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Comment by trhrowuuo23 | Hacker News Reader

This is a good thing.

And I say this as an Indian H1B worker who's actually left the US because of the broken immigration system.

I spent 8 years working for a big tech firm, and left the country when I realized that I was essentially never going to get a green card, despite my application being approved 4 years ago. The queue is now decades-long.

I worked directly for a giant tech company that you all know, and was paid a very good salary, easily at par with a US Citizen. I know of so many people who gamed the system, working in cahoots with consulting companies that exist solely to scam people.

Now I live in Canada, working for the same company, making the same amount of money, but as a Permanent Resident here. Life is so much simpler because I don't need to worry about capricious immigration policy, and being treated with suspicion at the border every time I fly back home.

Your system is broken and needs to be fixed. Now, I don't think your current administration is going to fix it, but who knows.

View on HN

> Your system is broken and needs to be fixed.

I couldn't agree more. The solution here should be to lift the per country cap on each visa category, which is a remnant of the pre-1965 overtly racist national origin system, and increase the overall number of employment based permanent visas. EB-2 and EB-3 (not including other workers), which are the main categories for high skilled workers, are only allocated around 70,000 visas per year. Compare that to the lottery system at 50,000 or siblings of US citizens at 65,000 per year.

While I am totally in favor of permanent resident visa programs being fixed, and am in general in favor of increased immigration including of high tech workers, the H1B is being abused. Not just by the Indian BPO companies like Infosys and Tata but also by multinational consulting companies like IBM and Accenture. If and when the EB2 and EB3 backlogs were cleared, I'd support: 1) eliminating the exemption rules for determining H1B dependent employers, 2) barring H1B dependent employers from filing any further H1B petitions until they were no longer dependent, and 3) apply the attestation requirements to any employer regardless of size that files at least 1000 petitions in a visa year.

Isn't this just unfair to say bright young people from Africa who don't have an industry turning out graduates

How are they any worse off under what I propose than the status quo?

"lift the per country cap on each visa category, which is a remnant of the pre-1965 overtly racist national origin system"

I understand that pre-1965 it was used in a racist way, but isn't a per country cap a good way maintain a diverse group of immigrants today? I'd keep that, and add a gender cap, forcing a relatively equal distribution. I'd also greatly increase skilled immigration overall.

Exactly, if we got rid of the per country caps, the only thing it would do (beyond help the OP, surprise!) would ensure immigrants would be 80% Chinese and Indian.

I for one prefer the diversity of immigrants we get with the cap.

How are arguments like this any different than arguments for Jewish quotas back in the day? What happened to judging people for the content of their character rather than the color of their skin?

Making Indians wait for up to 70 years (a de facto Indian exclusion act) is extremely racist.

Are you against diversity? Because that's what the quota is there for.

Plenty of Indians can come to the US, we just want to leave room for others as well.

(1) If India hypothetically broke into 50 nations (at independence there were 556 states), this problem would not arise. Suddenly, India's diversity index would "shoot up".

(2) India itself is very diverse: ~30% speak the same language (Hindi) with different dialects. Rest speak over 16+ regional languages with distinct scripts and a 1000+ dialects. Someone speaking Tamil won't understand a Punjabi speaker and vice versa.

(3) If someone was born just 5 kms from say Gorakhpur in India , across the border in Nepal, they suddenly meet the diversity bar.

(4) Not sure why two immigrants from Austria and Germany are 'diverse' but two immigrants from India's Nagaland and Gujarat, who have different religions, cultures, languages (even facial features, if those count) are clubbed together.

(5) Logically extending your argument, you'd also agree with a quota system in all jobs classifications. For example, we should have a 12% quota for African Americans in Google's engineering team.

This is an asinine argument.

Merit, fit and an ability to contribute to the society should determine America's immigration policy not some racist concept determined by the accident of birth.

> Not sure why two immigrants from Austria and Germany are 'diverse' but two immigrants from India's Nagaland and Gujarat, who have different religions, cultures, languages (even facial features, if those count) are clubbed together.

That's an interesting point. When asked by others where I am from I normally respond with "I am from India" - but it would be more appropriate to say "I am from Tamil Nadu" (an Indian State north of Sri Lanka).

If someone was born just 5 kms from say Gorakhpur in India , across the border in Nepal, they suddenly meet the diversity bar.

And if they were born 9000 miles away in the US, they'd already be a citizen, so what's your point.

Listen, no system is ever going to be "fair" for every person.

And considering how often people talk shit about the US on HN, I'm surprised people don't just go to Canada or Australia instead.

What's so good about diversity?

