My stance is typically anti-immigration, but I do not support this decision of ICE. I am likely missing big chunk of the story, but could anyone explain the motives behind ICE decision? (without blind hateful virtue-signaling please)
https://twitter.com/tcmassie/status/1280569206501789697?s=21
However here is Ken Cuccinelli on Fox News Lou Dobbs just half a day ago where he lays out the thinking behind the policy change. Basically hire unemployed americans or let them study instead of the foreigners:
Have to hand it to the anti-freedom of movement/association folks - this was a fairly clever one.
Or is it simply about making it seem like things have returned to normal? "See business are reopening, schools are reopening, the world is back to the way it was".
Generous interpretation: if classes are primarily online, international students do not have a reason to reside in the US except for easier access to the labor market. With 20M Americans out of work, the administration is prioritizing citizens for first access to the labor market.
Skeptical interpretation: This is another anti-immigrant change that uses COVID as a scapegoat for racist/nativist policy.
I generally interpret most of the administration's moves as political gambles. Given current trends in deaths, they may be hoping that daily deaths are near zero with the country mostly opened back up by October. That seems like the only path to reelection given the current gap in approval ratings between the two candidates.
Possibly a majority, but nowhere near all.
Trump probably believes that if we all just go back to normal that we will be fine and he will be a hero because that’s how his mind works. It doesn’t matter if it makes sense.
The diversity lottery is the smallest category of immigrant visas ('green card') issued. The largest is family-based, followed by employment-based.
Note that all the other major British settler colonies (Canada, Australia, you could also count NZ) switched to race-blind points-based systems decades ago, and since then have provided at least as much per capita opportunity to foreigners as the US has with much less internal political strife. The US is the corrupted outlier.
Canada, Australia, New Zealand are all quite far away from developing countries and access is much harder and much more expensive. Australia, which is somewhat close to Indonesia has adopted some... unsavory methods to mitigate this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_immigration_detenti...
So it's not purely the points based immigration system that differentiates between the 2 situations.
But Australia is ultimately near the top when it comes to how much sustainable opportunity it offers per capita to foreigners (and nonwhite foreigners in particular, despite past "White Australia" history, if you care about that). It is reasonable to try to do better, but that's pretty much impossible for the US until the people can again trust the government to adequately enforce whatever laws are ultimately decided on.
(I think Canada is the country in the best position to try to do significantly better today. And not coincidentally, it is a country I plausibly may emigrate to if things unravel further in the US.)
Unfortunately, it seems to be a very contested political statement to recognize the temporary and restrictive nature of their status to the point that I honestly believe that a significant number of them are unaware of the fact that their visas do not grant them a permanent status and there is no [legal] way to become an immigrant by staying in the country for a certain time in a non-immigrant status. Their only real hope to become actual immigrants is to find an employer who will sponsor an EB immigration or marry a citizen/permanent resident. Or wait for an amnesty, last of which happened in 1986.
One can, however, get the same EB immigrant visa abroad and come to the country as an immigrant (a lawful permanent resident) with very few restrictions compared to a citizen and with a clear path to citizenship.
First, the current numbers. More than 80% of all EB status is achieved by adjustment, rather than application for visa overseas. Why is this?
In order to be issued an EB visa in most categories, the job for which the candidate is being hired must have labor certification (aka PERM). This is (at minimum) a six to nine month process, extending up to a year and half if there is an audit of the company's application.
This contrasts with the labor condition application (LCA) for H-1B which takes a couple of weeks.
After PERM is complete, the candidate would then enter the queue for available visas. Since applications are adjudicated in strict date order, and there is an annual limit in most categories, the backlogs can be long.
For example, the July 2020 visa bulletin indicates that, at best, applicants who started the PERM process for EB-3 visas before 01 APR 2019 can now begin the application process.
I say "at best" because the priority date for China mainland applications is 01 MAR 2017, and that for Indian applications is 01 FEB 2010!
Now, compare with the H-1B, which, indeed, can have a quick certification, do you get a visa after these couple of weeks? No, you get in the lottery for available visas. Last I've heard, chances in H-1B lottery were ~1/3. But consider yourself lucky and assume you win every time, what is your time frame then? The lottery starts April 1st for the visas for the next FY, which starts October 1st. Give couple months for documents preparation and you are looking at ~10 months (+ n*years if you are not so lucky) from the decision to get H-1B and your first day on the job. E.g. if you wanted to come in on H-1B right now then you'd have to file on April 1st 2021 for the period starting on October 1st 2021. If you won the lottery next year first day of work would be 14 months from now.
If you lose the lottery just once, you are already behind the time it will take to get EB2 for people in most countries of the world.
But let's look at backlogged countries. They are not getting their greencards any faster by being in the country. Instead of waiting for 10-100 years in their home country, where they are first-class citizens, they will have to spend these 10-100 years as non-immigrants, renewing their temporary H-1Bs every 3 years in the best case (and every renewal can fail and they might fall out of status because of that), or applying for a new H-1B every time they change job (and these "transfers" can fail too, and if you are changing the job because of layoff - you are out of status again). I don't know, people are different and some maybe okay with this, but I suspect most do not understand this and get stuck because they were told that after 6 years on H-1B they will become LPRs so they keep going because they have already wasted 6 years.
Presumably this was traditionally implemented to prevent fake schools from enrolling students strictly for the purpose of allowing them entry into the country on a student visa.
It would be so easy to write a policy that both prevents fake universities from existing to give visas while also not suddenly deporting hundreds of thousands of students.
If understand the rules have always been there (on limit for online classes)
The broader Trump administration doesn’t like universities, and especially doesn’t like universities that are taking covid seriously. They can use this as leverage to try to force universities to have in person classes.
This isn’t “blind hateful virtue-signalling”. It is the only reasonable explanation for a policy that provides no benefit to anybody, causes tremendous and sudden harm to legal immigrants, and causes tremendous and sudden harm to higher education institutions.
What actual benefit comes from this? The universities have still admitted the students. There isn’t more room for Americans, and if there was it is way too late.
The only thing I can see is that this messes with all of the students ability to get OPT visas, ensuring that they have a difficult time getting a job in the US after graduating even if they are highly skilled. But the h1b cap is filled every year anyway so this wouldn’t reduce the number of jobs “taken” by immigrants.
Sure he does, just not Brown ones. Trump has come out and said they want immigrants from places like Norway. Of course your average Norwegian would have to be insane to move to the US.
I didn't see the exemption for white students in this. Because there isn't one?
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/394143-supreme-...
Second, the largest Muslim country in the world is Indonesia, and it wasn't on the travel ban list, so I wouldn't call it a Muslim ban. India has the second largest muslim population, and it wasn't on the list. Pakistan has the third largest Muslim population and wasn't on the list.
There have been multiple claims that China is using oversees students to steal knowledge or that University have become to dependent on the money from Chinese students and cooperations. Be aware that I'm just saying such claims did happen not that they are true.
The fact that many countries also doesn't want to open border to the US again for now might also play a role.
It almost looks like Trump is forcing top students to leave US and bring their knowledge back to China to benefit CCP.
No this are not thinks I believe. This are claims which came up one different articles in the recent year(s) on hackernews and are things you might hear from people which are strongly anti-foreigen students or people like Trump.