US freezes visas for 75 nations | Hacker News Reader

US freezes visas for 75 nations

english.mathrubhumi.com

207 pointscdrnsf190 comments

We have a really talented engineer on our team (in the US), who has a green card and everything. He's taking a job in Brussels, he said very plainly hes not sticking around to find out what happens next. I don't blame him.

If you are able to make it work in Belgium it's a great move. Free education, free healthcare, 20 days PTO minimum, public transport, 15 weeks of maternity leave, labor protections, basically no crime, no guns, no weekly school shootings, total tax rate of at most 60%.

This person is leaving a regime where the physical safety and liberties of immigrants like him/her are in jeopardy, and HN starts a 50+ comment thread about high taxes. Peak commentary.

60% is a selling point? How high do they go elsewhere?

When we lived in Cal decades ago, taxes weren't all that much lower. Federal taxes and state taxes (higher) on a larger salary, lots of social security and other fiddly little taxes and 100-200/check for 20% of my health insurance. The only good thing about social security is that while you pay a more the benefits are larger 62+. I'm trying to remember, but like 25% for the feds, 8-10% for the state, 6% for social security and the health insurance. Call it high 40's or so, maybe 50%? Yeah, sales tax was lower vs. vat but I thought Cal had about the highest sales tax in the states?

It all depends on what the aggregate deductions that are outside your control sum to, and what you get for the money.

Wow, you pay this much tax and probably don't even get national healthcare.

If you make $200,000 as a single person in CA, you pay about 35% total of income in taxes. https://www.adp.com/resources/tools/calculators/salary-paych...

In Ontario, it would be about 38%, and that’d include healthcare. Canada is very efficient though. At least a decade ago, Canada’s non-defense spending per person was less than the US’s.

In Germany it would be about 44% total. Of course, in Germany, $200k is a top 2% income. In California it’s only a top 8% income.

> you pay about 35% total of income in taxes.

That's what's directly taken out of your check right? But how much more do you pay after that in other taxes? And if you go even further, how much higher are the prices of everything that you purchase due to the various taxes involved in their production?

You pay sales tax, but it's less than VAT. You also pay property taxes if you own your home, but I'm guessing that's true in most places too.

Other major taxes are property taxes and sales taxes, which exist in other countries too and aren’t included in the calculation above.

What about health insurance and rent?

Does your Germany figure include healthcare and church tax? That could push it over 50%. Though church tax is optional and you can go private for healthcare.

Yes to healthcare, and no to Church tax: https://salaryaftertax.com/de/salary-calculator

What I meant to say is that even if you have a very high income you will never pay more than 60% in total tax and social premiums.

On €100,000 a year you pay €57,512 in tax (58% tax). On €60,000 a year it's only €32,405 (54%).

See:

https://be.talent.com/tax-calculator?salary=100000&from=year...

https://be.talent.com/tax-calculator?salary=60000&from=year&...

>even if you have a very high income you will never pay more than 60% in total tax and social premiums.

Are there EU countries where you pay more than 60% for you make the "no more than 60% tax" sound like such a good deal?

AFAIK 60% is pretty much the top end of income tax rates as far as EU goes.

Yes. Apart from the countries which live off of foreign direct investment, taxes are generally pretty high.

Also, in many EU states, companies contribute to social security. In some this is indexed to profits, but on others this is indexed directly to wages, so if you count that bit, taxes directly attributable to your income can easily exceed 60% of what a company pays out.

I don't know if Belgium is using that loophole when counting the 60%, though.

>Apart from the countries which live off of foreign direct investment, taxes are generally pretty high.

I have no idea about this. Can you explain what you mean and give some examples of such countries ?

>Also, in many EU states, companies contribute to social security. In some this is indexed to profits, but on others this is indexed into wages, so if you count that bit, taxes directly attributable to your income can easily exceed 60% of what a company pays out.

True. Some EU countries also tax the gross salary the employer has to give you before it gets to you, which is in bad faith not included in payslips. So when you negotiate your 60k gross wage, it's actually costing your employer something like 72k Euros. I hate this shady practice.

In the EU, yes, Ireland.

Their inward FDI stock to GDP ratio is around 250%, which is about 4× the EU average; and Ireland does this with a decently sized economy.

And then there's Luxembourg (1400%) and Malta (2000%) which arguably do much “worse” but are comparatively tiny.

I didn't do the math for every EU country. Those were just some of the few that came to mind. For instance, Cyprus has similar values to Ireland, but the Irish economy is 15× bigger.

When there's a lot of foreign money going through your economy and you can tax it to moderate amounts, you get to offer lower rates to your own citizens.

Which is great, but obviously doesn't scale if every country tries to do the same.

> I have no idea about this. Can you explain what you mean and give some examples of such countries ?

Probably countries like Ireland, Montenegro, Belize, etc which act as tax havens for foreign corporations. Or Singapore, while also a tax haven, acts as a center for regional trade.

