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This is just another step in a broad-based program to make sure as few highly qualified people as possible can come to learn and work in the US. (1) F1 visas h

This is just another step in a broad-based program to make sure as few highly qualified people as possible can come to learn and work in the US. (1) F1 visas have been effectively banned in much of the world since COVID started - the required interviews could only be done in now-closed centers. (2) H1B, L1, H4, and J1 visas have been suspended until the end of the year, leaving OPT transfers, H1B lottery winners (already a 1 in 3 shot), H1B transfers, and others in the lurch. (3) RFEs (a first step to visa denials) have been on a steep rise. As a result, not only are we kicking people out, but international applications to US schools have absolutely collapsed; fewer people are even trying. The US is actively abandoning its goal of being the land of opportunity, and it makes me sad.

ISL 6y ago
Vote.
- xtreme 6y ago
  Unfortunately, Democrats don't have a great track record of passing pro skilled immigration bills either. In 2009-2010, when Democrats controlled the house and the senate as well as the presidency, they didn't bring in a single major immigration reform bill [1]. The DREAM act for childhood arrivals didn't pass the senate, and DACA was later passed through executive order in 2012. And right now some Democrats continue to oppose skilled immigration claiming that it is "racist" [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress#Major_legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress#M... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/22/trump-wants-skilled-immigrants-is-that-because-economics-or-coded-way-reject-latinos/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/22/trump-wan...
  - BolexNOLA 6y ago
    The immigration debate looked very different ten years ago. I’m not sure we should expect the same policies.
three_seagrass 6y ago
It's another measurable, negative impact of the America First philosophy [1]. 40% of the Fortune 500 companies are founded by immigrant families [2][3], so the U.S. is really shooting itself in the foot (again). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_(policy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_(policy) [2] F500 2010: http://research.newamericaneconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/new-american-fortune-500-june-2011.pdf http://research.newamericaneconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/20... (pdf) [3] F500 2017: https://startupsusa.org/fortune500/ https://startupsusa.org/fortune500/
- screenbeam 6y ago
  America first is a great policy. Our people need jobs and our policies should reflect that.
  - mrkurt 6y ago
    Immigrants create economic growth though. They come here, spend money, start businesses, and generate more demand for the things that create jobs. In fact, preventing immigration reduces jobs. Companies will happily offshore any position they can. Jobs don't just exist in a vacuum. They're the result of a relatively complex economy, but growth generally creates jobs. So we should grow.
    - screenbeam 6y ago
      Yeah if an immigrant is going to create more jobs than he consumes let them in. Duh
  - Falling3 6y ago
    It's a false dichotomy rooted in isolationism and justified by xenophobia. It takes care of Americans in name only.
  - TeaDrunk 6y ago
    Our policies should reflect that our people also includes immigrants and that we are strongest when the definition of american is == "the best and the brightest from around the world".
rajup 6y ago
Minor nit: I believe H1B transfers for people already in the country are still being processed. But your broader point of the US government actively preventing global talent from entering the country stands. Very sad indeed.
- screenbeam 6y ago
  Not sad. Great!
  - Falling3 6y ago
    What's great about that?
fuckyah 6y ago
So where do all the open slots at universities go to now?
twsttest 6y ago
The US allows over 1 million immigrants per year. Maybe less the past year, but still extremely high on an immigrant per capita basis. H1B was being abused and needed to be reigned in. There are still plenty of people coming into the country through various means, the US is still extremely generous with immigration. There are plenty of qualified citizens here and in the zero sum game that is hiring national immigration policy should put their needs first before anyone else's.
- ilikehurdles 6y ago
  > There are plenty of qualified citizens here and in the zero sum game that is hiring national immigration policy should put their needs first before anyone else's. This exact sort of anti-competitive nationalism has been tried before, and over and over again it has been abandoned. It's a failed policy that gives other countries a competitive advantage over your own. It's better to learn from others' mistakes than to repeat them yourself.
- screenbeam 6y ago
  Agreed
- conanbatt 6y ago
  H1B abuse doesn't exist. It's made up. You multiply the quota by 100x and it wouldn't exist as a concept, same as J1 nanny visas being abused doesn't exist.
  - anon102010 6y ago
    It does exist, but would be easy to fix.
    - conanbatt 6y ago
      The fix is the problem. Even if you are anti-immigration, your biggest issue should be tourist visas which is how illegal immigrants stay in the US, and those are unlimited and in the millions. H1B quotas are stupid by design.
