> The green card diversity lottery is based on exactly the premise I mention. Applicants from countries with low rates of immigration to the US have a great chance of winning. Applicants from countries with high rates of immigration to the US are ineligible to apply.
Sure. But that has nothing to do with employment-based green cards.
By all means, choose for diversity when it comes to other types of immigrants (extended family, lottery, etc). But it makes no sense to consider country of birth for skilled worker green cards, where employers hire based on talent - and especially so when the beneficiaries already live here and pay taxes here.
> The alternative is to turn the green card backlog into a problem for immigrants of all nationalities rather than a problem for immigrants of some nationalities.
Sure, but a 3-4 year wait for everyone (while living here) is literally an order of magnitude lower than the current 60-year wait for those born in India. Problems like not being able to switch jobs, kids having to leave when they turn 21, etc, are just less likely to occur when the wait is shorter and more transparent.
In order to prevent a shock to the system, per-country caps should be phased-in over 2-3 years. That way, those currently in the system will all get their green cards in the expected 1-1.5 year timeframe, while future applicants will know, prior to applying, that the wait will be 4 years for everyone. HR392 does this.
Think a 4-year wait would be too long? First, let me point out the hypocrisy. Second, a solution then is simply to increase the employment-based numbers, from 140K currently, to around 220K (these numbers include immediate family: spouses and minor kids). This is hard politically, because Democrats would also want to increase chain migration and other categories.
> You should perhaps learn a bit more about the history of the country which you want to immigrate to.
Because no one could possibly be opposed to per country caps unless he were a disgruntled Indian.
I was born in New York. My parents were born in New York. Three of four of my grandparents were born in New York. The fourth grandparent was born in Germany. His parents died in a concentration camp because they couldn't come to the US with their teen children. You see they had be been born in Eastern Europe and the racist national origin system was designed to prevent too many people born in Eastern Europe from coming to the US. Kind of like how you don't want too many people born in India or China to come to the US.
> The green card diversity lottery is based on exactly the premise I mention.
With your encyclopedic knowledge of American history I'm sure you are aware of the political origins of that program.
> - Limiting the amount of visas that one country can claim (similar to the green card lottery)
How can anyone in their right mind justify per country caps that signify the racialist compromises of the Civil Rights Act.
I came to this country at 17 as an undergrad and have a US tax payer funded Masters degree from a top 5 university (not that I believe US news ranking is all that important. I've been here 9 years and can fairly say that I'm as an integrated immigrant as any, but i wont be getting a greencard anytime before 2025 because I'm an Indian. From my perch i could also find it maddening that a UX designer who happened to be born say in the EU gets their residency in a matter of months with far less investment or attachment to this country.
People don't come to this country as representatives of their government.
> Any replacement visa needs to be like the diversity lottery (or the Olympics) by rewarding applicants from smaller countries
Why? So you are okay with a guy who does not speak English, doesn't have moderate-high skills, will probably drive Uber or work in some restaurant over a moderately-skilled Indian/Chinese who understands and speaks relatively decent English, just because that guys is an Indian or Chinese? This is the definition of racism.
> Having multiple, smaller groups of people inside the USA also assists integration
No. Knowing the local language, understanding the local culture, knowing some people from a similar culture living in the country (a.k.a having a fallback - so as to not depend on government aid) helps in integration.
> Plus, just like the Olympics, diversity makes things interesting.
Absolutely. But that should depend on the skills and not on the nationality. Skilled people from Belgium-Mongolia would still get in regardless of "diversity lottery visa". What US needs is a point based system which rewards quality over just diversity.
> If you remove the national origin quotas (it has little to do with race and everything to do with where you were born)
Yeah, those things aren't correlated at all. Come on.
> then it would be the exact same process for green cards except you only have a limited number of chances before you cap out the time on your visa and get sent back.
No it wouldn't. There's a different system in place for permanent visas than for temporary ones. Viz. a waiting list. The grandparent post linked the visa bulletin which explains how it works. You have the tools at hand to educate yourself, there's no excuse for ignorance.
> How is that a better, less capricious system than the current one for anyone who isn't Indian or Chinese?
Because human being are human beings, not 1 billionth of India or China. It is a bedrock principle of contemporary liberalism (small l) that people ought be to treated as individuals. The remnant of the pre-1965 racist national origin system is a disgusting anomaly of a worse time.
> The US political system gives disproportionate power to states with smaller population. The US immigration system is disproportionately more difficult for countries with lots of applicants. That's what the US looks at as fair - giving each state or country a fair shot, not each individual.
One terribly unjust system originally put in place to protect slavery doesn't define the United States' entire notion of fairness.
In any event it is nonsensical to talk about giving a country a shot. Countries aren't going to immigrate to the US, people are.
>Even if you're right, I don't think people want a system that benefits a group of people just because they have a bigger population than others.
