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Comment by 0xcafecafe | Hacker News Reader

I doubt. Forget citizenship, the US is not processing permanent residency for its employment based applicants, many of which are MDs working in hospitals. The backlog spans more than a decade and if the applicant passes away, their family is subject to self deportation. The backlog is due to antiquated per country caps which result in prolonged waiting times for populous countries (I am personally waiting for the last 11 years). Forget citizenship, forget changing legislation to give them green cards faster, the agency (uscis) is poised to waste 100,000 of such green cards this year (which cannot be recaptured without legislation next year). These numbers would otherwise be useful for applications whose petitions were approved up to 2013. Truly dystopian.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-100-000-green-cards-at-ris...

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Why shouldn’t we have per country caps? India and China could easily become the majority of immigrants due to the population size. Mexico is the top country of origin for lawful residents but they are our closest neighbor and many families have ties to both countries, especially in boarder towns. Followed by China and India.[1]

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-finding...

And... why is that bad?

Personally I don’t think it’s bad and allows immigration to happen from more cultures and regions. GP was the one who had an issue with the per country caps.

The US issues approximately 1 million green cards per year. 86% of those (860k) are for family based and 140k are for employment based. Country caps for family based GCs is not a bad thing and in fact it does address your point domination by populous countries. In absence of a secondary differentiation criteria, per country caps are a good thing for family based GCs.

But for the 140k employment based GCs, it depends on the company hiring the individual based on a skillset/qualification and sponsoring them for permanent residency. Google doesn't differentiate between an engineer from Argentina and an engineer from India (arbitrary example). Why should one get a greencard within a year and the other have to wait 10+ years?

John oliver did a piece on it last year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXqnRMU1fTs

> ... per country caps are a good thing for family based GCs.

Would you mind going into detail on why you think that? To me, it's not obvious.

Obviously these people can perfectly live on their own and forget their family behind

" In absence of a secondary differentiation criteria,"

I was addressing the concern of the PP who mentioned immigration being dominated by a few populous countries in absence of country caps. Ideally the immigration system should be revamped bottom up to include a point based system which gives points to educational qualifications as well as familial ties.

The current political climate leaves that option out of the window. Hence at least removing country caps from employment based immigration (which is 14% of the total annual quota) is a reasonable common sense fix.

> immigration being dominated by a few populous countries in absence of country caps.

Why is this bad?

Honestly I don't think it is. However a lot of opponents to removing country caps are always concerned with this. Hence I was saying if anything country caps may be justified for family based GCs. There is no viable argument for them to remain for employment based GCs.

Diversity?

Does diversity mean you have to have proportional representation for everyone on earth? Or does diversity just mean having various different ethnicities or national origins within the country? Does constraining some very large groups actually skew the demographics anyways?

At least according to company’s HR, yeah, it means an equal proportion.

Touché

'Open Borders' lays out the extensive arguments for getting rid of caps altogether.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/openborders/

> India and China could easily become the majority of immigrants due to the population size.

Ok?

What’s your problem with that?

It's not very diverse, is it? You'd end up with many times more people from India and China as from the whole of Africa, for example. Basically no one from small nations would get a green card.

The problem is that the number of green cards is relatively fixed, so there has to be some way to distribute them that prevents two nations from taking almost all the spots.

> there has to be some way to distribute them that prevents two nations from taking almost all the spots

But why?

Why is it so important to you what countries people are coming from?

> It's not very diverse, is it?

The responsibility of an immigration program to its citizens isn't necessarily to maximize diversity. It's to maximize the benefit to the country. A points-based immigration program would allow the country to optimize along any number of axes: under-represented minorities, skills, etc.

> The problem is that the number of green cards is relatively fixed, so there has to be some way to distribute them that prevents two nations from taking almost all the spots.

Is it? Canada brings in 3x as many immigrants per capita as the US does. It's brought in 1% of its population each year for roughly the last 100 years - so the equivalent of 3-4M green cards per year. I think there's probably a lot of wiggle room.

> A points-based immigration program would allow the country to optimize along any number of axes: under-represented minorities, skills, etc.

That's what the cap is for.

> Canada brings in 3x as many immigrants per capita as the US does. It's brought in 1% of its population each year for roughly the last 100 years - so the equivalent of 3-4M green cards per year.

Almost every week there's a thread with Canadian Engineers whining about low pay. How are these out of control immigration quotas helping them out?

> That's what the cap is for.

