6 ms·

Yeah the US really needs to completely revamp its immigration system. Not only H1B but GC as well. Take a look at the line for Indians waiting for green cards

by jgh 8y ago

Yeah the US really needs to completely revamp its immigration system. Not only H1B but GC as well. Take a look at the line for Indians waiting for green cards. It's apparently 150 years long. That is absurd.

Ensorceled 8y ago
Why is it absurd? The green card application queue is several million along the only way for it to be shorter would be to just let them all in. Of course, many more millions who haven’t applied would immediately join the new queue ... I’m not sure even the US could deal with a sudden population increase of 30-40 million.
- nonamechicken 8y ago
  As of April 20, 2018, there were 632,219 Indian immigrants and their spouses and minor children waiting for green cards also known as legal permanent residency cards. https://m.timesofindia.com/business/india-business/indians-with-advanced-degree-may-have-to-wait-151-years-for-green-card-report/articleshow/64611973.cms https://m.timesofindia.com/business/india-business/indians-w... Where did you get the 30-40 million number from?
  - jgh 8y ago
    All of the anti-immigrant rhetoric makes people vastly overestimate the number of immigrants there actually are, I suspect.
    - Ensorceled 8y ago
      I'm not anti-immigrant. I'm estimating the number of people who would apply if the US stopped queuing and opened their doors.
      - jgh 8y ago
        I didn't say you are, but there is a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric that purposely overstates the number of immigrants in order to scare people.
  - Ensorceled 8y ago
    Weird. Why do I keep seeing 4-5 million in the press as the number of people waiting for green cards? The 30-40 million comes from the fact that there are lot more people who would come to the US that haven't bothered to apply. If you relaxed the criteria the number of applicants would expand. I'm not anti-immigration (I'm Canadian and we're slightly more relaxed about immigration) but there needs to be some controls in place.
    - sonnyblarney 8y ago
      30-40M is the high range of estimated undocumented folks in the US. The more conservative number is 15-20M. If there are 600K people of Indian descent waiting for Green Cards, then it seems rational there are a few million waiting overall.
      - Ensorceled 8y ago
        You missed my point. I'm hypothesizing current long waiting times is suppressing people applying for US immigration. If you relaxed those standards a lot more people would apply and also get in by those relaxed standards. You need to be able to "onboard" those immigrants.
- sjg007 8y ago
  Umm.. the green card permanent residents are already here.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
"Take a look at the line for Indians waiting for green cards. It's apparently 150 years long. That is absurd." There are about 4 billion people waiting in line to enter the US if they could. There is infinite demand for migration to wealthy countries, just as there is now infinite demand for healthcare services now that we are getting older. The number of people in this or that queue is no longer a valid metric unless we're talking purely about bureaucratic wait times, in which case those should be short. H1 I think is a good program overall, it needs to be tweaked for fraud. If it came with a bigger fee, like 5K for approval, it might cover the cost of an 'inspector' popping into the office to check up on H1 status granted individuals. If companies knew an inspector would pop in once a year without notice, they might be hesitant to go on with the fraud stuff. I suggest the blatant fraud is done by bad actors outside normal operations but they're enabled ultimately by BigCos who turn a blind eye. i.e. anyone hiring contractors for more than 6 months have to also back their residency status, i.e. Cisco hires from ABC consulting and the inspectors come in and it's fraud, Cisco is on the hook as well. That would be one way to help clean it up. I think there is truly quite a bit of real business demand for H1s - even outside of the scammy stuff and 'replace our engineers' stuff.
- jgh 8y ago
  There isn't infinite demand, come on. The real REAL solution to this is to raise up the living conditions of people living in poor countries. At that point even if we had open borders not everybody would move to USA/Europe/Canada/Australia any more than everybody from Louisiana moves to California. Besides the fees are already up there. I was on an O-1 for a while and IIRC it was roughly $8000 all in between lawyers and processing fees.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    Maybe you have never travelled to a poor country? What percentage of Africans living in poverty, corruption, dysfunction do you think would like to migrate to Europe, the US or Canada? It's 'most'. 