Yeah, seems like this re-approval concept makes a ton of sense. FedEx at least got some business.
We are Finnish citizens and if the passports really had been lost, we could always get new ones at the Finnish consulate in New York to return home.
I’ve held several types of visas, L-1 and O-1, and I also applied for a PERM whatever that I eventually abandoned because I didn’t want to stay in the country and with that employer. The American immigration system is incredibly poorly designed and frustrating for all parties. It drives honest legal immigrants like us to an “I don’t give a shit” mindset where we just did the minimum to get the paperwork while waiting to leave the country.
Now I still get paid by an American company at the same rates as before, but I pay taxes to Finland instead. The immigrant-hostile system isn’t the success you imagine.
You have made it so complicated and unattractive to stay in the country that you don’t care about losing people who wanted to stay and pay taxes, and instead are enabling these jobs to be exported.
The reason I have strong feelings about this topic is that I want America to continue succeeding, and I wanted to be part of it but it didn’t make practical sense for me.
When I was a child in the 1980s living next door to the Soviet Union, the USA was a beacon of hope to us. It sounds corny but it’s true. (Reagan and Clinton were politicians who seemed to intuitively understand this global mood and were able to leverage it. I disagree with them on many specifics, but they excelled at this.)
I know Americans always feel like there’s too much going on at home to care about the rest of the world. But often in history the solutions at home have appeared by opening up, not closing in.