Yes, but it selects for the wrong things. It's an axe when you need a scalpel.

> Almost every week there's a thread with Canadian Engineers whining about low pay. How are these out of control immigration quotas helping them out?

What on earth do you mean "out of control" lol. That's a value judgement you made that you're projecting.

Canada has low inequality. Most people are paid roughly the same amount - in line with much of Western Europe. The US is closer to PNG, the Philippines, Turkey and Madagascar. You can't have low inequality and high pay for one group. [1] Canadians value that. You don't, and that's ok too.

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

> You can't have low inequality and high pay for one group.

You also can't have overachievers. This becomes obvious when looking at academia. [0]

These individuals are the ones bootstrapping entire businesses and economic sectors.

[0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-global-brain-trade

Of course you can have overachievers, I suspect this is a very American perspective. Japan Airlines' CEO makes $90K a year. Money isn't the be all and end all, promotions come with more pay and more social status.

[edit] did you not have overachievers in high school and college? I suspect they weren't getting paid! Quite the opposite.

As a Canadian that’s hilarious. “Were going to pay you much less than other countries do and we’re actually doing you a favor”.

Nobody said anything about doing anyone any favors.

I said that the wealth inequality was lower, and inequality being lower by definition requires that pay bands are compressed.

Keep in mind that when you compare against international salaries, you have to convert not just to a neutral currency, but also adjust for PPP. Canada's PPP adjustment factor is close to +15%. That is to say, 1 USD goes 15% further in Canada than it does in America.

There are pros and cons to a more egalitarian society. Certain groups that would do better in other countries do worse, and in exchange certain groups that would do worse in other countries do better.

Per Levels.fyi a:

- Shopify L7 makes $324K USD ($372K PPP).

- That's a Google L5 at $356K.

- A Facebook E5 at $390K.

- Or a Microsoft level 65 at $287K.

Remote changes the game a bit here, but in the past your Shopify L7 would have gone infinitely further in Ottawa than your Facebook E5 would have gone down in MPK. Local PPP matters too.

Isn't the biggest budget item housing?

You accounting for taxes? HST? Gasoline taxes? The general higher cost of anything imported? How about the recent run up in housing costs? Houses are about as expensive in Toronto as they are the Bay area now.

Having worked in both countries, $300k USD goes way further in the US than $300k CAD in Canada. And that's even accounting for the housing difference.

> You accounting for taxes?

Yes, taxes are very comparable in California and New York on this income level. 400,000 CAD in Ontario is taxed at a net effective 44.8%. In BC 43.8%

In California you'd be taxed at an effective 42%. In New York you'd be taxed at an effective 43.2%. And after the Biden tax hikes go into effect this starts to look a lot worse.

Not to mention the Canadian tax bill includes healthcare whereas the US salary is reduced by $12,000 a year to account for it.

> HST? Gasoline? The general higher cost of anything imported?

You're making $400K a year and you think that a $55 average monthly gas bill is going to make a difference?

Yes this is all factored into the PPP adjustment. [1]

> How about the recent run up in housing costs?

It happened in both countries.

> Having worked in both countries, $300k USD goes way further in the US than $300k CAD in Canada.

I suspect this isn't true.

Now you can cherry-pick non-tech cities in the US, but I can do that with Canada too, and of course, the vast majority of tech folks have historically chosen to live in NY and CA for a reason. Will that hold? Who knows!

[1] https://www.oecd.org/sdd/prices-ppp/purchasingpowerparities-...

There's also currency (one USD will always be worth one USD!) and capital gain tax (on your RSU).

1CAD will also always be 1CAD. People who live in Canada are paid in CAD, people who live in America are paid in USD. The currency and PPP conversions smoothed out those differences for comparison purposes. I selected a mid-band senior Shopify role in Toronto denominated in CAD as the comparison and ran the appropriate adjustments.

In the US, RSU vesting is considered ordinary income and taxed accordingly, this was considered and included.

[edit] I believe in Canada, RSU vesting is also ordinary income, but if not then treating them as a capital gain will substantially reduce the tax burden for Canadians.

> 1CAD will also always be 1CAD. People who live in Canada are paid in CAD, people who live in America are paid in USD.

One of them is a stable reserve currency. Goods are priced in USD then the exchange rate is used to get the final price in other currencies.

Exchange rates really don't matter much for most people.

Most people buy goods at home.

Relative strength and weakness of a particular currency against another just indicates whether imports are more economical or whether manufacturing at home + exporting are more economical.