1/2 of Chinese would emigrate according to a few surveys [1]. Since everyone has the internet - they can now see that people elsewhere live in considerably higher material standards of living, why would they want to stay? Basically, family and culture ... but most people would trade that for a decent job and stable governance. Yes - totally agree the solution is to help poor countries have some wealth, but what can we do to help? They mostly have systems of total corruption. Any real attempt to try to fix underlying problems would be utterly destroyed by leadership who wants to maintain their status. Either governmental or non-governmental. Most African countries run on bribery. All the way up and down. So if a US Agency comes in and starts exposing this, how is the leadership going to react? With massive anti-American sentiment is how. This is happening right now as China is greasing government figures to buy up land on the cheap. They're bringing in their own workers in lieu of hiring Africans. Why? Because they can, and they are paying off who they need to to keep it that way. [2 Finally - even if countries were wealthier - there would still be massive emigration. Poland has a GDP/capita of about $14K US, but in PPP it's much higher. Poland is 'poor' for a rich country, but they are not poor. They have stuff. They have industry, they have regular clothes, housing, highways, governance that mostly resembles ours. None of it is UK/US standard ... but it's still pretty good. They are 'rich' compared to Nigerians, easily. And yet, there's a massive exodus of Polish labour into other places, particularly the UK, which has caused calamity in Europe. That's a different kind of migration, because I think many Poles return at some point, but nevertheless, it's big. So no, open borders would be a migration disaster by any stretch, even in some distant future where Central South American countries are hopefully much more 'caught up', it still can't work very well. I think a NAFTA type arrangement for all of the Americas is within reason though: no visa requirement, and possibility of easy work for a few years, then apply for citizenship. I think the fee for an H1 could be $1.5K a year. Maybe even a hint of a higher tax bracket, why not? $8K for an O1 sounds about right. You're supposed to be 'world class genius/talent' so that's not out of range. [1] https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/07/17/half-of-china-s-millionaires-want-to-emigrate-and-canada-s-thei_a_23034094/ https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/07/17/half-of-china-s-mil... [2] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2015/11/05/what-do-we-know-about-the-chinese-land-grab-in-africa/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2015/11/05/wh...
petilon 8y ago
This is because of racial quotas (or per-country quotas) that exist for green cards. More here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2018/05/21/will-congress-ever-solve-the-long-wait-for-green-cards https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2018/05/21/will-... This quota should be removed.
- screye 8y ago
  Seems absurd that a country with 1 billion would have the same quotas as a country with 1000 times fewer people.
  - taysic 8y ago
    Just to be clear... "The limits are calculated each fiscal year depending on the total number of family-sponsored and employment-based visas available. No more than 7 percent of the visas may be issued to natives of any one independent country in a fiscal year; no more than 2 percent may issued to any one dependency of any independent country. The per-country limit does not indicate, however, that a country is entitled to the maximum number of visas each year, just that it cannot receive more than that number." https://www.uscis.gov/tools/glossary/country-limit https://www.uscis.gov/tools/glossary/country-limit
    - screye 8y ago
      Thanks for clarifying. My previous statement would be incorrect in that case. I think maximum percent limits make sense. But, 7% might be a bit aggressive. After all, a country's borders aren't necessarily the best indicator of cultural diversity brought by those people. India (the biggest contributor to the H1B) is internally a lot more diverse than more ethnically homogeneous, yet highly populated countries such has Bangladesh, Russia, UK, Japan or France.
      - petilon 8y ago
        These visas are intended to expand our economy, create jobs and ensure that the US remains a technological and economic superpower. Country of birth has no bearing on an immigrant's ability to contribute to these goals. If it makes sense to allow immigration of highly qualified workers then it makes sense to allow them to immigrate regardless of country of birth.
refurb 8y ago
That’s because the system has country of origin quotas in the name of diversity. If they didn’t have those, 90%+ of the immigrants would be of Chinese or Indian origin. Is that what we want?
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago
  How about don't have a numerical quota for green cards for people who have already been living and working in the country for an extended period of time. If a law-abiding person lives and works here for a decade, they should be allowed to stay.
- taysic 8y ago
  I don't think so - because these larger countries have organized systems in place to bring people over. Something small countries can't benefit from.
- mavelikara 8y ago
  > If they didn’t have those, 90%+ of the immigrants would be of Chinese or Indian origin. Is that what we want? Yes, we'd want the 14% of skilled immigrants we allow to be skilled, irrespective of their nationality.

