Why do you think India and China aren't diverse by themselves, and within themselves? India probably has more languages than all of Europe. Would it be sensible to treat Europe (or even just the Schengen area) as one country, to "increase diversity"? I think that would be dumb. European countries are obviously very diverse and we see that more clearly because they're sovereign nations on a map. India and China are mega-countries and we fail to appreciate the diversity within.
> Basically no one from small nations would get a green card
Why would that happen? It would be a first-come-first-served system. If a person from a small nation applies, they'll get it at the same time as someone from a bigger nation who applied at the same time as them (modulo processing time variances).
> Would it be sensible to treat Europe as one country
Why would it? Europe isn't a country. India and China are countries. I fail to see your point. It's obviously more diverse if Chinese, Indians, Europeans, South Americans, Africans etc have a more or less equal chance, and that's what the current rules are supposed to provide.
> It would be a first-come-first-served system
So you think immigration status should be determined by whether someone gets their forms in on the 1st of January or not? I'm not sure that's entirely practical or fair. Perhaps a lottery would be more suitable.
> Europe isn't a country. India and China are countries. I fail to see your point
The point was in the rest of my comment. "Country" doesn't imply a homogenous, non-diverse group of people. And "diversity" is the purported reason for country-of-birth caps.
> It's obviously more diverse if Chinese, Indians, Europeans, South Americans, Africans
You said China and India are countries, then went on to compare them to continents. Surely you see the fallacy here.
> someone gets their forms in on the 1st of January or not?
I didn't say anything about the 1st of January (or any other date). "First-come-first-served" means applications are treated on their merits and processed in the order they arrived. If two people with the same application, but different country of birth, apply at the same time, they should have roughly same result in the same amount of time. That's not the case today. And I'm struggling to understand how a single queue is "unfair".
For immigration purposes, since the EU is one open territory, it absolutely could make sense to treat it as a single entity if you buy into the base ideas here behind the caps.
The common legal system that includes immigration which covers the vast majority of Europeans seems on topic for your point, AFAICT. Can you elaborate more how you think it's not applicable?
This is a really good point I had not considered before. I assume there is no policy to look for diversity within countries? That’s a shame, because probably many majority nationals from one country may apply and many minorities from those countries are unlikely to make it through.
There isn't any "look for diversity" policy at all. The law simply establishes caps for the number of green cards issued to applicants based on country of birth. Country of birth is considered a proxy for diversity. If countries were generally of a similar size IRL, and had similar rates of migration to the US, it might work better.
Why do you think India and China aren't diverse by themselves, and within themselves? India probably has more languages than all of Europe. Would it be sensible to treat Europe (or even just the Schengen area) as one country, to "increase diversity"? I think that would be dumb. European countries are obviously very diverse and we see that more clearly because they're sovereign nations on a map. India and China are mega-countries and we fail to appreciate the diversity within.
> Basically no one from small nations would get a green card
Why would that happen? It would be a first-come-first-served system. If a person from a small nation applies, they'll get it at the same time as someone from a bigger nation who applied at the same time as them (modulo processing time variances).
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