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Comment by ori_b | Hacker News Reader

I'm a Canadian currently living in the USA, so maybe I'm biased, but I would personally remove a number-based quota.

I would, however, put in a quota based on the amount of education, capital, and whatever else would provide an estimate of the benefit that this immigrant would provide to the country, penalized by the difficulty that the person would have in integrating and establishing himself.

So, for example, someone with a doctorate, a job offer from an employer, significant capital, and fluency in the language should NEVER have an issue getting into the country.

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I agree with you, this change would be very beneficial to the US. I've always felt a points-based system (like Canada or Australia) would make more sense. Nobody is happy with the current system - seriously, not a single person thinks the current US immigration system makes sense. The problem is there are so many competing visions for how it should be that reform is nearly impossible.

Keep in mind, if I wrote a post arguing for a cap of 1.2 million a year, some people would upmod me because it's high, others would downmod be because it's too low, others would down mod me because it's too high, others would upmod me because it sets a firm limit. The number of strong opinions on this topic is bewildering (but not at all surprising).

This. I have a Master's from a top U.S. University. Both of my sisters live in the US. I have personal resources well above the average American. But, under the current law this is not enough to move to be close to my sisters. In a point based system, I will get points in several categories.

Same here, still years away from getting residency.

Seems like you're giving access to the people that need it the least. Seems like you're simply shifting the self-interested (I don't mean this in a derogative sense) motivation of making this country better by not allowing 'job-stealing' immigrants to the equally self-interested one of making this country better by only allowing those who will improve it.

I'm not completely sure how I feel about the issue, to be honest, but I'm an immigrant (my parents brought me when I was an infant), and I probably wouldn't have made it here under either the criteria that exist now nor the ones you are promoting.

What I know is that the dream of immigration to the US is about having a better life for you and your children. Don't the poor and uneducated deserve that dream just as much as anyone else?

"Don't the poor and uneducated deserve that dream just as much as anyone else?"

Of course! The question is, how many poor and uneducated immigrants would you advocate naturalizing every year in the United States? 100K? 500k? 1.2 Mil? 4 mil? No limit? I feel that until people answer that question (and it will vary from person to person), there's no way to have a meaningful conversation about illegal immigration, which is about setting and enforcing limits.

I think quotas are the wrong way to frame the question, at least until we start running out of land. I'd be glad to let 100 million Einsteins and Teslas immigrate if they were available.

How about two separate systems. A quota-system and a points-system. You don't fall into the quota-system if you score high enough in the points-system.

Part of the problem is that it can be difficult to identify the Einsteins early enough to give them the visa when it would still matter. However, I don't think it would be difficult for an established scientist to gain US residency even under the current miserable system. Top athletes, entertainers, business people, scientists, and so forth inhabit a completely different universe.

As for "running out of land"... that's actually a little ambiguous. California could probably triple in population, and we'd still have some rural-ish areas in the extreme north. Japan, because of the density of its cities, actually preserved its rural character in some areas, and this is a country with a population density of 337.1/km2! In other ways, California has already "run out" of land. Ever drive from Orange county down to Tijuana? With the exception of a military base, it's basically sprawl all the way down. I suppose we could increase the coastal population by building high density housing on the coast...

> Don't the poor and uneducated deserve that dream just as much as anyone else?

Yes, but how do you prioritize? How do you control the drag on the social support systems of the country? How do you handle the gargantuan task of integrating these people into society?

There is a separate permanent resident application category with no quota for those individuals. For doctorate holders, it is the EB1-EA. If you have significant capital and invest in the US, you can apply via the EB-5 category.

EB* takes several years to be processed, even EB1-EA. Employers will not wait several years while you twiddle around outside of the country, so how almost everyone does it is to get an H1-B and apply for the EB* soon after while on the H1-B. Or they use it as leverage to get more work out of the immigrant. There is no H1-B speed EB visa and thats what needs changing. And you can only have an H1-B visa once, you can't renew for new ones indefinitely.