This change over time is reflected in both exchange rates and accounted for in PPP adjustment. It may fluctuate over time, but I don't think that's a huge deal when deciding which country you plan to work in.

Actually, one other important note: 1USD isn't really always 1USD in the sense that imports become relatively more or less expensive for Americans in America. Reserve status doesn't really correlate too much.

Check out DXY. You'll see that as compared to a basket of other world currencies the USD has ranged substantially, from 0.76 in 2012 to as high as 1.02 in 2016. [1]

Being the reserve currency more often than not means that its a unit of account.

[1] https://www.investing.com/currencies/us-dollar-index

> It's not very diverse, is it?

Why do you think India and China aren't diverse by themselves, and within themselves? India probably has more languages than all of Europe. Would it be sensible to treat Europe (or even just the Schengen area) as one country, to "increase diversity"? I think that would be dumb. European countries are obviously very diverse and we see that more clearly because they're sovereign nations on a map. India and China are mega-countries and we fail to appreciate the diversity within.

> Basically no one from small nations would get a green card

Why would that happen? It would be a first-come-first-served system. If a person from a small nation applies, they'll get it at the same time as someone from a bigger nation who applied at the same time as them (modulo processing time variances).

> Would it be sensible to treat Europe as one country

Why would it? Europe isn't a country. India and China are countries. I fail to see your point. It's obviously more diverse if Chinese, Indians, Europeans, South Americans, Africans etc have a more or less equal chance, and that's what the current rules are supposed to provide.

> It would be a first-come-first-served system

So you think immigration status should be determined by whether someone gets their forms in on the 1st of January or not? I'm not sure that's entirely practical or fair. Perhaps a lottery would be more suitable.

> Europe isn't a country. India and China are countries. I fail to see your point

The point was in the rest of my comment. "Country" doesn't imply a homogenous, non-diverse group of people. And "diversity" is the purported reason for country-of-birth caps.

> It's obviously more diverse if Chinese, Indians, Europeans, South Americans, Africans

You said China and India are countries, then went on to compare them to continents. Surely you see the fallacy here.

> someone gets their forms in on the 1st of January or not?

I didn't say anything about the 1st of January (or any other date). "First-come-first-served" means applications are treated on their merits and processed in the order they arrived. If two people with the same application, but different country of birth, apply at the same time, they should have roughly same result in the same amount of time. That's not the case today. And I'm struggling to understand how a single queue is "unfair".

For immigration purposes, since the EU is one open territory, it absolutely could make sense to treat it as a single entity if you buy into the base ideas here behind the caps.

Maybe, but I didn’t mention the EU. I said Europe.

The common legal system that includes immigration which covers the vast majority of Europeans seems on topic for your point, AFAICT. Can you elaborate more how you think it's not applicable?

This is a really good point I had not considered before. I assume there is no policy to look for diversity within countries? That’s a shame, because probably many majority nationals from one country may apply and many minorities from those countries are unlikely to make it through.

There isn't any "look for diversity" policy at all. The law simply establishes caps for the number of green cards issued to applicants based on country of birth. Country of birth is considered a proxy for diversity. If countries were generally of a similar size IRL, and had similar rates of migration to the US, it might work better.

There is a diversity visa category that is specifically geared toward getting diverse immigrants from all over the world. Increasing diversity is not a goal of the employment-based green card system, and neither is it a goal in the family-based green card system (it is family unification).

The reason for caps is historical. The idea was to reduce any ethnic group from wielding too strong an influence on politics by immigrating in large numbers, but that is now moot because of mostly uncontrolled/lenient immigration from Latin America over decades.

The main problem with the US immigration system is the high prevalence of family immigration vs. employment-based immigration. The majority of professional immigrants, such as the doctors who serve rural areas, medical/pharma researchers, postgrads in various scientific disciplines and software and high-tech industry employees are drawn from the latter category, and the majority face insanely long wait periods. This is rapidly eroding the attractiveness of the US as a destination for these people, which can only harm the future prospects of the country.

They're based on country of birth, not on country of citizenship of the individual or country of recent residency of the application. There's no reason, whatsoever, to have immigration tied to where your mother happened to be physically located when you came into the world. It's meaningless. One of my buddies was born in India, lived there for a couple of years and moved to the UK. He's a UK citizen. He's a principal engineer at a top Bay Area tech company. He's been in the India backlog for a decade.