Arbitrary country lines don't count for diversity, as somebody else pointed out. China and India have huge populations, and China at least has a huge land mass.

Why wouldn't we not "leave room" for others, especially if they weren't as skilled?

No, it isn't. Under the current system, there are no per-country limits on who can come to this country to work for a sponsoring employer.

The per-country caps only have the effect that some people need to wait longer than others for their rights, while still living here and paying the same taxes as you do, but not being easily able to switch jobs, not being eligible for certain jobs (eg. SpaceX), or certain research grants (eg. NIH), and being one layoff away from having to sell their house, sell their car, take their kids out of school, and leave on short notice.

If diversity is the goal, then the entire pipeline (H1/L1, potentially F1) should have per-country caps - that way, nobody living here is denied their rights based on where they were born. Raising the per-country caps on green cards to 100% to match the H-1B caps (aka eliminating them) is one way of achieving this, and arguably the most egalitarian - but it isn't the only way.

At this point now, I suspect some companies prefer hiring people from India/China because they know they'd be indentured. That aspect should be removed.

Quite a few of my friends are now applying for Canadian PR. Having suffered under H1B, its amazing how employee friendly the Canadian system is. I can be in India, apply for PR, get a decision in 3 months or less. Then I can go there, find a job. Never have to depend on an employer, never at the mercy of customer or some random visa officer or a CBP agent or lottery. I get to be in control of my life.

If Americans don't want H1Bs, its all fine. Kick all Indians out. But why a nation that claims itself to be the land of freedom, who routinely criticizes other nations including India for human rights violations, allow such a visa system to exist all these years, I don't know.

H1B is not about the employee, it is about the employer.

I am 100% for more immigration, hell I favor open borders completely. However as much as I am in favor of more immigration, and I am staunchly opposed to the H1B program.

Isn't this an oxymoron. Open borders completely, but against H1B program.

Not at all, H1B allows employers to hold immigration status over the head of their employers, threatening them with possible deportation or other effects if they do not accept working conditions, pay or other items that would be unacceptable to a person that did not have their immigration status tied to their employment.

I am for individuals, not corporations. Ever wonder why large companies are always pushing for more H1B but never for Full Immigration reform.

They like the power in balance H1B creates

Yeah, but you already got hundreds of thousands individuals here in H-1 status, and thousands more wanting to join them, for lack of any other options. Then what?

Seems quite logical to me: completely open borders make H1B obsolete.

H1B is an awful visa as far as work visas around the world go.

> But why a nation that claims itself to be the land of freedom, who routinely criticizes other nations including India for human rights violations, allow such a visa system to exist all these years, I don't know.

I think going to Canada is the most rational thing for tech workers and people without papers too. I keep wondering why it hasn't been happening more.

We've lost our collective shit over immigration in the us. Trump is a temporary aberration, either that or our country will have to fall apart eventually, and we'll split up into different countries, and a lot of us would immigrate to Canada or something.

Our years of easy economic growth and high salaried and widespread middle class jobs is ending (even before we lose most trucking jobs) and we are worried collectively about the future. A more rational approach would be improve education, figure out how to get better paying jobs and help industries-its more than cutting taxes on rich people and re-train people that don't have good jobs. We are stuck in a different direction, blaming others, with backwards policies that are supposed to increase employment opportunities in many decaying industries that are mostly or completely pointless.

Our visa policy has been screwed up and we've had this insane split about immigration for years - fears of people coming in from 'outside' and taking our limited number of new jobs, but needing at least lots of farm workers and low skilled workers. Never mind that when my forebears came to the us that was 'good immigration' from today's view, even though we've always had mixed feelings about it.

So as our lack of good jobs becomes more acute, the pressure against immigration planning just increases. And since we failed to do much to help the people who have lost their jobs for whatever reasons the last 40 years, all those people are feeling ever more desperate and subject to huckster political claims.

I think unless there is an amazing massive failure of our current political leadership, and probably even if that happens, we will have a really hard time changing our immigration "strategy". I mean we already had the iraq war 2 debacle, destruction of that country, thousands of americans died, the economy crashed, and we still ended up where we are now politically.

>I think going to Canada is the most rational thing for tech workers and people without papers too. I keep wondering why it hasn't been happening more.

Because you can easily double your salary working in the US. That and the fact that Canadian winter can be brutal for months out of the year.

What's the point if you live under a threat of deportation all your life!

Do you know how much paper work has to be done to file a petition. I have around 20 pounds in weight of past paperwork!. Every petition is 100s of pages. Even if you have an approved petition, you have to go for Visa stamping where there is a 8-10 page questionnaire, waiting in line on 2 separate days and answer questions.

