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There is no doubt that the country caps and quotas for immigrants from countries with large populations like India, Mexico, Philippenes and China are a huge pro

There is no doubt that the country caps and quotas for immigrants from countries with large populations like India, Mexico, Philippenes and China are a huge problem. I’m not sure that anyone can really agree on a solution, but there should be some stop loss where these things can’t be delayed beyond a certain fixed length of time and/or they shouldn’t issue the initial visas if the backlog to adjust is so long. The reason that this and most immigration law hasn’t been fixed is that while most people agree that this is a problem, there is not really a compromise solution that everyone can really agree on.

packetlost 11mo ago
Fully, fully disagree. The process should be better, but caps are not one of the problems that needs significant rework.
- rootusrootus 11mo ago
  I suspect that the amount of background legwork for each application is fairly limited. It should be possible to triage the vast majority of applications in a matter of days at most, at least the denials. It's wild that it takes years to do this. I assume it's intentional. And/or profitable.
  - packetlost 11mo ago
    You've clearly never seen someone go for citizenship. It's a relatively involved process that involves multiple interviews, character reference letters, lots of paperwork, etc. Getting a greencard (or equivalent) is an entirely different thing and is even _more_ broken.
    - rootusrootus 11mo ago
      I've known several people who've done it. I wasn't trying to argue that there isn't a lot of manual labor going on. But I'm doubting how much of that labor extends beyond interfacing with the applicant. Are they interviewing references outside the country? Doing deep background checks that are not basically instant electronically? That's what I'm talking about. The denial process can probably be made extremely fast, and then the tedious interview part can be focused only on the ones we are planning to accept otherwise.
      - packetlost 11mo ago
        You're probably right that the background checks aren't that intensive, but every other part of that process is. If needing 2+ interviewers for 15-30 minutes per candidate isn't labor intensive, I don't know what your definition is.
    - thatfrenchguy 11mo ago
      Going for citizenship is pretty easy once you have a green-card, and you can do it without a lawyer. It's a bunch of easy paperwork and an interview. Getting the green card though...
    - nirav72 11mo ago
      >It's a relatively involved process No its not. It's a 3-step process with only one in person interview involved. I've helped 2 people go through that process in the last 2 years. 1) Submit an application and fee. Along with additional documentation (if any). Then wait for biometrics appointment notification. 2) Go to appointed date for biometrics. (Finger printing, photos). Takes about 30 minutes. No different than appointment for TSA Pre-check or Global entry. 3) Go for naturalization interview. If accepted, then usually interviewer will let the person know that they've been approved for naturalization. They'll receive an email/letter indicating date , time and location of the naturalization ceremony/oath. Of course, depending on the area of the country you live in , the time between the above 3 steps varies. From 90 days to upwards of a year or more. Also, the above is for most people. But there could be some complicated cases where a person has to make multiple in-person visits. But regarding interview, there is only one.
  - dragonwriter 11mo ago
    The really long waits aren't processing backlogs they are quota backlogs, either global (because the total annual cap in a category is or was recently lower than the annual nuber of applicants, so there it takes a period of years for quota space to be available globally) or on a per-country basis (because in each category, only 7% of the annual quota can go to applicants from one country, regardless of the distribution of applications.) Though the processing times are also ridiculously and inexcusably long, in most categories.
    - pandaman 11mo ago
      Considering that there are over 2M immigrants per year and the USCIS staff is about 20K, it's actually pretty quick. If all USCIS did was just immigration it would still be ~100 immigrants per year per employee or about 2 workdays per immigrant. Even considering that some of those are dependents on the same case, it's still pretty fast. But USCIS also handles all the non-immigrant stuff: CoS, AoS, asylums, etc so they don't dedicate their whole workforce to the immigration and the actual caseload is higher than this estimate.
      - dragonwriter 11mo ago
        > Considering that there are over 2M immigrants per year and the USCIS staff is about 20K, it's actually pretty quick. The highest number of immigrant visas issued in a year was 612,258 in FY 2024.
        pandaman 11mo ago
        It is not, the number you present is the number of immigrant visas issued at foreign service posts from here https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/AnnualReports/FY2024AnnualReport/Table%20I.pdf https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Annual... There are immigrant visas issued in the country too.
bill_joy_fanboy 11mo ago
Citizenship in this country is not a right. Why is it important that we allow more people in from these other nations? Why is that a good thing?
- piperswe 11mo ago
  What did you do to earn your citizenship?
  - sudjsbbs 11mo ago
    [dead]
  - happytoexplain 11mo ago
    [flagged]
- etchalon 11mo ago
  Why not? Why is a bad thing?
  - nis0s 11mo ago
