Comment by screye | Hacker News Reader

Comment by screye | Hacker News Reader

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> unless you have a job offer or significant wealth

Isn't that exactly the same for the US ? If anything, because of the lottery, having a job offer is only gives you a 30% chance to actually get the visa. The USA (practically) has no path to permanent residency if you are Indian.

Even just getting to the job offer needs you to be on an F1-OPT which usually implies between $100-200k of college tuition just to apply for a job permit.

In that sense, the US needs both significant wealth & a job offer all while giving no pathway to permanent residency if you're born in the wrong country.

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For tech workers: Canada, the EU (through France, Ireland) and Australia are certainly easier to immigrate to. (wages are another question). Singapore & Dubai/UAE are popular destinations for working, though PRs can be awkward or impossible.

Even supposed harder to immigrate countries look easier, if you think about how every country needs you to be fluent in the local language. That everyone learns English is a testament to the political dominance of the USA & the UK over the last 300 years, and not a foregone conclusion.

There are over a billion people in India. There are probably more people in India who would like to move to the US than there are people currently in the US.

I’m sympathetic, but it’s not really feasible for the US to accommodate everyone in the world and it’s not like the US owes it to anyone to just let anyone live there just because they’d like to.

I mean, people aren't asking for infinite slots for Indians. Hell, they aren't even asking for more slots.

They are asking for one or multiple of :

1. Use of lapsed green cards slots from other categories to be used for pending green cards.

2. Removal/Relaxing of the 7% rule, which uniquely inconveniences Indians. (If the idea is diversity, then in almost every way India is more diverse than arbitrarily formed culturally homogeneous tiny nations around the world.)

3. More humane work permit rules for those who have a PR in the waiting. Eg: relaxing the insane 60 day unemployment rule, reducing need to restamp visa incredibly often, allowing secondary sources of income or starting a startup.

4. More stable processing times and predictions on how long PR waiting time actually are. Current estimates vary from 20-100 years. That is simply unacceptable as a range.

With all this stuff, it sounds like the country is telling you that they don't really want you there. Why do you insist on going someplace where you're not wanted? You're not a citizen, so you don't really have a right to complain about the immigration process. Perhaps look for a country that actually welcomes immigrants?

I would like the country to be straightfaced and say the same. why beat around the bushes and be indirect about it.

Removal/Relaxing of the 7% rule, which uniquely inconveniences Indians. (If the idea is diversity, then in almost every way India is more diverse than arbitrarily formed culturally homogeneous tiny nations around the world.

Everybody loves diversity until it’s not them.

What's the 7% rule?

No country can get more than 7% of the employment or family based green cards.

Ah I see, so if country A has a million people and country B has a billion people then people from country A have a 1000x higher probability of getting a green card? Now I understand the problem.

Yup. Also, that is also just one problem.

USA hands out a million green cards, but only 150k for employment based. For all the talks of immigrants bringing skills, we are really not preferred. They'll hand out 50k "diversity visas" by lottery, but God forbid more than 10k indians come into the country for their skills. And even the skills based visas barely prefer more skilled or in demand immigrants. That's what they call "abuse" by H1B/eb1 but also oppose any wage based or PhD preferring rules. Hypocrites hiding their true racist intentions.

If you are arguing that there are an unsustainable number of employment based green cards being handed out, you could not be more wrong.

USA hands out a million green cards every year. But only 150k are employment based. These are capped at 7% for each country. Only 10k out of a million green cards are assigned per year for Indian immigrants based on their employments.

For all the talk of meritocracy, looking beyond skin color, and valuing high skilled immigrants, USA definitely has policies that discriminate on national origin and actively encourage low skilled immigration (2 million unauthorized border crossings, policies allowing rampant "abuse" in h1b/eb1c visas whenever high skilled immigrants are concerned, constant opposition to making it easier for PhDs to get a green card or say putting wage rules on h1b/eb1,2,3).

Nobody cares about the people. It’s all about money. The H1B, etc mostly protects American workers by discouraging offshoring.

The easier path to low skill admission is all about rural interests. We need bodies working farms, we packing meat, etc.

  it’s not like the US owes it to anyone to just let anyone live there just because they’d like to

you sure of that ?

Of course. Every country is a sovereign nation and has complete autonomy to run their immigration as they see fit.

The proportion of family member visas to skilled worker visas that US visas are skewed significantly towards the former compared to most other countries.

That aside, I would agree that Canada is easier.

Is this specific to tech jobs? Because it seems to me that Indians can routinely become convenience store and hotel owners in the US?

It is the family pathway which is available only to very small communities whose (mostly) brothers immigrated to the US in the 80-90s. That's because afaik, it also has a 20-ish year waiting. So the convenience store owners are very likely to be folks from this group that are getting green cards for applications they put in when they used to young. There is a reason they all seem to be old men. Most young Indians at these stores are part-time workers on visa studying at universities nearby.

For the last couple of decades, a US university degree -> STEM job is the only way known legal way for an Indian to come to US on their own merit. I specify STEM, because none of the other professions get the STEM-OPT (3 tries at the low-probability h1b lottery vs 1 try for normal students), so most US employers blanket reject candidates in non-STEM professions.

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