19 ms·

150-Year Green Card Wait for Indian Immigrants With Advanced Degrees

91 points by varunsaini 8y ago

varunsaini 8y ago
I am one who can be in this boat and don’t know what to do yet.
- sus_007 8y ago
  I am thinking about coming aboard this particular boat i.e come to the USA. What would you do if you were me ?
  - sfbay 8y ago
    Canada
    - behringer 8y ago
      Mexico
    - HarryHirsch 8y ago
      European Union Blue Card. Just consider the healthcare mess in the US.
      - rs999gti 8y ago
        > Just consider the healthcare mess in the US. And even with that, there are still 600K Indians trying become US citizens.
        throwaway12122 8y ago
        That was because being in US was considered a status symbol until recently. Parents used to feel proud to tell their friends and relatives that my son/daughter is in US, even though deep down they are afraid of ending up alone. I see an Indian eagerly waiting to be picked for the H1B visa similar to the Sausage Party movie where they all wait eagerly at the supermarket thinking outside the door is heaven or something. I agree some of the things (especially pay) are better than in India, but they are loosing a lot. And India is only going to get better (probably in another 10-15 years, lot of things in India will be comparable to what US has currently). Coming back to the parents, now with all the negative coverage of H1B in Indian media, people have a negative perception of being in US. My visa expired and is in process of renewal. I didn't go to office one day. My dad thought I wasn't going because I was hiding from the authorities since my visa expired. They have been asking me to come back for a while now. 600K Indians out of 1 billion is nothing. Huge number of Indians don't want to leave India. I hope you know that. It becomes more evident once you are in the marriage market. Lot of them are downright reject proposals from people who work in US. Also, I never heard of Canada immigration until 1 year back. Now, a lot of my friends/colleagues are talking about or in the process of applying for the Canadian visa. And a good number of those who apply for green card don't do it because they want to become a citizen. Its because once you complete a certain stage of green card (I-140), you can continue working in the country. Otherwise, you have to leave once you complete 6 years. They plan to work for 10-20 years, and come back to India and retire nicely with all the money they made in US.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - georgeecollins 8y ago
    Come to the US. We reward talented people and it is a nice country to live in.
    - behringer 8y ago
      You spelt Canada wrong.
  - toweringgoat 8y ago
    Canada, Europe, Australia, NZ. There are places with Bay Area style salaries, there are other places with lower salaries - either way, you'll be living a comfortable life since costs will be lower than Bay Area. You'll universally find a much better healthcare system (e.g. health insurance not tied to your employer), with the exception of the UK. You'll find a humane immigration system that doesn't kick you out if your employer decides to screw you over (again with the exception of the UK). You'll generally have some form of state support if you lose your job instead of being thrown to homelessness. Etc etc. The US is a second world country nowadays. And any children you might have will be far safer, and at lower risk for severe mental health problems.
    - mFixman 8y ago
      None of those places have anywhere near Bar Area salaries: London, by far the city with the highest salaries in the West outside of the US, has salaries that are 70% of the ones you'd get in California before counting a significant amount of extra income and sales taxes and almost similarly ridicolous housing. On the other hand, the private insurance in the UK that's usually included in big tech companies' work is absolutely top-notch.
      - guitarbill 8y ago
        In absolute values, those salaries are the highest, but for quality of living, that's largely irrelevant unless your hobbies need large amounts of capital. For example, in big cities in Europe, you can easily and happily get by without a car, which saves a lot. You have more vacation. No tipping. Easier/more obvious ways to save for retirement. Your kids not having to do active shooter drills at school. Cheaper/free schools and universities. Maternal/paternal leave. Etc, etc. So if you have a family, or thinking of starting a family, it's worth factoring that stuff in.
    - partycoder 8y ago
      You might need to revisit the definition of second world countries (soviet aligned countries during the cold war).
    - 8y ago
djrogers 8y ago
This is one of the enormous penalties we as a nation have to pay because neither of our political parties actually wants to solve the illegal immigration issue. Republicans get to use ‘illegal immigrants taking jobs’ as a stick to beat democrats with, and progressives use cries of racism to rally support amongst Latino voters. Meanwhile anyone who espouses common sense ideas such as reforming our immigration policy gets called a racist and ‘anti-immigrant’.
- DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
  Could you explain the connection you see between illegal-immigration policies and legal-immigration policies?
- addicted 8y ago
  Umm reforming the immigration policy is exactly what progressives are calling for. The only difference is that the conservatives want to somehow deport everyone who is here and has been here for decades to somewhere while the “progressives” recognize that they are an integral part of the economy and want them to pay a penalty, and stand in the back of the line for American citizenship while they are provided recognized status so they can live in the country legally in the meanwhile. This isn’t both sides not wanting to do anything. This is both sides having very different solutions. All of which is irrelevant to the article since this is discussing legal immigration.
  - pessimizer 8y ago
    > reforming the immigration policy is exactly what progressives are calling for. It might be what progressives are calling for, but it's not what Democrats are calling for when they are in power. Additionally, I'm not sure how progressive it is to prefer elite immigrants with "advanced degrees" over other immigrants.
  - ta76567656 8y ago
    Conservatives (the politicians) pretend to want to deport illegal immigrants to get votes. They don't actually want to do it because a lot of businesses depend on them for cheap labor. You don't even need to deport anyone, just start actually enforcing laws that require employers to check employee eligibility. Fewer jobs for illegal immigrants would mean less incentive for them to come. That nobody has tried this shows IMO that nobody (in power) actually wants it. They just want a few examples to grandstand about for votes. pay a penalty, and stand in the back of the line for American citizenship while they are provided recognized status so they can live in the country legally in the meanwhile. This is basically amnesty/open-borders. Not arguing for or against, but it is. There is no "line" for citizenship, after five years of permanent residency anyone qualifies. The "line" is for the permanent residency (green card), and you have to qualify to even get in the line, that's why people come illegally. So what's the new qualification? "already in the country"? Then what about the people here 20 years from now? Is it a rolling admission? If not then you have the same problem as before. If yes, then the policy is 'open borders' possibly with a qualification of "can avoid getting caught for X years". If you don't find open borders acceptable the only reasonable compromise I can think of is a capped category that anyone can apply for, where the cap is adjusted as needed. Somewhat ike the current Diversity Visa (Green Card lottery) which is capped at around 50K per year, though that cap rarely changes.
pfarnsworth 8y ago
Is it really discrimination if the system is already known to have a per-country limit, and yet more and more people from that country continue to file for Green Cards? Indians who come to the US these days know for a fact there is a 10+ year wait for a Green Card, so they're the ones taking their chances. If they scream discrimination, I call BS on that. It sucks that the system is the way it is, and I think a point-based system like Canada is far more efficient, but it's not discrimination. If there are already known rules, and one particular country comes in an adds a massive amount of applications, you can't turn around and yell discrimination.
- damnyou 8y ago
  Is it really discrimination if the system has separate water fountains for whites and coloreds? It sucks that the system is the way it is, and I think having the same water fountains for everyone is far more efficient. (There is a term for when the system discriminates. It's called... you guessed it, systemic discrimination.)
- taken_username 8y ago
  Slavery was a system in the way it was and it was even legal! You can't turn around and yell this is how it is.
  - oculusthrift 8y ago
    And not being able to swarm into another country is equivalent to slavery?
    - pessimizer 8y ago
      No, the fact that a system of discrimination is already in place is not proof that the system is not discriminatory. If that were true, US chattel slavery would not have been discriminatory.
    - rohit2412 8y ago
      You can limit immigration fairly. But don't tell me I have a lesser chance of working in USA than a Kenyan and that's not discrimination.
temp-dude-87844 8y ago
How does this wait play out in real life? I doubt any company actually waits 15 years, and clearly not lengths exceeding a human lifespan, to fill a position, even if it went through the trouble of filing an I-140 and certified that zero US workers were available. So what do all these applicants do in the meantime? Are they overseas? Are they in the States on dual-intent visas? Are they in some creative legal limbo? If somehow, in the meantime, they obtain a green card or work permit, are they allowed to take that same position, if it's still open -- clearly, they can accept any other position, as they're fully allowed to work in the States, but can they take the one EB-2 and I-140 was filed for originally?
