So just imagine, having a normal job in the US and you're asked to leave to renew your visa and this stuff happens.
That's no more appointment, not even a new date and you're now very likely unable to work and possibly can't even enter the country to get your belongings if you were to leave.
Just 'putting a pause' on people with existing appointments with no answer for when they might resume is.... Inhumane
The issue here is that, if you just left the country to do everything the country asked you, you are now in limbo.
For how long? No one can tell.
Does this mean you lose your job? Maybe.
And when you decide it's no longer worth it, you might even have issues getting back in to get your stuff...
Retraining your people CAN be done without it being so disruptive, they chose not to.
I feel like I’ve said it a few times but - Yes, exactly. The country wants you to leave and then get’s to decide if you can come back. That’s how it’s designed. On purpose.
You’re approaching it from a perspective where you’re being asked to leave and your reentry is a right. It’s not. They never said, if you leave you can come back. They said, leave and we’ll see. The risk of being blocked out is inherent by anyone residing in a country that has this similar process; there are many.
That is how it's designed, and that's fine.
But make a decision... They're pausing the decision making for an indefinite amount of time. That's not how it was designed, but it sure does look like that's on purpose.
The reality is the program has been abused and stretched far beyond its intent by corporations in pursuit of cheap labor. You cannot, with a straight face, argue that the spirit of the program is being upheld. Come on. People are upset because they are realizing that they haven't been playing fair--the game's been rigged this whole time. I think that's a very understandable and normal human emotion all things considered.
I have a Republican friend who appreciates the Supreme Court Justices, and then suddenly has zero clue about any news story involving the administration, and shrugs off the war. This despite meticulously following Benghazi hearings when it was someone he wanted to dislike. He would rather Trump be Romney, but he's not going to do anything about it whatsoever.
I blame myself for teasing my Italian friend in college over Silvio Berlusconi, and now I've found myself in the same position :(
So what do we do? I don't want good people disrupted. But I also morally disagree with everything the abuse of the H1B program represents. What's the solution? It doesn't seem that crazy to me that "tax the companies so they can't undercut local labor so easily" is a reasonable first pass. But we know how that went.
I can't help but think if instead of shouting across the isle there were some amount of bipartisan accountability and shared understanding on the topic then the previous attempts by this administration to curtail the problem would have been more effective and we wouldn't be at a point where people have to take the gloves off.
What about the sweeping halt of all legal immigrant visa processing?
The point is maybe signal to people that we will soon be pausing all visa renewals so people who trivially have good jobs and good records know they ought to literally just plan on moving out of their apartment rather than have to deal with paying thousands of dollars to have someone else move their shit overseas, just to maybe get their visa renewed right when their shit arrives and they have to do the same thing all over again.
This would literally just helping law-abiding folks follow the law. But no, the cruelty is the point.
I mean... "leave to renew" is a horrible policy, it's just one that we've normalized since 9/11. It's incredibly wasteful and disruptive, and serves no purpose. There's no legitimate reason why a long-term residential visa like an H1-B can't be renewed by mail or electronically. I can renew my driver's license by mail, and I'm a hell of a lot more likely to cause serious damage with a car than my foreign coworkers are by continuing to do their jobs well.
The reason the State Department hides behind, by the way, is that domestic offices don't have the ability to take biometric data (fingerprints), which is self-evidently pretextual.
The terms were clear, visas are a privilege and not a right or automatic entitlement.
Is it "cruel" that temporary visitors don't have the right to vote? Why is residency and permission to work somehow any different?
They are. Yet can you tell me why you would need to pause all processing in order to retrain your people? Surely they do training all the time without pausing processing.
Your passport is a right too, you wouldn't mind if they paused that request with no indication of when they might resume? And that's including when you're abroad and lost yours. If that happens to you, you'll happily hold the same position?
United States Code plainly disagrees with you, as do the laws of basically every developed nation in the world. Visas are not a right, by definition.
> Your passport is a right too,
I am a citizen, so this isn't a good faith comparison. Citizens naturally have higher priority than visitors, otherwise what's the purpose of citizenship as a concept at all?
> I am a citizen, so this isn't a good faith comparison.
Oh, you still are. You'll get your passport, we just can't tell you when. That's what's happening here. These people aren't being denied, they're told to wait for an indefinite amount of time.
But basically you're saying that you think this is outrageous if it were you, got it.
I've explicitly stated that visas are not a right - which is the legally-consistent opinion and basic English interpretation of the concept. (If visas were a right, why would denial be a possibility? If denial isn't a possibility, what function do they serve?)
> That's what's happening here. These people aren't being denied, they're told to wait for an indefinite amount of time.
What part of "these people" somehow makes them equivalent in entitlement to a nation's citizens - how is this even a question? Not agreeing that borders, citizenship are concepts generally doesn't make them magically cease to exist.
But also, it's only been "the policy" since 2004. That's technically "decades", but only just, and it was also introduced for idiotic pretextual reasons. The ostensible reason is that domestic State Department offices don't have the equipment to capture biometric data. Seriously. That's the argument. The law doesn't say "you have to leave to renew", it says "you have to get fingerprinted to renew", and conveniently there's nowhere in the United States that can do that, despite every police station in the country having that equipment at this point.
Which visas legally come with renewal guarantees? Isn't that called permanent residency?
In most states, employers have broad rights to fire employees at will, including no reason or "he wore the wrong color shirt". That doesn't mean that if you have a dickhead manager who fires you because he doesn't like the color of your shirt isn't a dickhead, and if you defended that manager I would similarly consider you unfit to participate in civil society.
What? Where is this expectation enumerated? An expiration date is in fact defined. I'm not sure where some legal expectation of guaranteed renewal could arise from.
> unilaterally doesn't make you not an asshole if you actually exercise that right.
"Asshole" is a matter of opinion, and rights aren't actually rights if you aren't ever able to exercise them.
> if you defended that manager I would similarly consider you unfit to participate in civil society.
Why have laws, borders at all by these standards? What's the point?
Literally in the phrase "immigrant visa". An immigrant visa is definitionally a visa intended for someone to immigrate with.
It’s like saying that it’s “cruelty” to remove someone who uses a 2 hour parking spot as their permanent car parking.
Legally, there's very little the state can't do, there could be a bill passed tomorrow revoking all immigrant visas. But businesses, and by proxy the nation, benefit from work done by these workers.
Sudden unilateral moves like this are stupid on a social level (cause damage to businesses and communities), and on a moral level. "First do no harm" is a principle just as suited to government as medicine. Even if there is a broad consensus for reducing or eliminating H1B visas, why punish people who followed the system as it exists and contributed? It's perfectly possible to pass a bill, stop handing out new visas, and sunset renewals after some 1-2 year timeframe.
It's legal to invite a bunch of guests over and kick them all out after you open the wine, but you're going to lose friends. And ultimately it will be businesses and individuals paying the cost for these needlessly volatile course changes. Tourism and high skilled immigration rates will face lasting harm.
Not when the norm is open defiance of the rules for decades.
> An immigration system governs people making major life choices, and companies making large investments.
And it also governs the right of people to decide who they want to invite into their country and, ultimately, with whom they want to share democratic governance of their home. Those are important stakes, not to be minimized. But you neglected to mention them.
That's a very weak analogy for the moral issue here.
The consequences are radically different; losing a parking space is a minor inconvenience; losing immigration status can/does involve relocation and upends employment, family, property, and years of life planning / general stability.
The issue here is that they're not being denied, the government is basically refusing to make a decision for an indefinite amount of time.
I'm assuming most normal cases will get their visas eventually, the question is when. In the meantime the applicant can pay rent in the US, find some place to live abroad and maybe continue working from overseas? All so the state department can retrain a few people?
I don’t have words for it, but the US has been infected with some kind of hybrid reductionism / nihilism where people think that vicious bad behavior can be enjoyed and justified, even righteously glorified, if a disingenuous analogy can somehow be crafted to something banal and comparatively harmless.
Nobody actually believes it, but it’s become a game of sorts. I don’t like it.
No. Your analogy works well solely for the concept of temporary authorization.
If you're offering up 2h parking as proof that the moral stakes are equivalent...
Ah, this must be why so many utilitarian philosophers are European and American.
But it makes me wonder: do you think the $10 theft should be punished more heavily (minimum 1 year in prison), or the $1000 theft punished more lightly (maximum 1 year in prison)?
A shift in magnitude follows a shift in magnitude, as expected.
> The State Department and Department of Homeland Security are reviewing all B-1 business and B-2 tourist visas, he said.
https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary... (“B-1 Temporary Business Visitor”)
“A strong aversion, antipathy, or fear of foreigners.” Simple as.
It wouldn’t be wrong if you admitted that you want some degree of xenophobia. But I suppose that sounds even less convincing than your preferred abuse of terminology.