They could also mean resource rich countries that sell mineral rights to foreign corporations, who made investments in infrastructure in order to facilitate their operations, and they pay back dividends to the state, which offset the tax burden of the local population.

Civilization is expensive.

If an American factored in the totality of their tax burden, it would be pretty high. The USA has the benefit of higher incomes and a gigantic population, so there's some economies of scale. But even so, add up all of income tax (federal, state, city, county), sales taxes, property taxes, tariffs, tolls, etc and the % is already pretty high. After factoring the cost of benefits that are free/subsidized in other countries, and the cost probably averages out to the same.

Of course, European countries can also have those same consumption taxes. But I'm not sure if OP factored that in.

> sales taxes, property taxes, tariffs, tolls, etc and the % is already pretty high.

These taxes you mentioned (ignoring income taxes) are even higher in many EU countries than the US, especially sales tax. Same for tolls, tariffs, etc. they're all higher here and they're increasing them and adding new taxes on top, because EU coffers are being bled dry right now with the economy, trade wars, and actual wars going on.

Also, commodity products and services are generally more expensive here than in the US too. Like, I see on youtube the hobby stuff Americans do in their garage with home labs, electronic measuring equipment, power tools and stuff, all gotten nearly for free on craigslist, but if I want to replicate their setups it would cost way more here(from a smaller wage too), not to mention buying a house with a garage in Europe is very much of out of budget to most working class in Europe to begin with.

All this stuff being so cheap and readily available is probably why Americans in their garages have been so much more inventive and entrepreneurial than Europeans.

>After factoring the cost of benefits that are free/subsidized in other countries, and the cost probably averages out to the same.

True, but a lot of free stuff you get back from the government is sometimes of low quality compared to what you pay for in taxes on a high income, due to never being enough money for everything everyone needs, and not being able to attract and keep qualified and motivated workers to stay in the public system when they can earn more privately, and it's only been getting worse and worse since Covid and Ukraine, with no signs of improving.

For example, I am now paying ~1000 Euros for private physiotherapy after my accident, since the free government one is abysmal, which I am forced to pay for anyway out of my salary even though it's useless.

Another example, after my jaw surgery at the public hospital here they just strap cold packs to your face like in WW2, while in the US, my ex-boss who went through a similar procedure at a hospital there they had specialized head cooling devices for your post-op recovery, instead of medieval ice packs, while also being free of charge from his employer insurance. So you might pay more in the US for health insurance, but you also get more in return.

Overall I think I'd still prefer living here than in the US, but there's valid reasons why immigration to the US, and especially the success of immigrants there from an integration and financial perspective, is so high compared to here despite all the issues the US has.

>"On €60,000 a year it's only €32,405 (54%)."

Is it possible to live middle class life on around 27K?

In Brussels? Over half your net income would go to rent. If you are frugal then maybe you can get it to work out. This is not the type of income where you eat out every week.

So at this level 60K leaves one at bare survival level. And what is a normal salary in there?

Frankly speaking that sounds awful

providing healthcare and education are costs easily overlooked by most americans. But the reality is, these are costs borne by americans as well. and likely at a higher rate: americans pay more per capitia on both of those versus most other nations.

The top marginal tax rate in 2024 (assessed 2025) was 50%. But that's not the total tax take - that's the marginal rate of tax for income above 48320 euro.

You can see the Belgian tax scale here:

https://fin.belgium.be/en/private-individuals/tax-return/inc...

The maximum combined federal and California state income tax rate is approximately 51.3% for the highest earners in 2025

Marginal rate, of course

he's taking a 50% paycut going from the US to Brussels, but its more than what he will be making in his home country i guess.

This is not easy to compare. When you take into account all the costs up to and after retirement this is another perspective. The cost of life is another factor.

And then of course quality of life, but that's very individual.

And world-class beer if you’re into that!

Absolutely not. What a depressing country. Soulless people. Literally. Try Belgium in winter.

And today with the European white guilt it's full of Africans who hate not only their people , but European traditions and culture. This is the reality.

Especially if the salary is the same

Do you know any companies in Belgium that pay US salaries?

The average salary for software developer in Chicago is $125k. Pretty much sure there are companies in Belgium paying US salaries!

No, do you?

Why do you think I asked? I'd also move to Belgium for US salaries.

>>he said very plainly hes not sticking around to find out what happens next.

Can't blame him, US residency really is a like a game of high attrition. Its your classic up or out scenario.

Some times even a passport doesn't guarantee a stay. Sooner or later, you fall ill, lose a home, have a divorce. Its a unique combination of extreme luck, work, health and many other factors several of which are totally outside of your control.

You either win spectacularly or exit trying.

What country is he from?

Why was this flagged? This is important news to the VC and software industry.

Because to a certain group of HN regulars everything that gives them a tingle in the conscience is "offtopic" and "politics". Another quieter group believe themselves to be the rational Übermensch and cannot wait for the vagrants and the spooky pinky haired leftists to be put on camps.