    It’s not a bad thing per se, but democratic action can produce cultural shift to something that was previously considered outside of the scope of your country’s way of life. What matters is what you want to achieve as a country, a society, a community and so on. This is something groups of people have to decide for themselves, and the worst form of disagreement is violence. I am of the view that more than 10 countries in the world should be built on enlightenment ideals, have a rule of law, have systems and processes for providing a good quality of life, and have centers of education and productivity. I don’t think it’s reasonable that we should shift billions of people to live in a handful of nations via immigration. If that’s the overall plan, then nations where those people are immigrating from should just become vassal states.
  - sudjsbbs 11mo ago
    It isn’t necessarily, but it’s currently used in the US to allow the wealthy to avoid investing in Americans. Instead of investing in Americans by lowering costs of necessities (food, housing, education, children) they chase short term profits for the benefits of shareholders (which is by and large the ultra rich). It’s much cheaper to import labor where the above costs were paid for by somebody else.
spprashant 11mo ago
I think they could at least offer some sort of reprieve for people waiting in line. Their status is tied to employer whims. If someone has lived in the country for 5 years and in line for citizenship perhaps give them some protection in case their employment gets taken away. Some grace period, perhaps access to healthcare.
- thatfrenchguy 11mo ago
  They are not "in line for citizenship", they're in line for a green-card, that's very different
_DeadFred_ 11mo ago
The American people have spoken time and again that we want these caps. That we want opportunity spread to more countries than just the most populace. That immigration policy should support diversity over other considerations. The reason this hasn't been fixed is because most American's support current policy along with promoting family unification and other decisions that are based on our moral positions. America has set a pretty generous amount of immigration slots, and it's not broken that we chose to fill them in a diverse way.
- dragonwriter 11mo ago
  > The American people have spoken time and again that we want these caps. Evidence for this, or even that the majority of the American people understand the system of caps, whether or not they support it? > That immigration policy should support diversity over other considerations. The people most supportive of the caps are the people most openly hostile to the concept of diversity having value, generally.
- triceratops 11mo ago
  > That we want opportunity spread to more countries than just the most populace. That immigration policy should support diversity over other considerations. There's an unspoken assumption there that India and China are monocultures, containing no diversity within themselves. Or that diversity is neatly defined by a border on a map.
amanaplanacanal 11mo ago
There was bipartisan immigration legislation working its way through Congress, until the president killed it because it went against his "immigration bad" narrative.
dragonwriter 11mo ago
> I’m not sure that anyone can really agree on a solution, but there should be some stop loss where these things can’t be delayed beyond a certain fixed length of time and/or they shouldn’t issue the initial visas if the backlog to adjust is so long. What initial visas? If you are talking about selectively denying non-immigrant dual-intent H-1B visas to people from countries with long timelines in some or all immigrant visa categories (not that getting an H-1B doesn't imply intent to seek to immigrate, and doesn't require qualification in an immigrant visa category), that's...well, even as someone who thinks the H-1B is a bad idea ab initio, a remarkably non-helpful policy to layer on top. > The reason that this and most immigration law hasn’t been fixed is that while most people agree that this is a problem, there is not really a compromise solution that everyone can really agree on. It's not just that people agree it is a problem and don't agree on a solution, people don't even agree on what the problem is though they might agree that, e.g., the long waitlists from certain countries are symptoms of some problem. Like, when some people favor eliminating all immigration from certain countries, and other people favor eliminating per country caps, that isn't a different solution to the same problem, its a fundamental difference in what is perceived as the problem.
thatfrenchguy 11mo ago
Those four countries have very different quota problems though: folks from Mexico and Philippines face a long wait in family immigration, mostly to bring their kids & siblings to the US ( https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-bulletin/2026/visa-bulletin-for-october-2025.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v... ), whereas Indian nationals also face long waits for employment based green-cards. Noting that you can always use your country of birth or your spouse's country of birth (cross-chargeability) for an employment-based green-card, my understanding has always been that Indians have large preference (or face large pressure) to marry other highly-educated folks that they often meet in the US but are also born in India that other immigrants just don't face as much.
- dragonwriter 11mo ago
  > Those four countries have very different quota problems though: folks from Mexico and Philippines face a long wait in family immigration, mostly to bring their kids & siblings to the US Mexico faces long wait times in all of the quota-limited family-based immigrant visa categories. The Phillipines faces a few months longer wait time in one severelly globally backlogged family based category (F4; where there is a 17 year backlog for most countries and its 3 months longer for the Phillipines), but not otherwise. India and China have long backlogs in most employment-based immigrant visa categories (but generally much less than Mexico has in family-based categories), India also has an longer-than-usual backlog (more than Phillipines, less than Mexico) in the F4 family based category.

