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Comment by sam-cop-vimes | Hacker News Reader

I am surprised people are willing to put up with this sort inhumane treatment. A person I know has been waiting for 16+ years for his green card. They've very rarely traveled out of the USA together as a family because they were afraid they might be a problem getting back in. The people I know are not even desperate migrants where this sort of treatment is still better than the lives they are living - yet they still normalise it. When I ask them why they tolerate such draconian conditions, I get answers such as "well, we didn't realise it would take this long" or "this doesn't happen to people like us".

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Everyone back home in Texas wondered why my husband (a German) wouldn’t “let” us move to the US.

He was open to doing at least a few years over there; he’d enjoyed his exchange during university back in the 90s.

I was the one who said no, having seen the hell my colleagues married to Germans and other western Europeans were going through with US immigration.

Instead, I got a German residence permit without much fuss, and converted to a permanent one (Green Card equivalent) at a renewal when the clerk pointed out I was past the minimum time needed on my renewable one and encouraged me to apply.

Everyone complains about German bureaucracy, and I did have to bring in a fair bit of paperwork, but they do a prep appointment where they give you a list of exactly what they want to see from you specifically when you file your application.

Makes sense - and I have interacted with bureaucracy in a lot of countries. The FUD that US immigration seem to install in immigrants seems uncalled for.

It's certainly less FUD now that we have secret police and a psuedo-monarch dedicated to ruining the lives of immigrants.

If I were an immigrant, or someone wanting to immigrate to the US, I would consider it carefully.

The Republicans have never liked immigrants. They have succeeded in keeping things underfunded so the bureaucracy stretches out far longer than needed in a sane system.

And underfunded to the point of delaying things despite fees for comparable activities being far more expensive on the US side than in Germany, and even before this year.

For every anecdote here about a (very) bad experience with US immigration policy, there are 1000s daily that go on fine. It is a very large complex system that has issues, but for the majority it is working.

Find the specific issues and fix them.

Counter Anecdote: My wife won the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, aka Green Card lottery. Came here with close to nothing and not speaking more than a sentence or two of English.

And that's about the only type of visa where that happens.

Supply and demand. The US is by far the top place people want to be, so however poorly they treat applicants, there will still be an infinite supply of people willing to put up with it.

I get that, but the kind of white collar workers who are putting up with this have options all over the world. Why would even such people put up with it?

Professional opportunity or quality of life, most likely. Nowhere else even comes close to the US in terms of professional and economic opportunity.

In terms of professional and economic opportunity, sure, but in terms of quality of life half of the European countries eclipse the US.

Countries like Denmark, Switzerland or Netherlands indeed offer very good quality of life but the language barrier is substantial. Tons of people know English as a second language and almost no one knows, say, Danish as a second language.

Oh I didn't mean americans should come over. Please don't. Deal with your mess instead of extending it here.

> Deal with your mess instead of extending it here.

This is exactly the justification for all the anti-immigration policies, the idea that immigrants from foreign countries have extended the mess that is in their home countries to the United States, and the only way to prevent it is to prevent those people from having the right to settle permanently in the United States.

Oh I didn't mean [Mexicans] should come over. Please don't. Deal with your mess instead of extending it here [US].

And there is the fact that countries like Denmark are tightening up immigration even tighter than the US. The EU countries that tried a more open boarder quickly realized how it can spiral out of control.

That's entirely subjective for sure. The USA is a continent sized country and not a one-size-fits-all like most European countries. Each state should be viewed as its own European sized country with its own warts and all. You will have some backwater, inbred states like AL, MS and GA but places like CA or New England or NY are just eons above anything Europe has to offer. Again, it's all subjective.

What I'm hearing about CA and NY is 10hr work days if you're lucky, 2/3 jobs to make ends meet if you're not, and absurd rents.

It is true that it is probably better in the US if you're privileged, but then again it's good everywhere if you're privileged. The difference is in the quality of life of the average person.

> What I'm hearing about CA and NY is 10hr work days if you're lucky, 2/3 jobs to make ends meet if you're not, and absurd rents.

All these things can be said about most countries you'd want to live in nowadays.

Nope, not for half of Europe and that's my entire point.

Healthcare in USA is a nightmare, from almost every perspective.

But a lot of countries like Canada, EU nations and other developed countries (and even in developing nations like India) have free or affordable healthcare systems.

So, at least from a healthcare metric, most of these nations trump USA (pun intended, since Trump scrapped or crippled Obamacare, which itself wasn't a full-fledged solution to the healthcare crisis prevalent in USA).

Most of the countries with free healthcare are dying at the seams. Look at the NHS in England, you can't even get appointments as there are so few doctors. Operations take years to be done. In the USA you get ops real fast and doctors can be seen same day. Obamacare has only reset back to pre-COVID subsidies so it was always temporary the COVID subsidies, per the Inflation Reduction Act 2021.

> In the USA you get ops real fast and doctors can be seen same day.

IF the patient has Medical Insurance.

Only in the USA, medical insurance seems to be tied to employment. Non-employment driven medicare is unaffordable except for the filthy rich.

If someone is unemployed or poor, they won't be able to afford or get healthcare (not even for a toothache!) in the USA.