- wetpaws 8y ago
  You can work until your priority date is current and you can even change employer.
  - HarryHirsch 8y ago
    The caveat is that your employer keeps you on a very short leash. If you are fired you must have a new job within 30 days, else must leave the country. Not everyone has the stomach for this, especially if you have a family.
    - wetpaws 8y ago
      In my experience companies do not lay off people, it's a huge legal headache, usually people change jobs on their own. I agree about short leash though, it's really bad, although manageable on H1B. The people on L1 are who are trully screwed up.
      - sigfubar 8y ago
        Are you high? Layoffs - and individual firings - happen all the time. The dirty secret of corporate America is that performance reviews (and even supposedly innocent constructs such as JIRA and other project management software) are really a pretext to firing someone. A firing for poor performance isn’t a significant legal risk if the alleged transgressions are documented in detail.
mankypro 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_ethics
cletus 8y ago
So this is the result of several factors that are at odds with each other. 1. There is no per-country quota on H1Bs 2. There is a per-country quota on EB-1/2/3 GCs 3. And this is crux of the problem: H1Bs are issued indiscriminately, most problematically to so-called bodyshops. There are various proposals to fix the immigration backlog. There's one bill that would get rid of per-country quotas. I wonder what that would do to the backlog of everyone. I kind of see this one as a nonstarter. Bizarrely, it's the current (otherwise abhorrent) administration that is the first to even talk about fixing the real problem, which is (3). H1Bs are a lottery now. When the likes of FAAMG companies can't hire people because the likes of Infosys and Tata are flooding applications for people who will essentially become indentured servants, that's a problem. Infosys settled a visa fraud case with the US government several years ago including a payment of millions of dollars. How exactly are they still able to apply for visas? There are problems with ranking applicants based on salary (or total compensation) as the one proposal would do. This would potentially drown out lower-paid STEM fields that have legitimate need with FAAMG SWEs. Then again... that's still probably better than the current system. People have also complained "well you can't hire graduates if you rank on salary". That's true. But at the same time, are newly minted college graduates fulfilling unsatisfied demand for specialty occupation? Or just being used to lower labour costs?
- mehrdada 8y ago
  +1 This is the correct analysis of the article with sensational title. Of all the problems the immigration system has, this is probably one that is least fundamental and the bill would solve basically zero problems for the nation and is simply a political question of who gets to win a limited resource between various foreign players. The entire premise of "limiting immigration" is discrimination based on a binary national origin/citizenship (i.e. you happened to be one of us or not) so it is comically laughable to talk about how to make such system "fair" without opening it to everyone, which has practical issues. Immigration is an inherently political mechanism constructed as a result of amalgamation of various underlying game theoretic balances and trade-offs over the years between nation states. It's important to note that you cannot divorce the individuals from their own governments/resource allocation when thinking about that.
- 8y ago
matz1 8y ago
Not a bug: working as intended
partycoder 8y ago
The dilemma of intolerance is that tolerating intolerance makes you intolerant. Some forms of intolerance: believing in gender superiority, a caste system, exceptionalism based on ethnicity or country of origin. If you believe in those things, you might have a tolerance problem, no matter where you are from. I try to be as tolerant as possible, and do not have negative views against immigration. But if you are intolerant I will have a hard time getting along if you openly express those views or if you apply those at work.
ng12 8y ago
Isn't it a false assumption that immigrant workers should eventually get Green Cards? The whole point of the H1B system is to temporarily fill shortages of skilled workers, not to be a path for permanent immigration.
- mavelikara 8y ago
  The point of H-1B is to both fill a skilled job temporarily, and as a path to permanent immigration. This is called _dual intent_ technically.
  - ng12 8y ago
    From the DOL: > The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States. The focus seems to be on the temporary nature.
    - mavelikara 8y ago
      > The focus seems to be on the temporary nature. For the DOL, yes. For you too, maybe. But for the individual involved, probably both intents are in equal importance, and that is perfectly legal and moral.
known 8y ago
97% people in India are poor by global standards http://idronline.org/addressing-inequality-in-india/ http://idronline.org/addressing-inequality-in-india/ They'll wait for 250 years

