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Comment by jonathankoren | Hacker News Reader

> it's a mostly pointless bureaucratic exercise in bogus paperwork where lawyers and the gov. make bank

I love how people always think that The Government™ does things to make money, rather some congressman from the Bible Belt just engaging in straight up xenophobia.

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I mean the outcome is that it's a lot of wasted time and money. The original motivation for these policies was a pro-labor/protectionist stance in hiring immigrants, but that is completely subverted because there are no restrictions in hiring temp. immigrant workers. This PERM thing only comes up if you want to keep them permanently. The process basically subverts everyone's expectations, disappoints everyone, and just hands gov. and lawyers money.

I see it as arbitrary barriers to immigration to satisfy those who don't want to see foreigners in the US. The fact it was corrupted to become a money-making business is just a natural result of any archaic laws in the US. It is rather the norm that lawyers and politicians make a dumb law to get attention, then later on they refuse to change it because it is profitable to keep it that way. If it wasn't profitable, they would change it to get political points already.

Let me know as soon as any state outside the Bible Belt elects a governor of Indian descent, okay? Meanwhile, please don’t complain about “xenophobia” while simultaneously making extremely ignorant and offensive generalizations about specific parts of the world.

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