by jgh 8y ago

Ensorceled 8y ago

Why is it absurd? The green card application queue is several million along the only way for it to be shorter would be to just let them all in. Of course, many more millions who haven’t applied would immediately join the new queue ... I’m not sure even the US could deal with a sudden population increase of 30-40 million.

nonamechicken 8y ago
As of April 20, 2018, there were 632,219 Indian immigrants and their spouses and minor children waiting for green cards also known as legal permanent residency cards. https://m.timesofindia.com/business/india-business/indians-with-advanced-degree-may-have-to-wait-151-years-for-green-card-report/articleshow/64611973.cms https://m.timesofindia.com/business/india-business/indians-w... Where did you get the 30-40 million number from?
- jgh 8y ago
  All of the anti-immigrant rhetoric makes people vastly overestimate the number of immigrants there actually are, I suspect.
  - Ensorceled 8y ago
    I'm not anti-immigrant. I'm estimating the number of people who would apply if the US stopped queuing and opened their doors.
    - jgh 8y ago
      I didn't say you are, but there is a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric that purposely overstates the number of immigrants in order to scare people.
- Ensorceled 8y ago
  Weird. Why do I keep seeing 4-5 million in the press as the number of people waiting for green cards? The 30-40 million comes from the fact that there are lot more people who would come to the US that haven't bothered to apply. If you relaxed the criteria the number of applicants would expand. I'm not anti-immigration (I'm Canadian and we're slightly more relaxed about immigration) but there needs to be some controls in place.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    30-40M is the high range of estimated undocumented folks in the US. The more conservative number is 15-20M. If there are 600K people of Indian descent waiting for Green Cards, then it seems rational there are a few million waiting overall.
    - Ensorceled 8y ago
      You missed my point. I'm hypothesizing current long waiting times is suppressing people applying for US immigration. If you relaxed those standards a lot more people would apply and also get in by those relaxed standards. You need to be able to "onboard" those immigrants.
sjg007 8y ago
Umm.. the green card permanent residents are already here.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

"Take a look at the line for Indians waiting for green cards. It's apparently 150 years long. That is absurd." There are about 4 billion people waiting in line to enter the US if they could. There is infinite demand for migration to wealthy countries, just as there is now infinite demand for healthcare services now that we are getting older. The number of people in this or that queue is no longer a valid metric unless we're talking purely about bureaucratic wait times, in which case those should be short. H1 I think is a good program overall, it needs to be tweaked for fraud. If it came with a bigger fee, like 5K for approval, it might cover the cost of an 'inspector' popping into the office to check up on H1 status granted individuals. If companies knew an inspector would pop in once a year without notice, they might be hesitant to go on with the fraud stuff. I suggest the blatant fraud is done by bad actors outside normal operations but they're enabled ultimately by BigCos who turn a blind eye. i.e. anyone hiring contractors for more than 6 months have to also back their residency status, i.e. Cisco hires from ABC consulting and the inspectors come in and it's fraud, Cisco is on the hook as well. That would be one way to help clean it up. I think there is truly quite a bit of real business demand for H1s - even outside of the scammy stuff and 'replace our engineers' stuff.

