I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed | Hacker News Reader

I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

vox.com

526 pointsanu_gupta588 comments

The US legal immigration system is perfectly described by the adjective, Kafkaesque. In terms of the arbitrariness of bureaucracy, it has more in common with what I saw in the socialist days of India and what one reads in books by Solzhenitsyn and Kafka. The iniquities have been discussed repeatedly in popular press, with almost no changes wrought in the process. Many years ago (yes, 2011 was 4 years ago) Newsweek ran a story about how irrational bureaucratic delays derailed a guy's career in a consulting firm: http://www.newsweek.com/story-one-mans-immigration-ordeal-66...

I know at least 6 other people who have had similar experiences: well qualified people in great skill-specific jobs who were caught up in bureaucratic nightmares. Unlike the subject of the Newsweek article, these people had employees who could afford to keep them on the payroll.

New York Times also ran an article on this issue, of a Google employee who had to move to Canada because of arbitrary bureaucratic rules concerning the work visa. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/business/12immig.html?page...

Further, green card applications have country quotas, which, in the context of citizenship were deemed unconstitutional during JFK/LBJ's civil rights actions.

In spite of such iniquities, there seem to be no political efforts to fix the system.

Part of the problem with improving the system is that there's simply no incentive. Immigration reform almost entirely centers on managing undocumented/illegal immigrants. Law Makers don't have to listen to petitions from people outside of the country let alone their own jurisdictions.

The other part is that people who've suffered through the process don't turn around and try to fix it, I remember when my wife was going through the process almost 2 decades ago (and it took us something like 2-3 years to get through it), not one of the employees in immigration we dealt with were obvious former immigrants. If people who finally made it in turned around and went into government service and tried to fix the hellscape they went through, it would probably be better. But most people seem to be glad to get through the process and then get as far away from it as possible.

All that being said, people who I know who've gone through the process recently report a vastly simpler and streamlined process from the one we went through. So there is improvement being made.

For better or worse, the difficulties around immigration come purely from limiting the number of immigrants. If immigration entry was virtually unlimited, these stories wouldn't happen. I'll leave it up to you to decide if unlimited immigration is a good or bad thing.

> If people who finally made it in turned around and went into government service and tried to fix the hellscape they went through, it would probably be better.

I suspect that people who are persistent and qualified enough to get through that legal system have opportunities to pursue better job opportunities. And at the other hand, I wouldn't expect them to be wealthy and successful enough to easily sacrifice their careers to work for a public cause full-time.

Even if the objective is to limit immigration, the rules are arbitrary. Like bureaucracy in general, it is also counterproductive to the economy. Skilled immigrants, after all aren't like industrial pollution or worker safety or pharmaceutical drugs to be deliberately doomed to bureaucratic labyrinths.

Part of the problem is identifying the actual abusers of the visa-system applicable to skilled workers, i.e. what makes someone "skilled" with "specialized knowledge". The public debate in elections may make the biggest noise about undocumented immigrants, but there is behind-the-scenes discussion about the H1-B and L-1 system. This August, the USCIS will announce its decision on expanding the L-1 definition of "specialized knowledge". The L-1 class, the lesser-known brother of the H1-B, is a 3-year non-immigrant visa that is extendable for up to 5 years (7 years for the L-1A) and can be reissued if the employee in question leaves the US and works for the sponsoring company for another year. People are eligible to apply for the L-1 if they have worked for a US company abroad or will be opening and running US-branch office for a foreign company (other cases apply, just not available off the top of my head. The L-1A is for execs and managers, the L1-B for specialized knowledge workers). No degree or education requirement is necessary for the L-1B by the way. No quota either, like with the H-1B. About a third of applications are rejected though, biased towards India. Abusers of the H1-B and L-1 system are the blue-chip, non-tech companies who use out-sourcing IT companies like Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro to cut costs in their tech departments. Talking about immigration reform is not so much about lack of incentive as it is about the emotions arising from the stories of Disney IT workers being fired and having to retrain their H1-B replacements who are getting paid lower wages. Another aspect not discussed is whether expanding the H1-B system perpetuates ageism in the Valley -- why not push out older workers at the expense of getting fresh foreign grads? No large change can happen when fear is present.