US immigration can be very slow and bureaucratic (even pre-Trump). I hesitate to say but generally, it's not as arbitrary as people think. If things are clearly above board, it works out.
The US still is a destination in very high-demand. There are a huge number of qualified and unqualified people, who would come here in a heartbeat (and it goes without saying, there are a huge number of people who have no interest in moving here).There are clearly agents like the H-1B body shops who have exploited the system. Similarly, masters programs were launched effectively to trade full tuition for an opportunity to enter the US labor market (e.g. all the masters in financial math programs). This doesn't mean we don't get amazing people on H-1Bs or in masters programs but these pathways have been exploited.
Many people desire a sane immigration policy and experience. One that allows promising candidates into the country. The exact definition of a "promising candidate" was outsourced to universities and companies sponsoring these visas. A lot of people have lost trust in those institutions. I don't know what a good solution is but the rise of these policies is a symptom that the current system is not working.
Americans aren't "xenophobic." I just got back from two weeks in rural Texas and everyone was super nice to me. Nobody was "afraid" that I'm a foreigner. They just don't want me to bring my entire extended family over and in numbers that changes the culture of their home. And people in my dad's village in Bangladesh would hate if some other group did the same thing to them.
“The Trump administration has paused processing of immigrant visas, which allow recipients to move permanently to the U.S., to train visa officers on new guidance ensuring that applicants have enough financial means to support themselves after they arrive.”
Tradeoffs exist.
It's understandable for everyone to have varying views on immigration and immigrants, but this sort of rhetoric is a vile, racist and xenophobic dog whistle.
They may have hired a property manager, but if the manager goes rogue, what the owners say is more important.
The homeless person thought experiment is meant to illustrate the existence of tradeoffs. "The cruelty is the point" is essentially rhetoric meant to demonize political opponents, and sweep under the rug the existence of tradeoffs and differences of opinion.
If immigration is such a good idea, people ought to be able to defend it on the merits, instead of pearl-clutching and playing dishonest rhetorical games.
I'm not exactly sure what is so racist or xenophobic about my thought experiment. Homeless people are people too. I'm tempted to pearl-clutch just like you, and accuse you of denying their humanity. Want me to do it?
Historically i've tended to agree that "the cruelty is the point" was too dismissive for the policies in question. But with immigration policy of this admin, I'm not sure that's the case. For a while they were deporting people to the equivalent of a Gulag, and literally suggested that if people were afraid of that outcome they should self deport. I think that would be a pretty fair example of a policy where the cruelty was the literal point: The hope was it would be viewed with sufficient fear as to dissuade people from staying in the country illegally. However seriously you think immigration should be taken, and however many people you feel should be deported, there are policy choices that do not involve that level of cruelty that could be chosen instead. That they are intentionally not is what the term "The cruelty is the point" is meant to imply.
I actually don't think it is that common for policy to be cruel just for the sake of being cruel ("the cruelty is the point")
>For a while they were deporting people to the equivalent of a Gulag, and literally suggested that if people were afraid of that outcome they should self deport. I think that would be a pretty fair example of a policy where the cruelty was the literal point: The hope was it would be viewed with sufficient fear as to dissuade people from staying in the country illegally.
The point of law enforcement is to deter and prevent lawbreaking, not be cruel for its own sake. Suppose you observe that meals in prison aren't very tasty. Would you criticize this policy on the grounds that "the cruelty is the point"?
You can argue that the punishment is too harsh, but that still doesn't prove that cruelty was the point.
/s (poe's)
People should get the fck out of the US, as quickly as possible.
If you think ICE isn't coming for you for bogus charges, think again, because that's exactly what everyone in CECOT also thought.
Remember, "leftists" are now terrorists, too.
But I'll be honest: between the uncited numbers, the clear-eyed, neutral potted history, the italics, and the all-caps "LEGAL," I'm starting to think it would be foolish not to take your argument seriously.
I've legally gone through this process in at least 5 countries and the US was the most expensive, but far from the worst.
It’s a chore, but very common around the world.
I know stuff like this happens for digital nomads in southeast asia or Schengen but the US generally doesn't approve of "visa runs".
The point is surely to get another chance to grill the immigrant and potentially bar them entry. Other countries don’t always do this: Canada for example has inland changes of status and I believe renewals.
For many visas, people are expected to maintain a home that they intend to return to in their country of origin. Forcing people to leave every once in a while makes this more likely (at least in theory.)
Lack of real domestic enforcement would be an obvious one, so everything gets pushed to the border entry points.
Wait, what’s getting enforced here, anyway? They are getting a new visa, no? I don’t believe this rationale at all.
See the recent events and pushback on immigration enforcement, to answer this, with whole cities (with their judicial system and police) refusing to participate, and governors condemning enforcement.
Most visas don't permit their holder to work.
> Wait, what’s getting enforced here, anyway?
The visa holder is forced to expend nominal financial resources and time in their home country (where they agreed they would return to.) Most people can't afford to maintain a facade of residency or two actual residences (and those who can aren't the intended targets of this type of restriction.)
However, the in-country processing takes 6 months while the flagpole option (If you’re eligible) takes 15 minutes.
Except you had zero paperwork to show to an employer and they had no way to verify themselves. Even if an employer understood the process and accepted some proof that you submitted an application, they would have no idea if you were rejected and became out-of-status.
Most visas are for temporary guests: obtaining a visa doesn't normally give someone the right to permanently reside, and most don't permit their holders to work.
US is unique in that the visa sticker and your right to remain in the country (status) are two different things. The only purpose of the visa sticker is to allow you to travel to a U.S. port of entry, where you apply for admission, and therefore legal status. You can have legal status in the U.S. while the visa sticker has expired, and your status can be changed or extended domestically. However unless you have a valid sticker you cannot leave and return.
Prior to the mid 00s you could renew at any consulate but they changed it so you could only renew in your home country.
The only way I can see this happening is if you try to convert from OTP to an H1. I used to do some runs up to Vancouver to help a friend do that.
This just generally sucks for anyone making plans in their life. I remember my wife's greencard interview in Guangzhou, and it would have sucked if they instituted this the day before she did that.
I think it is helpful to remind folk that these policies are not universally hated. Indeed a majority of voters voted specifically for them, and they were explicitly laid out.
This is democracy in action. The majority (of those who care enough at all) get to rule over the minority (and the apathetic). Obviously not all actions will be universally loved, but no govt action can ever be universally loved.
Have you worked at a tech company in 2026?
Plenty of engineers, born in India/China and working in Silicon Valley, are openly anti-immigration. And I also support them since I agree with them.
Pull up the ladder once you’ve made it.
Nothing new.
you mean leaving the country is required for visa renewal? the other way around?
Meanwhile I've got a tech lead who is 12 hours away from the rest of the team. He was at least willing to work US-East hours while in India (basically staying up all night and sleeping during the day), but there was a huge amount of management overhead and inconvenience for the employee involved.
The main constraint is re-entry into the US and being able to travel outside the US. If one stayed here, there was no problem switching schools, programs, jobs, adjusting status to permanent residency or naturalization. On the other hand, for re-entry, one needs a valid visa stamped on a passport which necessitated a trip to one's home country. This stamping visit could be unpredictable.
Ideally, one would like to travel freely to see family and friends but I see a lot of comments implying that one is forced to leave. It might be true now but a lot of comments here are conflating several issues together.
Everything post-2025 has been a shit-show. There's no predictability or clear guidance, either from our lawyers or from the state department.
Predictability matters a lot in business. If you know what the procedure is and how long it will take, you can plan around it. If the rules change in the middle of the game you're left scrambling to keep up.
Hundreds of thousands of tech workers have been laid off in the last two years. There are many skilled Americans on the job market. Foreign workers are here for the benefit of the United States, not as charity to the rest of the world, or as a source of cheaper labor for global employers seeking to undercut American wages.
But that's the point, isn't it? Some foreign workers who "worked the US for the benefit of the US" are now unable to come back to the US. Isn't that bad for the US too?
Is every natural-born American entitled to a job that pays what they want, for the hours they want, in the location they want, regardless of their qualifications for the job?
I would understand logic of bringing people from other countries when there is a shortage of workers but with current market it doesn't seem to be the case.
In the world you're imagining, is x+y potentially infinite?
And it is uncontroversial in most countries that a country should do this.
So this isn't a contradiction. Indeed america is capitalist. And it is also prioritizing its own citizens. There is nothing weird about that.
You must have responded to the wrong post as it has nothing to do with my statement.
That statement is that there is nothing about capitalism that prevents a country from prioritizing its own citizens. That is a perfectly normal and rational thing to do.