Who cares if India and China become the majority of immigrations? What difference does it make?

What the US needs is top-down immigration reform and a points-based program like Canada and Australia. Those countries get to cherry-pick the most skilled immigrants and the most likely to thrive in their new homes.

Who cares where they were born?! That's literally the least interesting thing about an immigration petition.

There wouldn't necessarily be a indian/chinese majority if immigration were to "cherry-pick the most skilled immigrants"

As the current system is being abused by Indian consulting companies plahying the numbers games and filing for as many people as possibly to place them at low(er) income roles

https://www.epi.org/blog/new-data-infosys-tata-abuse-h-1b-pr...

> What the US needs is top-down immigration reform and a points-based program like Canada and Australia.

Right. Trump tried proposing a merit-based immigration system while he was in office. It quickly got shouted down and fell off the radar, by people and factions who didn't want to consider that different people have varying levels of merit to offer society.

The US immigration system is already strongly weighted by merit but the lack of family immigration causes a lot of folks who marry internationally to just emigrate (like me!) - the issue with attracting "good" immigrants isn't going to be solved by making it more merit based - it'll be solved by making it more fair and predictable. Families can spend decades partially locked into green-cards that can be revoked without warning forcing them to relocate their lives. This isn't an attractive option for most people looking for a new home.

I don't know about Australia, but Canada also has a much stronger refugee program than America that bypasses the whole points system. The US refugee system got worse under Trump & I suspect it'll be a constant pendulum swing now whenever the GOP gets into power. You can't have one without the other.

The other challenge for America is that it gets drastically more applications than Canada does (not to mention that IIRC Canada does have a bottleneck). I think putting region restrictions/incentives for immigration might be better, so that you give preference to residency outside of already populated areas/less populated states.

How do you enforce regional restrictions on immigration? Once someone is a citizen they can move anywhere within the country.

If you want to make it attractive to live in some region, just create good jobs there and people will follow. Trying to force immigrants to live there if there are no good jobs sounds like a terrible bandaid.

> How do you enforce regional restrictions on immigration? Once someone is a citizen they can move anywhere within the country.

I'll preface this by saying that this my anecdotal understanding of the Canadian immigration process. Essentially provinces can nominate the immigration of certain desirable professionals, boosting their cases to the top of the queue for an immigrant visa. It comes with a requirement to live and work in the sponsoring province for a minimum period of time - something like 3 years. Immigrants are also eligible to apply for citizenship after 3 years of residency, and citizens have the right to live and work anywhere. From my understanding of the provincial nominee system is that they strongly prefer that you have an existing social and family network within the province, encouraging you to stay put even after you become a citizen.

First, green card != citizenship. You don't get citizenship until 5 years have passed & residency limits are typically in the 3-5 year range, not beyond. Once someone establishes roots for 3-5 years, they usually stick around there long term anyway (unless they're young & childless).

Secondly, you know how you fill out taxes every year & you have to say where your primary residence was for tax purposes? That's how you enforce it.

> How do you enforce regional restrictions on immigration? Once someone is a citizen they can move anywhere within the country.

My understanding is that there's one province (Quebec) that select it's own immigrants (quotas are per province).

They can't force anyone to stay so they tune their selection algorithm to match profiles that are most likely to stay.

I believe each province can nominate individuals under PNP. [1]

[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...

> How do you enforce regional restrictions on immigration?

You could ask for proof of purchase from local stores, check the address of the employer to see if the employer is located in that area. Check train/bus tickets.

> if there are no good jobs sounds like a terrible bandaid.

It depends, maybe you need workforce in some occupations in that area, so you tell immigrants who have expertise in that domain to stay in that area and fi you spend X years you will get the citizenship after that you are free to move in the country.

Its a fair deal, if the immigrant does not like he/she just wont come.

Canada does have quite visible regional incentives for northern settlement - I don't actually think they make the northwest territory financially viable, but you will get a fair-sized income supplement.

Also to the Maritimes - IIRC the provincial governments can nominate individuals to bypass the quotas/caps in exchange for committing to spend a couple of years in the province.

> There's no reason, whatsoever, to have immigration tied to where your mother happened to be physically located when you came into the world. It's meaningless.

It's to avoid people using passports of convenience to game the system.

> He's been in the India backlog for a decade.

