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We didn't have a lottery system a decade ago: What we had was big quotas, but the same number of green cards as we've had for many decades. So instead of a usel

by hibikir 10y ago

We didn't have a lottery system a decade ago: What we had was big quotas, but the same number of green cards as we've had for many decades. So instead of a useless H1-B system which only helped big outsourcers, what we had was a big H1B population that had to wait even longer to get permanent residency. Make green cards quotas bigger and people that will stay here anyway will just spend a lot less time as indentured servants, making them far less interesting to the companies that are actually exploitative. But that sounds like we are bringing in more immigrants, and that's not something that the now suddenly very protectionist US will want to do.

mavelikara 10y ago
Of the 1M people immigrating every year, only 14% goes to skilled workers on H-1B. Of these both the primary applicant and their family get counted separately, so the actual number is closer to 7%. Of these 7%, there is a per-country limits - Iceland (population 320K) and India (population 1.2B) both are allotted the same number of Green Cards. These limits treat each nation equally, but not immigrant equally. Applicants from Iceland get their Green Card in few months, but those from India will have to wait many years to get theirs. This is broken.