This does not make much sense. People get green cards, not countries. Imagine if you were at the DMV and each region of your city had its own queue. People coming from the smaller parts leave in 5 minutes, and people hailing from the larger parts have to wait 8 hours for their turn. It's their fault for living in a more populous place?
What did the people in the smaller areas do to deserve their faster queue compared to others, except being born at a certain place?
Work visas should be about the person who passes the interview, is selected and is able to hold said job.
> Current U.S. immigration law limits the number of green cards issued per country, and people from populous countries like India and China are disproportionately affected.
It still shocks me how many of my friends from $top_US_university got kicked out of the country (or almost did, saved only by marriage). Like, do we really want to kick out a half-Iranian nuclear engineer, who now wants to work as a SWE, because they were born in India?
I get that we can't open the flood gates. But it _does_ make a bit of sense to retain the top % of immigrants based on education in scarce fields, no?
> The reason for this delay in getting citizenship is an effort to promote diversity among immigrants to the US. No single country can get more than 5% of the permanent resident visas in any given year.
7%, and note that this applies separately to employment-based and family-based immigration, not just in total, which is why the backlogs (and which countries have backlogs) differ between countries.
> If this wasn't done, the vast majority of immigrants to the US would be from China and India
Mexico, actually, by a very, very, very large margin (and that may understate the size of the margin.) The annual quota for family-based immigration is nearly double that for employment-based, and Mexico dominates the waiting list in every family-based category (as well as showing up on the waiting list in several employment-based categories.) Mexico has more people on the waiting to lost for Family Fourth Preference alone than (1) the total annual US immigratiom quota for all categories, (2) twice the number the next two countries have on the waiting list in all categories combined, (3) three times what China has on the waiting list in all categories, combined. They also, aside from waiting lists, have a huge number of immigrants in the unlimited “immediate relative” category (which is uncapped itself, but effects the allocations to the other categories), about 9% of total US immigrant visas of all kinds issued in 2017 were for immigrants from Mexico in that category.
India and China have the most applicants annually in most employment-based categories, but they don't come anywhere close to dominating total applications or total visas that would be issued if the only change was eliminating the per country cap.
> There was a time when it was much harder to come to America and that meant that only the best people went to America. Not just everyone and anyone. The DV lottery program was the beginning of the end for the right kind of immigration to America.
The diversity visa lottery program requires that you have a high school diploma and come from a country that has sent very small numbers of people to America. And the DV lottery includes only 50,000 winners. Are you aware of how large America's population is, and how small 50,000 people is relative to the U.S. and to the size of normal annual immigration?
Yes, the point of the diversity visa is to add diversity to the immigrant pool, so that it isn't totally dominated by Asia and Latin America, because the U.S. has had historical success with diversity.
> The issue is that the green card process is too onerous and is subdivided by country of origin so some have to wait much longer than others.
I wasn't giving an average, I was giving current processing times for the various steps assuming a current priority date and I called out the specific criticism you levied.
> I feel this country makes it a bit too hard for legal residents to come with work visa, meanwhile I know people that got it much faster via 'fictive' marriages
So true. I have been on a student visa for 8 years, and hence I am a non immigrant. I have the luxury of getting a working visa by a random lottery, with no regards to my skills as a PhD. And when I have that, I have the luxury of entering the 100 year long line for green card for Indian immigrants. They have such racist policies in immigration, but consider Asian Americans privileged.
I find it hilarious to hear politicians talk about immigrants creating jobs, while actually having the worst policies possible for the high skilled immigrants that actually create the said jobs.
> Immigrants and their children are now 27% of the US population.
Immigrants from 1800s maybe ?
> Show me the numbers on China.
China has just started. I dont think there is any data yet. Even if there is, wont be easy to find.
> Why is Canada only 1% hispanic? Because they restrict immigration overwhelmingly by skill.
No they don't. They encourage both. Express Entry is for the skilled ones, family based quotas parents and siblings in addition to asylum and refugees. Isn't that how immigration is supposed to work ?
> How's that for treating people with dignity?
Canada have temporary worker visas similar to H1B. They issue the spouses of those temporary skilled workers with open work permit. Dignity & freedom from the day one they land in Canada. There are no carrots in Canada for temporary skilled workers. If you satisfy Express Entry points which you almost will, you can apply for permanent residence. Your permanent residence is not under the control of your employer master. Canadian employers cant threaten your Express Entry application. You wont have to wait 10 years or get kicked out of the queue if you change jobs or gets fired while being on H1B.
Those who come to Canada as students get a post graduate work permit. No lotteries, no quotas and can apply to express entry and become residents unlike those unfortunate master degree holders who are at the mercy of their employer masters and waiting 10 years for their GreenCards.
The fact that open work permits are issued for spouses of temporary skilled workers in Canada proves that temporary workers are treated with dignity in Canada than H1B workers in the US.