jgh 8y ago
There isn't infinite demand, come on. The real REAL solution to this is to raise up the living conditions of people living in poor countries. At that point even if we had open borders not everybody would move to USA/Europe/Canada/Australia any more than everybody from Louisiana moves to California. Besides the fees are already up there. I was on an O-1 for a while and IIRC it was roughly $8000 all in between lawyers and processing fees.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  Maybe you have never travelled to a poor country? What percentage of Africans living in poverty, corruption, dysfunction do you think would like to migrate to Europe, the US or Canada? It's 'most'. 1/2 of Chinese would emigrate according to a few surveys [1]. Since everyone has the internet - they can now see that people elsewhere live in considerably higher material standards of living, why would they want to stay? Basically, family and culture ... but most people would trade that for a decent job and stable governance. Yes - totally agree the solution is to help poor countries have some wealth, but what can we do to help? They mostly have systems of total corruption. Any real attempt to try to fix underlying problems would be utterly destroyed by leadership who wants to maintain their status. Either governmental or non-governmental. Most African countries run on bribery. All the way up and down. So if a US Agency comes in and starts exposing this, how is the leadership going to react? With massive anti-American sentiment is how. This is happening right now as China is greasing government figures to buy up land on the cheap. They're bringing in their own workers in lieu of hiring Africans. Why? Because they can, and they are paying off who they need to to keep it that way. [2 Finally - even if countries were wealthier - there would still be massive emigration. Poland has a GDP/capita of about $14K US, but in PPP it's much higher. Poland is 'poor' for a rich country, but they are not poor. They have stuff. They have industry, they have regular clothes, housing, highways, governance that mostly resembles ours. None of it is UK/US standard ... but it's still pretty good. They are 'rich' compared to Nigerians, easily. And yet, there's a massive exodus of Polish labour into other places, particularly the UK, which has caused calamity in Europe. That's a different kind of migration, because I think many Poles return at some point, but nevertheless, it's big. So no, open borders would be a migration disaster by any stretch, even in some distant future where Central South American countries are hopefully much more 'caught up', it still can't work very well. I think a NAFTA type arrangement for all of the Americas is within reason though: no visa requirement, and possibility of easy work for a few years, then apply for citizenship. I think the fee for an H1 could be $1.5K a year. Maybe even a hint of a higher tax bracket, why not? $8K for an O1 sounds about right. You're supposed to be 'world class genius/talent' so that's not out of range. [1] https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/07/17/half-of-china-s-millionaires-want-to-emigrate-and-canada-s-thei_a_23034094/ https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/07/17/half-of-china-s-mil... [2] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2015/11/05/what-do-we-know-about-the-chinese-land-grab-in-africa/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2015/11/05/wh...

petilon 8y ago

This is because of racial quotas (or per-country quotas) that exist for green cards. More here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2018/05/21/will-congress-ever-solve-the-long-wait-for-green-cards https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2018/05/21/will-... This quota should be removed.

screye 8y ago
Seems absurd that a country with 1 billion would have the same quotas as a country with 1000 times fewer people.
- taysic 8y ago
  Just to be clear... "The limits are calculated each fiscal year depending on the total number of family-sponsored and employment-based visas available. No more than 7 percent of the visas may be issued to natives of any one independent country in a fiscal year; no more than 2 percent may issued to any one dependency of any independent country. The per-country limit does not indicate, however, that a country is entitled to the maximum number of visas each year, just that it cannot receive more than that number." https://www.uscis.gov/tools/glossary/country-limit https://www.uscis.gov/tools/glossary/country-limit
  - screye 8y ago
    Thanks for clarifying. My previous statement would be incorrect in that case. I think maximum percent limits make sense. But, 7% might be a bit aggressive. After all, a country's borders aren't necessarily the best indicator of cultural diversity brought by those people. India (the biggest contributor to the H1B) is internally a lot more diverse than more ethnically homogeneous, yet highly populated countries such has Bangladesh, Russia, UK, Japan or France.
    - petilon 8y ago
      These visas are intended to expand our economy, create jobs and ensure that the US remains a technological and economic superpower. Country of birth has no bearing on an immigrant's ability to contribute to these goals. If it makes sense to allow immigration of highly qualified workers then it makes sense to allow them to immigrate regardless of country of birth.

refurb 8y ago

That’s because the system has country of origin quotas in the name of diversity. If they didn’t have those, 90%+ of the immigrants would be of Chinese or Indian origin. Is that what we want?

TheCoelacanth 8y ago
How about don't have a numerical quota for green cards for people who have already been living and working in the country for an extended period of time. If a law-abiding person lives and works here for a decade, they should be allowed to stay.
taysic 8y ago
I don't think so - because these larger countries have organized systems in place to bring people over. Something small countries can't benefit from.
mavelikara 8y ago
> If they didn’t have those, 90%+ of the immigrants would be of Chinese or Indian origin. Is that what we want? Yes, we'd want the 14% of skilled immigrants we allow to be skilled, irrespective of their nationality.