packetlost 11mo ago

Fully, fully disagree. The process should be better, but caps are not one of the problems that needs significant rework.

rootusrootus 11mo ago
I suspect that the amount of background legwork for each application is fairly limited. It should be possible to triage the vast majority of applications in a matter of days at most, at least the denials. It's wild that it takes years to do this. I assume it's intentional. And/or profitable.
- packetlost 11mo ago
  You've clearly never seen someone go for citizenship. It's a relatively involved process that involves multiple interviews, character reference letters, lots of paperwork, etc. Getting a greencard (or equivalent) is an entirely different thing and is even _more_ broken.
  - rootusrootus 11mo ago
    I've known several people who've done it. I wasn't trying to argue that there isn't a lot of manual labor going on. But I'm doubting how much of that labor extends beyond interfacing with the applicant. Are they interviewing references outside the country? Doing deep background checks that are not basically instant electronically? That's what I'm talking about. The denial process can probably be made extremely fast, and then the tedious interview part can be focused only on the ones we are planning to accept otherwise.
    - packetlost 11mo ago
      You're probably right that the background checks aren't that intensive, but every other part of that process is. If needing 2+ interviewers for 15-30 minutes per candidate isn't labor intensive, I don't know what your definition is.
  - thatfrenchguy 11mo ago
    Going for citizenship is pretty easy once you have a green-card, and you can do it without a lawyer. It's a bunch of easy paperwork and an interview. Getting the green card though...
  - nirav72 11mo ago
    >It's a relatively involved process No its not. It's a 3-step process with only one in person interview involved. I've helped 2 people go through that process in the last 2 years. 1) Submit an application and fee. Along with additional documentation (if any). Then wait for biometrics appointment notification. 2) Go to appointed date for biometrics. (Finger printing, photos). Takes about 30 minutes. No different than appointment for TSA Pre-check or Global entry. 3) Go for naturalization interview. If accepted, then usually interviewer will let the person know that they've been approved for naturalization. They'll receive an email/letter indicating date , time and location of the naturalization ceremony/oath. Of course, depending on the area of the country you live in , the time between the above 3 steps varies. From 90 days to upwards of a year or more. Also, the above is for most people. But there could be some complicated cases where a person has to make multiple in-person visits. But regarding interview, there is only one.
- dragonwriter 11mo ago
  The really long waits aren't processing backlogs they are quota backlogs, either global (because the total annual cap in a category is or was recently lower than the annual nuber of applicants, so there it takes a period of years for quota space to be available globally) or on a per-country basis (because in each category, only 7% of the annual quota can go to applicants from one country, regardless of the distribution of applications.) Though the processing times are also ridiculously and inexcusably long, in most categories.
  - pandaman 11mo ago
    Considering that there are over 2M immigrants per year and the USCIS staff is about 20K, it's actually pretty quick. If all USCIS did was just immigration it would still be ~100 immigrants per year per employee or about 2 workdays per immigrant. Even considering that some of those are dependents on the same case, it's still pretty fast. But USCIS also handles all the non-immigrant stuff: CoS, AoS, asylums, etc so they don't dedicate their whole workforce to the immigration and the actual caseload is higher than this estimate.
    - dragonwriter 11mo ago
      > Considering that there are over 2M immigrants per year and the USCIS staff is about 20K, it's actually pretty quick. The highest number of immigrant visas issued in a year was 612,258 in FY 2024.
      - pandaman 11mo ago
        It is not, the number you present is the number of immigrant visas issued at foreign service posts from here https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/AnnualReports/FY2024AnnualReport/Table%20I.pdf https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Annual... There are immigrant visas issued in the country too.

bill_joy_fanboy 11mo ago

Citizenship in this country is not a right. Why is it important that we allow more people in from these other nations? Why is that a good thing?