It's all really fucked it. You can do it for maybe 1-2 years. Not for decades.

There are many Indians in US, who would be screwed if they lost their jobs in US. They work for the outsourcing companies and if they have to move to to India - their quality of life will take a big dive. There if they make 80k USD, they will make 20-30k USD in India and have a much worse quality of life. These people wouldn't go back unless they are forced to. And they save every penny they can, because they are trying to be ready for the worst case scenario.

However, anyone who is highly skilled - they can get a job anywhere.

Being in US is like being in a decades long dating relationship where you counterpart raises questions on the relationship and threatens to throw you out every few years. However, some people want to get married and settle and it makes sense for them to move on!

> I think going to Canada is the most rational thing for tech workers and people without papers too. I keep wondering why it hasn't been happening more.

Because the US still has the vast majority of prestigious tech companies and still has the edge in innovation. That may be changing long term, but at least on the short term, this is the truth. The opportunities you get at Microsoft or Amazon are unmatched.

People will gladly prioritize wealth and career at a Big 4 company vs a nice stable life at some not well know Canadian company.

you talk like there are no big tech companies in Canada. Every US tech company that's a household name (and many more than that) has offices in Canada with engineers in them.

This is not Trump. This bullshit with regards to legal immigration at least has been going on for 15-20 years under Democratic and Republican administrations.

> Having suffered under H1B, its amazing how employee friendly the Canadian system is.

> If Americans don't want H1Bs, its all fine. Kick all Indians out.

If you like the Canadian system then you should love Trump. That's exactly the direction he wants to take the US.

So far, the only news I have seen about H1B reform is articles such as these, where they are supposedly making it harder for companies who game the system to get the visa. I hope he will change it to a merit based system and free the people from employer dependency completely.

Same here man. I'm getting sick and tired of immigration in this country. The whole country is worried about illegal aliens and no one cares about us.

And this is not new with trump. Been on h1b for years. It just got worse over time under obama. Americans dont care about indians. Either we don't get our voices heard too much, or we are just a slightly wrong shade of brown ("people of color" - ha!). Go care about illegals.... I'm just tired of dealing with immigration and then getting shat on by "pro immigration" people who dont care about Indians (and frankly Chinese).

To my american friends, you dont realize how racist the immigration system is currently. Forget refugees and "muslim bans". Those are really nothing compared to how Indians and Chinese are treated. I'll show you: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...

Do a search for "FINAL ACTION DATES FOR EMPLOYMENT-BASED PREFERENCE CASES"

See that table. There are a few salient points:

1. That table shows where the queue pointer is right now. "C" means at the head of the queue (no entries, everything being processed). If it is a date, that is the date that is currently being processed (for all intents and purposes).

2. Notice the special columns for the different nationalities. So they discriminate based on national origin. But, only 5 to 7 countries are special cased. Everyone else (including all refugee countries, muslim countries, etc) fall under "Rest of World" ("All chargeability areas..").

3. Now notice the INDIA column. The date is 01Jan07 for EB3. This means, for someone with a Bachelors degree, they have to process people who applied 11 years ago. Let that sink in. No other race has to face this discrimination. EB2 (masters or phd) is not much better either. You have to be a genius (EB1) to get a greencard 'now' without a queue ... at the same level as a Bachelors graduate from Iran, Saudi, Somalia, whereever. .

Anyway, hopefully you can empathize a little bit with Indians and Chinese who did things by the book and stop focussing so much on illegals.

If there was zero discrimination no-one from any other country would stand a chance due to the sheer population size of India & China.

Would have thought this was obvious.

It’s fairer to the rest of us.

That's not true. People from every country would have the same chance. Petitions would be processed in the order they were received regardless of nationality. How would that be unfair to anyone?

Trust me man, you haven't seen the ugly side of many liberal "pro immigration" folks. At least the guy you are responding to is being honest.

It is unfair because it doesn't allow someone to jump the line. A totally unfair system (sarcasm).

There is no "order they are received" for H-1B. You have to apply on the first of April and literally win a lottery.

If you remove the national origin quotas (it has little to do with race and everything to do with where you were born), then it would be the exact same process for green cards except you only have a limited number of chances before you cap out the time on your visa and get sent back. How is that a better, less capricious system than the current one for anyone who isn't Indian or Chinese?

The US political system gives disproportionate power to states with smaller population. The US immigration system is disproportionately more difficult for countries with lots of applicants. That's what the US looks at as fair - giving each state or country a fair shot, not each individual.

> If you remove the national origin quotas (it has little to do with race and everything to do with where you were born)

Yeah, those things aren't correlated at all. Come on.