For example australia has employer sponsored permanent immigrant work visas that are processed fairly quickly.

Personally I think that idea is anti-American. The very premise of America as an immigrant society is that we don't judge your worth, we let you prove it. It's so important we even put it on the statue of liberty, it doesn't say "give me your wealthy, your well educated, your industrial tycoons".

And honestly I think that is one of America's greatest advantages. Reliance on credentialism ends up too often being just another class-based divide rather than meritocratic in any sense. Look at Andrew Carnegie, as an immigrant he had little to set him apart, but eventually he became one of the wealthiest men in the world. There are many, many more examples just like his. And yet so often we continue to say "yes, but, let's ignore that and pretend that we can filter people by merit". I don't agree that we can filter people by merit.

The fact of the matter is, there is a greater demand for US citizenship than "supply" (amounts to political will, really).

It makes sense to prioritize for the most productive/least diseased/least criminal/etc when possible to discriminate with reasonable certainty. Of course, this is not to imply that immigrants are neither unproductive, nor unhealthy, nor unlawful.

While rags-to-riches stories are great, riches-to-riches probably has a better expected outcome.

It was the refuse of Europe that made this continent what it is not the elites. We would be selecting for qualities that have an unknown relationship to our past results (and perhaps values).

Basically, everybody who we can reasonably expect to pay more in taxes than they get handed out by the government, should be allowed in.

You can achieve this insanely easily, too. Just register every immigrant that comes across and give them a temporary 2 year visa (conditional on the normal things like criminal record, documented connections to terrorist groups, war criminal status, and so forth). Over those two years, compare their tax returns to their use of services. After 2 years, either grant a permanent visa or let their visa expire and deport them. If they're either using services or paying taxes we'll have a way to find them, and if they're not doing either, they're obviously not causing any obvious problems.

Once you've made it past the immigration counter enforcement is virtually impossible. Most cities and counties don't want to be involved in immigration enforcement because its disruptive to the community. And it's left to the visa holder to go willingly. A big problem is people arrive on tourist visas and don't leave by the appointed date. ICE can't really do anything about it unless you try to leave through a border checkpoint. This causes an incentive to stay rather than leave.

Maybe without all the absurd, overcomplicated immigration laws to enforce, ICE will have the resources to implement the followup checks and send local agents to apprehend and deport people.

The US has plenty of rich, educated people. What we need (according to current illegal immigration activity) are less educated lower wage hourly workers.

I don't see a lot of Canadian PhDs smuggling themselves in to the US, compared to Mexican laborers. Because there isn't demand to support the risk. The US seems far more willing to pay for laborers than PhDs.

Actually, you don't see any sort of skilled Canadian smuggling themselves in at all because it's ridiculously easy to get into the USA if you're from Canada. You walk up to the border, say "I have someone who wants to employ me in the USA, and I have a degree. Give me a TN visa." One hour later, your visa application is processed, and you continue across the border to start your new job.

However, even if that wasn't the case, You wouldn't see Canadian PhDs smuggling themselves in because they can get perfectly good jobs outside of the country. They don't need to go anywhere illegally, because they have plenty of options to go elsewhere. If it wasn't for the TN visa, I would be working in Europe, Asia, Canada, or nearly anywhere else, because someone from there would be trying to attract me.

It's not that there's no demand to support the risk. There's plenty of demand. There's also enough demand elsewhere -- if I had trouble getting into the states, some other company would have me, and I would be contributing to the economy there.

It's a lot easier to stay 'under the radar' in an hourly job (i.e. cash) than it is to do so as a knowledge worker making a large salary.

I agree. But I would also add political asylum and similar human rights considerations (they do exist, but need to be broader, imho). Perhaps this aspect is less relevant to HN, however it is relevant to the immigration issue.

I agree. I generally don't consider those as part of the normal immigration process -- a side channel into the country, if you will.

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