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Comment by rubashov | Hacker News Reader

The Visa Lottery is infuriating. It's almost as stupid as the family sponsorship driving our visa allocations.

The purpose of an immigration policy is to serve the citizenry. Only the most useful and "profitable" people should be let in, period.

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my mom won the green card lottery 10 years ago, when I was still young and surely wouldn't have been very useful or profitable. 10 years later, I'm getting my master's at one of the best universities I could've hoped for, and a pretty good chance of being able to do interesting work with competitive pay. I'm extremely grateful for the lottery, which is the one thing that made all of this possible.

my mom also got a chance to actually apply her computer science degree (which she couldn't do before because of the explicit sexism which meant women were generally employed as, perhaps glorified, receptionists), and now works as a senior software engineer at a large company. I imagine her true potential would also have been difficult to estimate prior to the move, as she'd done very little actual programming after college - but she effectively got a fresh start here, and was able to quickly advance in an environment which allowed her to be judged solely on technical competency.

Good for you. Are the American people better off thanks to you and your mother's presence here? Or would they have got along just as well without you? That's the salient question.

I imagine they probably could have, but even looking at it from a strictly utilitarian point of view, both me and her are now American citizens producing a fair amount of value by plying our trade. I suppose you could debate whether or not skilled workers like ourselves were truly needed, but I think being able to find employment is a good enough proxy for being a productive member of society, so I would say the American people as a whole are 'better' than they would have been without us - although clearly this hinges on the actual criteria you choose.

So much for "All men are created equal," eh?

Over ten million people each year apply through this program for only 50,000 green cards. In a nation of 300 million people, I think we can manage this.

All men (and women) are created equal, of course. What rubashov is talking about is what they do with their lives after they're created.

Stop and think about how absurd this is. Ten million people apply and we pick randomly, rather than take the cream.

Is this not plainly insane?

Given the values that the United States was founded on, in the purest sense,

Why?

I'm not sure what founding values you're talking about. A cursory reading of the founders plainly reveals they viewed America as a nation of and for Europeans. Immigration policy for most of American history explicitly excluded non-whites, and often sought to exclude southern and eastern europeans.

I'm not advocating a racist immigration policy, as the US was founded on, just one that serves the people living here. After all the purpose of the constitution is to "secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity". That means the country is for citizens and their bloodlines, not foreigners.

I suppose I more mean "all men created equal". And the "American Dream" of coming to this country from nothing and making it big. A meritocratic process, or a process that has a likelihood of being gamed/manipulated/bought, would seem to detract from that possibility.

I suppose, technically, that's not what this country's Constitution has written on it; but, perhaps I'm an idealist and would like to think that, in the hearts and minds of the founders, they were intending to create a confederacy of freedom, and of equal opportunity. Why would the bar for entry into the country be any different?

[edit: finished my thought, then changed wording slightly]

Meanwhile, US foreign economic policies like free trade agreements displace people from their country into the US in order to survive, by becoming second class citizens and cheap labor for big corporations.

Meanwhile, red necks scream in anger, teir took uor jobs!!

Do you remember that time when the sons of immigrants (because in america everybody is the son or the grandson of a immigrant) were not angry at the newcomers? Neither do I, because it is always been this way.

A point based system as the one used in other countries may be better. You get points for education, experience, financial status, family ties, age, origin, etc.

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