91 points by varunsaini 8y ago

varunsaini 8y ago

I am one who can be in this boat and don’t know what to do yet.

sus_007 8y ago
I am thinking about coming aboard this particular boat i.e come to the USA. What would you do if you were me ?
- sfbay 8y ago
  Canada
  - behringer 8y ago
    Mexico
  - HarryHirsch 8y ago
    European Union Blue Card. Just consider the healthcare mess in the US.
    - rs999gti 8y ago
      > Just consider the healthcare mess in the US. And even with that, there are still 600K Indians trying become US citizens.
      - throwaway12122 8y ago
        That was because being in US was considered a status symbol until recently. Parents used to feel proud to tell their friends and relatives that my son/daughter is in US, even though deep down they are afraid of ending up alone. I see an Indian eagerly waiting to be picked for the H1B visa similar to the Sausage Party movie where they all wait eagerly at the supermarket thinking outside the door is heaven or something. I agree some of the things (especially pay) are better than in India, but they are loosing a lot. And India is only going to get better (probably in another 10-15 years, lot of things in India will be comparable to what US has currently). Coming back to the parents, now with all the negative coverage of H1B in Indian media, people have a negative perception of being in US. My visa expired and is in process of renewal. I didn't go to office one day. My dad thought I wasn't going because I was hiding from the authorities since my visa expired. They have been asking me to come back for a while now. 600K Indians out of 1 billion is nothing. Huge number of Indians don't want to leave India. I hope you know that. It becomes more evident once you are in the marriage market. Lot of them are downright reject proposals from people who work in US. Also, I never heard of Canada immigration until 1 year back. Now, a lot of my friends/colleagues are talking about or in the process of applying for the Canadian visa. And a good number of those who apply for green card don't do it because they want to become a citizen. Its because once you complete a certain stage of green card (I-140), you can continue working in the country. Otherwise, you have to leave once you complete 6 years. They plan to work for 10-20 years, and come back to India and retire nicely with all the money they made in US.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- georgeecollins 8y ago
  Come to the US. We reward talented people and it is a nice country to live in.
  - behringer 8y ago
    You spelt Canada wrong.
- toweringgoat 8y ago
  Canada, Europe, Australia, NZ. There are places with Bay Area style salaries, there are other places with lower salaries - either way, you'll be living a comfortable life since costs will be lower than Bay Area. You'll universally find a much better healthcare system (e.g. health insurance not tied to your employer), with the exception of the UK. You'll find a humane immigration system that doesn't kick you out if your employer decides to screw you over (again with the exception of the UK). You'll generally have some form of state support if you lose your job instead of being thrown to homelessness. Etc etc. The US is a second world country nowadays. And any children you might have will be far safer, and at lower risk for severe mental health problems.
  - mFixman 8y ago
    None of those places have anywhere near Bar Area salaries: London, by far the city with the highest salaries in the West outside of the US, has salaries that are 70% of the ones you'd get in California before counting a significant amount of extra income and sales taxes and almost similarly ridicolous housing. On the other hand, the private insurance in the UK that's usually included in big tech companies' work is absolutely top-notch.
    - guitarbill 8y ago
      In absolute values, those salaries are the highest, but for quality of living, that's largely irrelevant unless your hobbies need large amounts of capital. For example, in big cities in Europe, you can easily and happily get by without a car, which saves a lot. You have more vacation. No tipping. Easier/more obvious ways to save for retirement. Your kids not having to do active shooter drills at school. Cheaper/free schools and universities. Maternal/paternal leave. Etc, etc. So if you have a family, or thinking of starting a family, it's worth factoring that stuff in.
  - partycoder 8y ago
    You might need to revisit the definition of second world countries (soviet aligned countries during the cold war).
  - 8y ago

djrogers 8y ago

This is one of the enormous penalties we as a nation have to pay because neither of our political parties actually wants to solve the illegal immigration issue. Republicans get to use ‘illegal immigrants taking jobs’ as a stick to beat democrats with, and progressives use cries of racism to rally support amongst Latino voters. Meanwhile anyone who espouses common sense ideas such as reforming our immigration policy gets called a racist and ‘anti-immigrant’.

DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
Could you explain the connection you see between illegal-immigration policies and legal-immigration policies?
addicted 8y ago
Umm reforming the immigration policy is exactly what progressives are calling for. The only difference is that the conservatives want to somehow deport everyone who is here and has been here for decades to somewhere while the “progressives” recognize that they are an integral part of the economy and want them to pay a penalty, and stand in the back of the line for American citizenship while they are provided recognized status so they can live in the country legally in the meanwhile. This isn’t both sides not wanting to do anything. This is both sides having very different solutions. All of which is irrelevant to the article since this is discussing legal immigration.
- pessimizer 8y ago
  > reforming the immigration policy is exactly what progressives are calling for. It might be what progressives are calling for, but it's not what Democrats are calling for when they are in power. Additionally, I'm not sure how progressive it is to prefer elite immigrants with "advanced degrees" over other immigrants.
- ta76567656 8y ago
  Conservatives (the politicians) pretend to want to deport illegal immigrants to get votes. They don't actually want to do it because a lot of businesses depend on them for cheap labor. You don't even need to deport anyone, just start actually enforcing laws that require employers to check employee eligibility. Fewer jobs for illegal immigrants would mean less incentive for them to come. That nobody has tried this shows IMO that nobody (in power) actually wants it. They just want a few examples to grandstand about for votes. pay a penalty, and stand in the back of the line for American citizenship while they are provided recognized status so they can live in the country legally in the meanwhile. This is basically amnesty/open-borders. Not arguing for or against, but it is. There is no "line" for citizenship, after five years of permanent residency anyone qualifies. The "line" is for the permanent residency (green card), and you have to qualify to even get in the line, that's why people come illegally. So what's the new qualification? "already in the country"? Then what about the people here 20 years from now? Is it a rolling admission? If not then you have the same problem as before. If yes, then the policy is 'open borders' possibly with a qualification of "can avoid getting caught for X years". If you don't find open borders acceptable the only reasonable compromise I can think of is a capped category that anyone can apply for, where the cap is adjusted as needed. Somewhat ike the current Diversity Visa (Green Card lottery) which is capped at around 50K per year, though that cap rarely changes.

pfarnsworth 8y ago

Is it really discrimination if the system is already known to have a per-country limit, and yet more and more people from that country continue to file for Green Cards? Indians who come to the US these days know for a fact there is a 10+ year wait for a Green Card, so they're the ones taking their chances. If they scream discrimination, I call BS on that. It sucks that the system is the way it is, and I think a point-based system like Canada is far more efficient, but it's not discrimination. If there are already known rules, and one particular country comes in an adds a massive amount of applications, you can't turn around and yell discrimination.

damnyou 8y ago
Is it really discrimination if the system has separate water fountains for whites and coloreds? It sucks that the system is the way it is, and I think having the same water fountains for everyone is far more efficient. (There is a term for when the system discriminates. It's called... you guessed it, systemic discrimination.)
taken_username 8y ago
Slavery was a system in the way it was and it was even legal! You can't turn around and yell this is how it is.
- oculusthrift 8y ago
  And not being able to swarm into another country is equivalent to slavery?
  - pessimizer 8y ago
    No, the fact that a system of discrimination is already in place is not proof that the system is not discriminatory. If that were true, US chattel slavery would not have been discriminatory.
  - rohit2412 8y ago
    You can limit immigration fairly. But don't tell me I have a lesser chance of working in USA than a Kenyan and that's not discrimination.

temp-dude-87844 8y ago

How does this wait play out in real life? I doubt any company actually waits 15 years, and clearly not lengths exceeding a human lifespan, to fill a position, even if it went through the trouble of filing an I-140 and certified that zero US workers were available. So what do all these applicants do in the meantime? Are they overseas? Are they in the States on dual-intent visas? Are they in some creative legal limbo? If somehow, in the meantime, they obtain a green card or work permit, are they allowed to take that same position, if it's still open -- clearly, they can accept any other position, as they're fully allowed to work in the States, but can they take the one EB-2 and I-140 was filed for originally?