Everyone has ethics until they get rich...

Yes! I genuinely don't understand the reason why this got flagged.

I also uploaded this news to hackernews (before discovering that this also existed) and the post I did wasn't flagged (atleast not right now)

I sincerely hope that healthy disucssions can take place in Hackernews and such articles shouldn't be flagged as they are important.

Edit: my post got flagged as well WHILE I WAS WRITING THIS COMMENT THIS IS CRAZY

There are people (investors) that you cannot criticise. Period

The site is getting inundated with bots. For the past few months everytime I realize some poster I’m replying to is looping in replies or having gaping holes in logic, I check their account and it’s been made in the past few months and the early interactions it had were with other accounts made in the same pattern.

Then you also see shit like these posts that touch on the admin in a negative light getting insta flagged and nuked off the front page.

Don’t put blinders on. The problem isn’t new accounts (who can’t even flag). This community has always been subtly in favor of exactly this kind of suppression. Consider the fact that posting anything even slightly critical of YC on the YC subreddit gets one instantly shadowbanned. Then consider that this very community is modded by the same ilk of people.

What would you expect? The same kind of censorship, right? This is by design. The design can obviously be changed (e.g. don’t let only echochambery high karma accounts vouch for stuff).

Not gonna lie, you’re a new account and you ignored the majority of my comment, binning you in the “likely a bot” box as well

My account is primordial and I took long vacations from HN for precisely the reason he stated.

This site has always had a bad faith flagging/downvoting issue; the bots might make it worse, but the culture was always there.

I agree with the bad faith downvoting existing, there’s always been a trend on here of certain people thinking it’s tech related and good when it makes them money and political and bad if it loses them money along with several other biases, but the the pattern of new accounts boosting each other and then throwing their narratives around has super charged ever since LLMs became widespread.

I am increasingly losing any desire for anonymous speech due to how much of my time ends up getting wasted talking to GPUs someone configured to throw more noise into the discourse

Downvoting is an issue sometimes yes but I understand that.

Flagging on the other hand to me on a post as such and other attempts genuinely sadden me because I was only able to discover this flagged post because people wrote about this article in the post I built which has also promptly got flagged.

I don't even know how else to say but I saw two people here in such discussions either worry about their wives or sons in laws and my heart goes out to them. Hackernews is a vast place but its still niche compared to tech giants, we are a community mostly built around each other and curiosity. Curiosity goes to dumpster fire if events like these happen and B) they are flagged by the same community we all think to be a part of.

I have been a vocal supporter of hackernews usually. Because I like the website but I am genuinely seeing it crack and you really never know what can get flagged because I genuinely didn't expect such posts to be flagged because of how valuable they are. I can't fathom why Hackernews might do this, When I had posted the comment it wasn't intended to be political but rather just a massive news development which impacts technological and actual people and geopolitics and I wanted people to discuss it in here on Hackernews for as so, give insights and have discussions.

Perhaps I am feeling hurt and that's because I am because "et tu brute hackernews?"

I then discovered that news.ycombinator.com/active (from one of the comments here, thank you c42) which can still show flagged posts.

I didn't know about the /active and I have been in this community for quite a long time and I didn't know that /active could show flagged posts so I am probably gonna create a tell HN about it

Sharing my sympathies to anyone who is troubled & personally impacted over this recent development. I hope humanity unites together and works for a more affordable & better future for the average person. Peace and hugs.

Edit: looks like someone already posted about news.ycombinator.com/active 5 days ago and so my attempt of post redirected to them but its all good

Found https://brutalist.report/source/hn this from the comment of razingeden which shows both normal and also flagged posts https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=46559792&goto=item%3Fi...

>Flagging on the other hand to me on a post as such and other attempts genuinely sadden me because I was only able to discover this flagged post because people wrote about this article in the post I built which has also promptly got flagged.

I find that annoying myself. However, at the suggestion of another user, I began looking at https://news.ycombinator.com/active instead of the front page.

The "active" page (as its name implies) includes the most active discussions regardless of whether or not they've been flagged.

I find it to be a much better place to find stuff to discuss.

On top of these methods, I will often surface content and discussion by looking at:

- the search page for the last 24H, with a list of both "title" keywords and "comment" keywords, based on how many results are appearing

- the comment histories of folks I have enjoyed.

I do this by modifying the query string in the URL field.

I am quite glad that these modes of finding content on the site take a little effort- I already have a 180min time out and it's not the healthiest way to try and find my news. This is, fortunately, the only social media site I am actively writing responses on, other than some message boards.

And I don't try to book mark my way through those keywords- I just have a set of stuff I find in comment threads I find interesting memorized and look for those threads ("measles", "salvador", "venazuela", "flock").

But I find it a lot easier to find general news and conversations I am curious about using that method.

