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Comment by thrwwy192783 | Hacker News Reader

thrwwy192783·

What a wonderful and equitable world globalism has created. The wealthy can just buy citizenship while the poor, the desperate and the refugees languish pretty much stateless. At this point a wealthy chinese, saudi or israeli citizen is more of an "american" than a poor kid born in the rust belt. At least the government and the elites value these wealthy foreigners more than any poor citizen here in the states.

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>poor kid born in the rust belt...

... or in Harlem apparently.

It is a little infuriating that they are, essentially, stealing from impoverished rural and urban areas.

That’s not what’s going on at all. You think that if Hudson Yards wasn’t built, Harlem would somehow get all that money? That’s not how it works, it’s not a zero-sum game.

If I understand it correctly - there is a limited number of these Visas and this mega-project used up most of them.

If true, then this scheme is indeed taking opportunity away from Harlem and other areas it was intended to help.

That's a fair point. But have you considered that maybe Harlem would be hard pressed to find investors, even if the investors got a Visa? It would only take away investment from other areas if a) all the investment visa spots are fully allocated and b) If the investors would have given the money to some low-income community instead.

I'm certainly not an expert on this, but it sounds plausible to me that at least one of the aforementioned conditions is not true.

According to the article there's a 15 year waiting list for these Visas for Chinese investors (it's not clear FTA why it would differ based on country of origin).

It sounds like there's enough demand for this program to work (mostly) as intended.

We already receive many rich and many destitute immigrants.

Maybe we should start immigrating in a middle class.

That's basically what H-1B does.

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