genericone 6y ago
Weren't these visas supposed to be for bringing talented individuals with expertise deemed to be missing in the US? Was the visa system ever 'just' for bringing 'highly qualified' individuals? If America wants highly qualified individuals, it seems to me that 'nurturing' that talent is more important. Bringing in uniquely talented individuals who can distribute expert knowledge accomplishes that. Bringing an IT worker who does a good JAVA/.Net programming does not accomplish that... right?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- screenbeam 6y ago
  Agreed
- kerneltime 6y ago
  Bringing in raw talent and nurturing them here has been successful for USA. That is the student visa route.. I think you are referring to H1B?
- kirankp89 6y ago
  Right, but the visas are not being exclusively used for IT workers. Instead of weeding out abuse all current policies seem to be to just blindly make immigration harder. Making it harder for all specialized fields to hire the folks they need doesn't help anyone. The administration is just pandering to it's anti immigrant base instead of solving hard problems.
- grumple 6y ago
  Yeah, this whole idea seems a little misunderstood. Here's some of the high-level effects of bringing international talent of all sorts to the US of year: 1) more talent in the US 2) less talent in other nations 3) the US can ignore pre-university education and opportunity problems 1 and 2 are great for the US government and the top of the US economy, but bad for pretty much everybody else. 3 is pretty awful for a huge number of actual US citizens. Especially given the current state of our nation, this seems like a problem. I don't believe in "talent". It's all about nurture. If you need more talented people in huge fields for generations, yet half of your nation doesn't have college degrees, the problem is that you are not investing in your people successfully. If we invested more in education and resources for kids, parents, and families from before conception through early childhood and education, we would not have a shortage for fields like... computer science and engineering. These aren't fields that just popped up, they've been a big deal for a century.
TrackerFF 6y ago
But don't worry though, lots of jobs and prosperity in the coal industry. /s
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jimbokun 6y ago
How much of this is due to existing Trump administration policies, and how much due to COVID?
gopalv 6y ago
> The US is actively abandoning its goal of being the land of opportunity, and it makes me sad. Yes - this is active, but not irrational, because this is a reversion to mercantilism of the earlier centuries (it is not a conservative position, but a regressive one). The only people welcome to this country are "growing things in the ground". Because if the only thing that you consider to be productive is farming (as in production == farming), then the whole social requirements of education, research or specialization is irrelevant. And in fact, those people are a drain on the food security and profitability of the extractive industry of farming. Maybe because it is fresh, I was struck by a bit of the lyrics from Hamilton as being a direct reference to this thought that the rest of America is just "moving money around" in the service industries (even the industry, where every stage is just making something from somebody else's raw material, till you get to the Appalachian coal mines). Don't tax the South 'cause we got it made in the shade / In Virginia, we plant seeds in the ground / We create, you just wanna move our money around / This financial plan is an outrageous demand
jtdev 6y ago
Or, maybe American’s have grown tired of educating state sponsored (China) students whose sponsors quite literally seek to exfiltrate knowledge from U.S. academia and industry. Do you think I as an American would be welcome to attend a Chinese university 100% remotely? Do you think China would allow any American to attend a program in China that could help the U.S. build a competitive or defensive advantage?
- nopeNopeNooope 6y ago
  Wasn't that literally the US model, until recently? Bring folks in, use their knowledge, fuck whoever gave them that knowledge in the first place?
unishark 6y ago
> (1) F1 visas have been effectively banned in much of the world since COVID started - the required interviews could only be done in now-closed centers. Wouldn't lock-downs have resulted in the consulates being required to close in much of the world? And how much reciprocity is there? Are Americans even allowed to travel to most of the world today? There are stories about schools in places like UK having to charter planes to bring students since it's impossible to get there otherwise. Making this all into a narrative about xenophobic americans seems near-sighted.
nopeNopeNooope 6y ago
Bullshit, it's not an abandonment, it's active harassment. Getting paperwork finished for the visas for me and my wife can be a months long ordeal where paperwork just disappears and the lawyers have to restart the process. The rules change randomly, without warning, which causes stress for me and my family. This is a campaign to harass people, so they don't come to the US, because the current administration lacks the ability to actually do what they want. Just another massive failure of the American model of governance.