> then it would be the exact same process for green cards except you only have a limited number of chances before you cap out the time on your visa and get sent back.

No it wouldn't. There's a different system in place for permanent visas than for temporary ones. Viz. a waiting list. The grandparent post linked the visa bulletin which explains how it works. You have the tools at hand to educate yourself, there's no excuse for ignorance.

> How is that a better, less capricious system than the current one for anyone who isn't Indian or Chinese?

Because human being are human beings, not 1 billionth of India or China. It is a bedrock principle of contemporary liberalism (small l) that people ought be to treated as individuals. The remnant of the pre-1965 racist national origin system is a disgusting anomaly of a worse time.

> The US political system gives disproportionate power to states with smaller population. The US immigration system is disproportionately more difficult for countries with lots of applicants. That's what the US looks at as fair - giving each state or country a fair shot, not each individual.

One terribly unjust system originally put in place to protect slavery doesn't define the United States' entire notion of fairness.

In any event it is nonsensical to talk about giving a country a shot. Countries aren't going to immigrate to the US, people are.

Yes, I am aware that there is currently a different system, for green cards. I am aware that your proposal is to process each application in the order that it is received. What exactly do you think is going to happen to go from here to there? On one hand, you need to deal with the backlog. On the other hand, if you are going to "fix" the system, you should fix it in such a way that, in the future, there will be no backlog. How would such a system be different than what I described? The alternative is to turn the green card backlog into a problem for immigrants of all nationalities rather than a problem for immigrants of some nationalities.

You should perhaps learn a bit more about the history of the country which you want to immigrate to. Slavery had nothing to do with representation in the senate. It had everything to do with protecting Connecticut, Delaware, and New Jersey from New York, Georgia, and the Carolinas.

The green card diversity lottery is based on exactly the premise I mention. Applicants from countries with low rates of immigration to the US have a great chance of winning. Applicants from countries with high rates of immigration to the US are ineligible to apply.

> You should perhaps learn a bit more about the history of the country which you want to immigrate to.

Because no one could possibly be opposed to per country caps unless he were a disgruntled Indian.

I was born in New York. My parents were born in New York. Three of four of my grandparents were born in New York. The fourth grandparent was born in Germany. His parents died in a concentration camp because they couldn't come to the US with their teen children. You see they had be been born in Eastern Europe and the racist national origin system was designed to prevent too many people born in Eastern Europe from coming to the US. Kind of like how you don't want too many people born in India or China to come to the US.

> The green card diversity lottery is based on exactly the premise I mention.

With your encyclopedic knowledge of American history I'm sure you are aware of the political origins of that program.

> The green card diversity lottery is based on exactly the premise I mention. Applicants from countries with low rates of immigration to the US have a great chance of winning. Applicants from countries with high rates of immigration to the US are ineligible to apply.

Sure. But that has nothing to do with employment-based green cards.

By all means, choose for diversity when it comes to other types of immigrants (extended family, lottery, etc). But it makes no sense to consider country of birth for skilled worker green cards, where employers hire based on talent - and especially so when the beneficiaries already live here and pay taxes here.

> The alternative is to turn the green card backlog into a problem for immigrants of all nationalities rather than a problem for immigrants of some nationalities.

Sure, but a 3-4 year wait for everyone (while living here) is literally an order of magnitude lower than the current 60-year wait for those born in India. Problems like not being able to switch jobs, kids having to leave when they turn 21, etc, are just less likely to occur when the wait is shorter and more transparent.

In order to prevent a shock to the system, per-country caps should be phased-in over 2-3 years. That way, those currently in the system will all get their green cards in the expected 1-1.5 year timeframe, while future applicants will know, prior to applying, that the wait will be 4 years for everyone. HR392 does this.

Think a 4-year wait would be too long? First, let me point out the hypocrisy. Second, a solution then is simply to increase the employment-based numbers, from 140K currently, to around 220K (these numbers include immediate family: spouses and minor kids). This is hard politically, because Democrats would also want to increase chain migration and other categories.

If the backlog is truly 60 years, then it will take 4.2 years of giving every single employment based greencard to Indians to clear that backlog. This ignores the backlog that exists for Chinese applicants.

The fact is that the backlog will get longer in every year that more foreign temporary workers apply for green cards than there are green cards available. So what might start out as a 4 year backlog in (say) 2020 will get longer each year by as long as 1 year (if there are, say, 280,000 H-1B petitions every year and the worst case of 100% of them applying for greencards occurs).

