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Compare number of applicants per year from India (250K H1 + some amount L1) to the green card caps (140K). And their population growth is still positive (>1% ye

Compare number of applicants per year from India (250K H1 + some amount L1) to the green card caps (140K). And their population growth is still positive (>1% year). Even if Congress kicks out all the rest of nationalities and gives 100% cap to Indians, the wait times will drop only once but then keep growing indefinitely. (And this does not yet account to how many more will be inspired by that, as right now long wait times presumably deter a lot from even trying.) There is no fix for this that does not involve a huge lot of Indians failing at their immigration attempt. The core problem is that they are just trying too hard: India applies 8.5x more people per %population than France, 14x more than Germany etc. No Congress can fix that. Sure, 7% cap for a country that makes 17% of the world seems a bit unfair. But increasing it to the fair 17% or even to unfair 100% will still be peanuts in the long run. The reality is that a person born in India is being screwed not as much by bias in immigration policies but only by other persons born in India.

belltaco 7y ago
>Compare number of applicants per year from India (250K H1 + some amount L1) to the green card caps (140K). And their population growth is still positive (>1% year). This is not correct. The 250k includes people who got their first H1B in 2006 till date but have to renew every 3 years. Those are work visa renewals while they wait. The yearly demand is much lower. There is a 85K cap on all new H1Bs. Only 70% go to tech sector. However some governments and nonprofits are excluded from the cap, but the nowhere as high as 250k. Which is why the rest of your comment is wrong. >Even if Congress kicks out all the rest of nationalities and gives 100% cap to Indians, the wait times will drop only once but then keep growing indefinitely. (And this does not yet account to how many more will be inspired by that, as right now long wait times presumably deter a lot from even trying.) >There is no fix for this that does not involve a huge lot of Indians failing at their immigration attempt. The core problem is that they are just trying too hard: India applies 8.5x more people per %population than France, 14x more than Germany etc. No Congress can fix that. Not true again. After 8 to 10 years it will fix itself because the system is first come first served. i.e If a French or German person apply on January 1 2029, they will get their GC before everyone from India that applied after Jan 1 2029. Actually that would be true even today if the law passes. The French citizen who applies on Jan 1 2020 will get his gc before the Indian citizen who applies on Jan 2, 2020. It's just that if the law passes, they won't get to cut ahead to directly in front of the line, before people waiting since 2009. It's like going to a DMV. Regardless of how bad the crowd is or where you drove from, you get a token number and no one that came after you gets a GC before you can. The initial wait for some will be high initially because there are people waiting for a long time.
- hamstergene 7y ago
  > After 8 to 10 years it will fix itself 100% of the total cap is used every year. The cap is not changing, the number of applicants is not changing (grows, actually), so the backlog will keep growing with no change at all. How exactly the cap is allocated to nationalities is irrelevant. You can write a simple simulation of a DMV office that gets more new people every day than it can serve per day, and prove that the line grows indefinitely regardless if it's FIFO or capped or whatever. The only true fix to the indefinite growth of wait time is to change the spammable lottery/FIFO system to something like merit-based (like Canada) or salary auction, which grants all the cap to highest scored people and rejects everyone else.
  - diebeforei485 7y ago
    > How exactly the cap is allocated to nationalities is irrelevant. It's very relevant actually. It drives hiring decisions - plenty of reasons to hire people born in India (and to some extent China) because they won't get full employment rights for a long time. And this has a feedback loop (the longer the wait time for some people, the greater the incentive to seek and hire those people). This is actually bad for people born anywhere else and want to find a job here, including US-born. There can be no "true fix" because the legislative process involves compromise. There was plenty of criticism of the 2013 Senate bill (S. 744) for example. Perhaps there will be another such attempt a decade from now, but it's stupid to wait for speculative future compromises instead of fixing one issue at a time. In any case, fixing the country cap issue is not incompatible with any of the points based proposals - AFAIK Canada does not make people wait longer based on where they were born.

belltaco 7y ago

>Compare number of applicants per year from India (250K H1 + some amount L1) to the green card caps (140K). And their population growth is still positive (>1% year). This is not correct. The 250k includes people who got their first H1B in 2006 till date but have to renew every 3 years. Those are work visa renewals while they wait. The yearly demand is much lower. There is a 85K cap on all new H1Bs. Only 70% go to tech sector. However some governments and nonprofits are excluded from the cap, but the nowhere as high as 250k. Which is why the rest of your comment is wrong. >Even if Congress kicks out all the rest of nationalities and gives 100% cap to Indians, the wait times will drop only once but then keep growing indefinitely. (And this does not yet account to how many more will be inspired by that, as right now long wait times presumably deter a lot from even trying.) >There is no fix for this that does not involve a huge lot of Indians failing at their immigration attempt. The core problem is that they are just trying too hard: India applies 8.5x more people per %population than France, 14x more than Germany etc. No Congress can fix that. Not true again. After 8 to 10 years it will fix itself because the system is first come first served. i.e If a French or German person apply on January 1 2029, they will get their GC before everyone from India that applied after Jan 1 2029. Actually that would be true even today if the law passes. The French citizen who applies on Jan 1 2020 will get his gc before the Indian citizen who applies on Jan 2, 2020. It's just that if the law passes, they won't get to cut ahead to directly in front of the line, before people waiting since 2009. It's like going to a DMV. Regardless of how bad the crowd is or where you drove from, you get a token number and no one that came after you gets a GC before you can. The initial wait for some will be high initially because there are people waiting for a long time.

hamstergene 7y ago
> After 8 to 10 years it will fix itself 100% of the total cap is used every year. The cap is not changing, the number of applicants is not changing (grows, actually), so the backlog will keep growing with no change at all. How exactly the cap is allocated to nationalities is irrelevant. You can write a simple simulation of a DMV office that gets more new people every day than it can serve per day, and prove that the line grows indefinitely regardless if it's FIFO or capped or whatever. The only true fix to the indefinite growth of wait time is to change the spammable lottery/FIFO system to something like merit-based (like Canada) or salary auction, which grants all the cap to highest scored people and rejects everyone else.
- diebeforei485 7y ago
  > How exactly the cap is allocated to nationalities is irrelevant. It's very relevant actually. It drives hiring decisions - plenty of reasons to hire people born in India (and to some extent China) because they won't get full employment rights for a long time. And this has a feedback loop (the longer the wait time for some people, the greater the incentive to seek and hire those people). This is actually bad for people born anywhere else and want to find a job here, including US-born. There can be no "true fix" because the legislative process involves compromise. There was plenty of criticism of the 2013 Senate bill (S. 744) for example. Perhaps there will be another such attempt a decade from now, but it's stupid to wait for speculative future compromises instead of fixing one issue at a time. In any case, fixing the country cap issue is not incompatible with any of the points based proposals - AFAIK Canada does not make people wait longer based on where they were born.