Truth is, a lot of that backlog is self-imposed. H1B are supposed to be for real employment for a specialty occupation. There are "Body Shops", mostly Indian owned, that will submit fraudulent applications to import cheap underqualified labor in the country. [0] [1]

If the people working at these body shops or their owners simply decided to start following the law, this would clear the backlog almost instantly.

> What the US needs is top-down immigration reform and a points-based program like Canada and Australia. Those countries get to cherry-pick the most skilled immigrants and the most likely to thrive in their new homes.

And yet how does it explains the brain drain these two countries have towards... the US!

[0] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/silicon-valleys-body-s...

[1] https://cis.org/North/Indian-Body-Shop-Indicted-Abuse-H1B-Pr...

> It's to avoid people using passports of convenience to game the system.

Yes I'm sure people looking to immigrate to the US are checks notes becoming British Citizens. A country with notoriously difficult immigration requirements. Citizenship requires 5+ years in most instances to obtain (with a few small exceptions). Generally speaking all first-world countries have stringent rules.

> Truth is, a lot of that backlog is self-imposed. H1B are supposed to be for real employment for a specialty occupation.

I'm not sure that's what self-imposed means.

> And yet how does it explains the brain drain these two countries have towards... the US!

Immigration to the US is effectively suspended. [0] These days those folks are going to Canada. [1]

'"While the States has gone, 'Let's make it difficult to get the employees here on a visa,' Canada's gone the exact opposite, and it's beneficial for Canada," says Alex Norman, the other co-founder of TechToronto. "You had a fast-growing ecosystem here that's been getting a shot of steroids."'

That's what it looks like when you hang a "NO VACANCIES" sign in the window.

[0] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/visas-news/s...

[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/01/27/799402801/canada-wins-u-s-los...

> Generally speaking all first-world countries have stringent rules.

First world might, other countries don't. So it would be easy to get citizenship from one of those and then use it to bypass the cap.

> I'm not sure that's what self-imposed means.

Indian nationals applying for fraudulent visas.

> and it's beneficial for Canada

Is it really? How's the VC ecosystem? Unicorns? Not long ago the government bragged to investors that Canadians devs were worth 50K less than their American counterparts. [0]

[0] https://globalnews.ca/news/4178326/amazon-vancouver-tech-wor...

> First world might, other countries don't. So it would be easy to get citizenship from one of those and then use it to bypass the cap.

In this case I was saying that quotas and caps would still apply but be basted on citizenship instead of place of birth. If everyone started buying Cayman Islands citizenship instead, the quota would fill up fast.

> Indian nationals applying for fraudulent visas.

Again, that's not self-imposed.

> Is it really? How's the VC ecosystem? Unicorns? Not long ago the government bragged to investors that Canadians devs were worth 50K less than their American counterparts. [0]

This is a new phenomenon, and it takes time to turn a boat. I think it would be pretty myopic not to see the trend, however. The ecosystem will follow in time.

[edit] I think Shopify was the defining moment when things started to turn. If an Ottawa startup can reach a $200B market cap in a few years, that's going to create a lot of wealth, spawn its own startups and an investment ecosystem in its own right.

As usual, no reply to this comment is actually addressing the question:

> Why shouldn’t we have per country caps?

So, I'll give it a shot.

Let's say that 1% of the human population happens to have great genius. They're the cream of the crop in terms of ability, though perhaps they lack opportunity.

Statistically, where are most of them going to be born? In the most populous countries of course...

If you choose a flat-rate cutoff for importing talent on a per-country basis, you're choosing "diversity" (of birthplace...which might not mean anything at all) over "talent". Which would be fine, except that this particular route to residency was ostensibly created to bring in talent specifically.

Although, immigration is a highly politicized issue and practicality usually has little to no bearing on the policy in this area. It appears many other issues in America are heading that way...

Why have caps anyway? There was nothing such in place 400 years ago, why should there be now?

Who will pay for all the social services required? The existing tax paying citizen via increases taxes and lowered standard of living. We already have a shortage of housing, overcrowding in schools & major budget deficits. No, open borders are not the answer - no country has/allows them because of the reasons above.

Maybe allow them to steal some land and build there without regulations? Just like the previous people did?

Are you offering to volunteer your place to live? A lot of things, like slavery and public beheadings were done 400 years ago, which aren't done today. Any other arguments you can provide to make your case rather than revisionist history?

You asked a question, I tried to provide an answer to it which is reflective of the common viewpoint.

The per country caps are intended to drive diversity, otherwise all of our immigrants would be from 1 or 2 countries.

It’s a good thing.

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