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I'm an American that lives abroad. I have first-hand experience how other countries treat 'immigrants'. H1B is a temporary non-immigrant visa. I could never im

• Solstafir 1mo ago
  There are arguments from the other side too. Many H1B folks do keep one foot back in the country they are from. But then a lot of backlash on specifically Indian folks for sending most of their salary back home. They know that this is transient state, many of them have rented housing, but still these visas are not like weekly visas, they are for 3 years, people would build somewhat of a life in that time and uprooting them instantly is inhumane indeed.
  • itake 1mo ago
    I don't have opinions about them sending their salary back home. Obviously its better for the USA if the money stayed in the USA, but "earning money in one locality and spending it another" is really really really situation, even in the USA. American Police officers are famous for not actually living in the cities they work in. In each country I have lived in, I was a guest. With that knowledge, I carefully designed my life so uprooting would not be a painful inhumane process. If you throw a party and a guest refuses to leave, you wouldn't declare forcing them to leave your home in-humane.
    • khriss 1mo ago
      > If you throw a party and a guest refuses to leave Show me where the govt has actually revoked their visa? Instead, because they cannot cancel the visa legally they are trying to create as much pain as possible for these visa holders hoping that some will give up and leave.
    • cousin_it 1mo ago
      I don't really like the concept of "guests" being applied to people living somewhere for years, working, paying taxes, making families and friends, sending children to school and so on. I think it would be more humane if this concept was minimized, and instead the concept of "no taxation without representation" was applied. Fast track people as much as possible. Maybe one year as a voiceless "guest" is okay for a human being, but not more than that.
    • aprilthird2021 1mo ago
      These people are productive members of our society who enrich our country and our economy. The idea that they are guests we are hosting is absurd
      • arcbyte 1mo ago
        A siblings commenter stated this opinion much more persuasively for me. When these people arrive here, they are absolutely guests. It's incontrovertible that they are guests. Theres no debate. However, time is important and after a certain amount of time or perhaps even connection made to the community, a person does move from guest to neighbor.
        • aprilthird2021 1mo ago
          > When these people arrive here, they are absolutely guests. It's incontrovertible that they are guests. Theres no debate. Yes there is. They are a huge reason our economy is as good as it is. When a player comes to a team from another as a result of a trade, is he a guest or is he someone people look up to? It depends on what he brings to the table right? Most of the immigrants we talk about here, high skilled tech workers, are bringing more to the table than the average American
  • latch 1mo ago
    Who's angry about how people are spending their already-taxed income? Is that really a thing? Is it sincere or just racism masked as "think of the economy"? (Honest question, Not American. Don't live there, news to me).
    • itake 1mo ago
      The big beautiful bill included a 1% foreign remittance tax for outbound international transfers funded using physical cash, money orders, and cashier's checks.
      • LadyCailin 1mo ago
        Which notably, doesn’t affect money transfers in general, just ways that poor people transfer money, so the concern as stated is not in good faith at all, but rather a way to further punish migrant workers, primarily Mexicans, and is absolutely racial animosity.
        • account42 1mo ago
          You could also say it affects money transfers that can be used to avoid taxing that money in the US.
          • paulryanrogers 1mo ago
            Yet strangely not cryptocurrency or bank transfers
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• ab8 1mo ago
  (a) The WSJ article is talking about "immigrant visas" a.k.a. green cards, not H1-Bs. (b) Even if we are talking about H1-Bs, it takes someone in India 10-15 years of waiting in line to get a green card. If someone were to buy a house in the interim, it doesn't seem so irrational to me. Its easy to blame the victim and say they should have known.
  • itake 1mo ago
    (a) I responded to OP's comment about H1-Bs, not the article itself. Even then, presumably, they paused processing new visa and the people that have already obtained them may continue to stay. If they fail to renew GC during this time, I agree that is a dark issue. (b) If I enter China on a temporary work permit visa, with a 15 year plan to obtain Chinese citizenship, no one will have sympathy for me if that plan is interrupted by legal, political, economic changes. Since I full well knew my current status and the risks of failing to obtain Chinese citizenship. Just because there is a possibility in the distant future for permanence, doesn't mean you can safely backdate it to today.
    • TheDong 1mo ago
      > If I enter China on a temporary work permit visa, with a 15 year plan to obtain Chinese citizenship, no one will have sympathy for me if that plan is interrupted I would have sympathy for you if it was interrupted by suddenly changing the requirements through no action of your own. Like, if you commit a crime, are a belligerent drunk, or whatever and they don't renew your visa over that, I have no sympathy. If you're unable to secure employment for an extended period of time, and they don't renew your visa, I also have less sympathy since that's part of the bargain you knew going in. If you play by the rules, but they reject a visa renewal for a reason like "we have too many immigrants from $x country, so we're rejecting y% of renewals" , well that's legally within the government's rights to do, but I'll have sympathy for you and think that you're morally in the right and China's failing its duty to its foreign residents. Likewise, this US one is a case of capricious rejection, the US government is not holding up its end of the deal you both thought you were agreeing to. Like, the deal with a work visa, even if it's not permanent, is "if you follow the rules and keep good steady employment, you can live here, but yes it's conditional on the work thing". I have sympathy for this hypothetical you, and also I have sympathy for those holding american visas who are impacted.