>My grandparents were all immigrants who didn't need to jump through hoops to come in. IMO, this should still be possible. I think we should have a open lottery that meets 95% of immigration demand, and have some sort of competitive/fast-track process for skilled workers that would weed out the bodyshops.
> If someone were to bring their family, they have done so with the explicit knowledge that the situation could change at any time.
I don't disagree - and I'm a US citizen, who previously was a greencard holder, who previously came here via the H1B process.
But look at it this way: the whole greencard approval process sometimes takes years, or even over a decade. When people spend 10 years in some place, the perspective changes a bit. It does become a complicated issue, with moral overtones too.
Make the goddamn greencard approval (or rejection) faster. If processing the papers took a few months, instead of years, after which you got your yea or nay decision, then the whole issue would be much simpler - and, indeed, as you say it would not be a moral issue at all.
But think of someone who spent here 10 years, brought their spouse here, had a couple kids (that clock doesn't stop ticking just because you're waiting for a rubber stamp to hit the paper), the kids go to school, and from a cultural perspective the kids are American - and then they are all told to get the hell out of here. That's terrible.
Speed up that stupid process. Then sure, tweak the rules any way you see fit.
> Not that US is any better for Indians. Based on current estimates, if someone from India applies for an employment based Green Card now, they might get it in 70 years. And life is a pain because you have to do a lot of paperwork throughout.
I thought that is because so many Indians applying for green cards but there is a limit by country so it takes a long time?
> it just keeps immigrants in precarious positions for much longe
That is entirely the point of the system. Let's say if anyone could get a GC, X people would. Let's say you need a work visa and it takes 3 years, Y people would. If you need a Masters+ and it takes 15 years then Z people would. X > Y > Z. The system is designed to discourage certain people and/or just have them drop out of the system out of frustration or ill fortune. It is arbitrary, capricious and punitive. By design.
> I don't see any reason to keep per-country GC quotas in place.
The US is a country founded on white supremacy. The fact that the system makes it harder for some countries is not an accident. It's by design. Take the green card lottery (which, again, Indian nationals aren't eligible for by design). It was invented largely to benefit the Irish [1].
> it doesn't actually prevent immigration (since we still grant work visas with temporary residence - that's a separate process from getting a GC),
It's exactly what it does. Children age out of the immigration system. Others fall out of the pipeline for other reasons and have to leave the country. That's the definition of preventing (certain) immigration.
> Guess how much time it takes to get a greed card? Atleast 100 years. I'm not joking. Unless there's a policy change, there's no possibility.
So my entire family migrated from India (not H1B though, so no idea what that process is like), and some are still migrating, and this is just ridiculous. Green cards and citizenship are issued quite regularly. I'm not going to say its fast, but it's not literally 100 years (can't tell if you were being sarcastic or not). My uncle got his a few years back, and got his citizenship this year. The system works, as long as there're no discrepancies.
> However, the number of annual green cards have been capped, so even though it's approved, it cannot be given to them yet.
The wordplay and sophistry around this amazes me. They either have gotten a green card or they have not. A background check shows they are not a member of al-Qaeda, great. That is not a green card. No one has promised them they are going to get a green card.
These are people here on a 3 year work visa promising the work is temporary and they have special skills no American worker can fill. They're here under false pretenses and are now claiming they have been promised green cards, when that never happened. If they'd been promised a green card they would have a green card.
Also, as green cards are limited per country, and there are such a high number of green card applications from India, a green card application by an Indian is more of a lottery ticket than from most countries.
>Would plans to make the requirements more strict(such as requiring them to work a high-paying job..) help alleviate this, since the queue will be shorter
If it does, the effects will only be seen in a couple of decades. A lot things can change by then. What would be better would a system where countries get green cards proportional to their population. It makes no sense for Fiji to be awarded the same number as India.
Sure. But that has nothing to do with employment-based green cards.
By all means, choose for diversity when it comes to other types of immigrants (extended family, lottery, etc). But it makes no sense to consider country of birth for skilled worker green cards, where employers hire based on talent - and especially so when the beneficiaries already live here and pay taxes here.
> The alternative is to turn the green card backlog into a problem for immigrants of all nationalities rather than a problem for immigrants of some nationalities.
Sure, but a 3-4 year wait for everyone (while living here) is literally an order of magnitude lower than the current 60-year wait for those born in India. Problems like not being able to switch jobs, kids having to leave when they turn 21, etc, are just less likely to occur when the wait is shorter and more transparent.
In order to prevent a shock to the system, per-country caps should be phased-in over 2-3 years. That way, those currently in the system will all get their green cards in the expected 1-1.5 year timeframe, while future applicants will know, prior to applying, that the wait will be 4 years for everyone. HR392 does this.
Think a 4-year wait would be too long? First, let me point out the hypocrisy. Second, a solution then is simply to increase the employment-based numbers, from 140K currently, to around 220K (these numbers include immediate family: spouses and minor kids). This is hard politically, because Democrats would also want to increase chain migration and other categories.
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