> This site has always had a bad faith flagging/downvoting issue

The real tragedy is that this is fixable -- look at which accounts regularly flag inappropriately and shadow-ignore their flags going forward.

Why not just make the upvote, downvote, and flag lists public?

That'd also be a good idea, but transparency without action doesn't seem like it would fix the non-active front page problem.

HN does this. My account has shafow-ignored flags. This is because I flagged too many things that said Israel did nothing wrong, or that YC had perfect ethics, and dang didn't like that.

Someone accused me of being a bot and called me a clanker when we are talking about this.

I am extremely annoyed at hackernews right now

wtf is happening. someone said nice try clanker bcause of my username like (wtf/)

This community is feeling more hostile and less trustworthy I am sorry to say that

Well see, now based on my heuristics I don't think youre here in great faith/a real person either

1) your account was made post LLM access being widespread

2) you made this claim

> I am extremely annoyed at hackernews right now

> wtf is happening. someone said nice try clanker bcause of my username like (wtf/)

and when I go back through your comment history trying to find when that occurred, I got to over 8 days ago and no one ever used the word "clanker" in response to you.

The signal to noise ratio is at an all time low because of LLMs. If you are a real person, I guess that sucks, but I have a difficult time believing anything you say now

https://files.catbox.moe/5yp9qo.png

The irony in this whole situation is so ironical. I was mad at first but this is actually just sad + irony

Someone accuses me of being clanker for no apparent reason

I respond to them first madly and secondly calmly

Their post got flagged so you are now unable to watch it plus my comment

But I had commented about it in other comment too when it wasn't flagged (If I remember correctly) and now the additional context got flagged because of Hackernews and you are unable to find it on the internet/hackernews

So 2) can still be chalked up to misunderstanding but I genuinely believe that this is sad that you didn't ask me about it and assumed I was AI

And secondly how do I EVEN PROVE THAT I AM NOT AI.

So I was mad that I got called AI once and so I got called AI twice now... Um, (what the fuck?)

My account was created a year ago because I am a teenager. I created Hackernews account when I was 16. AI came when I was 14-15. What'd you expect me to do?

Of course some of this information is not public so there might be misunderstanding but holy cow.

I got accused of being AI because I commented how other person accused me of being AI which got flagged and they did it for not much apparent in depth reason

And now thanks for accusing me again, Yes I am mad again hope you understand why (so if I say something rude, I don't mean it but you have been rude in this post as well)

> The signal to noise ratio is at an all time low because of LLMs. If you are a real person, I guess that sucks, but I have a difficult time believing anything you say now

Okay, have a nice day, what'd you expect me to say?

But I must say that this level of distrust in this community is once again extremely painful to witness and genuinely hurts (in this case me) or others

Please apologize man if possible, I can answer your further questions but I cant tolerate someone calling my comments, the one thing I am pretty proud of and learned a lot out of, AI of all things. It's deeply hurtful because my identity is never reflected back on in the way I want.

I am still sure how to respond to you as well. On One hand I want to say some pretty mad things because I am mad, on the other I don't want to because I don't want to stoop to that level of civil indecency.

I am quite frankly out of words. I made a bluesky post about it with their post and my original comment but I quickly removed it because I dont enjoy controversy of any kinds but oh I wish to vent about hackernews online right now, just Wow.

I've said what I've said and I am proud of somewhat all comments of mine on hackernews as they reflect growth. That is a personal thing and uhh its sucks to see that this is happened. Your post has made me reflect back if I want to be part of this community again, on one hand its full of amazing software discoveries and I try to help others here as well with any knowledge I might have and ask questions in genuine curiosity and this is what I get.

This is not okay man. I am just really sad right now to see the state of distrust. I don't even know what to say

I guess this first hand experience shows me how artists feel when their work gets called AI I suppose, trying to take something positive out of this I must admit, pretty negative experience for the past few days on hackernews

Well I take that back then, my basic grep missed that because it was flagged and collapsed.

You typed a lot and I’m not responding to all of it, but for this specific point

> And secondly how do I EVEN PROVE THAT I AM NOT AI.

You cannot do so anonymously anymore now that silicon can pass the Turing test convincingly. I can’t do it either. Trust was already at an all time low on the internet and now it’s completely cratered.

I personally have come around to believing that our technological progression has made widespread anonymous speech in public to be a net negative. Not as a symptom of the times but as a permanent change to human societies. I am still for free speech but I think we need to have human identity tied to the speech or we will end up in a world where you can have all the speech you want, and humans won’t see it. You’ll be making statements to machines who then try and manipulate you back, and can be deployed en masse at speeds humans can never match.

That or we make impersonating humans on the internet a crime with the death penalty and deal with the few people willing to risk that for whatever reason.

It's particularly weird given that visa advice and discussion has been a core HN feature for the past decade: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=proberts

I really wish there was more transparency. We can’t see flagged posts without a direct link.

How about a flagged section?