Additionally, the exact percentages of unemployement rates also has little to do with capitalism, nor does the uncommonness of fully achieving a lofty but possibly valuable goal also has nothing to do with what capitalism is, nor does it say very much about how valuable that goal is or the value in attempting to aspirationally achieve it.
OK. You can't handle context, noted.
>That statement is that there is nothing about capitalism that prevents a country from prioritizing its own citizens.
The free market is what prevents it. The purpose of capitalism is the creation of capital and its transfer to the capitalist class, and the purpose of corporations is to maximize profits to facilitate that process as quickly and efficiently as possible. Neither capitalism as a system nor corporations have an obligation to improve quality of life for their employees beyond their market value, or to "prioritize" the social welfare over profit, or to hire more people than they need.
It's simple supply and demand and there isn't a demand for American labor.
>Additionally, the exact percentages of unemployement rates also has little to do with capitalism
which is weird because you're arguing that capitalist companies need to prioritize "citizen" labor in order to reduce unemployment, or that governments need to force them to.
Globalism has ruined that entirely, and there’s no amount of implying these people are closed minded or incurious that will make them change their mind on this issue.
Preferentially treat one group of people (non-white/women/Americans) even if in the short term the revealed preference of businesses is to hire a different group of people (white/men/immigrants), such that, in the long term, the first group of people can develop the necessary skills to compete with the second group.
Short term pain for long term gain.
Also, this ignores that the government works for citizens, no matter their race. Promoting racial equality among citizens is a function that the government might undertake. Pursuing policies that favor citizens over non-citizens falls in line with that same reasoning.
Many can’t find locals.
Tons of Americans are out of work. I’ve personally seen my wages drop by at least 20$ an hour as well as the work being less stable.
Gasp, you might need to train someone a bit or have employees that will say no if you ask them to work on Christmas.
If I ran the H1B program it would be an unrestricted work permit with an automatic pathway to a GC after 5 years. Don’t get *convicted* of a felony and here you go.
Let’s say that tomorrow we need 1M nuclear physicists. How can money help? You still need to wait for the talent pipeline to divert.
One of the math problems recently publicized as having being solved by was actually just discovering that a German mathematician had published a solution in the 1950s.
And it would be absurd if they could not.
Also, in some cases, employers should be able to discriminate, it's totally different to hire someone on an n-month visa vs full time.
Granted, it's different if they are Green Card.
It's also perfectly normal to want to hire locals, if it can be done on a national basis, then I think for some roles, state ought to be fine as well. If state governments had a state preference for in-state nationals, that would be fine, for example.
The issue here is by far and away mostly one of transparency and efficiency - the rules should be clear and the bureaucracy should just function normally.
The fact that anything takes months, or that you need lawyers etc is a sign of dysfunction.
It should be about as complicated as getting a prescription. 'One trip to an office and done'.
For those seemingly not believing this, read: [1]https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-a-company-refuse-to-c...
So it's a decision between violating the law and acting unethically?
It's totally unreasonable to suggest that companies should have to hire random people from nation xyz only to have to sponsor their impossible work visas.
And I say this as someone who was on work status for a very long time.
Clarity, consistency, simplicity, predictability - this is what people want.
Because 'discriminating against people of other ethnicities' is kind of as old as time, the issue triggers our empathy radar a bit, which is reasonable, but in reality what would be 'the most fair to everyone' is just clear rules, and very light but important anti-discrimination aka can't discriminate on age, race, gender religion aka the basics.
So, yes, they could hire a citizen, but then they probably wouldn't be able to do the job they were hired for.
This is based on my experience in working with good immigrant coders who got the job over about equally capable locals, but more cheaply. The immigrants (mostly Indian and Chinese) tended to have weaker English communication skills but stronger work ethics.
There's obviously some degree of reality to it, but the equilibrium doesn't always work that way, and, shifting it would require sometimes a decade, and integration with other parts of the supply chain, like literally opening / expanding new schools, training programs, certification, convincing young people before they even select a college major - etc.
It's a very different equation for specialized work than for unskilled labour.
And should add - communication skills matter a lot, and I don't mean just 'vocabulary'.
I've hired tons of teams from India and it's often really hard, the cultural gaps are huge.
There's a reason that almost zero startups on limited budgets 'go to China or India' to hire.
Big budget and small budget films immediately choose lower wage centres to produce films, but it's not the same for certain skilled work.
And yes, 'funny accents' can cause people's otherwise great work to be overlooked, or for them to be devalued, obviously that one is as old as time.
The entire Silicon Valley would not exist were it not for immigrants behind he scenes, obviously, and speaking from direct experience there as well.
Nobody has 20 years of React experience, of course, but that doesn't stop people from listing this as a requirement - or a pre-selected group of people on the other end from asserting this experience.
This is specifically a pause on immigrant visas. That is, green cards. So this is for family-based green cards and investor green cards through consular processing (ie when out of the country).
As yet, work visas and other nonimmigrant visas are unaffected.
Does it suck? Yes. Is this unexpected? Not really, no.
This sucks but it isn't new, unfortunately.
It's not ideal but a lot of us basically didn't leave for several years (even pre-Trump 1) to avoid the hassle of a new stamping.
I do remember Canada telling my partner she wouldn't be guaranteed reentry while they were processing her PR visa until it was finalised if we left the country though so we just ended up doing the Australian half first and I never went back.
You're comparing apples to oranges.
People going from non-immigrant visa (H1B, F1 etc.) to Green card via i485 "adjustment of status" do not need to leave the country either.
Only consular processing (ds 260) are in scope of this pause
https://www.ellis.com/resources/immigrant-visa-pause-2026
Has more details than the paywalled article
My classmates who had gone to the US for PhD programs, even those who were fortunate enough to get multiple entry visas, had visas that allowed re-entry for only the first two years of the PhD program. After that, if they wanted to leave the US, say for a conference or to visit family, they would have had to apply for a visa from abroad and hope to be granted one. In Canada, I could apply for the visa and get it while in Canada. Even comparing like with like, the American system seems bizarre to me, looking at it from a Canadian lens.
https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/us-citizenship-...
I don't think the practice of the change is significant. Reddit has numerous stories of people who are still receiving it, so whatever that release says, things haven't changed. People seem to be receiving AoS based Green Cards the same way I did under the Biden Administration. It does seem to be a bit more uncertain which is always troubling.
That being said, yes, the way the current administration handles immigrant visas, worker visas, and more is absolutely inhumane and completely asinine. I've been through it with family and friends, and it is painful and can be heartbreaking even.
I say this as someone who just sent their daughter to NYC explaining how we used to try to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to poor immigrants who just assumed this was a land of kind people, WTF? Could we not take a decade off from being prissy about our democracy *and* total cocks about how we actually act?
[CHAOS] [CORRUPTION] [CRUELTY]
imagine what's tomorrow or next week
meanwhile let's all enjoy the billion spent on making statues gold plated in DC and the ballroom and the arch and his drapes and his reflecting pool and 100 foot banners of his face on federal building and his face on gold coins, passports, park passes and the $250 bill
it's surreal
We’re so screwed. Good luck to us ever building up goodwill again.
Not really.
Taiwan doesn’t like India either.
There’s a reason out of the 1.1 million immigrants/foreigners in Taiwan, only 6,000 are from India.
Also, even with NWOHR it’s not that hard. What trouble did you encounter? Might be useful for me to be aware.
Naturalization never required leaving the country, at least in my experience but things might have changed.
Trump ended in-country processing and now requires almost all greencard applicants to go to a consulate abroad. My friend and his wife were surprised and nervous when they were told he'd have to leave due to this new requirement (rightfully so, in retrospect).
Why doesn’t their home country have a welcoming immigration plan allowing his spouse and child to move with him? Which country is this?
What would the steps be for this? Hopefully the other country has easier entry and that would be a possible route?
Moving his wife and kid to his birth country isn't really an option. He doesn't plan to stay there. He has no job, no house, and no social network there. He barely speaks the language. His wife (US born) has a job and family here, and his kid only speaks English. Asking them to pull their kid out of school and move to another country until the US consulate decides to start processing paperwork again doesn't really seem like a reasonable solution, though with every passing week and month, it may end up being the only way they can be together again.
OP either intentionally left out some crucial details or their friend lied.
Also, UCIS has limited discretion to reject a spousal green card applicant; an undisclosed criminal record or immigration violations are basically the only two that would apply if he's been married for years.
> He's been doing the paperwork to finally become a citizen, and as one of the final steps he was required to leave the country
You don't have to leave the country to become a citizen. I recently became a US citizen a few years back and leaving the country is not required.
If you somehow meant Green Card, the timeline still doesn't make sense. Until May 2026, 3 months ago, you could do Adjustment of Status within the country without having to leave. So there's no reason why you friend would need to leave the country to get his Green Card unless he chose Consular Processing.