If it really is a matter of going from <2 year wait for non-Chinese, non-Indians and a multi-decade wait for Chinese and Indians to a <4 year wait for everyone, forever, because there will no longer be an accumulation of a backlog, then it is a no brainer for the US to make that change in policy. I believe that that scenario is a fantasy and the actual result of HR 392 will be a multi-decade wait for everyone. The solution to that will, IMO, turn into a lottery similar to today's H-1B process.

> except you only have a limited number of chances before you cap out the time on your visa

That's not true - anyone with a submitted I-140 can renew their H-1 or L-1 visa indefinitely in yearly increments. See sections 104 and 106 of AC21.

> If there was zero discrimination no-one from any other country would stand a chance due to the sheer population size of India & China.

If there was zero discrimination on country of origin, each qualified individual applicant within a given VISA category would be situated equivalently regardless of nation of origin.

India, China, Mexico, and the Philippines (I may be missing one or two other countries) would see an increased number of total immigrants to the US and other countries less, but that's because the per country of origin limits currently put individuals of those countries in a worse position, not because the present system is fair and removing the per country limits would be unfair.

I think we'd see more from Brazil peh Argentina, Indonesia, fewer from Mexico [unless undocumenteds don't count as immigrants]

India & China make up 35% of the entire worlds population. A fair system will admit a lot more people from those countries than others simply because there have more people.

That’s why the system can’t be “fair”. Someone in the system is always going to be slighted.

The goal of the caps is diversity of immigrants. Making the system "fair" for countries like India and China is not the goal.

Do you know that India is more than in languages, cuisine, culture and history than whole of Western Europe. Just because they have common passport, doesn't mean that they are any less diverse.

If whole of Europe gets a single EU passport, does it suddenly make them any less diverse?

Its hilarious how "diversity" is supposed to be about thinking beyond race/nationality/skin color, yet the measure of diversity is how many different races/nationalities/skin colors you can collect.

If race does not matter, then why does "diverse" mean as many races as possible. Shouldn't it mean diversity of thought instead? If nationality does not affect personality, then why should diversity be about diversity of nations?

Hang on, why should someone from India have less of a chance just because they were born in India? They can't help where they were born, or that their country has a high population.

If there weren't country caps, then someone born in India would have an equal chance as someone from Sweden.

I argue what you're proposing isn't fair at all - it's clear that limiting by country is discrimination, not the other way around.

Now what I will grant you is that it'll skew population statistics for immigrants to the more populous countries. But that's just a function of global population distribution by nation.

Which again, isn't the fault of the applicant.

Or to put all this another way, should someone born in Vatican City have an extremely high chance to get in, versus someone from a country with several million in population? No.

I'm writing this form a throw away for obvious reasons. The H1-B system or the green card system does not distinguish between TCS/Infosys/etc.. and bay area engineers making a lot of money.

I made over $300k+/year at one of the large tech firms. Because the US limits green cards from people born in a single country to 7% (same upper limits to India / China and Montenegro), me and many of my friends have to wait 70+ years. (https://www.cato.org/blog/no-one-knows-how-long-legal-immigr...)

I paid a lot of money in taxes for a long time. Over a decade, this was taxation without representation.

Many of my american friends could not believe how bad the system was. It took several beer chats with hours of question answering before they realized that you had no way around this if you were born in India. Before anyone says EB-1, remember that EB-1 was meant for nobel laureates and requires a lot of luck to work out. It's ridiculous - a person I used to lead in my job who was born in Spain got their green card in under 2 years because of where they were born, while I had already waited a decade.

Life is short and there's no point waiting for 70+ years paying taxes without representation.

I'm back in India starting a company. The access to venture capital here is improving, and it's so much easier to be creative without having to worry about immigration status. If I hadn't move back to India, I would have moved to Canada. They have really got their immigration system right.

> the US limits green cards from people born in a single country to 7% (same upper limits to India / China and Montenegro)

As someone who doesn't know a lot about american immigration laws, that sounds surprisingly insane. Probably a stupid idea, but might it be preferable to become a citizen of another country - let's say Estonia, which seems to embrace immigration - just to use that citizenship to apply for a US green card?

You can't. The Green card quotas are based upon country of birth, not country of citizenship.

> This is a good thing. […] I was essentially never going to get a green card, despite my application being approved 4 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I understand the greencard path for H1B workers seems unrelated to the number of H1Bs issued but more to which nationality H1Bs go to. Since Indians are more likely to apply in the first place the wait time will stay ridiculously high unless the actual quota for greencards is increased.

Yes, you're right.The country based quotas are the real issue.

However, this issue stems from the fact that the US has no real high-skills immigration path the way Canada, Australia and a bunch of other countries have.

