Comment by astura | Hacker News Reader

Comment by astura | Hacker News Reader

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I don't understand the premise of this. The author goes on and on (and on) about how "Americans have no idea how weird and tortuous their immigration system is" but doesn't really give any evidence. I wonder if they ever have spoken to an American? They must have some extremely out of touch social circles.

Here in the real world, every American I know knows that the only way for "normal" (non-rich, non-connected, non-extraordinary) person to legally immigrate is to marry an American citizen and have them sponsor you. Literally everyone knows the average "illegal immigrant" living in the US isn't eligible for citizenship and couldn't obtain citizenship legally. Exactly zero people think that any (let alone most) "illegal immigrants" could have just "followed the rules" and been able to live here legally. The reason they are "illegal immigrants" is because there's no legal way, other than marrying an American.

A lot of people would prefer if even family sponsorships didn't exist. Many people think of that as "gaming the system" because they allow "average" people to be immigrants. I assume Republicans want to get rid of this.

The author is mostly correct. A lot of discourse in America revolves around, "Why don't they get come in legally?"

>A lot of discourse in America revolves around, "Why don't get come in legally?"

Do you honestly believe that people who say "Why don't [they] come in legally?" are complaining about a lack of administrative process? Do you really, honestly believe that? Because if you do I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can give you a great deal on.

"Why don't [they] come in legally?" is just conservative doublespeak for for "they don't belong here." It's begging the question and everyone knows that, even the person saying it. They know there's no legal avenue for the vast majority of "illegal immigrants."

It's a bit of both. I would wager that most Americans believe that there are reasonable pathways, either through education, work, family ties, or even asylum, to "legally" immigrate to the US. They have never dealt with the Kafkaesque nightmare that is USCIS or the State Dept.

I can 100% guarantee you that most Americans have no clue whatsoever how hard it is to "come in legally".

People from cosmopolitan well-educated world traveler tech-connected circles are common on HN, but are extreme outliers. I would agree that the overwhelming majority of those sorts are aware of it. The general public? No.

It's true that many don't want anyone (or certain anyones) to come in at all and are saying those kinds of things as a deflection or smokescreen, but plenty of others saying "they should just come in legally" don't realize what a feat they're demanding. They don't know what any immigration process anywhere looks like, in the US or elsewhere. They don't know what ours has been like in the past, either, at all (in fact I bet many think it's been trending less strict and difficult over time, which, LOL). But they're still comfortable suggesting people should simply find a legal route to come in (while, again, having no idea what that actually means).

> Why don't [they] come in legally?" is just conservative doublespeak for for "they don't belong here." It's begging the question and everyone knows that, even the person saying it.

While this question is definitely used in the way you, I’ve heard it come from the mouths of more legal immigrants than I can count.

It’s not just conservatives who are saying this.

You’re attacking a strawman. The administrative process is not the end in itself. It’s the process we use to control the number and type of immigrants. The fact that most people wouldn’t be able to get through the legal system is exactly the point! It’s like any other administrative system for controlling access to a fixed number of slots.

I have always thought of it like this: U.S. citizens have the right to marry and bring home anyone they want. It is not about the immigrant. For example, if you're stationed on a military base on Japan or Germany, you can meet a local girl, fall in love, and bring her back home.

"Chain migration" however is more questionable.

> A lot of people would prefer if even family sponsorships didn't exist. Many people think of that as "gaming the system" because they allow "average" people to be immigrants. I assume Republicans want to get rid of this.

I think Republicans didn’t really understand that this existed until recently. And yes, many want to get rid of it, because it’s a loophole in the skilled immigration system. We apply aggressive filters to 65,000 H1Bs or whatever, and hundreds of thousands of low skill people come over because they’re someone’s cousin.

> And yes, many want to get rid of it, because it’s a loophole in the skilled immigration system.

Why does "the skilled immigration system" represent the whole immigration system? What makes family sponsorship a "loophole" to H1Bs, when family sponsorship could instead be framed as an equivalent form of legal immigration with a different purpose?

> and hundreds of thousands of low skill people come over because they’re someone’s cousin.

Accepting the "low skill" framing and setting aside the fact that family-sponsored immigrants can have "high skill" without proving it through the H1B process, I don't think it makes sense to have an immigration system based solely on "high skill", because not every member of a family should have to be "high skill" for the entire family to move to the US.

I erroneously used "H1B" as a shorthand for employment-based immigration. While H-1B provides a pathway to permanent residency, it is a non-immigrant visa until the State Department approves the visa holder's residency application. The EB visa line (such as EB-3 and EB-1) are immigration visas from the start.

To make my previous comment better fit with what I intended to communicate at the time, I would correct my previous comment by replacing:

- What makes family sponsorship a "loophole" to H1Bs, when family sponsorship could instead be framed as an equivalent form of legal immigration with a different purpose?

with

+ What makes family sponsorship a "loophole" to employment-based immigration, when family sponsorship could instead be framed as an equivalent form of legal immigration with a different purpose?

and replacing

- Accepting the "low skill" framing and setting aside the fact that family-sponsored immigrants can have "high skill" without proving it through the H1B process,

with

+ Accepting the "low skill" framing and setting aside the fact that family-sponsored immigration-seekers can have "high skill" without proving it to the government through the "high skill" pathways,

.

Why shouldn’t we try our best to make sure only net positives get in, and make sure they can’t bring net negatives with them?

To avoid losing the context of my previous comment in this chain, here is the relevant excerpt:

> I don't think it makes sense to have an immigration system based solely on "high skill", because not every member of a family should have to be "high skill" for the entire family to move to the US.

