Comment by nonamechicken | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nonamechicken | Hacker News Reader

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> Americans feel that the country is full and will increasingly be enforcing the letter of the law.

I used to think the same, that the Americans don't really want us. But when the corona pandemic related lockdowns happened, and US banned people from India, US still allowed Indian college students. So there must be some need. These students are not coming to US for education, they are coming here to work, and get green card and become a citizen.

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2021/05/03/us-rest...

> For a long time, d###s treated the H1-B system as a permanent immigration visa...D###s should internalize that.

And that is why I think posts like this are important. So that Indians who are considering moving to US know the ground reality, and make informed decisions rather than regret it later in life.

Need is different from want. Indian college students are future temporary workers, if that. Going to college here doesn’t guarantee you an H1B much less a green card. The rapidly aging American population has a need for various temporary workers, but they don’t need them to stay here and become citizens. There is no political will on either the left or the right to create a real, predictable skilled immigration system that doesn’t leave Indians and their families at the mercy of legal fictions like “dual intent” papering over what is fundamentally a temporary worker program.

Silicon Valley needs and perhaps even wants Indians as permanent immigrants. Insofar as Biden is supported by Silicon Valley with donations he’ll throw them some scraps. But Indians (and Asians generally) aren’t especially politically useful to Democrats. They aren’t eligible to vote for a decade or more, and don’t turn out even then. And they create internal tensions in the coalition (e.g. voting down Prop 16 in CA). Democrats will talk a lot about loving immigrants because they’re laser focused on the Hispanic vote. But reforming the H1B system doesn’t help with that and they won’t spend any significant political capital on that.

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