What about a feature to challenge the flag?

What about a justification for the flag? Do flagged posts need to be approved by a mod?

I love HN. Flagged posts are the worst part. I can’t tell if the community is being taken over by a subset of bad actors, or YC is asserting opaque editorial control. Feels bad.

https://news.ycombinator.com/active

Use this link as your HN homepage and enable "showdead" on your profile

Thank you!

> I can’t tell if the community is being taken over by a subset of bad actors, or YC is asserting opaque editorial control.

The purpose of a system is what it does. If the end result is the same, is there a difference?

Bootlickers. The tech industry is crawling with them unfortunately - perfectly happy to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that they'll never be out of favor. The Hacker News team doesn't seem to care, this has been happening all year with important information.

Because there are a bunch of MAGA / right wingers on HN who don't like posts that cast Trump, Musk et al in bad light regularly flag them

Try posting a negative story on anything related to Musk

Musk's astroturf bot army. It's the same with any submission that points out how far into a fascist dictatorship the US has already plunged. It's either concerted botting, or comfortable US tech sector workers putting their fingers in their ears and saying "la la la I can't hear you" because as yet, it's not them getting shot in the street.

My wife came here on a K1 visa from one of the countries on that list. We have an appointment for interview next month (which determines whether or not she can remain in the country).

It's always worrying seeing news like this.

Apple should really consider starting to host WWDC outside the US like Canada.

This really cuts into who can attend it.

Though since they no longer do the 5 days thing and just invite people at the office for a couple of days- might not even make sense.

The US is no longer the place for anything that's truly worldwide. It's amazing how quickly the country has isolated itself compared to just one year ago.

Exactly, I have multiple relations that are leaders in research of their fields. They all used to work in the US and they have all moved away (except one but in the process).

Can you explain in more detail how suspension of immigrant visas cuts into who can attend WWDC? Do many people immigrate to the US just to attend WWDC? Does anyone at all?

Can you explain in detail how to maintain obdurate blindness to context that's so airtight that it's plausible for a potential WWDC attendee to ignore what's going on in the US? I mean it's not like they're going to get shot in the face.

If they are going to assault people there is a high chance they might get shot in the face in the process, yes. I am sorry, I was not familiar with the WWDC attendants propensity to violence, it now makes more sense.

As far as I know Apple is supporting current regime.

I have worked alongside with Iranian and Russian tech workers. I hope they all have a green card by now. Other countries will now benefit from the brain drain instead.

Will having a green card or not even matter though?

https://metro.co.uk/2025/11/28/full-list-nationalities-lose-...

My son-in-law is from Brazil, came to the US for grad school, has an Ph.D. in ML and a good job in the US. He got his green card via marriage a couple of years ago and was planning on probably getting citizenship in the next year or two. He is very worried about what all this might mean for that plan.

In his first term, I anticipated that one day he will wake up and say “any body with a green card, get the F out of the country”. I applied for the citizenship as soon as I was eligible to. I know it’s a matter of time until GC holders are somewhat affected.

U.S. citizens are already routinely affected by supposed efforts to detain illegal immigrants.

There is denaturalization FYI

That and the current administration has repeatedly said they’ll do that if citizenship was obtained “fraudulently” without really defining what that would look like.

At this point, it's fair to assume that Stephen Miller et al. are willing to pull any "get non-white people out of the US" lever they can find, and Trump (naively or otherwise) signs off on it.

The US government now has an explicitly racist immigration policy. (True at many points of US history, but we'd managed to avoid doing it for a bit)

Link in case flagged: https://english.mathrubhumi.com/news/world/us-visa-ban-publi...

I uploaded another link from reuters and while I was seeing this thread, my other link got banned too

This is genuinely bugging me right now as to how or even why Hackernews would try to curb this information.

I'm in the process of EB visa prep and spoke with my lawyer today. They told me that it's a temporary pause for immigrations visas only.

Most likely will be unfrozen in couple of weeks. The real question is about new rules and how much harder it will be to get in.

There is no evidence to think it will be unfrozen in a couple weeks.

I don't want to make an appeal to authority fallacy, but normal human heuristics would be to think that even a hearsay statement about what an immigration attorney said is more meaningful than a random commentor who claims not to see any evidence of something. Particularly where there is no reason to think said commentor would even see that evidence.

What sort of visas? Tourism, work, residence?

Does the US currently allow immigrants who are likely to become a "public charge"? The UK has not for a very long time (at least a few decades) and many other countries will not either.

> Does the US currently allow immigrants who are likely to become a "public charge"?

Providing evidence that the applicant is unlikely to become a public charge is an important part of most visa and green card applications. Form I-864 is an Affidavit of Support where a sponsor (usually the family member or employer sponsoring the visa or green card) promises to financially support the applicant.

If the U.S. really does have a problem with lots of visa and green card holders becoming public charges, it's not because their application process doesn't directly address the issue.