Getting denied CP is rare, but it means that they lied about something.
And if he did live in the US for decades without having his GC, well, applying for GC under Trump in this climate was a huge mistake, especially leaving the country having been in here for decades illegally. He should have waited 2 years until the Republicans were voted out and maybe he would have some modicum of amnesty where at least ICE would get him.
> His wife and child aren't citizens of his home country either, so it's not like they can move to be with him.
This also doesn't make sense. First off, the country's immigration is even more restrictive than the US?? They can't even visit on a travel visa??
They can definitely move to his home country, since he's a citizen. There's a spousal visas for almost all countries, and the child is most definitely allowed to come in since they can usually get citizenship via the father.
But there's no way he hasn't seen his daughter in over a year since the forced Consular Processing didn't start until this past May, and his spouse and daughter can most definitely travel to see him.
None of this story makes sense, so either you have the details very drastically incorrect or this is completely fake.
A lot of America has this world view that there's a hierarchy, and the people they know and like are above the people they don't know and don't like. One group gets the benefit of the doubt and the other group gets rules and cruelty.
Do you have a source for this claim?
https://cis.org/Camarota/New-January-Data-Still-Shows-Most-J...
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/feb/7/immigrants-t...
This site is worse than reddit in all of the worst ways.
https://cis.org/Camarota/New-January-Data-Still-Shows-Most-J...
That cites this:
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
They do note that the share of working-age men not in the labor force is near a historic high for this kind of economy.
That probably suggests not reading too much into this before figuring out if the reason so many foreign born people have been hired is because so many native born people have dropped out of the labor pool.
There has not been this level of chaos in government decision-making in generations. I have no idea how far back you'd have to go to find a president changing the rules for business arbitrarily every single month.
If anything, these policies harm the citizens of the US in a myriad of ways. There's zero benefit to be had from any of this. Except for the joy tha tthe cruel feel in causing others misery, but that's not citizens, that's just a few sick people.
From the article:
"Updated guidance and training were being put in place to ensure that visa applicants don’t become a public charge under U.S. law or depend on government benefits intended for Americans in need, a spokesman for the department said Wednesday."
They get a plenty bad enough shake. Let’s grant them the absolute basics of humane treatment and a fair shake at getting citizenship, sheesh.
Other countries get by just fine not having such a huge delta between haves and have nots on citizenship, and their social cohesion is better for it.
The Immigration and Nationality Act makes citizenship discrimination illegal.
>Other countries get by just fine
Which ones are your model for the US?
Most countries have MUCH higher standards for immigration and their citizens much better off for it.
I think your math is off. The US is in the top 10 for GDP per capita, 99% literacy rate when the global average is 87%, the poverty rate is below average, the list goes on. Most countries in the world aren’t even considered developed nations. Immigration has been America’s core growth engine for two and a half centuries. There may be problems but you are deluding yourself if you think the whole economy hasn’t benefited from immigration. Even when that immigration was through chattel slavery.
As you're well aware, the US is just barely meeting replacement birth rate. Most developed countries are under it. And the big picture: the US is all about growth. Economic growth, cultural growth. If you want more of that, you need immigrants. Sorry, that's how the US has always worked. If you don't agree with it, then I'm not sure the US is the country for you.
There are plenty of developed, homogeneous countries. Diversity is what makes the US the US. Please, feel free to seek a country that better aligns with your beliefs.
Oh no, they'll have to raise wages due to lack of labor. How terrible for the working class (everyone).
> Diversity is what makes the US the US.
Is this meant as a joke? I can't tell, but it is completely ahistorical. The foundera wrote about their demographic intention extensively.
Of course racism existed when the founding father's were alive, we had slavery. But, from the beginning, the US has been a country founded on immigration and racial diversity. Yes, we did not, at the time, consider black Americans Americans. But we certainly do now, and have for a very long time.
I'm also not convinced immigration lowers wages. People throw this around, while providing no evidence. And, even if it did, I think it's obvious that wages is not the cause behind birth rate decline.
All the developed countries, with the high wages and standard of living, have poor birthrate. All the developing countries, with low wages and low standard of living, have high birthrates. Hmm.
If we look at the demographic progression of nations the "culprit" behind birthrate is development. Particularly, social development, the liberation of women. Turns out lots of women don't actually want to have children, and when we stop pressuring them socially, they don't. They work instead.
Obviously this is a hard problem to solve. If you want to solve birthrate, you need to de-develop your nation. Not good. Or, some other solution, which nobody has found yet. Or, you just have immigration, which we do and have had.
Only supply a demand economic denialists cannot understand than an increase in the supply of something leads to falling prices.
Then why are they coming if it's so bad?
> Other countries get by just fine not having such a huge delta between haves and have nots on citizenship, and their social cohesion is better for it.
Outside of the USA and a few other countries, there is no social cohesion at all shared between natives and immigrants/foreigners, just different levels of animosity. Even between different native ethnicities and groups.
I sometimes wonder where these concepts come from, because it sounds like somebody tricked you into thinking that non-citizens are somehow taking things from everybody else, rather than contributing just the same as everyone.
They benefit from the entire bill of rights (arguably rightly so).
They have better job prospects.
They can purchase homes with federal loans.
They can attend college.
They can invest and own companies.
They can even draw from Social Security.
For now, non-citizens cannot vote openly in congressional elections, but can in minor elections like school boards and municipal votes.
They cannot be drafted to defend a nation. They have to remain employed, but enforcement is questionable and creative solutions exist.
It's a pretty good deal. Oh, and of course dual citizens always have an escape hatch to leave one country and their debts behind should they choose.
It's very clear what the motivations are, and just because they don't seem harmful in isolation doesn't mean it's going to have no consequences for everyone else.
I am to some degree on board with keeping a closer eye on immigration, but the way the current administration does it feels intentionally cruel. The guy at my company has a house, wife, and kids in the US; his visa is perfectly legal, so it seems it would make sense to process these people quickly. But instead, he is now in some limbo. Same for ICE. Clamping down on illegal immigration makes sense, but it doesn't make sense for ICE to behave like some unaccountable secret police that hires the biggest assholes they can find who can then do whatever they want.
I could never imagine myself buying a home in a country where I don't have permanent access to that real estate. I am not opposed to voting to prevent non-PRs from owning real estate in order to keep housing prices lower for residents and prevent non-immigrants from shooting themselves in the foot.
As I live abroad in temporary status, I keep one foot back home (USA) and am extremely mindful of the risks of needing to close up shop and move.
If you want an economic perspective, consider reading Warren Buffet's "America’s growing trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us" article [0].
[0] - https://fortune.com/article/warren-buffett-foreign-trade/
American Police officers are famous for not actually living in the cities they work in.
In each country I have lived in, I was a guest. With that knowledge, I carefully designed my life so uprooting would not be a painful inhumane process.
If you throw a party and a guest refuses to leave, you wouldn't declare forcing them to leave your home in-humane.
(b) Even if we are talking about H1-Bs, it takes someone in India 10-15 years of waiting in line to get a green card. If someone were to buy a house in the interim, it doesn't seem so irrational to me.
Its easy to blame the victim and say they should have known.
(b) If I enter China on a temporary work permit visa, with a 15 year plan to obtain Chinese citizenship, no one will have sympathy for me if that plan is interrupted by legal, political, economic changes. Since I full well knew my current status and the risks of failing to obtain Chinese citizenship.
Just because there is a possibility in the distant future for permanence, doesn't mean you can safely backdate it to today.
no one talented will come pay taxes and make your nice tech companies carry the S&P500 and in turn, everyone's retirement funds, if you treat them like hogs
Where have you been? There is so much evidence of the deliberate cruelty that it beggars belief you’d say that.
not only are they making it hard & unbearable for families of US citizens & PR holders to be together.
while at the same time - discouraging talent to come to the US at a crucial time when talent is at a premium due to A.I development.
last the backwards energy policy of banning renewable energy.
I think the situation is quite simple. Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better.
If tomorrow you were to tell (let say) Google they now need to hire only US citizens, would they lower their hiring bar, or would they expand their Shanghai or Zurich offices? Are US citizens entitled to work at Google more than others for the sole reason they have a particular citizenship?
Yes, at the lowest wages they can get. Increase supply -> lower prices (wages) -> more corporate profits!
However, there are those who believe that corporate profits are not the highest good. Some of us also care about the earnings of American workers.
Also, "best candidates" alone does not "best company" make. You need people who can work well together—which requires some degree of culture fit. Immigration restrictions help preserve the cultural homogeneity that makes collaboration and social trust possible.
Google (and friends) famously have teams composed of a single national origin (or caste...). What does that say about their hiring bar?
