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Comment by foogazi | Hacker News Reader

What country based discrimination are you seeing?

The US accepts a lot of immigrants due to hardship or persecution from around the world

>The US accepts a lot of immigrants due to hardship or persecution from around the world

During the last three years the US has admitted about as many refugees as Sweden, a country of 10 million people, did in 2015. It wasn't that much higher under earlier administrations. On a per capita basis[1] the US hosts about three times fewer than Russia, and 10 times fewer than comparably prosperous Western European countries like Switzerland or Germany.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_refugee_p...

Currently by law, immigrants from a given country can only represent 7% of the overall immigration flow into the US per year. That isn't explicit country-based discrimination, but it effectively discriminates against China and India. If China were 10 nations of 150M people, and not 1 nation of 1,500M people, more people from those 10 nations could immigrate to the US than can today from China.

How can granting residency be construed as discrimination?

The door is open, but there’s a queue

If you have a limit that says "2 people per group" and you have groups with vastly different sizes, it can "seem" like discrimination. E.g. if you're from a group that has 500000 people, your odds of being chosen are much smaller than if you were from a group that had 1000 people. I believe the term is used lightly in that context, more as a point to the original poster's comment.

Granting residency isn't the discriminating part.

There absolutely are country based discrimination even if it doesn't say so by having country based quotas irrespective of the population of a country. A country like China or India has the same cap as a country like Singapore for Green Cards etc. This means that two people who are exactly the same in every way except one is born in India vs one who is born in Singapore will have very different length of time to get a permanent residency. This isn't hypothetical, a friend of mine's dad was an Indian working in Iran when my friend was born, his brother was born a few years later in India. The one born in Iran got his Green Card in a few months after application, the one born in India is still waiting.

>What country based discrimination are you seeing?

It just decided to temporarily ban the vast majority of people from all countries other than the US from working in the US.

Green Card Quotas are literally country-of-birth-based.

Yes and the limit is 140k employment based GCs, max 7% allocated per country

So people from every country get a shot

> So people from every country get a shot

With a system that performs in this manner, predict the behaviour you would expect if the number of issued green cards is less than 140k.

Not more than 14 countries?

I misremembered section 1152, clause (a) (3) here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1152

My error. That should not happen unless there are too few participants, you're right.

It's country-based discrimination, certainly, but the cause is just.

Not that many when you compare it to other countries

You always find one country better than others at anything. But the US is not doing that bad:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migra...

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