Wonder if we’ll get a third world war that we stay out of until halfway through and then pile on at the end.
Does anyone have data on what this percentage is? Seems like it could be 55%:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/647123/sharply-americans-curb-i...
The problem at this point (and not just the US, throughout the west), I don’t think a pollster even needs to slant their question. So many people have been taught that lens over 100+ years of politics.
It’s why I am happy to be Irish American: we never forget a slight, so I am a living vessel for the stories of every time one of my great-grandparents was treated poorly for being a dirty, non-white papist piece of jetsam.
Those weren’t services for the benefit of the immigrant. Those were a service to the US citizen who sponsored them and had to sign up to be on the hook to take care of their welfare.
The government was very clear to my spouse that she could divorce me the second her application was granted and I was still on the hook for any welfare she may end up needing.
This is just being anti immigrant. The same way they talk about illegal aliens and then you find out they really mean legal asylum seekers because they don’t like the process.
Or when they use the phrase Heritage Americans to discount recent immigrants.
Or when they just straight up say we have too much legal immigration.
The only surprising thing about this change in policy to me is that they are still keeping a veneer of not being racist on it, instead of just being as open as they have in other cases.
Practically every country has pathways to permanent residence or citizenship via non immigrant visas, including the US.
Why? Because it makes practical sense. You can be living in the US on a H1 visa for 6 years, and at this point you could have a wife, kids etc, so it makes sense to have a pathway to residency where you don’t have to leave the country at that point.
Also, it's quite hard to become a permanent resident/immigrant even without the obstacle of this being categorically prohibited. My family, for instance, overcame some very low odds of success to make this happen (highly educated, both PhDs, for what it's worth).
I have learned that most Americans, probably through no fault of their own, have absolutely no understanding of how their own immigration system works. The options for legal immigration were _extremely_ limited and byzantine, and have been for decades, long before Trump.
The majority of permanent residents gain their green card through a status adjustment (ie, from a nonimmigrant visa).
Status adjustments are the norm, not some fringe edge case.
The only large category of immigrants that does not come primarily through adjustment are the "family preference" categories for more distant relative such as adult sons and daughters and siblings.
https://ohss.dhs.gov/system/files/2025-07/2025_0725_ohss_leg...
Nice.
So, at least one
However, ignoring family-sponsored routes, it is extremely difficult to get an immigrant visa in the first place, usually requiring years + $10k+ of fees to work your way up to it. You also need a sponsor to pay the fees (legally, you can't pay it yourself). Therefore, the vast majority of people start on a non-immigrant (temporary, restricted employment) visa and eventually ask their employer to sponsor a green card.
When people say "if you wanted to immigrate, you should just get an immigrant visa", they usually assume any other route is a hack or loophole. But it's actually the most common way to immigrate by far. You can, of course, interview for a job from abroad and ask the employer to directly sponsor an immigrant visa, but they'd have to wait years (best case) until you could actually step foot in their office. Plus they'd be forking over thousands in legal fees for an employee they haven't even seen in person. Nobody would do this, so the commonly accepted way is to bring an employee over as a temporary worker first and then apply for a green card while they're in the country.
By the way, the same checks apply for immigrant visa applications both inside and outside the US. You might think that employers are scamming the government by turning purported temporary immigrants into permanent ones, but the exact same qualifications checks, eligibility requirements, waitlists and quotas apply if you do the process inside vs. outside the US. It's entirely possible, and common, for green card applications to get denied (and the applicant's location doesn't factor in to this).
As a practical matter, all these immigrant visas pretty much entail a greencard soon thereafter. In other words, to get them is about as easy as getting a greencard in the first place, give or take, more or less.
The discussion here is really about legal workers, students and others on temporary visas who convert to permanent status.
this is a good example, because let's say someone is here on a student visa or temp work visa, falls in love and gets married. without the ability to adjust their immigration status they now have to leave the country - probably for years - to apply and hopefully get a greencard. Good luck making that marraige work.
We should increase the number of immigrant visas and make it straightforward what the process is to get a green card like what one would see in other countries like Canada and Australia.
Meanwhile, non immigrant visas should remain non immigrant and very restricted criteria for changing status (eg. marriage) without reapplying abroad.