Google (and friends) are already expanding the Shanghai and Zurich offices.
That racism isn't only something white people are capable of.
Respectfully, this sounds terribly naive.
1/ Employment provides training and experience. If the h1bs are given access to the jobs (training and experience), then is it the American's fault that they are no longer considered "best"?
2/ h1b increases labor supply, not the demand. More supply, means lower wages for everyone.
2/ Demand for software is not static. Good software drives demand for more engineers in many cases, intra or extra-company. There is probably a non zero rate of wage suppression per marginal h1b currently. But an American economy with no h1b employees could feasibly have a much lower average sde salary. It is not an Econ 101 problem.
Again... the skill issue falls apart when you consider teams at tech companies having 1 non-American national origin or caste. I'm very skeptical that, between two foreign candidates with the same U.S. education and experience but different national origins, the fact that the candidate whose nationality matches the current team composition is selected can be explained purely as a matter of skill.
2/ Great, lets train up more American engineers to push the demand higher.
For some visa classes, the law says you should hire an American citizen if they can do the job - not if they rank first at whiteboards or fizz-buzz.
> If tomorrow you were to tell (let say) Google they now need to hire only US citizens, would they lower their hiring bar
Does it really matter? To a point, obviously, but a lot of people are good enough for the role without being the world's best. The bar for getting into Google has dropped since its early days, and Google keeps breaking profit records quarter after quarter.
This entire "hire the best or nothing" mindset has led to a dysfunctional hiring process that's a pain to both employers and employees, and is prima facie unachievable.
As an interviewer, I don't rank candidates. I have my set of questions, some candidates solve them, others don't. You can argue that it's the bar to do your job properly. Should politicians tell big tech companies what's the bar for being a successful SWE?
> When it comes to national interest, the argument for "meritocracy" falls apart quickly.
A lot of US tech exists because of skilled foreign workers. I'm not sure what would be the tech industry without them.
Someone in your org does - an individual or committee: that's the entire purpose of the hiring pipeline. I've interviewed candidates at multiple companies small and (extremely) big, and interviews always have to give recommendations for ranking purposes (out of 10/100, or (strong-/)yes / maybe / (strong-/)no)
I am not attacking you personally, but the fact remains: in some circumstances hiring "the best" - when they happen to be a non-citizen - can be in contravention with the law depending on the visa class and whether you failed to find an American capable of doing the job.
Don't just take my word for it, big tech companies have lost or settled multiple AG suits because they tried to hide job postings from Americans, e.g. by posting SWE/PM jobs in some podunk, print-only Farmers-Weekly-type magazines.
> A lot of US tech exists because of skilled foreign workers.
I fully agree. Unfortunately being skilled doesn't grant them the right to vote, and as young people keep finding out, those who write (and sign) laws care a lot about what actual voters think and feel. You have to get into office first before you can do the hard labor-policy stuff.
It's common for the prevailing wage to be double what that person could earn in their country of origin.
You don't need the carrot of a green card or the stick of deportation to make a software engineer on an H1B accept a depressed wage, because it's not depressed relative to their alternatives.
* The expected marginal increase in supply, from immigrants looking for jobs in F
* The expected marginal increase in demand, from immigrants (or non-immigrants identifying an opportunity) starting companies that need experts in F
And how strongly does that delta correlate with average salary in F?
What a brilliant plan. Lets make sure that we restrict the supply of doctors and medical personell, that's sure to improve care!
[1]https://www.newsweek.com/microsoft-layoffs-2026-xbox-h1b-vis...
That would be a market based solution that allows everyone to get the talent they need without driving down American wages.
But the point isn't about helping Americans, it's about being peedormatively against letting in brown people.
Also encompasses the self-destruction of military power, alliances, and beneficial trade.
They are insurgents. These people are Confederates.
Trump first term was make Mexico and Vietnam Great Again as companies moved their manufacturing there. This term its make India Great Again as companies retain and train their tech talent there.
If not, are you willing to equate the current Chinese regime’s quality to that of your perceived quality of the US?
But really, immigrating to any country is quite complex. It's far from "just fill out a form" for pretty much every western country.
There is no right for non-citizens to come to the US.
“Once we squeeze all we can out of the United States, it can dry up and blow away.”
—Benjamin "Netanyahu" Mileikowsky
> U.S. intelligence sources report that the one Israeli who is considered an extreme threat to U.S. national security is former prime minister and current prime minister hopeful Binyamin Netanyahu. Not only has Netanyahu visited convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard in his North Carolina prison cell and advocated strenuously for his release, but he was once overheard by an ex-CIA agent as saying to a group of his supporters, "Once we squeeze all we can out of the United States, it can dry up and blow away." Considering the damage the neocons and their Israeli facilitators are causing for U.S. national security, Netanyahu may soon have his wish.
(https://web.archive.org/web/20101121090204/http://onlinejour...)
I don't like Bibi and he should definitely go, but if that's your source... Enjoy.
Another theory is that the leadership in Israel is not really thinking long term. They are suffering from the same issues that other poor leaders like Trump are suffering from. They're just looking at themselves and what benefits them in the short term, so the moves that they're making are beneficial in the short term but very detrimental in the long term.
It's possible that they think that the US decline is inevitable due to uncontrolled spending, the decline in development in its people and other issues etc. and so they are grabbing as much as they can before it collapses and then afterwards they align with the next superpower there have been some moves in that direction to open up to China although small. Its a risky move because China may not treat them anywhere near as well so Israel has to work harder to earn its seat at the table but if the US decline is out of their full control then the next best move is to grab as much as you can before it comes crashing down and then move on.
So if you were essentially having a spasm about how no one understands how perfect the world was when you had all the advantages, I mean, we don't need a fancy theory at that point. It's literally old people spewing up acid about why their kids don't come to Thanksgiving, only we managed to create such a presence in the world media, it's a damned disaster.
The U.S. had a draconian restrictive immigration policy from 1921-1965. That worked fine. How can you say with a straight face that someone must be a “foreign agent” to think doing the same thing again will have the same result? Surely the burden is on you to prove the opposite, right?
Either way, your whataboutism isn’t even relevant since those were congressional changes.
This is the executive trying to undermine the law.
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
It's not exactly an unbiased selection but it is interesting.
Better for whom? People are struggling to afford groceries largely because the dollar is worth 1/165th of its 1913 value and the minimum wage hasn't been raised in 17 years.
I found a job that pays in BTC and I'm super hopeful about that one because my effective salary won't go down by 3-8% every year but instead will appreciate relative to what things are priced in.
Minorities and women, for a start.
In the area of women’s rights, for example, the driving force was mainline protestants who wanted prohibition, in opposition to recent immigrants: https://www.wpbstv.org/prohibition-and-the-suffrage-movement.... If America had remained an Anglo-Protestant society, it likely would have developed on a similar trajectory as Canada, the UK, and Australia on issues like abortion. Remember, Roe v. Wade had five Nixon and Eisenhower Republicans in the majority. The party shifted positions on the issue with Reagan because it was a way to flip a large number of catholics, who had overwhelmingly voted democrat until then. Evangelical protestants plus religious Catholics was a big enough coalition to offset mainline protestants on the issue.
I looked at that data and decided deliberately, out of rational self interest to be just like them and put my own race first exactly like they do. Equality!
Hard to parse .. ESL ?
That aside, what made up assertive nonsense is this? There are many stories and studies about various non Caucasian groups WhiteMaxxing to make themselves look more Caucasian because <reasons>.
eg: (2013) - Asian women are turning to plastic surgery to look more Caucasian https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/asian-women-are-tur...
(I'm not sure they're right about the overall effect though.)
Even if they don't give me a raise, I'll still have more purchasing power at the end of a year rather than less as the case with USD.
"the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49453997
We should modularize our discussion to distinguish between the various effects of immigration and the most humane/optimal way to enforce immigration law.
If you give any debit for the decade-long Great Depression, or wartime malaise due to loss of life, emotional toll, and rationing, it’s fair to conclude that half of the period of good times was during exactly that post-war rebuilding (largely powered by US industrial capacity) and concomitant baby boom.
I hope this because it’d be hilarious if they got what they wanted and realized that meant actual open borders with most or all of the Americas.
Even odder: what makes you find it plausible that an understanding of the policies of this period and their effect on the economy were part of the decision-making process of this administration - especially when they have actively voiced opinions that fully explain this action? At some point bending backwards to provide some benefit of the doubt is saying more about the speaker than the topic - I am certainly of the opinion that we are well beyond that rubicon. I cannot fathom the reasoning at this point.
It’s strong evidence that immigration restriction isn’t economically destructive. If you think economic circumstances have changed and the result would be different this time, then I think you have the burden to prove it.