Because of this, an H1 worker from a body shop is equal to a rocket scientist from MIT if they're both Indian.

Look, I have nothing against the body shop H1 worker who's only trying to make a better life for himself - what I don't like is companies that exploit Indians (and other nationalities) and the American public alike.

We all get screwed together, and the US should have sensible immigration policy that works to improve the lives of its citizens.

Of course Americans shouldn't be exploited.

Of course you should be trying to attract the best and brightest - but also lower skilled workers who can fill jobs that have a low supply of labor (all the illegal immigrants are working away in this space).

Immigration is an important aspect of public policy, and by having a broken system, your government is not doing its job.

+1 I absolutely agree with you. I've been on H1-B and saw a lot of abuse from both big tech and startups (most abused were people from countries like India because a lot of them will do anything just not to go back). In big tech I saw people being indirectly threatened by not proceeding with their green card so that they work on weekends etc. I wouldn't take that crap so I kept leaving and transferring H1N but others were too scared and it really affected my view of H1B. Startups are also a problem, but more because of ignorance rather than malice. Once I transferred my H1B to a startup who really sold me on everything from being stable and funded to growing fast etc, so I moved my family across the country and on my first day CEO said they have 1 month of money left in the bank...

The rocket scientist does have a different path to immigration, as a 'person of exceptional ability'. This is, granted, a higher bar and more limited than the typical 'high skills'-promoting immigration policies of some other countries.

As a sibling comment has mentioned, there are high-skills immigration paths in the US, they just aren't very well known, and have a very high bar to clear. It's not great, but it does exist. I personally know 2 Indians who got their green card in a matter of months.

That said, the Canadian system, while definitely better than the US system, still isn't that great, and not something to model after. Specifically, it gives too much weight to credentialing, which is unfair in its own right, and still very much subject to gaming.

I personally believe in complete free movement of labor (which totally existed before, the current state of things is relatively young), but that seems politically infeasible around the world right now. Brexit is an example of even taking a step back from it. Maybe this will someday happen in my lifetime.

I'm in the same boat as you were. 16 years of being in the US and no green card in sight even though I've been approved thrice over. I could potentially become a permanent resident in 2022 but even that's not guaranteed at the rate the process is going. If I may ask, what was the tipping point that made you decide to move?

I think this is the problem in the USA. If someone wants to come here to work, pay taxes and be a reasonable citizen why not allow it?

The system is definitely broken, I want to see change immediately.

You won't have a green card until 2022, but you will have permission to stay in the country.

Yes, except that I won't be able to switch jobs easily or grow in my career as fast as I want to. Every time I go to India, I have to do this elaborate dance to get my Visa stamped. I haven't traveled out of the country enough just for this reason. It's very stressful. I have a child who was born here and doesn't want to go back. I'm really stuck here for no other reason than the fact that the immigration system is horribly broken. Every American (white person) in my management chain thinks I'm skilled enough to be here in the country and pay me north of $400k. Terrible state of affairs. I'm a well-paid slave or at least feel like one.

>>I know of so many people who gamed the system, working in cahoots with consulting companies that exist solely to scam people.

It's sort of strange you even write this. Almost all engineers from India 'gamed the system' in some way both back home and in the US to do anything they have done in the US.

The only thing not surprising to me is the way you talk. All Indians/ex-Indians I met while I was in US believed they deserved to be there and others do not. Therefore they should go back, giving them a chance. And of course everybody thought, everybody else should go back and only they deserved to stay. Not surprising, because Indians live the crab mentality day in and out.

Also the 'consulting company' bogey is so broken to repeated in these situations. Why do you think you deserved to be there and they don't?

You felt untrusted as a foreigner but imagine being born here and feeling the same way and vise versa. Luckily we sell this place well enough people still think the American dream is more than a dream.

I feel so great for you! Finally, I am moving out. Enough dealing with the immigration crap here!

I waited for 8 years too. Didn't let immigration stall my career. Built a company, sold it to one of the top tech companies in Bay Area. Building another company to solve a really tough problem. But man it has been stressful! USCIS keeps getting hung up on technicality and makes it as difficult as possible to live here.

Meanwhile I have paid millions in taxes in US.

People who are in the lowest part of the value chain, will always find a loophole - there is too much money at stake and they don't have any other choice!

Accomplished people will move out or stop coming! US, keep doing this and eventually H1B will be just be a tool for cheap labor! Best talent from India, doesn't come to US anymore! And most of who are still here will move out!

I applied for EB-1. They need 3 criteria. Accepted 2 criteria (extra ordinary contribution to my field and leading role in organizations). They rejected the media and press criteria because most of the press about my company's acquisition, while mentioned me by name, was about the company and not me. And BTW I was Founder of the company and built it from scratch.