piperswe 11mo ago
What did you do to earn your citizenship?
- sudjsbbs 11mo ago
  [dead]
- happytoexplain 11mo ago
  [flagged]
etchalon 11mo ago
Why not? Why is a bad thing?
- nis0s 11mo ago
  It’s not a bad thing per se, but democratic action can produce cultural shift to something that was previously considered outside of the scope of your country’s way of life. What matters is what you want to achieve as a country, a society, a community and so on. This is something groups of people have to decide for themselves, and the worst form of disagreement is violence. I am of the view that more than 10 countries in the world should be built on enlightenment ideals, have a rule of law, have systems and processes for providing a good quality of life, and have centers of education and productivity. I don’t think it’s reasonable that we should shift billions of people to live in a handful of nations via immigration. If that’s the overall plan, then nations where those people are immigrating from should just become vassal states.
- sudjsbbs 11mo ago
  It isn’t necessarily, but it’s currently used in the US to allow the wealthy to avoid investing in Americans. Instead of investing in Americans by lowering costs of necessities (food, housing, education, children) they chase short term profits for the benefits of shareholders (which is by and large the ultra rich). It’s much cheaper to import labor where the above costs were paid for by somebody else.

spprashant 11mo ago

I think they could at least offer some sort of reprieve for people waiting in line. Their status is tied to employer whims. If someone has lived in the country for 5 years and in line for citizenship perhaps give them some protection in case their employment gets taken away. Some grace period, perhaps access to healthcare.

thatfrenchguy 11mo ago
They are not "in line for citizenship", they're in line for a green-card, that's very different

_DeadFred_ 11mo ago

The American people have spoken time and again that we want these caps. That we want opportunity spread to more countries than just the most populace. That immigration policy should support diversity over other considerations. The reason this hasn't been fixed is because most American's support current policy along with promoting family unification and other decisions that are based on our moral positions. America has set a pretty generous amount of immigration slots, and it's not broken that we chose to fill them in a diverse way.

dragonwriter 11mo ago
> The American people have spoken time and again that we want these caps. Evidence for this, or even that the majority of the American people understand the system of caps, whether or not they support it? > That immigration policy should support diversity over other considerations. The people most supportive of the caps are the people most openly hostile to the concept of diversity having value, generally.
triceratops 11mo ago
> That we want opportunity spread to more countries than just the most populace. That immigration policy should support diversity over other considerations. There's an unspoken assumption there that India and China are monocultures, containing no diversity within themselves. Or that diversity is neatly defined by a border on a map.

amanaplanacanal 11mo ago

There was bipartisan immigration legislation working its way through Congress, until the president killed it because it went against his "immigration bad" narrative.

dragonwriter 11mo ago

> I’m not sure that anyone can really agree on a solution, but there should be some stop loss where these things can’t be delayed beyond a certain fixed length of time and/or they shouldn’t issue the initial visas if the backlog to adjust is so long. What initial visas? If you are talking about selectively denying non-immigrant dual-intent H-1B visas to people from countries with long timelines in some or all immigrant visa categories (not that getting an H-1B doesn't imply intent to seek to immigrate, and doesn't require qualification in an immigrant visa category), that's...well, even as someone who thinks the H-1B is a bad idea ab initio, a remarkably non-helpful policy to layer on top. > The reason that this and most immigration law hasn’t been fixed is that while most people agree that this is a problem, there is not really a compromise solution that everyone can really agree on. It's not just that people agree it is a problem and don't agree on a solution, people don't even agree on what the problem is though they might agree that, e.g., the long waitlists from certain countries are symptoms of some problem. Like, when some people favor eliminating all immigration from certain countries, and other people favor eliminating per country caps, that isn't a different solution to the same problem, its a fundamental difference in what is perceived as the problem.

thatfrenchguy 11mo ago

Those four countries have very different quota problems though: folks from Mexico and Philippines face a long wait in family immigration, mostly to bring their kids & siblings to the US ( https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-bulletin/2026/visa-bulletin-for-october-2025.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v... ), whereas Indian nationals also face long waits for employment based green-cards. Noting that you can always use your country of birth or your spouse's country of birth (cross-chargeability) for an employment-based green-card, my understanding has always been that Indians have large preference (or face large pressure) to marry other highly-educated folks that they often meet in the US but are also born in India that other immigrants just don't face as much.

dragonwriter 11mo ago
> Those four countries have very different quota problems though: folks from Mexico and Philippines face a long wait in family immigration, mostly to bring their kids & siblings to the US Mexico faces long wait times in all of the quota-limited family-based immigrant visa categories. The Phillipines faces a few months longer wait time in one severelly globally backlogged family based category (F4; where there is a 17 year backlog for most countries and its 3 months longer for the Phillipines), but not otherwise. India and China have long backlogs in most employment-based immigrant visa categories (but generally much less than Mexico has in family-based categories), India also has an longer-than-usual backlog (more than Phillipines, less than Mexico) in the F4 family based category.