I'll concede that this statistic is cold comfort if you fall into that 5% category, but the point is that work visa almost always means non-immigrant.
Why do you wonder if it's economic instead of the Trump administration's announced policies of stopping immigration, including unconstitutionally removing birthright citizenship?
Every economic analysis I have ever seen shows that there's economic surplus from immigrants entering a local economy; more jobs and more wealth is created, per person, than if those people had not come. In particular I'm thinking of some studies of local economy in Miami when there have been bursts of immigration.
That was study about Cuban immigrants into Miami, a city with large Cuban population and thus existing infrastructure to absorb. I wouldn't draw that study into anything broader.
As someone in Local Politics, the issue generally is, immigration, esp of unskilled kind decimates local budgets since they are generally directly tied to number of people. Here is CBO report on it. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61464
Now, type of immigration that mostly impacts this study is not type of immigration that is impacted by visa application processing halting but acting like "Yea, this current system is working GREAT!" is false. This is what so annoying about this issue, it's in clear need of change but Congress refuses to do it and Trump doesn't have leadership to get it done.
No it's a negative sum thing. Especially when they come in at such insane rates as they did under Biden. Notice you car insurance rates going up? Housing costs skyrocketing? Hospital waits taking forever? That's the cost of mass immigration. And that's not even accounting for the millions of illegal immigrants.
>Every economic analysis
Since there apparently so many, surely you wouldn't mind citing a handful.
Regarding your concerns, I don’t see why it is unreasonable to simply renounce citizenship later or just simply double check your travel itinerary during the late stages of a pregnancy. This seems like at best an unfounded concern.
However being a dual citizen isn't necessarily all upside. Citizenship comes with requirements, particularly in some countries military service is mandatory and so if you're a citizen - even though you are a permanent resident of somewhere else, you must either go do your service or maybe pay a fine depending on the country.
You also get treated differently if things go wrong. Foreigners are entitled in most cases to diplomatic assistance from the representatives of their country. Your country can't necessarily do much for you, but typically you will get that phone call home to let loved ones know what happened, they can find a lawyer who speaks your language (but you'll need to find a way to pay them), if there's some paperwork snafu they might be able to help (often for a fee). It's at least nice, if you're jailed or in hospital after surprise food poisoning or whatever, to hear somebody who speaks your language.
None of this applies to dual citizens. You're "home" from their point of view, so no need to contact your diplomatic representative, maybe you have never been there since the day you were born and can't speak a word of the language but too bad.
Not treated differently. Treated the same.
You are required by law to enter your country of citizenship using that country's passport (this is true for every country). Not doing so can result in fines or jail time. This is precisely to stop idiots from playing the "foreigner" card to try to, for example get out of paying a speeding ticket or parking fines.
you have a kid like billions of other people in the world, nothing special tbh besides it is "your" kid
you just want a subscription pass to a country, and i think people like that are useless freeloader people who want none of the stakes and all of the benefits
cool you can code and get hired by some company, or maybe you start a company. so what?
The first because a lower supply of labor is going to create breathing space for an entire working population who will see tremendous job upheaval due to AI automation. A lower aggregate demand on houses, services will also be welcome to take the fuel out of inflation, and maybe we'll regain some of that experience of true affluence, where scarce things (e.g. access to cabin in the woods, a rowhome in a walkable city, ...) are in abundance. There is also the import of an idle, criminal element that has very clearly reduced quality of life and safety in many places.
Birthright citizen should be abolished because birth tourism and illegally crossing the border to have anchor babies are a vector for foreigners to participate politically and claim imho undeserved welfare benefits.
I think largely these are the stated reasons of the administration too.
The change would require 2/3 of all states to approve a constitutional amendment. It won't ever pass. Most of us are only citizens because someone up the chain was born under this rule.
My family came here in the early 1700s and fought in the revolution. It would be a disgrace for me to do anything other than support immigrants.
And we can amend constitutional rights. It most definitely will happen in our lifetimes.
> Most of us are only citizens because someone up the chain was born under this rule.
And?
You think the world in 2026 is exactly the same as in 1776?
What about slavery? Good idea in 1776 therefore good idea in 2026?
If it were really part of a coherent anti-inflation, pro-housing strategy, then, well, a lot of other policies would be different... (Including signing the ROAD act, not starting trade wars, or driving up the price of oil)
I have seen a lot of freakouts about birth tourism since the recent SCOTUS ruling and I haven’t seen anyone give even the most cursory overview of the actual scale of the supposed problem. It’s purely an emotional reaction.
Or if they do, surely there are ways wealthy "real Americans" could hide their money just as easily and defraud welfare, so this isn't really a problem specific to birth tourism.
So the immigrants end up with the same birth rate and then we have to bring in more immigrants. So there would have to be a constant source of excess people somewhere else for this to be sustainable. So it gets to a point where I wonder if this is really the plan.
You're assuming the birthrate can be "fixed". Japan has an even worse demographic problem. They've tried "fixing" it and nothing much works. Similar for South Korea. Japan would certainly benefit from opening up to more immigration. Countries that can attract more immigration are going to benefit economically as the birthrates continue to decline globally. Why not be attractive to immigrants instead of wanting to repel them?
Not to mention how unsustainable it is anyways, what happens a few years down the line when the immigrants stop having kids? There isn't an infinite ocean of people you can import on a whim, and definitely not forever.
very consistent correlations between migrants being net positive economic providers, more law abiding then native citizens, and just straight up regurgitating racist myths
mass deportations won’t solve anything economic when it’s the same admin hamstringing prices and rates with tariffs, war, and defacto support of the oligopoly
i really wish basement dwellers like you though of something original now and then
Occam's razor. When somebody shows you who they are, believe them. Nativism is possibly the only stable and coherent political ideology this admin holds. Everything else is negotiable, but not this one.
There's nothing inherently wrong with pausing immigration visas. These commenters act like anything less than fully open borders and unlimited immigration quotas makes you Satan reincarnate.
They intentionally over-dramatize everything he does to spread fear and alarmism cause that's all they can do. It's so tiring and nonsensical.
Just think of it as the return of the 19th-century Know Nothings or the 1920s nativists if the Nazi comparison makes you squeamish.
But since you asked, here you go: https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/microsoft-...
Vivek Wadhwa, one of the staunchest supporters of H1B (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12489558) is now recommending to end it: https://x.com/wadhwa/status/2090958079726927873
Supreme Court doesn’t get to throw out an amendment because it’s old.
"The State Department and Department of Homeland Security are reviewing all B-1 business and B-2 tourist visas, he said."
From CBP's own website[1], emphasis is mine:
An immigrant visa (IV) is issued to a foreign national wishing to live permanently in the United States.
A nonimmigrant visa (NIV) is issued to a foreign national with permanent residence outside the United States but wishes to be in the United States on a temporary basis for tourism, medical treatment, *business, temporary work, or study*, as examples. Note: There are more than 20 different categories of nonimmigrant visa classifications.
So far he has driven away allies, put huge tariff on our most loyal allies. Driven away manufacturing by tariff policies. Driven away immigrants and academics. Pushed a last century oil based economy. Shown us how our exquisite weapon tech will fail (this might actually be good in the long run). Along with crippling our cybersecurity and state departments.
Then starting ~2016 Trump and his DoJ made it borderline impossible for Chinese nationals to get visas, specifically targeting research universities. Since then new Chinese skilled immigration has slowed down to a trickle, and there has been a massive "brain gain" of existing talent in China's favor.
The result - China now has a booming tech industry, Chinese universities have overlapped Amercian ones in research output, China is a very close 2nd in the AI race. And as skilled immigrants continue to be driven out of the US China in particular will enjoy the benefits.
(Musk started X.com while on a student visa and didn't get around to securing a work visa until many years later. This rule violation technically renders his U.S. citizenship void under Trump-era immigration rules.)
* indefinitely pauses legal immigration *
They like to complain that "big government inefficient and bad" while actively making it inefficient and bad. They are fulfilling their own prophecies.
Similar to immigration I'm sure. If all immigration is illegal then it's all bad!
If you really believe what you wrote then I'd suggest to "GetThemOut*" your own immigrant heritage out of the country.
* as your trolling username says
And your lesson from this is that Native Americans should continue to be ignored and more immigrants let in?
If you care about Native Americans (and don't just use them as a rhetorical device to argue with people on the internet) then surely, you'd support a reduction in immigration, right?
No, that is just the conclusion you want to make. Stop putting in my mouth the words I didn't say.
The natives rightly attempted to fight off the Europeans. They lost.
It does not follow that the Europeans here now should just let in whoever wants to come in, to the point that the Europeans themselves are outnumbered.