ISL 6y ago

Vote.

xtreme 6y ago
Unfortunately, Democrats don't have a great track record of passing pro skilled immigration bills either. In 2009-2010, when Democrats controlled the house and the senate as well as the presidency, they didn't bring in a single major immigration reform bill [1]. The DREAM act for childhood arrivals didn't pass the senate, and DACA was later passed through executive order in 2012. And right now some Democrats continue to oppose skilled immigration claiming that it is "racist" [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress#Major_legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress#M... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/22/trump-wants-skilled-immigrants-is-that-because-economics-or-coded-way-reject-latinos/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/22/trump-wan...
- BolexNOLA 6y ago
  The immigration debate looked very different ten years ago. I’m not sure we should expect the same policies.

three_seagrass 6y ago

It's another measurable, negative impact of the America First philosophy [1]. 40% of the Fortune 500 companies are founded by immigrant families [2][3], so the U.S. is really shooting itself in the foot (again). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_(policy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_(policy) [2] F500 2010: http://research.newamericaneconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/new-american-fortune-500-june-2011.pdf http://research.newamericaneconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/20... (pdf) [3] F500 2017: https://startupsusa.org/fortune500/ https://startupsusa.org/fortune500/

screenbeam 6y ago
America first is a great policy. Our people need jobs and our policies should reflect that.
- mrkurt 6y ago
  Immigrants create economic growth though. They come here, spend money, start businesses, and generate more demand for the things that create jobs. In fact, preventing immigration reduces jobs. Companies will happily offshore any position they can. Jobs don't just exist in a vacuum. They're the result of a relatively complex economy, but growth generally creates jobs. So we should grow.
  - screenbeam 6y ago
    Yeah if an immigrant is going to create more jobs than he consumes let them in. Duh
- Falling3 6y ago
  It's a false dichotomy rooted in isolationism and justified by xenophobia. It takes care of Americans in name only.
- TeaDrunk 6y ago
  Our policies should reflect that our people also includes immigrants and that we are strongest when the definition of american is == "the best and the brightest from around the world".

rajup 6y ago

Minor nit: I believe H1B transfers for people already in the country are still being processed. But your broader point of the US government actively preventing global talent from entering the country stands. Very sad indeed.

screenbeam 6y ago
Not sad. Great!
- Falling3 6y ago
  What's great about that?

fuckyah 6y ago

So where do all the open slots at universities go to now?

twsttest 6y ago

The US allows over 1 million immigrants per year. Maybe less the past year, but still extremely high on an immigrant per capita basis. H1B was being abused and needed to be reigned in. There are still plenty of people coming into the country through various means, the US is still extremely generous with immigration. There are plenty of qualified citizens here and in the zero sum game that is hiring national immigration policy should put their needs first before anyone else's.

ilikehurdles 6y ago
> There are plenty of qualified citizens here and in the zero sum game that is hiring national immigration policy should put their needs first before anyone else's. This exact sort of anti-competitive nationalism has been tried before, and over and over again it has been abandoned. It's a failed policy that gives other countries a competitive advantage over your own. It's better to learn from others' mistakes than to repeat them yourself.
screenbeam 6y ago
Agreed
conanbatt 6y ago
H1B abuse doesn't exist. It's made up. You multiply the quota by 100x and it wouldn't exist as a concept, same as J1 nanny visas being abused doesn't exist.
- anon102010 6y ago
  It does exist, but would be easy to fix.
  - conanbatt 6y ago
    The fix is the problem. Even if you are anti-immigration, your biggest issue should be tourist visas which is how illegal immigrants stay in the US, and those are unlimited and in the millions. H1B quotas are stupid by design.

