Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

There's no changes that affect the real bottleneck: the annual quota on green cards and the per-country limits of 7% or children aging out. Those all require Congressional action and that's just not going to happen in the current political environment [1].

Here's my take: you get a work visa for 3-5 years that's tied to your employer and allows you to freely leave and re-enter the US. Believe it or not, we still have visa holders that can't leave the US without having to re-apply for their visa.

On renewal that becomes a 3-5 year visa that isn't tied to your employer. You can freely change jobs.

At the end of that period, it just becomes a green card as long as you satisfy presence tests. Naturalization has continuous and physical presence tests. Just use those. Failing that it is simply renewed for another 3-5 years.

If you satisfy the extraordinary category or get a NIW you simply skip the first step of having an employer-tied visa.

This would free up USCIS to deal with actual visa fraud rather than all the pointless hoops they currently (are forced to) enforce.

[1]: https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/columbus/news/2023/12/21/congre...

Your take sound reasonable and practical.

The only problem with it is that the problems it solves are problems for people who don’t have a say in the matter. While the drawbacks it implies affects people who have a say in the matter. (Either through voting or lobbying)

The fact that the current system imposes a form of long identured servitude on imigrants is not a bug but a feature. This benefits the employers in very direct ways.

The fact that the current system processes applications from select regions of the world much faster than other regions of the world is not a bug but a feature. It is a system which maintains plausible deniability while in effect racially selective. This is a sad and quite odious, but it appears to be consistent with the preferences of many voters.

All in all: a good plan with some fatal flaws. And I am very sad to say that.

> The fact that the current system imposes a form of long identured servitude on imigrants is not a bug but a feature

I was on the hill when the initial congressional negotiations over immigration began in the mid-2010s.

The stumbling block has always been illegal immigration. [0]

The Dems congressional leadership at the time decided that no reform on legal immigration would happen without illegal immigration reform (eg. DREAM act)

The GOP congressional leadership at the time decided that no reform on illegal immigration would happen without legal immigration.

Neither side budged, and neither side really cared because immigrants (legal or illegal) can't vote.

[0] - https://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/nancy-pelosi-immigrat...

> neither side really cared because immigrants (legal or illegal) can't vote.

This really is the alpha and omega of migration policies all around the world: the people affected don't have a say, and the people not affected use the issues to play hateful games.

I don’t think that’s fair. If I could cross a border to earn $5M a year, I wouldn’t call the locals hateful for coming up with ways to protect their own livelihoods, and I wouldn’t feel entitled to a say.

This argument assumes that economics is a zero sum game which is easily disproven by history.

there is more to life than economics

Having done some student lobbying on H1B visas a few years back, I can tell you the fatal flaw in that plan is that it does nothing to secure the southern border. The same thing is true about sending military aid to Ukraine now — how does that stop people from crossing our border?

In the twisty little minds of Congressmen, we can’t do anything good and obvious unless we solve their tangentially related problem first. All of that stuff you said about the system sounds like it matters but honestly those concerns never even appear in their minds.

This is similar to how it works in the Netherlands. First 5 years as "knowlage immigrant" your visa depends on your work. Not tied to an employer per se but working in certain sectors (IT, SW dev, HW dev etc) and earning minimum a certain amount per year. As long as you satisfy the conditions you are free to change jobs. If you lose employment, you have 3 months search period with extension possibility. After legally living in NL you have the option to either get a permanent residence permit or becime a citizen.

Won't this just dramatically shrink the number of initial work visas given out? Because you'll have to assume each one is now just a green card with extra steps.

Why do we need a quota for qualified people getting work visas (or green cards) at all? We don't.

If the qualifications are for a field that has 95 workers for every 100 jobs, come on in. If it’s for a field that already has 105 workers for every 100 jobs, I can see a lot of reasons ($$$) why current residents would want to see their potential competitors stifled or limited in number.

Because we don’t want an unlimited number of foreigners moving into the country? Like it or not that’s the reason Congress won’t touch the issue, right?

Please check the requirements for each of the "national interest waivers" and tell me how many "unlimited foreigners" meet that requirement.

TIL: https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/permanent...

This "unlimited number" argument is a common dog whistle. If the Dept of Labor is certifying each one of the qualified immigrants and vetting the credentials, how is this unlimited?

Dog whistle for what? Calling for deportation? The comment is literally just “we can’t take every immigrant.” What other position is there?

You should not take every immigrant. Take immigrants who bring their skills and productivity to you. Don't make their lives difficult with unnecessary hoops to jump through. Skilled immigration is not asylum or illegal immigration.

Well they are taking 100s of thousands immigrants as they see reasonable. What is problem with following established rules and timelines? Immigrants would surely be aware of those before even thinking of immigration.

Besides if Europe / Australia / Canada have much simpler immigration why would any skilled/productive prospective immigrant would even think of US.

> Besides if Europe / Australia / Canada have much simpler immigration why would any skilled/productive prospective immigrant would even think of US.

US wages are significantly higher, and it also has a much more developed tech industry (picking the T from STEM since that's what I know about most).

The US's tech industry succeeds in spite of their immigration policies, not because of it

1. The problem with established rules and timelines is they are have been outdated for decades and do not reflect the reality we live in. If the same logic was applied to federal minimum wage, it would never be raised because the number has been well established at an arbitrary time in the past. That is surely not the case and hence timely revisions are necessary.

2. Immigrants are absolutely aware of this. That is reason why overall skilled immigration has not grown by leaps and bounds in the last few years like it did decades ago. US is no longer the top destination of choice for international students in STEM fields. It is only a matter of time that you'd see the effects on overall productivity. The Social Security Administration is already hinting towards this future. The funds are supposed to run out by 2041 (reference https://www.ssa.gov/newsletter/Statement%20Insert%2025+.pdf ) . Quoting from the document ".. the birth rate is low, the ratio of workers to beneficiaries is falling.." . The US simply doesn't have enough productive people to fund benefits for the population for the coming decades.

We need every immigrant possible to pay for social security.

> you get a work visa for 3-5 years that's tied to your employer

Time spent getting a degree at an accredited American university should count as the same.

Disagree as it has no warranty you are good enough to keep a job, only that you could pay fees every year.

Sure. Nobody said you get citizenship. Just a work visa not tied to an employer.

Work visas and education visas are two different things that should be treated separately.

> Work visas and education visas are two different things that should be treated separately

It makes zero sense to educate kids and then force them to grow those fruits abroad. If we’re going to teach them, it makes sense to give them a chance to work here applying their new skills. This is such low-hanging win-win fruit.

I am all for visas post education, to give a chance. But they should be separate from work visas so they can be tweaked separately.

There is no difference. The goal is to avoid a Canadian Vancouver situation

Can you please stop posting like this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38776618 to HN? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We've had to ask you this a couple times already.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

My comments aren't as out there as anyone elses. It's just not left wing.

It's clear anyone to the right of AOC isn't welcome on this website.

Please delete my account. thank you.

Are you familiar with the idea of Chesterton’s fence?

Why do you think we have such a convoluted immigration scheme?

Can you think of ways to exploit the system you have suggested?

Thinking about unintended consequences is good, but you're assuming more intentionality to existing laws than is actually there. It's convoluted more for political reasons than for pragmatic ones.

The bottle neck is on purpose.

The per-country limits are a good thing, the "bottleneck" is a feature not a bug

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