In any other country, one of the criteria that they accepted would have been enough.

If you are talented and from India, don't waste your life in US. Where ever you go, jobs will follow you. Move out as soon as you can!

Good bye US!

>I applied EB-1. They need 3 criteria. Accepted 2 criteria (extra ordinary contribution to my field and leading role in organizations). They rejected the media and press criteria because most of the press about my company's acquisition, while mentioned me by name, was about the company and not me. And BTW I was Founder of the company and built it from scratch.

That is such BS. I was gonna try (I have some publications and stuff) but that's about it. Now I feel like I am rotting away here.

Going for EB-1 has been one of the worst decisions of my life. I wasted 2 years collecting paper work, getting letters, wasting money and waiting!

It really a luck thing. And if you have to go premium. You will find out sooner!

Lawyer adviced the same. Told me it was almost impossible for me to do EB-1 and it was all about luck. I don't really want to do that. It's just frustrating seeing people I went to school with years ago from other countries become greencard holders so quickly without even doing grad school or STEM.

It's not luck as in buying a lottery ticket. If the case is not strong and not well prepared - it will definitely get rejected.

But if the case is really strong, and the petition is really strong - it's possible that you might get lucky and they might approve it.

It depends on which officer did you get, which side of the bed they woke up and did they have a fight with their spouse recently!

It really sucks!

>>Going for EB-1 has been one of the worst decisions of my life. I wasted 2 years collecting paper work, getting letters, wasting money and waiting!

Also depends on the company and the leverage you have with the manager in the company. Plenty of people from India have gotten GCs in that category in months after arriving to US.

So yeah, Its luck by most means. Life is unfair, if its any consolation, think about this aspect of luck. There are likely more merit people in India who haven't even gotten as far as you. Is it unfair for them and their lives to be compared to you.

> That is such BS. I was gonna try (I have some publications and stuff) but that's about it. Now I feel like I am rotting away here.

Don't get too disparaged by this example. It depends a lot on the individual reviewer. Yes, that sucks, but it also means that in many cases it's not as hard as the in the quoted case.

I'm not nearly as successful as you but have similar frustrations with the US immigration system. I'm a co-founder of a company that has employed a couple dozen Americans for a few years now and decided to leave the US when it became clear there was basically no path for me to get a green card. Oh well.

This sounds great! Congrats on cutting your losses!

Notably, people who do not come from India or China can apply under EB-2 NIW instead of EB-1, so the requirements are lower. The spirit of the Chinese Exclusion Act lives on!

EB-2 works under same priority order, whether NIW or not. Only benefit of NIW is that you don't need to do PERM (which is labor certification).

So, EB-2 NIW - doesn't help people from India - because it is really easy to get a EB-2. I have 2 approved ones which are useless!

It sounds like you might be in a position where EB-5 is an option. It does take a long time though (I just got my conditional green card and filed my I-526 3 years ago). It sucks that they wouldn't count your media mentions, sounds like you had bad luck with the reviewer.

Does it take so long! When were you able to file your I-485 - so that you have EAD and AP

It’s funny how people are criticizing USCIS here (not that it is not to be blamed for lacking) and not their fellow Indian men for running such consultancies in the first place and exploiting talent backhome and luring them here in hopes for green cards before they realize it’s close to impossible and by that time these consulatancies middle-men would have already milked them enough. Creating awareness among Indian backhome is first step in discouraging consultancies abusing them. US has always been an open market for anyone to come here, take advantage of it and make ones dreams come true. US educated Indians stuck in green card queue is not entirely because of USCIS ineptness but also Indian “consultants” clogging up the queue. It feels there should have been a separate visa category for these “consultants” altogether.

It's the system which is enabling people to take advantage, and only system can fix it through changes in law!

When the system allowed segregation, whom do you blame more - the system which allowed it or the general people who were taking advantage of it.

> When the system allowed segregation, whom do you blame more

That is easy - the people who were taking advantage of it.

E.g. I have the right to be a racist dirtbag - but if I act like a racist dirtbag that is on me and not on the system.

If you paid millions in taxes personally, then you have sufficient funds to qualify for investor/job creator visa (which in turn leads to a green card as well). I have family that were able to accomplish this with as little as 500K and 2 years, but depending on the scenario it can take as much as a couple million dollars (depending on location and nature of business). I am sure this is stuff your attorney must have explained to you so probably there is context I am missing here.

The process is non-definitive. A few years after you invest the money, you get a provisional green card and if the 10 permanent jobs are created after 2 years from that point, you get a permanent Green Card. Too many ifs and buts.