• k8sToGo 1mo ago
  When I was in the US as a student (F1 Visa) that is why I decided to go back home instead of trying to optain an H1B. It was just too risky for too long. I did not want to live a life where I had to expect to leave the next day. Besides, it was right at the beginning when Trump won the first time.
• raz32dust 1mo ago
  I think one of the fundamental problem with h1b is that it is labeled as "non-immigrant" whereas for all practical purposes it is really an immigrant visa. Why would a person who is supposedly having rare skills come to a country and spend their best years here without reasonable guarantee of permanency? People buy homes because it is a reasonable belief that they are going to be living here permanently and it has historically been true. In any case I don't see the point you are making. Should America be treating immigrants poorly because whichever country you're in makes you slightly uncomfortable to buy a home there? It's not an excuse for all this pain and cruelty. America should hold itself to higher standards.
  • tyre 1mo ago
    > Why would a person who is supposedly having rare skills come to a country and spend their best years here without reasonable guarantee of permanency? I agree with your overall point but the answer here is money. The earning potential in the US vs. e.g. India is drastic.
    • bubblethink 1mo ago
      It's not really money. Frankly, no 20 year old thinks that much about money. They do things that they like, whether that is going to school, working at a job, or starting up. And you don't know about the broken immigration system from the outside. The reason this problem is unique to India is due to country caps/DEI which prevents people from India on H-1B from getting a green card.
      • achenet 1mo ago
        I disagree that no 20 year old thinks that much about money. If you're lucky enough to have had rich enough parents to not have to worry about money too much, yes, you'll probably optimize for doing things you enjoy, but people who spend a lot of their younger years with money issues will sometimes obsess about it and really focus their lives around 'getting rich'. I've noticed have similar phenomena with people who are deprived of certain important needs in their youth - people who are starved of a certain type of parental affection overcompensating by orienting their lives around getting more of it (eg women with daddy issues who are very promiscuous), people who feel disrespected and downtrodden who become obsessed with social status, people who get bullied and get into martial arts... If you've ever read Gone With The Wind, there's a line where Scarlett O'Hara says "with God as my witness, I'll never go hungry again". I suspect that many people who have similar experiences will react by orienting their lives in a similar manner. "I was deprived of something important, so I will react by over-indexing on that important thing I was deprived of, to avoid the future pain of being again deprived of it".
• alphabeta3r56 1mo ago
  That's by design too because immigrants visas are capped by country of birth. And the quota has nothing to do with reality.
• afavour 1mo ago
  > H1B is a temporary non-immigrant visa. It’s a dual purpose visa. You are allowed to pursue immigration (i.e. a green card) while you have an H1B.
  • fg137 1mo ago
    This. The dude has no idea what they are talking about. It's amazing even on HN people are openly giving their opinions while being completely uninformed of the facts. Imagine the discussions elsewhere.
    • 3838484949 1mo ago
      [flagged]
      • cindyllm 1mo ago
        [dead]
    • itake 1mo ago
      I’m informed on this topic… Can you correct the mistake? If I show up in China (or the USA) on a tourist visa with the plans to pursue a marriage and permanent residency, does that mean I get to backdate my permanent residency to the tourist visa because I’m able to pursue a marriage (PR)?
      • afavour 1mo ago
        I don’t understand the relevance. No one is using a tourist visa in this scenario and a tourist visa definitely isn’t dual intent in the way an H1B is.
        • itake 1mo ago
          The "dual intent" permits seeking permanent residence, while seeking permanent residence on a tourist visa is not allowed, under most conditions. "dual intent" doesn't backdate permanent residency once you're started to seek.
• munksbeer 1mo ago
  Completely random, and not leading in any way, but where do you live currently? As in, which country, which city?
• m3rc 1mo ago
  Genuinely how are people like you still around and semi-concious after the past 8 years
• woodpanel 1mo ago
  Non-US citizen here. 100% Agreed. Where does this notion come from that a host society has any obligation to the foreigner / non pr? As if he was forced to move to America.
  • ramraj07 1mo ago
    No one asks for that obligation. Only that the rules are stable and you give a heads up.
    • woodpanel 1mo ago
      You have the heads up: Why acquire real-estate if your status is by law temporary?
