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Countries in the EU (and elsewhere) have more sane immigration systems. As a Canadian having immigrated to both Germany and the US, I can say that the US system is at least two orders of magnitude more difficult, costly, needlessly complicated, and in the end a lot of it comes down to luck (most of it bad). Germany has no lottery system, and renewal is very straightforward. I applied for my visa while in Germany as a tourist, I was issued a "temporary visa" while the final decision was made, and after I was accepted, the renewal processes every couple of years was essentially a formality. There is also a straight-forward path to permanent residency after X years working in the country. Contrast that with how things work in the US (which I don't have time to get into in an HN comment), and you'll see why it deserves to be singled out for this.

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This. For comparison, when I had to renew my H1B for another 3 years, I had to leave the country and fly to Berlin for my "visa interview". But first I had to send them my passport, which of course I needed to get into Germany first. So after a lot of expense, several days of wasted time, and anxiety if the courier would deliver my passport on time, the "interview" took all of one minute (handing me my passport back with the Visa stamp). Well, two hours, actually, with going through security and waiting in line. Kafka comes to mind.

This type of thing has been my experience dealing with many US agencies from federal/immigration related to the local/state level. Recently I went to California's DMV to renew my driver's license. I wanted to do this 8 months before it expires, because at the time it looked like I will be outside the country for a couple of months for work. To my utter surprise, I was forced to take a new written test because you can only 'renew a driver's license within 6 months of it's expiry date' without taking a new test. How this makes sense AT ALL boggles my mind. I could understand having to take a test if you lapse your expiry date and try to renew, say, two months too late. But renewing EARLY? Why? How? They also couldn't tell me what would happen to my (still valid) license, if I happen to fail the test. Thankfully I didn't.

European countries immigration systems are not equal. Just getting a job in Switzerland if you are foreigner is considerably harder. The employer has to demonstrate that no native would be able to your job. The government will send him unemployed locals and employer has to write what exactly disqualified that local. It is considerable hustle, so most of them do not bother.

Plus, as a foreigner in Switzerland, you will always be looked down upon. It is hard to get accepted as equal.

Right. But for some reason people think the US should be an open playground for all of the world, and that it should never actively defend and protect its own citizens.

One reason why non-American countries have "easier" immigration systems is often demand related. Your example "H1-B lottery" is precisely demand related.

Trust me, EU countries have their own immigration demand problems. Especially a place like Germany which has one of the few functioning economies in the block lately. People flock there looking for work. Other countries with huge immigration demand include England and Spain. There are simply better ways of dealing with high immigration demand than "dump everyone into a pot regardless of education/experience/viability/urgency and randomly select a few".

> Other countries with huge immigration demand include England and Spain

Spain is just wanted due to the proximity to Africa and a lot of African immigrants/refugees using this vector.

> There are simply better ways of dealing with high immigration demand than "dump everyone into a pot regardless of education/experience/viability/urgency and randomly select a few".

We Germans deal with asylum seekers by putting > 2.500 people in camps designed for 1.500 MAXIMUM occupants (Munich, "Bayernkaserne" camp), blocking them from work and giving them free food and 140€ per month as pocket money.

Needlessly to say, that ain't fucking enough for non-food expenses in bigger cities, and what happens if the only thing they do is drink, smoke and fight (as asylum seekers you must not travel around the country, you have to stay in your processing city!) is basically a fucking violation of human dignity.

Of course it also leads to vast criminality - not just the fighting between asylum seekers themselves, but also massive amounts of theft, pot dealing (hello Berlin Görlitzer Park) and other criminality. In order, Nazi-parties and other right-wing extremists gain excellent popularity with "Kick em out" messages.

> Spain is just wanted due to the proximity to Africa and a lot of African immigrants/refugees using this vector.

I hear this from time to time, but data paints a radically different picture. What you describe is only the case for sub-Saharan immigrants who are just a tiny, tiny minority of the inmigrants coming to Spain. Most inmigrants come from:

1-Romania (for which Spain is obviously not in the path to any other country)

2-Morocco (the vast majority of whom arrive legally since the late 90s)

3-UK (and contrary to popular belief, only 21% of them are over 65 years old)

Then, the largest component of immigration is from the former colonies, due to the shared language (so, again, not being used as a vector)

All of this data is available online on the INE (national institute of statistics)

Ah, y'see that's why we, in Australia, stick our asylum seekers in camps in different countries like Nauru and Papua New Guinea, where whatever problems they cause are safely out of sight.

My opinion is that the world seriously needs a new refugee convention to prevent economic migrants from abusing the refugee system. The governing idea should be that you can't use refugee status to move from a poorer country to a significantly richer one. If you're a genuine refugee then moving to a safer country with similar per-capita-GDP is something you should be happy with.

Great idea but hard to enforce, unless the country is Israel or an island. It's amazing how many migrants are trying to get illegally across the English Channel from France to the UK because of better benefits and jobs.

Meanwhile, Yazidi and Syrian refugees will have to pay thousands to smugglers or scale barbed wire fences to enter a safe country.