genericone 6y ago

Weren't these visas supposed to be for bringing talented individuals with expertise deemed to be missing in the US? Was the visa system ever 'just' for bringing 'highly qualified' individuals? If America wants highly qualified individuals, it seems to me that 'nurturing' that talent is more important. Bringing in uniquely talented individuals who can distribute expert knowledge accomplishes that. Bringing an IT worker who does a good JAVA/.Net programming does not accomplish that... right?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
screenbeam 6y ago
Agreed
kerneltime 6y ago
Bringing in raw talent and nurturing them here has been successful for USA. That is the student visa route.. I think you are referring to H1B?
kirankp89 6y ago
Right, but the visas are not being exclusively used for IT workers. Instead of weeding out abuse all current policies seem to be to just blindly make immigration harder. Making it harder for all specialized fields to hire the folks they need doesn't help anyone. The administration is just pandering to it's anti immigrant base instead of solving hard problems.
grumple 6y ago
Yeah, this whole idea seems a little misunderstood. Here's some of the high-level effects of bringing international talent of all sorts to the US of year: 1) more talent in the US 2) less talent in other nations 3) the US can ignore pre-university education and opportunity problems 1 and 2 are great for the US government and the top of the US economy, but bad for pretty much everybody else. 3 is pretty awful for a huge number of actual US citizens. Especially given the current state of our nation, this seems like a problem. I don't believe in "talent". It's all about nurture. If you need more talented people in huge fields for generations, yet half of your nation doesn't have college degrees, the problem is that you are not investing in your people successfully. If we invested more in education and resources for kids, parents, and families from before conception through early childhood and education, we would not have a shortage for fields like... computer science and engineering. These aren't fields that just popped up, they've been a big deal for a century.

TrackerFF 6y ago

But don't worry though, lots of jobs and prosperity in the coal industry. /s

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jimbokun 6y ago

How much of this is due to existing Trump administration policies, and how much due to COVID?

gopalv 6y ago

> The US is actively abandoning its goal of being the land of opportunity, and it makes me sad. Yes - this is active, but not irrational, because this is a reversion to mercantilism of the earlier centuries (it is not a conservative position, but a regressive one). The only people welcome to this country are "growing things in the ground". Because if the only thing that you consider to be productive is farming (as in production == farming), then the whole social requirements of education, research or specialization is irrelevant. And in fact, those people are a drain on the food security and profitability of the extractive industry of farming. Maybe because it is fresh, I was struck by a bit of the lyrics from Hamilton as being a direct reference to this thought that the rest of America is just "moving money around" in the service industries (even the industry, where every stage is just making something from somebody else's raw material, till you get to the Appalachian coal mines). Don't tax the South 'cause we got it made in the shade / In Virginia, we plant seeds in the ground / We create, you just wanna move our money around / This financial plan is an outrageous demand

jtdev 6y ago

Or, maybe American’s have grown tired of educating state sponsored (China) students whose sponsors quite literally seek to exfiltrate knowledge from U.S. academia and industry. Do you think I as an American would be welcome to attend a Chinese university 100% remotely? Do you think China would allow any American to attend a program in China that could help the U.S. build a competitive or defensive advantage?

nopeNopeNooope 6y ago
Wasn't that literally the US model, until recently? Bring folks in, use their knowledge, fuck whoever gave them that knowledge in the first place?

unishark 6y ago

> (1) F1 visas have been effectively banned in much of the world since COVID started - the required interviews could only be done in now-closed centers. Wouldn't lock-downs have resulted in the consulates being required to close in much of the world? And how much reciprocity is there? Are Americans even allowed to travel to most of the world today? There are stories about schools in places like UK having to charter planes to bring students since it's impossible to get there otherwise. Making this all into a narrative about xenophobic americans seems near-sighted.

nopeNopeNooope 6y ago

Bullshit, it's not an abandonment, it's active harassment. Getting paperwork finished for the visas for me and my wife can be a months long ordeal where paperwork just disappears and the lawyers have to restart the process. The rules change randomly, without warning, which causes stress for me and my family. This is a campaign to harass people, so they don't come to the US, because the current administration lacks the ability to actually do what they want. Just another massive failure of the American model of governance.