Immigrant visas. The US does not allow immigrants to be a public charge (at least until they naturalize) but there is no discovery or enforcement.

Damn - seeing mathrubhumi.com on HN is quite the surprise, when youre a specific kind of South Indian.

For what it's worth, 15 countries have qualified, 10 countries are still in the running for qualification for the FIFAWC26 on that list of 75 countries.

what’s the context around the website?

I think visa processing has had serious issues for quite a while: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-inf...

This could just be an attempt to frame (what is in effect) a serious customer support failure as a deliberate policy decision.

tl;dr: The full list of countries comprises of Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bosnia, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominica, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Republic of the Congo, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Uruguay, Uzbekistan and Yemen

Even Albania such a US-liking country! or Jordan!

B and R but not ICS

No SNI:

https://web.archive.org/web/20260114174658if_/https://englis...

In the meantime, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/11/onlyfans-inf...

I find it so incredible disappointing that discrimination by citizenship or country of birth is not just alive, but getting worse. I’m afraid if the US is starting with this, it won’t take long for others to catch up.

If the world learns anything from the celebration of stupidity that has become the US, I very much hope it’s “whatever they’re doing, we absolutely should not.”

A lot of countries already do this. You cannot get visas to most developed countries if you are likely to become a "public charge". In general, its a lot easier to get a visa if you are from a rich and stable country (or are rich yourself), and if you look at where countries allow visa free travel to citizens of another country the countries on this list are unlikely to qualify!

In that case, why not have some measurement of what makes a person likely to be a public charge that applies to every country, rather than a blanket ban on everyone from targeted countries?

They already literally review on a case by case basis regardless of country of origin. Providing evidence of financial support is a big part of visa and green card applications.

There are lots of possible reasons. Some good, some bad.

A possible good reason might be that there is a higher level of fraud (e.g. faked financial statements), or a higher level of public charge in applications from some countries - especially if it is a pause while procedures are changed. On the other hand the true motive might be something else.

That said, I have no idea why its this particular list of countries. Why Thailand or Jamaica or Nepal?

H1B processing is hopelessly backed up for the 60-70 thousand visas we give out annually. We would have to massively cut immigration inflow, from the 1-3 million annually we have today, to make those granular determinations feasible.

I don't think individualized determination are even possible. Unless you take very few people from each country, they'll inevitably find each other and form communities. And the kinds of communities they form will be driven by their cultures. The question isn't "would this one Bangladeshi be a good immigrant." It is "when 100,000 Bangladeshis inevitably form a cultural enclave in some city, will that be better or worse than what was there before?"

That is not the same as this. If you're a multi-PhD holder from Iran who's a world-famous scientist, you can get into e.g. the UK. This would forbid them, purely based on country of origin.

The article says it is a temporary pause. other sources seem to confirm this:

"Immigrant visa processing from these 75 countries will be paused while the State Department reassesses immigration processing procedures to prevent the entry of foreign nationals who would take welfare and public benefits,"

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-suspend-visa-processing-...

Oh, well that's reassuring

The U.S. already does this. Providing evidence of financial support is a big part of visa and green card applications. If this is a big problem, it's because the U.S. is approving applications without sufficiently reviewing that evidence (but more likely, it's a bogus excuse).

You need to learn your history because one of the first immigration laws this country passed was exclusively banning Chinese people for nearly an entire human lifespan.

Who doesn't discriminate by citizenship, really?

That’s the “is not just alive” part.

Yeah, but then the "others will catch up" part does not make sense. Other countries don't need the US' example to do that.

Good. I like having distinct nation states with different cultures and ethnicity instead of bland homogenized globalized grayness - the thing that could be seen in every mall in a city that has international airport. From Jakarta trough Kenya, Berlin and NY - it is all the same. There should be breaks on the whole immigration and asylum things.

While I don't agree with the haphazard and seemingly random policy changes coming from the US lately -- this is a bad take.

You do realize that discrimination by citizenship is conducted by basically every government on earth in the context of visas and tourism and residency?

In fact, what made the US so bizarre up until about 1914 was that they were the only major country that effectively had open borders. There was no welfare state to take advantage of back then, and you literally did have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

This only started to shift after the US began constructing its welfare state (welfare state expansion correlates with increasingly closed immigration policy, hence where we find ourselves today).

Literally every country worldwide does this. The question is simply to what extent and to what countries. The whole difference between being a native an an alien is the rights you get. It's not a human right to be able to freely go into any country you please.

> The whole difference between being a native an an alien is the rights you get. It's not a human right to be able to freely go into any country you please.

The first step for genocide is to dehumanize people.

They're not humans, they're aliens. Therefore it's fine if we treat them as filth and throw them away (or gas them).

It's interesting you got downvoted, perhaps for the sentence

> The whole difference between being a native an an alien is the rights you get.

A knee jerk and uncharitable reading might make this look bad, but it does require an uncharitable reading. It is clear what you mean.