I thought EB-1 was more definitive and I felt that I was the right fit for it.

However at this point I am kind of done!

Which country would you recommend a skilled immigrant go to in present day ?

>I applied for EB-1.

Did you use an immigration lawyer for that?

Read the first paragraph and thought"come to Canada!". You delivered.

Are you paid/employed in cad or usd? If the latter is it hard with PR?

I'm paid in CAD.

I'm lucky - my employer was sympathetic to my situation, I had built good relationships with senior management, and what I do (I'm not an engineer) is a skill that they don't have in abundance, and I had a global role in any case.

All these factors contributed to them moving me to Canada without a major hit to my salary.

There is a difference (I get paid about USD 10K less), but that's more than made up in the lack of healthcare costs (I pay absolutely nothing for healthcare coverage in Canada), and most importantly for me, peace of mind.

Also, I couldn't realistically switch jobs in the US without tons of paperwork. As a PR, I am treated exactly like a citizen and could easily switch if I got a better offer.

Agreed. I'm about to get PR, same boat. Thanks for the info and enjoy canada!

If you are earning good money then you arent paying zero for healthcare. Perhaps your employer is covering it, but canadas health system isnt totally free. In BC i paid a monthly fee, not much but something. Prescriptions and such also arent totally free.

Well, if you want to pedantic, sure. I know I pay taxes, and the taxes fund healthcare. Obviously it's not "free".

However, my out of pocket costs are zero. My employer pays for prescription drug coverage and dental care, but that isn't deducted from my pay check. It's over and above my salary.

In the US, I was paying nearly $600 a month from _my_ paycheck for equivalent healthcare.

>>However, my out of pocket costs are zero.

No your out of pocket costs are hidden, abstracted away, and hard to quantify so you never know if you are actually getting a better value, it only seems that way because you lack the proper levels of information to make an informed opinion.

Similar to how the True cost of National Defense is abstracted away and shifted to the US by virtue of your proximity to the US... Canada has a much much smaller national defense cost (which they can use that saving for national healthcare) because they know the US would never allow an invasion/attack to the Continent of the North America,

Agree ! I was 3 years into my H1B and I called BS on that. Moved out of US sometime back with a Canadian PR. Living happily thereafter. Gets paid more than US, because no more visa or greencard shackles.

My spouse started working too unlike in the US where she was not "authorized" to work on H4. We are well ahead economically than was in the US and planning to buy a home soon and settle.

Seriously, what kind of country says that just because someone is on a work visa that their spouse cannot work !! Why cant ACLU take this up because DACA gives more PR for them ? Take cue from Canada, they too have temporary work visa, but the dependent spouses are free to work. The plight of H4 spouses..sigh.

The right to work is a basic human right. And they say other nations violate human rights because they block social media !! but wont allow my wife to work because she was married to me and on an H4 visa. Hypocrisy at its best.

So I left all those bullshit behind.

Why is this a good thing? Wouldn’t the good thing to be able to get a work visa if you want to work?

A lot of the reason for the difference between the US and Canada is simply demand. Both target an immigration rate of about ~1% of the population.

The demand to immigrate into the US far exceeds that limit while in Canada there are many years where they don't even hit the limit.

Hah, no.

The USA typically allows about 0.3% per year. Canada is around 0.8%. Per capita, Canada allows many more immigrants than the USA. (Since the USA's population is so much larger, USA allows more in absolute numbers.)

About 21-22% of Canadian residents are immigrants. About 14% of American residents are.

Where did your numbers come from? Did you pick peak years? Canada is higher but slightly. It still stands that the waitlist is way longer for the US than Canada.

  The USA typically allows about 0.3% per year.

That statistic omits those who enter/overstay illegally.

Good point. There are ~20 millions people in the US illegally, so that adds another 6-7% to those numbers.

20 million is an estimate of the total number currently present, not the number that immigrate illegally each year. There are about 400k new illegal immigrants per year[1] joining a population of about 320 million so that is about 0.1% joining the population each year.

[1] https://cis.org/Report/25-Million-Join-Illegal-Population-un...

The Pew numbers conflate completely different sources to deliberately underestimate the net count. For entrants, they count only working head-of-household adults. For exits, they count every single person leaving, even children. They then just subtract the latter from the former. This process understates the net entrants by a factor of at least three. Keep that in mind when quoting Pew, which is an interest group. On their "5 Facts" page, they even say, "the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. was lower in 2015 than it was at the end of the Great Recession in 2009", which contradicts even their own data, let alone the CIS reference you cite.

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