      • ramraj07 1mo ago
        It was not by law temporary, it was by law indefinitely renewable. You just had to hold a job that'll sponsor you. How is that materially different from any "normal" person who takes a 30 year mortgage with no guarantee that they will stay employed that long? Hell, the vast majority of H1Bs have much greater job security than the average home buyer anyway. Again change the law if you want. Give a heads up. Or dont. Nothing the current government does to home owning H1Bs should be rank ordered anywhere but to the bottom quartile of the greatest injustices being doled out.
        • woodpanel 1mo ago
          > renewable Sorry but does that word ring any bells? Is there any nation where natives have to "renew" their native-ness acceptance from the state on a n-yearly basis? This is intellectually dishonest imo.
• ramraj07 1mo ago
  Immigration is a privilege, no more unfair than all of capitalism. If a country decides things are x or y levels hard to immigrate thats great. The problem is the moving of goal posts. For decades, h1b (which is an immigrant visa) was a stable path to immigrate to America. People see that, and there was an implicit promise made there. If the US wants to decide not to continue with this practice that is fully fair. Just make up the rules clearly and give people a heads up. Is that too much to ask?
• titzer 1mo ago
  This comment vaguely blames immigrants for not having an escape plan. Millions of people immigrate to the US through all the right mechanisms and follow all the laws and have every intention of staying forever and becoming citizens. Scaring their pants off is an unnecessarily hostile and unwelcoming act that is unbecoming of this country. > in order to keep housing prices lower for residents And where do they live? They rent. So this jacks up rents for everyone, not just for immigrants, but for any who cannot afford to buy. Basically everything you say and also imply makes life worse for immigrants and better for wealthy residents. It even makes life worse for poor residents.
  • mslate 1mo ago
    But titzer, are you not a wealthy resident as well? I thought we were among friends!
    • titzer 1mo ago
      I know, pretty much everyone on HN is a self-selected group that's pretty high up on the privilege/luck/wealth scale. I immigrated to Germany from the US in 2013. My employer handled basically everything--even hired a personal assistant to accompany me to the immigration office and help with finding housing, which is pretty competitive in a major German city. Honestly, immigration for highly skilled tech people is a walk in the park compared to basically everyone else. I used the term privileged because it's accurate--and I daresay it was a tad bit easier being white, having an advanced degree in tech, and even having some German roots. My experience was absolutely not what other people immigrating to Germany face, as they come from all over the place, there are far fewer slots, and there's a host of soft discrimination that even Eastern Europeans face trying to come to Germany. Like everywhere, there's xenophobia and isolationism, mistrust, and blame. Literally the exact same arguments, finger-pointing, suspicion. And that didn't fall on me. I moved back to the US and handled the backend of that process, which honestly isn't too bad, but it was so much harder to deal with than one would expect--and that was just leaving. I have a bit of German language skills but legal German is a whole other matter. When I read OP's comment it raised my hackles because it just sounds incredibly tone deaf. Lots of people want to come to America, and it isn't easy, even doing it right. Telling them they need to be prepared to get kicked out at the drop of a hat is a shitty welcome. If we want to have reasonable controls on immigration and a better policy, I'm all for it, but let's focus on things that would work without screwing people over and treating them like subhuman garbage like this administration has. Limit the number of visas, handle visa overstays better. A ham-fisted, incompetent over-correction that has untrained meatheads shooting US citizens in the streets with no consequence isn't it. I don't have a lot of patience for anyone carrying water for this administration. Not a thimble-full. If you think you have nuanced, smart-sounding take on immigration but is just victim-blaming, then it deserves to be challenged. I haven't got time for the leading edge of the Overton-window people who just can't confront their deep anti-immigrant biases and provide cover for the tragic and cruel things that are going down as we speak.
• stanleykm 1mo ago
  i think your problem is you havent also experienced the american immigration system to properly compare also h1b is “non immigrant” but it is dual intent. this means it is perfectly legal to seek an immigrant (ie green card) visa. again, you have no idea what youre talking about
• limitedmage 1mo ago
  H1-B is a dual intent visa, which means that, while technically a non-immigrant visa, one can apply for an immigrant visa (aka Green Card) while on it. Because there are per-country yearly limits for immigrant visas, some countries have insanely long wait times. If you’ve applied for a Green Card, you can renew an H1-B visa indefinitely until the Green Card is approved. Realistically for someone from India, that wait time can be decades long. Are you saying someone that has lived in the US for over a decade, may have kids born here, may have lived the majority of their adult life here, should not try to live a normal life and buy a house and settle down? I went through the whole immigration process from H1-B to citizenship. In general I agree with your mentality, and I did not consider buying a house until I got my Green Card. But I am not Indian and it took me 6 years.