However, the claim

> It's not a human right to be able to freely go into any country you please.

is not false. The idea that open borders are a good thing is a very odd idea. It seems to grow out of a hyperindividualistic and global capitalist/consumerist culture and mindset that doesn't recognize the reality of societies and cultures. Either that, or it is a rationalization of one's own very domestic and particular choices, for example. In any case, uncontrolled migration is well-understood (and rather obviously!) as something damaging to any society and any culture. In hyperindividualistic countries, this is perhaps less appreciated, because there isn't really an ethnos or cohesive culture or society. In the US, for example, corporate consumerism dominates what passes as "culture" (certainly pop culture), and the culture's liberal individualism is hostile to the formation and persistence of a robust common good as well as a recognition of what constitutes an authentic common good. It is reduced mostly to economic factors, hence globalist capitalism. So, in the extreme, if there are no societies, only atoms and the void, then who cares how to atoms go?

The other problem is that public discourse operates almost entirely within the confines of the false dichotomy of jingoist nationalism on the one hand and hyperindividualist globalism on the other (with the respective variants, like the socialist). There is little recognition of so-called postliberal positions, at least some of which draw on the robust traditional understanding of the common good and the human person, one that both jingoist nationalism and hyperindividualist globalism contradict. When postliberalism is mentioned, it is often smeared with false characterization or falsely lumped in with nihilistic positions like the Yarvin variety...which is not traditional!

Given the ongoing collapse of the liberal order - a process that will take time - these postliberal positions will need to be examined carefully if we are to avoid the hideous options dominating the public square today.

> The idea that open borders are a good thing is a very odd idea

Passports were not common until the 20th century. Until then borders were mostly porous.

There did use to be other cases some people couldn't leave a geografic confines, they used to call them serfs.

Pardon me if I’m misreading it but this sounds like disinformation. No examples in your example, a lot of abstract reasoning unmoored from facts.

>uncontrolled migration is well-understood (and rather obviously!) as something damaging to any society and any culture.

The US was built on unrestricted immigration for a long time. Was that destructive? I guess so if you count native Americans but not to the nation of USA.

Capitalism wants closed borders to labor and open borders to capital. Thats how they can squeeze labor costs while maximizing profits. The US is highly individualistic but wants closed borders so how does your reasoning align with the news?

Capitalists in wealthy countries have absolutely no problem with effectively open borders, that's exactly how they squeeze labor costs

That's the wrong way of looking at it. We have evidence that national cultures affect prosperity, and that, at scale, immigrants bring their cultures with them: https://www.rorotoko.com/11/20230913-jones-garett-on-book-cu... ("For the last twenty years I’ve been asking the Adam Smith question: Why are some nations so much more productive than others? I’d found some new answers in my own research, summed up in my earlier book Hive Mind. But at the same time, I kept reading findings by a separate group of researchers, especially three excellent professors at Brown University: David Weil, Louis Putterman, and Oded Galor. Their work on the 'Deep Roots' of economic prosperity suggested that many of the important economic differences across countries began centuries, even millennia ago.").

The U.S. takes in millions of immigrants a year. At that scale, it's not a question of the individual merits of a single immigrant from a country. It's about the merits of the community that will be formed when 100,000 immigrants from that country come to the U.S. and settle in the same place and socialize their children into their culture. And the evidence we have is that, when that happens, they'll bring with them a lot of characteristics of their origin countries.

This is a gigantic middle finger to pre-1965 South Asian immigrants, which you continue to pretend don't exist.

A few days ago he was claiming that the most orderly societies had the least seasoned food.

Am I wrong? You acknowledge that food preferences are cultural, right? Wouldn’t it be weird if culture just affected the kinds of food people like and how they dress, but not the kinds of civic institutions they form?

Not at all! I think it’s the opposite! That population was small and scattered. They had limited capacity to create cultural enclaves, develop ethnic social identity, etc. They ended up absorbing much more culturally from Americans and had little cultural and social impact on the communities where they moved.

That’s quite different from mass immigration.

How on EARTH are we going to host the World Cup this year?

This is my question. Foreign athletes typically enter the U.S. on a P-1A visa for internationally recognized athletes or an O-1 visa for those with "extraordinary ability" but they're still Visas. Maybe they'll carve out holdouts for this that the news articles aren't delving into (probably because they haven't been announced).

Many Ethiopian cross-country runners were not able to participate in the recent World Cross Country Running championships in Tallahassee Florida due to rejected visas.

The USA is also supposed to host the World Track & Field Championships for under-20 in Eugene Oregon this summer.

see https://www.letsrun.com/news/2026/01/world-cross-country-cha...

I think the concern is around fans getting into the country, not players.

Nobody wants to just hear US citizens chanting 'Defence, Defence' all the time.

I need to chug more coffee, you're absolutely right.