If the Europeans fight and the newcomers win, so be it. But why should the Europeans lay down and let it happen? Especially when they trivially have the ability to stop it, unlike the natives. For now, anyway…
Being anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration doesn't mean you want to flood the country with legal immigrants. That's the case in the UK, by the way, where the vast majority of immigrants are legal and it's the reason for the growing anti-immigrant attitude of the natives.
People who are anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration also have requirements like:
- there should be a fixed number of legal immigrants
- they should be well vetted (this may be lacking in the US and UK)
- legal immigration should be points based
- quotas for legal immigrants should be increased contingent on the number of illegal immigrants which are expelled
- there should be checks to verify that visas are not abused (the way H1Bs are abused in the US with under qualified immigrants)
- asylum should be abolished because it's abused. It can be replaced by paying poorer countries to permanently host asylees.
> Being anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration doesn't mean you want to flood the country with legal immigrants.
If only there were something between 0 and unrestricted immigration, some sort of program where people apply for permission and the government issues approvals for individuals to enter its borders after meeting legal criteria.
Nobody is banning legal immigration. It's being restricted. The headline itself says "pauses". Do you think no legal immigrant will be let into the US until 2028?
> some sort of program where people apply for permission
Yes, and if that program is being abused (just ask people here on HN about H1Bs to see how they feel), then you pause it until you figure out how to solve it.
In 2024, I didn't think we'd be murdering protesters in the streets or kidnapping heads of state or inciting global tariff wars paid for by US citizens or watching the president take billions of dollars of bribes using cryptocurrency.
Why do you think thos government is responding to something in a good faith attempt at improving a system?
Lol, just three comments from being "pro-legal immigration" to ... whatever this is.
If pro-Trump commenters are like this, couldn't they at least start with praising ICE? Would have saved time for everyone.
"Ugh! Now look at the bad thing you made me do! It's entirely your fault, this all happened because you kept on warning me it was a bad thing and that I should stop doing it."
Nonsense, the prediction coming true so easily shows it wasn't an "overreaction" in the first place. There is no iatrogenic chain of causation here.
Like, you know that about Pretti right? That he was shot on his hands and knees surrounded by agents who celebrated? I don't think someone on HN would knowingly lie about the government murdering citizens.
If only there was some kind of reasonable investigation by the government about those things.
You're right on one thing, defending human rights against government misbehavior and abuse of power seems to be exclusively left wing these days.
Oh, and that Venezuelan takeover we did, which likely led to massive amounts of fraud and wealth transfer to Trump and others? That illegal act and feckless obedience of the legislature is the same root cause for the illegal tariffs you seem to dislike.
It's a real shame that just when we have the tech and infrastructure to allow people to travel anywhere in the world within a day, for a single person to be able to explore the entirety of this awesome planet for the first time in human history,
that the worst among us have to enforce artificial borders and deny everyone this basic freedom.
Travel should be codified as a human right.
If someone can support themselves and doesn't harm anybody, what ethical justification does anybody have for denying a person from living where they want?
Fish Fails to Detect Water
The easiest way to see it is look at Japanese portrayals (outsider perspective). Cowboys, horses, guns, pride in our military and our free speech, fireworks and BBQs.
Just because you look down on the culture doesn't mean there isn't one.
The natives of the Americas, Australia, and the many nations previously colonized by European countries, know that better than any descendants of the colonizers.
Did they get to have any say?
a very postnational view, humanist in a way, lipsius or erasmus would recognize it.
that sort of individuated cosmopolitanism only works for educated men and women with means, who have or have the capacity to self-actualize.
not for the masses. the nation is still a cradle to protect and nurture the commonwealth, and given that they took hundreds to sometimes thousands of years to form, i don't think borders are artificial in the least.
So because not everyone can afford to travel freely we shouldn't let anyone do that?
"Borders" as they are treated today began barely 200 years ago, and only started being enforced so strictly since WW1 and then even worse after WW2.
For the vast >95% of human history, if you could walk to somewhere and survive there, you could live there.
The real ironic shit is that most of the travel and immigration restrictions of today are instituted by the descendants of people that invaded and occupied the lands of other people :')
For 95% of human history we were hunter gatherers living in extremely sparsely populated areas.
From AP NEWS. Sooo Trump can get deported? Is anyone draining public coffers faster than him?
The most important thing to note is this for immigrant visas ie green cards. As yet, nonimmigrant visas such as visitor, student and employment visas are unaffected. That may change. It's also unclear if K1 (fiance) visas are affected because they're technically nonimmigrant but they'll probably be treated as immigrant visas.
This has the most effect on family-based green cards. The most common type is a marriage-based green card but there are also green cards for parents, children and even siblings of primarily US citizens but also lawful permanent residents ("LPRs").
When a US citizen or LPR marries a non-resident and they wish to live in the US, you broadly have three routes to make this happen:
1. If they're within the US, you can do an adjustment of status ("AoS"). This is where you file an I130 and an I485. Generally you do this concurrently. If you're an LPR and not a citzen then you might not because you may need to wait for a visa to become available. There can be other reasons depending on the foreign spouse's immigration history, whether they're in removal proceedings and what other immigration benefits they've applied for;
The I130 is filed by the sponsor (ie the citizen or LPR) and it basically shows that you both are free to marry and the marriage is legal. If neither of you have been married before, this is relatively straightforward. It can be difficult otherwise but an I130 is generally considered routine;
The I485 is filed by the immigrant to adjust status. It can be based on an approved I130 or filed concurrently (within the US only). This is where USCIS will determine if they believe the marriage is bona fide, meaning there's no fraud taking place. This includes the submission of marriage evidence (eg joint bank accounts, bills in both of your names, a lease or deed in both of your names, photos, proof of the relationship and so on). USCIS makes a holistic determination based on the totality of your case and prior immigration history. For various reasons, you may have a bar on adjusting and may need a waiver;
2. If the foreign spouse is outside the US, you will generally need to do what's called consular processing. You file the I130 as per normal and once it's approved you apply with the consulate. Depending on the country it may take over a year to get an appointment and the embassy and/or USCIS may end up sitting on the case. This whole process can take years. If granted, you are granted a visa to enter the US. Upon entry, you get a green card; or
3. The so-called fiance visa (K1). In this case you are unamrried and the foreign fiance is outside the US. It's similar to consular processing. If granted, you get a visa stamp and can enter the US. You need to marry within 90 days of entry and then you apply for adjustment of status within the US.
So, what has this administration done to block legal immigration? A ton, actually:
1. They've placed various bans on the issuance of visas to citizens of certain countries. There are 3 such bans in place now and they're called the 19, 39 and 75 country bans. I honestly forget which is which. What happens in consular processing and fiance visa cases is that you go through all the above steps including a consular interview and then... nothing. The consulate is forbidden from issuing you a visa by executive order.
Although it's never been estated, the administration tends to take a broad view of citizenship. For example, if you were born in Afghanistan and your family moved to Canada when you were 1 month old and you've never been there in your life, this administration treats you as an Afghan for the purposes of the bar.