wetpaws 8y ago
You can work until your priority date is current and you can even change employer.
- HarryHirsch 8y ago
  The caveat is that your employer keeps you on a very short leash. If you are fired you must have a new job within 30 days, else must leave the country. Not everyone has the stomach for this, especially if you have a family.
  - wetpaws 8y ago
    In my experience companies do not lay off people, it's a huge legal headache, usually people change jobs on their own. I agree about short leash though, it's really bad, although manageable on H1B. The people on L1 are who are trully screwed up.
    - sigfubar 8y ago
      Are you high? Layoffs - and individual firings - happen all the time. The dirty secret of corporate America is that performance reviews (and even supposedly innocent constructs such as JIRA and other project management software) are really a pretext to firing someone. A firing for poor performance isn’t a significant legal risk if the alleged transgressions are documented in detail.

mankypro 8y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_ethics

cletus 8y ago

So this is the result of several factors that are at odds with each other. 1. There is no per-country quota on H1Bs 2. There is a per-country quota on EB-1/2/3 GCs 3. And this is crux of the problem: H1Bs are issued indiscriminately, most problematically to so-called bodyshops. There are various proposals to fix the immigration backlog. There's one bill that would get rid of per-country quotas. I wonder what that would do to the backlog of everyone. I kind of see this one as a nonstarter. Bizarrely, it's the current (otherwise abhorrent) administration that is the first to even talk about fixing the real problem, which is (3). H1Bs are a lottery now. When the likes of FAAMG companies can't hire people because the likes of Infosys and Tata are flooding applications for people who will essentially become indentured servants, that's a problem. Infosys settled a visa fraud case with the US government several years ago including a payment of millions of dollars. How exactly are they still able to apply for visas? There are problems with ranking applicants based on salary (or total compensation) as the one proposal would do. This would potentially drown out lower-paid STEM fields that have legitimate need with FAAMG SWEs. Then again... that's still probably better than the current system. People have also complained "well you can't hire graduates if you rank on salary". That's true. But at the same time, are newly minted college graduates fulfilling unsatisfied demand for specialty occupation? Or just being used to lower labour costs?

mehrdada 8y ago
+1 This is the correct analysis of the article with sensational title. Of all the problems the immigration system has, this is probably one that is least fundamental and the bill would solve basically zero problems for the nation and is simply a political question of who gets to win a limited resource between various foreign players. The entire premise of "limiting immigration" is discrimination based on a binary national origin/citizenship (i.e. you happened to be one of us or not) so it is comically laughable to talk about how to make such system "fair" without opening it to everyone, which has practical issues. Immigration is an inherently political mechanism constructed as a result of amalgamation of various underlying game theoretic balances and trade-offs over the years between nation states. It's important to note that you cannot divorce the individuals from their own governments/resource allocation when thinking about that.
8y ago

matz1 8y ago

Not a bug: working as intended

partycoder 8y ago

The dilemma of intolerance is that tolerating intolerance makes you intolerant. Some forms of intolerance: believing in gender superiority, a caste system, exceptionalism based on ethnicity or country of origin. If you believe in those things, you might have a tolerance problem, no matter where you are from. I try to be as tolerant as possible, and do not have negative views against immigration. But if you are intolerant I will have a hard time getting along if you openly express those views or if you apply those at work.

ng12 8y ago

Isn't it a false assumption that immigrant workers should eventually get Green Cards? The whole point of the H1B system is to temporarily fill shortages of skilled workers, not to be a path for permanent immigration.

mavelikara 8y ago
The point of H-1B is to both fill a skilled job temporarily, and as a path to permanent immigration. This is called _dual intent_ technically.
- ng12 8y ago
  From the DOL: > The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States. The focus seems to be on the temporary nature.
  - mavelikara 8y ago
    > The focus seems to be on the temporary nature. For the DOL, yes. For you too, maybe. But for the individual involved, probably both intents are in equal importance, and that is perfectly legal and moral.

known 8y ago

97% people in India are poor by global standards http://idronline.org/addressing-inequality-in-india/ http://idronline.org/addressing-inequality-in-india/ They'll wait for 250 years