This pause does not apply to visitor visas

Why do people downvote this? Bizarre - and plain stupid. This is a legitimate question and has precedent:

Hugo Calderano, the third best table tennis player in the world, is denied an entry visa to the USA. Thus, the Brazilian misses the prestigious tournament Grand Smash in Las Vegas. https://swedenherald.com/article/hugo-calderano-denied-us-vi...

Ethiopian athletes denied U.S. visas ahead of 2026 World Athletics Cross Country Championships https://amileaminute.com/news/ethiopian-athletes-denied-us-v...

Vancouver Whitecaps split with left back Ali Adnan following extended visa issues https://rdnewsnow.com/2021/07/03/vancouver-whitecaps-split-w...

>Why do people downvote this? Bizarre - and plain stupid.

A sizable chunk of the HN userbase is All-In on the Trump cult. They try to bury anything that questions the infallibility of the administration.

Russia in 2018 just made tickets valid visas, something like that should be done. Also no one is blocking non-immigrant visas, so there is no issue here.

The last World Cup used slave labor to build their stadium in the desert, in a country that banned beer/alcohol consumption - the latter of which was relaxed eventually due to heavy lobbying (and possibly corruption.)

Relax.

I'm curious what it would take for FIFA, or one of the teams, to reneg.

Nothing. He could drop a nuclear bomb on Madrid and FIFA would give him a second peace prize.

I'm guessing this is only getting downvotes because Americans don't realise quite how corrput and disgusting FIFA are.

The prior World Cup was held in stadiums built by slave labor in a country that banned beer. I genuinely don't think there's anything, up to and including visa denials for competing teams, that would get FIFA to give up their chance for bribes.

I don't know, FIFA is a den of villainy, but what happens if I dunno... half the Brazilian team ends up on an ICE camp? It wouldn't be during airport customs, but what if Agent Cletus sees the team bus and thinks that he can get a nice bonus.

FIFA will ignore unlimited human suffering but if matches don't happen it might be a problem.

FIFA has been doing damage containment (everybody is but especially FIFA) ever since the November election.

When the World CUp was assigned to the US during Trump first term one of the implied things was that he'd be long gone in 2026

Nobody could have possibly predicted 12 years of Trumpism and pulling a Grover Clevalend by skipping a term and getting re-elected

>How on EARTH are we going to host the World Cup this year?

Good question. Which is likely another reason for more ticket cancellations[0].

[0] https://www.financialexpress.com/sports/fifa-calls-for-emerg...

The WC has already been ruined by pausing games for commercial breaks.

hmm, why is it flagged now? Went to 178 points, lots of engagement, someone must have been mad. wonder why?

This is basically Trump's 'shithole' list. If you even look like you are from one of these places (basically anything other than white) you are probably a potential ICE target.

Well Trump said it: "why it is we only take people from s**hole countries," and "why can't we have some people from Norway, Sweden, just a few? Let's have a few from Denmark."

Probably because people from Norway and Sweden aren't interested in moving to a sh...less-developed country.

I guess Denmark is going to be out of the question now.

People from Denmark, Norway, Sweden are smart enough not to come to Trump's America, that'd be the reason, if you're still wondering.

the great leap backwards bounds another step int the american century of humiliation

Trump is trashing the economy and the easiest way to pick a scapegoat is to blame foreigners.

I'll save you the click: India is not affected.

The list includes Russia, Iran, lots of RU-aligned nations, and a bunch that probably have security issues.

The only one that stood out as odd was Thailand.

Brazil is on the list just because Brazilian justice condemned Bolsonaro for a coup attempt very similar to Jan 6 (it was Jan 8 the following year). The beef has been going for a while, and Lula has been quite combative against Trump.

Surprised to see Georgia in the list

Their current government is widely considered to be aligned with Russia. (No idea whether it's true.)

Also, Georgians are one of the nations with the most asylum claims in Europe, and that's not even per capita.

Weird that India, who does a lot of business with Russia, was not affected.

Maybe because the intended target are immigrants who purportedly put a higher load on welfare and public services:

> "The Trump administration is bringing an end to the abuse of America's immigration system by those who would extract wealth from the American people," State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said. "Immigrant visa processing from these 75 countries will be paused while the State Department reassesses immigration processing procedures to prevent the entry of foreign nationals who would take welfare and public benefits," he said.

Since the Indian diaspora is famously known to be the wealthiest on average in the US, they wouldn't be targeted under such reasoning.

I'll save you the downvote; the article title ended with "check whether India is affected".

For those who didn't read the article, it's supposed to be temporary while they reassess the criterias for immigration[0].

Canada has a similar system, that discriminates disabled people for instance and most people are fine with it.[1]

Yes, the inflammatory wording is bad, but a points-based system would be a good improvement over the current situation.

[0] https://www.visaverge.com/news/us-suspends-visa-processing-f...

[1] https://immiquest.ca/how-the-canada-immigration-points-syste...

There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.

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