2. The administration implemented a rule whereby you have to consular process in the country of your birth regardless of where you live. There's really no reason for this rule other than to make it harder for people from "shithole" countries to get visas because certain countries have incredibly long wait times for consulate interviews. And if your country of birth has no consulate, they'll assign you to another one and that may not be convenient or even possible (ie you may not be able to enter that country);
3. The administration released a policy memo that stated that adjustment within the US was an "extraordinary" rememdy and that most cases should consular process. They like consular processing because AoS can be challenged in federal court whereas the Supreme Court has ruled that the president has broad powers to limit immigration so consular decisions generally can be reviewed by any court. So the various bans will likely stop issuance of visas to citizens of those countries outside of the US until, at a minimum, Trump leaves office;
4. They're introducing a new rule that's typically called "public charge". This is a new standard whereby USCIS should reject visa applications from people who have been or they consider will be a "public charge", meaning rely on public benefits. You can guess the skew in what countries this does and doesn't apply to;
5. When you adjust within the US, you can optionally apply for an employment authorization document ("EAD") ie a work card. In earlier times, this would arrive within 2-3 months and allow a person to work legally while their I485 case is being processed. It seems like since January 21, 2025, USCIS has basically stopped issuing EADs to make life difficult for immigrants in most cases;
6. To adjust within the US, you need to be inspected at the border. People without this (eg they sneak across the border) are called entering without inspection ("EWI"). This administration has decided some previous programs under Biden specifically (eg CBP One and TPS) in most cases won't be treated as valid entries. This generally means you need a difficult to get waiver to adjust and if you leave to consular process, you're facing a 3-10 year bar and possibly a permanent bar depending on circumstances;
7. In certain circumstances to adjust within the US you have to maintain valid status the entire time or be in status at the time you apply. This administration is trying to take the view that TPS is not valid status for this purpose. This can be mean you're retroactively out of status and can be placed in rmeoval and/or face a bar if you leave and try and return;
8. Various humanitarian programs to parole in place ("PIP") have been ended, forcing people to leave the country to adjust and then face bans from certain countries, bars for unlawful status and/or inadmissibility;
9. There have been pilot programs, particularly in San Diego, to coordinate removals by ICE when people go an appointment at USCIS for an interview or check-in;
10. Judges in immigration court are not Article III judges like federal judges are. They can be fired by the executive for any rason. This president basically fires judges that approve too many cases;
11. Previously, people in removal proceedings depending on their circumstances could get out on bond. For a lot of people, this has been eliminated;
12. ICE will generally try and get someone out of the jurisdiction after picking them up to avoid getting blocked by a habeas petition in federal court. Often they're moved to jurisdictions with far friendlier judges (eg Louisiana). They can also be moved randomly to make it hard to family or even their attodrneys to find and talk to them;
13. There is a ton of evidennce that USCIS is sitting on cases to delay for really no good reason. For example, they'll approve the I130 and just not make a ruling on an I485. This can force people to pay even more money to go into federal court and get a writ of mandamus;
14. Naturatlization has a requirement for "good moral character". Up until thi sadministration, that's been treated as the lack of bad moral character, such as a conviction for certain aggravated offences. This administration takes the view that an applicant has to instead prove good moral character, which can be letters of support from citizens;
15. Denaturalization has historically been a very rare occurrence. It requires the government to go into federal court and make a case that you committed fraud to become a citizen. Historically this has been a few dozen casea a year at most. Now it's in the hundreds. That's still not a lot but people expect this to ramp up. They're also taking a broader view of grounds for denaturalization. For example, if you committed a disqualifying offence before you naturalized but weren't charged and convicted until after, they isometimes now go after that where they didn't previously;
16. They've implemented so-called third-country deportation. That is, you can be deported to some other country entirely if your home country won't take you or if it's deemed unsafe for you to return to that country. So, you can flee civil war in South Sudan and be deported to El Salvador now. Historically, we didn't do this;
17. This week they announced they were going to revoke the B1/B2 visas for asylum seekers issued in the last 10 years. For anyone who doesn't know, visitor visas typically allow you to enter the US for up to 6 months. It's up the officer at the port of entry and they just make it up, basically.
People who seek asylum are generally forgiven for however they get into the country as long as they entered with inspection. There is a huge backlog in immigration cases from the mid 2010s that are still pending.
Now those visas have long expired so what's the point? I have a theory. When you apply for a temporary visa, you're asked what it's for. So for a visit visa, it might be to go to the World Cup. At any point later on if they find you didn't do what you said you were going to do, they can view that as misrepresentation (ie immigration fraud). This is particularly the case for people who get a visit visa, come to the US and get married within a short window of time.
A finding a misrepresetation can make you permanently inadmissible and that makes you ineligible to adjust.
So what's the point of expiring old visas? I believe they're going to say certain asylum seekers committed immigration fraud to get into the country and they'll find them inadmissible and use that as an excuse to deport them, something we never previously did;
Or, that evocation will potentially break your chain of maintaining status retroactively, making you ineligible to adjust in other circumstances; and
18. The latest: immigrant visas are being paused in consular processing cases, ostensibly for "retraining" in public charge scenarios.
Or is this in retaliation for a federal judge ruling 6 days ago that Trump's ban on immigration from 75 countries was unlawful?
Right wing oligarchs want infinite immigration because they get a larger labor pool and lower wages. Right wing normies want less immigration because they don't want to compete with the entire world for a job and don't want to become a minority in their own country.
Spend some time on X and you can see the two parts of the right wing attack each other over this issue.
Yet in the next thread over, people are crucifying DHH for saying the same thing, except they are spinning it as "denying their right to exist"... somehow.
> Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein had been at work!
-- 1984
To borrow from Baum (The Wizard of Oz): today there's not only a curtain with men behind it, but a man in front of the curtain that everyone is pointing to (a la Goldstein). And if he stops being useful they'll replace him. This has happened several times already while the men behind the curtain and long standing policies he people hate remain unchanged.
Emmanuel Goldstein: An exiled academic in hiding with a death-sentence over his head for criticizing the despotic government.
You: "People like myself who actually read 1984 know that Trump is basically Goldstein! Not any other character. The parallels are impossible to ignore."
If you really read the book, then that's tragic, because all you learned was how to embody doublethink.
Do you not remember the two-minutes-hate where they screamed at Emmanuel Goldstein? Apparently not. The point is people rabidly attack Trump when his policies - especially foreign - are indistinguishable from Biden, Obama, and Clinton. You're attacking a dummy setup for that. Your obsession with him makes it obvious. Israel gets whatever they want instantly, and Americans get fancy speeches from figureheads.
You're the one screaming at a figurehead and accusing me of doublethink? Read the book again.
Whatever the party affiliation, he was an actual thief and scam-artist at the public’s expense, so wouldn’t be a great example of some high water mark for public service.
The recruiting at a typical research university has an woke dimension to it - and I am reporting my personal experience, not hearsay:
Out of five scores each student was graded on, three were basically pure wokism like: describe how you overcame a difficult prejudice in life, or talk about how your presence will contribute to an inclusive environment ... only one was probing actual skills ...
PS: I have nothing against immigration - I am an immigrant myself ... a former immigrant student at that ...
I am against the selection process that ignores talented, skilled people and replaces them with mediocre people with some (probably made-up) nice woke story.
I am saying we are not selecting for those people.
When we hire at the university, we ignore creative, tenacious people and instead select mediocre people with a nice woke story that meets the woke requirements.
Which university? Name some "creative, tenacious people" who were rejected by said university.
There's nothing in your HN profile to out you to anyone, so have at it. If you are unwilling to do so, I call bullshit on your anecdote. Or as they say, "pix, or it didn't happen."
"Woke" is a nonsense scare phrase at this point, when what you're actually taking issue with is valuing people's lived experiences and backgrounds as a part of what they contribute. Understanding where people come from and how that colors their world view is simply a good practice when doing anything, but especially when you're trying to do science/academia. Too many similar minds in a room will never produce what one with a diverse group will. Diversity is good science, and valuing it is not "woke".
If you don't like the term given to your basket of political beliefs give one that encapsulates it that you like better.
"MAGAts" is the obvious 'other side' parallel. Both sides have their crazies and denying that one exists means you're obviously one of them. As a Pacific Green I don't even like the fact that I can say "both" and people both know what I'm talking about and perpetuates the misguided notion that only two parties exist.
We can also take a more critical look at the definition of what being American is. The 20th century, especially pre-1920, was rife with illegal immigration. Why should the descendants of those who skipped the line, who didn't come in "the right way", be able to now call themselves American and reap the unearned benefits of citizenship? They've taken and continue to take jobs from Americans who need them.
They aren't really pausing for training. The training is an excuse for the pause. The pause is to cause pain and difficulty and try to get people not to immigrate. Because they don't like immigrants.
It's a bullshit excuse that's barely more palatable than the truth, brought to you by the same people who paused immigration for almost all of Africa except for "Caucasian South Africans".
What Mayorkas alone did to this country is treason: https://x.com/search?q=from%3Afentasyl%20mayorkas&src=typed_...
What absolute steaming garbage. Literally 158 refugee visas have been approved this year for anyone but South Africans. And all asylum applications have been suspended since last 2025 except for... again, guess.
https://www.rpc.state.gov/admissions-and-arrivals/
2026 refugees:
Africa: 10,255 (10,105 of which are South African)
Asia: 0
Europe/Central Asia: 0
Former Soviet Union: 0
Latin America, Caribbean: 0
Near East, South Asia: 3
PSI: 0
Where are all these other refugees who are, according to you, just walking right in?
Two other Trump years are also the lowest refugee approvals.
The next lowest years are nearly double that.
Keep spewing bullshit talking points, or feel free to spin how the State Department is probably still controlled by Democrats or something.
Users keep downvoting my comment even though it is the only literal interpretation supported by the evidence, without any evidence to the contrary. I would rethink only if it lasts over three months.
Note also that courts would easily overrule Trump if the pause became unreasonable.
By the way, you also haven't provided any evidence for your opinion, why would you burden type replies with it?
And yet we have an entirely open-ended "We have nooooo idea how long this will take!"
Garbage. This is the same administration that paused all immigration from Africa except for "Caucasian South Africans" who were classified as refugees by default, regardless of their motivation on immigration.
This is just Stephen Miller doing exactly what he said he intended to do, and exactly what Project 2025 said the government should do (meanwhile, Trump, "What's that? Never heard of it").
It will take about two weeks. Is that right, two weeks? We'll have it done in about two weeks I'm told by some, very intelligent people.