To say non-American countries have easier immigration systems on the basis that it is demand related is in my opinion, absurd. Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada and many European countries have massive demand.

However you'll find most of these countries have opted to sell residency, albeit through business and job investments. Generally skilled workers have to be sought for locally before they get someone over.

Using a "lottery" system just sounds crazy. It's still possible to buy citizenship, yet everyone else has to sit on the side-lines and take a number. Sounds like a weird plan created on a whim..

A recent gallup survey says 150M people would move to the US if they could, the UK was a distant second at 45M [1].

As for the lottery, how else could it be done? There is a cap on H1-B visa each year. The USCIS receives more applications than spots the first day you can apply.

[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/153992/150-million-adults-worldwi...

> A recent gallup survey says 150M people would move to the US if they could, the UK was a distant second at 45M

Now adjust those numbers to the population of those countries... oh look, the UK all of a sudden came out ahead.

All of these studies comparing numbers usually just boils down to "The US is big". It has been brought up elsewhere that Canada, for example, has more immigrants as a percentage of population. But of course when comparing absolute numbers to the US, it will look like peanuts.

If the reason is the US is big, why would you look at it on a per-capita basis? Maybe adjust for land size? Then the UK would really come out ahead!

Only if immigrants are merely settling empty land. As long as they want to start out as part of society, they'll need jobs, housing and regular infrastructure. My own region is growing nearly as fast as housing can be built. More than 50% of everyone in some cities like Toronto have been in the country for less than 5 years, at any given moment. (Often starting out there, and moving to other parts of Canada later. Still limited by the population capacity of Toronto)

Uh, I guess? It looks like you're making fun of your own original argument at this point. In this case, if you use these numbers as an indicator of demand the UK clearly has greater demand per capita. And per capita is a much better measure since a country with a bigger population can assimilate and/or integrate a larger number of immigrants, thus it can comfortably have a larger immigration demand than a smaller country.

Why does a per-capita number make any sense here?

Because a large country is able to absorb more immigrants than a small country. 150M is 2x the population of the UK, but less than 50% of the US. So it would make sense that the US would have a higher quota than the UK.

Because it is a better proxy for how it will affect society in terms of ability to absorb more people, ranging from tax payer base to things like cost of infrastructure projects to handle the population growth.

I'm not sure about the "demand" angle here. Demand is sorted out at the interview stage on a company-level. Once the position has been filled up, it shouldn't be counted towards demand. Hence it should not be subject to lottery. The fact that US has more job opportunities for foreigners compared to, say, Germany in high-tech only means that industry is more thriving in the former. I doubt jobs are created BECAUSE more people wanna move to the US. And by the way, the job search process itself is partly a lottery - it's never 100% about merits.

What's your definition of sane? None of those countries have the scale, frequency and volume of demand that resembles anything like the US.[1]

> Contrast that with how things work in the US (which I don't have time to get into in an HN comment), and you'll see why it deserves to be singled out for this.

I don't think anyone is questioning that other countries have much more lax policies. The question is what is your solution?

As someone who is a US citizen, held visas in Germany/UK, and has a Belgian technical co-founder trying to get the US, I understand this situation very well. But I simply can't sympathize with people who simply say "Why can't they just let me! It works elsewhere!" and offer no real solution that takes into consideration anything other than a "why not me" attitude.

[1] - http://247wallst.com/special-report/2013/09/25/countries-wit...

In terms of immigrants as a percentage of population the US is nothing special. Canada has a lot more (closer to 19% instead of 14%). Many European countries have statistics similar to that of the US (Sweden has a bit more, the UK a bit less, etc).

But I digress. The problem with the existing system is that it is insane and a waste of resources. One has to get a lawyer and wait for a long time with no certainty in the outcome while dealing with an extremely opaque bureaucracy where anything can go wrong at any time.

This has nothing at all to do with volume. Indeed, a simpler more streamlined and less opaque system would help with volume.

Say a system like the Canadian or the UK one. There's a point scale. You can compute the number of points you get ahead of time, now there's a simple web form actually. If you cross the threshold you will get in. There are known wait times, you can just call the embassy. There are points for things the country needs (particular jobs), for certain qualifications (degrees, etc), for language proficiency, some regional tweaks, family, and having an employment offer.

And extremely importantly. You get permanent resident status (green card), not an H1B. What Americans don't realize is that you want to hand out green cards. H1B lower both your salaries and ours. The H1B restricts immigrant mobility, can't move to a better job and raise the average salary, and encourages people to go home with all of their newly gained knowledge and money.

I'll give you a personal example of the difference between a sane and an insane system:

As an 11 year old I filled out all of our Canadian immigration paperwork (my parents checked it but it was correct and they didn't change it). We knew we would get in based on our points. The embassy told us the timeframe in which we should expect our paperwork to go through. It went through a bit early. We moved to Canada.

Now for the US. As a near-30-year old with a US PhD working at a top research institution I have to pay a specialized law firm several thousand dollars, spend weeks getting paperwork, bugging people in several countries to write absurd letters, building a case, etc. All of this to basically the same thing. And in the end, who knows what will happen because there are no standards, no appeal, no one to discuss anything with. Oh, and I have no idea what the processing time is.