EU nations are struggling with state-sponsored Medicare because those are old systems that weren't improved with growing populations and the needs of modern times, and there are concerted efforts by Big Pharma to cripple and dismantle such free or affordable healthcare. NHS is under attack by Big Pharma is you read the news closely.

EU nations also made tne mistake of intaking thousands of "refugees" many of whom are still jobless and a constant drain on the nation's fragile Medicare system and social service subsidies.

Contrast this to countries like India which has lots of expert doctors and excellent hospitals, and free clinics and free healthcare for the poor. India also has state-sponsored pharmacies selling generics medicines that are extremely affordable substitutes for Big-Pharma-branded medicines.

e.g., A metal stent for a heart surgery in India costs a pittance compared to rest of the world. A dental root canal treatment costs around 5000 rupees (around $55). Foreigners visit India to get cheap (but high quality) Medicare (especially surgeries). One diabetic American I personally know gets his Insulin from India, because it is cheaper despite the shipping cost involved. There's a growing industry for "medical tourism" in India, as catered packages, wherein a foreigner needing surgery arrives with family to stay at a nice hotel, then gets timely appointment and surgery at a reputed hospital by skilled doctors, and then patient and family can recuperate at a nice holiday resort and partake in some local sightseeing as guided tours as part of the whole package.

I am not trying to belittle USA here, but even the staunchest American patriot will agree their healthcare system is under the crippling grip of Big Pharma and bad policies, and is anti-poor by design, and desperately needs an overhaul to become at par with the best healthcare systems in other developed nations. A closer look at America's neighbor Canada's healthcare system will be an eye opener on how to do healthcare better.

>even the staunchest American patriot will agree their healthcare system is under the crippling grip of Big Pharma and bad policies, and is anti-poor by design

Sadly you are drastically overestimating American patriots

Lol I've been hearing this nonsense since i was in kindergarten. Those countries all have better health outcomes than the US.

This is frankly somewhat ludicrous. Federal law applies everywhere. The national economy affects everyone.

I've lived in many states, the differences are minor.

California and New York are actually among the most inbred states, because they have the largest populations of recent Muslim immigrants, and cousin marriage is more prevalent in the Muslim world than it is in other places: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage#/media/File:Gl... . There's not all that many Muslims in Alabama or Mississippi; Georgia has somewhat more, probably because of Atlanta's status as a major city that attracts sizeable numbers of immigrants.

Then why don't EU countries have the same demand for citizenship as the US? (I don't have numbers, maybe there is?)

Depends on the work? Software salaries in the US are so far beyond anywhere else in the world that it puts you in a significantly different lifestyle.

One year of a kafkaesque process to make $500k/year instead of 70k Euros is a trade worth it to tons of people to make the go at it. And that’s for stable corporate jobs, it gets even more favorable if you want to start a company.

The delusion that they're a temporarily embarrassed millionaire is not limited to American citizens.

Once you see it one sees low grade to high grade affinity fraud everywhere.

People would rather align with wealth and power and pretend they are part of the club than align with the other schmucks like them.

a) money make up for a lot of systemic deficiencies, adding here taxes, which are insanely high all across EU, salaries are several times lower here too

b) English language as a first class language. For example, while there are many job offers promising English only requirement, in reality a significant part of these unofficially presume you will speak local language at proficient level in the team, and hiring process filters for that.

c) EU countries have a lot of their own bureaucracy hell regarding immigration. For example I'm now on a Blue Card status in EU, that's a high skilled immigration program. I need to renew my card for the next 1 to 3 year period, I've started process in Sep 2025 and best case scenario will get card around next winter 26/27. Worst case scenario, add half a year more to that. If I want to get a passport, originally I had to dance through these hoops for at minimum 9 years. Just recently it increased to 11 year. And right now there is a law proposal in the parliament, increasing this term to minimum 17 years (among other inane requirements). If that passes, they may increase it even more in the future, making all immigrants live on the flimsy status for decades. USA at least makes the process faster, even if unpredictable.

tl;dr - EU is nice, just like USA is nice in it's own way, but in both countries immigrants have to put up with a lot of legal BS.

Propaganda

I think you answer your own question:

> "this doesn't happen to people like us".

Up until now wasn't this the case that generally white collar workers would only face issues in very narrow set of conditions? And even now, are all irregular migrants experience the same worsening prospects?

And sometimes there isn't really a choice. Life threw us together, our hearts had their own ideas about the situation. The only choices were put up with the process or separate.

Despite the challenges with current government, the USA is still the best country in the world for most things. Some will disagree but they are in a minority. People who have never been or lived in the USA likely won't understand why this is. I stopped bothering to explain it to others a long time ago as their views are mostly influenced by biased media in their home country.

> their views are mostly influenced by biased media in their home country.

Mirror, mirror on the wall...

(As you've already concluded, don't bother...)

Your parent comment is probably satire, but given current situations, one can never be sure.

No satire intended. It's more a simple reflection on reality.

Replying as this is not satire, it is 100% true. Social media amplifies this, news regurgitates it and we fight online while advertisers get their clicks.

As a US citizen with plenty of travel experience, there are actually scant few things the USA is best at, especially when it comes to quality of life for ordinary people.

US residents who rarely leave their borders likely won't understand why this is.

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