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Comment by midoridensha | Hacker News Reader

It sucks, but every country has the right to set their own immigration laws. If Indians don't like US laws, maybe they should emigrate to countries that don't put so many onerous restrictions on them. Lots of countries would be happy to have them.

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I think countries should then be at least straight-forward about it.

If they don't want immigrants to settle, they shouldn't allow migrant workers to stay for more than a year or so and make that clear, instead of leaving them in legal limbo for cheap labor, which is close to what Qatar was criticized for.

It would be nice if everyone were totally honest, but that's not realistic I think. It's pretty well-known these days how lousy Qatar is with immigrant labor, and among the well-educated Indian populace that would be interested in high-paid tech jobs in the US, it should be well-known by now how bad the system there is for them and how there's no real path to PR for them. They should, therefore, act accordingly. If they keep coming to the US with the current bad policies, the US won't have much incentive to change those policies.

Of course. And in a Democracy you have the right to petition to change it.

The fact that the only argument commenters here have against what these people are asking for is that “well, it was a law set 30 years ago…” in itself shows that there’s little defense for the current law and very clearly should be changed.

You don't need a democracy to petition for change. Non-democratic countries usually have some kind of mechanism to petition for change too. In a democracy, the difference is that you get to vote for the political leaders if you're a citizen. If you're not, then you don't have a say in governance, aside from just protesting or petitioning.

Sure, the current law sucks, but the same can be said for many laws in America. The law is the law, and if you don't like it, maybe you shouldn't go there, and should pick a more welcoming country.

Sure, and immigrants have the right to ask for better laws. Do you think its wrong for immigrants to provide constructive feedback for better laws, to a country that allowed them to immigrate?

Of course, anyone can complain and provide feedback all they want. But given the US's utterly broken political system, I wouldn't expect much to come of it, and I should think this is obvious to anyone who's paying attention to the world around them.

As far as I can tell, the current situation is not a surprise: someone immigrating from India today should know the situation, and know that there's probably not a good likelihood of it being fixed anytime soon. Given that, why bother going to the US? As I said, there's other countries that are much more welcoming. It seems to me the only reason to go to the US is $$$. Tech workers are overpaid there relative to other countries, so this is attractive to people who want to take advantage of this.

Basically, I see this like going to a casino and then complaining about the odds being stacked against you there. America is a very high-risk place: sure, you can make a lot of money there, if you're skilled and lucky, but all it takes is one big medical problem and you're bankrupt.

The fact is usa gives one more opportunity and after permanent residency they can start something of their own. That is why people from india emigrate to usa so much.

It gives opportunity to make money in the tech field, but as the article points out, they cannot get permanent residency in the US unless they wait 180 years. Maybe it was different in the past or something, I'm not sure, but obviously the situation right now doesn't look good unless you just want to go to the US for a little while to save up a bunch of money and then go home or to a different country.

Countries are bound by international agreements. There is no such thing as full unrestricted Westphalian-style sovereignty anymore for more than a century already.

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