So no. It is not an issue of "why can't they just let me in". It's a system that hurts your salary by restricting my mobility, hurts me by making me pay lawyers needlessly, hurts the image of the US by creating disgruntled people, and hurts the economy by routing business and increasingly prestigious conferences elsewhere. It just makes no sense.

It's interesting, actually. In some ways the US is actually the small-government low-regulation country that it likes to pretend to be, but in other areas it's just a labyrinth of aggresive mollases-paced bureaucracy. Examples:

Example: the DMV. In both Australia and the US the procedure for getting my licence renewed is the same. I go into an office, I fill out a form, they take a picture, and I get a licence. The difference is that when I did this in Australia I waited about five minutes and they printed my licence on the spot, whereas in the US it for some reason takes one or two hours and they print the licence in six to eight weeks. It's not that the California DMV appears to have fewer staff per customer or anything, it's just for some reason their procedures make no sense and nobody is able or willing to fix it.

Other examples: immigration and the TSA, but let's not even go there.

> It's interesting, actually. In some ways the US is actually the small-government low-regulation country that it likes to pretend to be, but in other areas it's just a labyrinth of aggresive mollases-paced bureaucracy. Examples:

Exactly this. There's a myth that the US is less bureaucratic than Europe, for example, and while in Europe you have the things like Italy which are horrible (in Bureaucracy terms) a lot of things are simpler.

To be fair, that's a US state problem and not a US problem.

I have had driver licenses from multiple US states. My experiences on the matter vary in extreme measures from one state to the next. This is mostly based on local laws, resources, and demand.

One time, it took hours but I had license in hand before leaving the building. In another case it took around twenty minutes and I had license in hand before leaving the building. Things are different in different places.

Then again, I've never had a license from California so that's a pain I haven't endured.

To defend the DMV. I renewed my license online and it was mailed to me. Took 5mins.

>It just makes no sense.

Now, I'm not saying this is right or wrong; it's a complex issue, and I am personally undecided. But you seem to be missing a major argument against the "points system" you describe.

The Canadian system explicitly biases the system in favor of the wealthy and well-educated. That's exactly what the "points" system is meant to do. Now, many people think this is a good thing; their argument is that wealthy and well educated people bring good things in to the country. I'm not saying they are wrong, I'm just saying that you should understand how some people feel that is unfair.

The US system does this to some extent, too, for instance the H1B visa is biased in just that way, and even for the lottery, we set minimum "you can likely support yourself" levels, And we have special ways for really wealthy people to jump the queue, and of course, the way the lottery is set up, one could argue, is quite racist. But you can also make the argument that the US lottery system is a lot more fair to people that have the ability to support themselves, but maybe weren't wealthy enough to get an advanced degree.

> but maybe weren't wealthy enough to get an advanced degree.

Of course, in many countries the ability to get an advanced degree is not very dependent on being wealthy

>Of course, in many countries the ability to get an advanced degree is not very dependent on being wealthy

I... find your assertion to be unlikely. Of course, I could be wrong. Do you have statistics? Is there a country where there is not a very strong correlation between high parental income and advanced degrees?

Finland should have no correlation here, as all the schools are free and you get an allowance from the government for the duration of your studies. Unfortunately it turns out a high income correlates well with having an advanced degree, and a parent with an advanced degree correlates well with a child who has one.

Which results in a situation where the higher socio-economical status of your parents makes you much more likely to have an advanced degree, even though there should be no correlation.

Obviously IQ has something to do with this.

Most of the people in my PhD lab were paid to be there, fees waived and 50% from what would be described as low income backgrounds - anecdotal I know, but in the UK you don't need to be wealthy to get an advanced degree ... although getting the first degree got a bit more expensive a couple of years ago.

The correlation in Europe tend to be between parental education level and child education level. The correlation between parental income and education level of the child is weaker.

Being educated does not imply being wealthy.

This is true in the United States (there is a very strong correlation between wealth and education level, but the correlation between parent's education level and child's education level is stronger than the correlation between parent's wealth and child's education level; IIRC, there still some evidence that the wealth plays some role independent of parent's education level in determining child's education level, but its a smaller role.)

No statistics, sorry. If you want to look yourself try the usual suspects, India, Iran, ex-Soviet states...

This is the first post by 0xab after 1992 days of being a registered HN user. Imagine (a) the determination needed to not yield to temptation and post something over 5.5 years, and (b) how upsetting immigration is to someone as determined as this PhD for his first comment to be on immigration.

> What's your definition of sane? None of those countries have the scale, frequency and volume of demand that resembles anything like the US.[1]

The most relevant statistic in the link you reference is "Pct of population" with the US at 14.3% and Germany at 11.9%. Two and a half percentage points does not seem like such a big difference in scale.

My attitude isn't "why not me" but "why is this so absurd"? I got in to both countries, but one was a total clusterfuck and one wasn't. Obviously one of them is doing something better than the other. I'm positing that the ultimate solution to demand (if one exists), is more in the direction of the German system than the random lottery of the US.

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