as making less than $1.25 per day. That's PER DAY, NOT PER HOUR. They are literally starving, malnourished, have no clean water, no education - they have practically nothing. So unless you can show me evidence that you've spent many hours worrying about open borders and the extreme poor, screw your first world problem.
And by the way, I'm a rich american with an Ivy League degree myself, so this is not coming from a place of ivy-envy or anything. I've just spent a lot of time reading and thinking about open borders and the state of the world and I'm disappointed in my fellow educated first worlders that they're so oblivious, apathetic, uncaring, so this gets me angry.
Please see my other comments in this thread for more of my thoughts.
Great links: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2014/01/sitting_on_an_o.... https://vimeo.com/15000835 http://www.bottombillionfund.org/extreme_poverty.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/magazine/debunking-the-myt... http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/04/if-... http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/08/the_efficient_e.... http://www.openborders.info
Open borders may still have merit (I'd certainly value the additional convenience), but your argument for it is obviously wrong.
I feel that even something much smaller (esp. in the US), like allowing labor shortages to be filled would make a huge difference. Simplifying the process so that a farmer in need of workers doesn't have to hire a lawyer to do complicated paperwork that takes 6 months would be a first step. Granting these workers green cards on entry (instead of the restrictive H-2 visa) would ensure their freedom. The same goes for skilled workers. Even just allowing all workers in fields where there is a huge variation in skill (e.g. STEM, journalism, culinary arts, etc) to immigrate on the basis of well-paying job offer would make a huge difference.
[1] http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/futarchy.html [2] http://www.augur.net/
http://www.economist.com/node/21541391
And here's an article on seasteading (basically huge platforms/ships that sit in international waters) from around the same time:
If I were in this position, I'd start a company to employ me and get an investor to foot the bill for keeping me in the US. Someone as smart and well-connected as the author should be able to manage that. It's difficult to get personal goals to align with the government's wishes, but it's not difficult at all to throw money at the problem.
There are scores of ways to get into and stay in the US, the problem is understanding and navigating the bureaucracy. He managed for 15 years. I read stories all the time of creative strategies yielding a green card and eventual citizenship. I don't even ask the many non-Hispanic immigrants I meet whether they have citizenship or not, they all managed to work the system.
He should have just stuck with the job until he found another one that would support his green card efforts. Switching careers part way through he should have known was risky. The lack of information that is presented on him for his reasoning besides "Well they weren't sponsoring me anyways" seems pretty lack luster and not well thought out for someone who is well educated and as intelligent as himself. This article seems like a desperate plea after making a mistake.
I hope he finds a legal way to stay in the country, or come back but the article was pretty whiny about something he already should have known.
For comparison, I've spent time in a few countries where a slavery-like relationship with employers is completely expected and even supported by the employees. (Culture shock!) They imagine that it's the only way that businesses can function.
This isn't the type of business culture you want to live in, no matter the perceived benefits.
To which countries are you referring to?
Actually, that sounds like America's start-up culture
1. When the rest of the world sends America its best and brightest, America says, "Go away" : No country/entity sent you here. You came here of your own volition. You said that you have lived here legally. That means you followed the law. The US immigration enforcement agency also has a law to follow and they are precisely doing that. As a result of the law you are not qualified to become a permanent resident or citizen (yet). There is absolutely no law here that says the US is required to absorb all of the world's best and most skilled. It is not in the US constitution.
2. American immigration law leaves the skilled immigrant feeling like an indentured serf : I disagree w.r.t skilled immigration. It cannot be true as a blanket statement. All the labor laws treat US workers equally regardless of their immigration status. Some corporations misuse loopholes or down right violate them. That is not the fault of the immigration system. It is against the law and the law will punish those corporations/businesses to the extent that is practically possible (not an excuse for failure to do so). And where the laborers, skilled or otherwise, are being exploited it becomes the duty of lawmakers and enforcers to take action.
Each country has their own laws with regard to immigration. It is their right as a sovereign nation to craft laws as they see fit. In come countries it is almost impossible to permanently immigrate unless you are born there and in others you could virtually buy citizenship. Even the country you come from has immigration laws and I am certain that many find it burdensome or extremely difficult. But it is still within their right.
If you here illegally, chances are you are good to stay. Follow the law by a letter, and you destine to go through kafka-ian bureaucracy, spend years waiting for some permit.
For your (2) bullet, skillful immigrants in vast majority are lawful individuals.
This guy has been trying for 15 years. It doesn't explain in the article why he doesn't at least have his residency yet.