Now moving on to what you said:

> Why shouldn't we try our best to make sure only net positives get in, and make sure they can't bring net negatives with them?

Making prospective will-work-as-a-condition-of-immigration human beings who provide for their families choose between

(1) staying outside of the US,

(2) sending their families better income from the US only to eventually leave the US and return to worse job opportunities, or

(3) sending their families better income from the US while resigned to live permanently separately from their families (semantics note: vacationing to visit one's family on the rare occasions when one can afford to do so does not count as "living temporarily with your family")

is inhumane: a nation should not permanently hold continued legal immigration status hostage to require will-work-as-a-condition-of-immigration human beings to undergo the potential mental, emotional, and social suffering of being physically apart from their families. There should be at least one additional option:

(4) having to work for a capped, meaningfully finite duration of time before one's family members can immigrate without being forced to take the will-work-as-a-condition-of-immigration pathway.

How is it “inhumane?” People who don’t want to leave their families behind, especially extended families, can simply choose not to immigrate. It’s not “inhumane” to make people stay in their own countries.

We could have a long term dependent visa that permanently renders them ineligible for government assistance

> when family sponsorship could instead be framed as an equivalent form of legal immigration with a different purpose?

What would be that purpose?

(I made some corrections [1] to my upper comment to make clear that when I mentioned H-1Bs I intended to refer instead to must-work immigration pathways in general, including but not limited to H-1B and EB-3.)

The previous context included:

>> A lot of people would prefer if even family sponsorships didn't exist.

> And yes, many want to get rid of it, because it’s a loophole in the skilled immigration system.

From the start of US immigration law, the must-work immigration pathways have never been the only (non-asylum, non-TPS) immigration pathways. What is your basis for framing family sponsorship as a "loophole" to the "skilled immigration system", accounting for the fact that some immigration pathway (whether agnostic to family unification or specifically allowing family unification) has long existed separately from the "skilled immigration system"?

Do not let the following tangent distract you from my previous question, but: H-1B itself does not provide a pathway for "family sponsored" immigration. H-1B allows immediate family members to temporarily stay in the US as dependents using H-4 visas. A person who uses H-1B without intent of becoming a permanent resident is by definition not an immigrant. If an H-4 holder becomes a legal permanent resident, it is because their H-1B-holding family member can become a legal resident (i.e. become an immigrant) as specifically allowed by the H-1B itself, and being a legal resident or citizen provides your family with H-1B-agnostic pathways for becoming legal residents.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46937673

The irony of the current First Lady and her parents immigrating here seems to be lost on Republicans as well: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43256318

What exactly is the irony? There’s less than 1,700 EB1 visas issued annually. Models coming to the U.S. on EB1 visas aren’t the source of the third-world cultural enclaves emerging in American cities.

She wasn't qualified per the program requirements/expectations.

And then you deflect on complaining about "third-world cultural enclaves", which is rich. Every wave of immigrants have tended to cluster in communities comprising others of their origin. That is not an unreasonable thing and the "third world" part is thinly veiled racism.

Older adults who come here are likely to be slower in assimilation of language and culture, but their children very much grow up as "americans".

And now they're saying the quiet part out loud in demanding that America is only for white people, and the goal is to purge all non-whites to "Make America Pure Again".

None of this is to deny that there are serious immigration issues, but a lot of this is ginned up to continue having the masses angry at each other rather than our overlords who deserver more scrutiny and accountability.

Here's some interesting takes on the situation from that notorious woke group, the Cato Institue:

  https://www.cato.org/blog/cato-study-immigrants-reduced-deficits-145-trillion-1994
  https://www.cato.org/blog/why-legal-immigration-system-broken-short-list-problems

Note that the current administration has no interest in fixing the problem, only in purging non-whites and using the problem as a cudgel to demonize the Democrats (who are definitely not above reproach).

> Every wave of immigrants have tended to cluster in communities comprising others of their origin. That is not an unreasonable thing and the "third world" part is thinly veiled racism.

The clustering is the problem. It allows foreign cultures to take root and reproduce in the U.S. And there's nothing "racist" about it. Culture is not superficial, like skin color. Culture drives differences in how people participate in government, civic society, etc. E.g. if you're in a little Vermont town and a bunch of Alabamans move in and start changing the culture, it's not "racist" for you to oppose that migration. The same is true if you're in any place that's has a more successful culture that's seeing immigration from places that have less successful cultures.

> Older adults who come here are likely to be slower in assimilation of language and culture, but their children very much grow up as "americans".

That wasn't true even for the European immigrants. If you define "American" as orderly, austere New Englanders, the Ellis Island immigrants never became fully American.

Even generations later, people's cultural backgrounds affect their attitudes: https://www.rorotoko.com/micro-interviews/20230913-jones-gar....

> The clustering is the problem.

Are you going to deny that there's legitimate reasons why it happens and that in and of itself that clustering is not a problem?

You'll see this for yourself -- kids want more than anything to "belong", and the first born are going to sound "American" and try to act "American" because they want to belong amongst their American peers.

Your link was not on point -- show me the studies of clustering in America that are hurting this nation.

> That wasn't true even for the European immigrants.

https://texashighways.com/culture/sprechen-sie-texas-deutsch...

And again, you manage to ever acknowledge the "rules for thee but not for me" regarding the sneaking across the border by the First Lady.

So let's play a game: you are now president -- what are you going to do about the "border crisis"?

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