I had to get finger-printed 3 times because they INS/BCIS/USCIS kept losing my prints - or perhaps the FBI did. I'll never know, and now no longer care

Which country recognizes a universal right to naturalize as a citizen of that country?

How is this question germane to my comment or OP? I am not advocating any universal right. Just bureaucratic efficiency.

Svalbard, effectively.

Argentina.

Disclaimer: I am a Canadian permanent resident.

> I like it here.

This is the real problem, you have a severe case of non-reciprocal love. In that case the answer is obvious: move over, find another love, come to Canada or go to Northern Europe.

U.S. immigration is an American problem,since they are the ones loosing talent and entrepreneurial people. It is not an immigrant's problem, since they don't have the powers to fix it.

Here in Canada we have a much more open immigration policy and, IMHO, better quality of life. I strongly suggest you considering coming to Canada.

Just to clarify in case people still have the impression that Canada is good for immigration: Maybe Canada is better than America for immigration, the experience is getting worse.

After the new immigration minister came up in July 2013, the government has changed policies to make immigration slow and the path to citizenship much harder.

1) A Labour Market Opinion (LMO), which is required before a work visa, itself used to take 6 weeks in 2008. This process now takes about 6 months (my case, which is not too slow) to 1 year (another friend's case, and plenty of people in forums). For the work visa, add another 2-6 months on top of it, and then you have to apply the temporary resident visa.

2) Path to citizenship (having work visa => permanent residence => citizenship) used to take a total of 4 years (roughly), now is changed to 1 + 2 + 4 (7 years), a significantly longer time frame.

I get the feeling that Canada is changing its opinion of welcoming immigrants.

Disclaimer: Used to live in Canada, but have left.

My wife and I befriended a couple from North Korea who, in the face of horrendous hardship that we can barely begin to imagine, managed to escape by way of China to end up in Toronto.

In short order they had setup a thriving massage studio based on traditional Chinese methods, had a child, and were able to afford a nice apartment and car. Apart from the the private Christian group that helped them enter Canada, they were entirely self-reliant.

They showed greater entrepreneurism and work ethnic than the majority of Canadians, by far. Despite their many challenges (including the presumed murder of their families in DPRK), they remained delightful, generous, and happy people that were a pleasure to be around.

I'm getting a little emotional as I write this because I was shocked -- disgusted really -- when I learned that the Canadian government was kicking them out of the country. They were forced to apply for citizenship in South Korea, and told only to return if they were rejected from S. Korea.

Unfortunately, I don't know how the story ended because, somewhat alarmingly, we've lost contact with them although my wife was speaking to the woman almost daily via WeChat before they left. I hope they are able to establish a more permanent home for themselves in S. Korea or wherever they ended up.

So, yes, I would say the government has changed its policies recently, and not for the better. Why these people would be forced to leave is beyond me.

Strangely with Canada, I think it depends on where within the country you immigrate to. As a native Canadian from the prairies who moved to Montreal 10 years ago, I have met and worked with so many immigrants here that I now believe I know more of them in Montreal than I do native Canadians. It makes for an extremely interesting cultural mix.

Apparently Quebec makes it much easier for citizens from a select list of countries to obtain permanent residency, as opposed to what you'll find elsewhere in the country. It still takes a long time dealing with loads of bureaucracy (especially the requirement for basic French language skills which can be handled via courses while here), but I haven't yet met anyone who has had to leave before they manage to obtain their permanent residency.

Random aside: Moldova has proven to be the source of my favourite people. There are so many Moldovans here due to a simplified immigration process for their country. There's just something so refreshing about how they carry themselves: friendly, humble, utterly proud and self-confident, and without ego. It's nice to meet people who are pleasant without plastering a fake-ass smile on their face all day long. When you see them smile or hear a laugh, you know it's genuine!

tldr; I believe Quebec is conditionally easier (based on country of origin) to immigrate to than other Canadian provinces. And, um, Moldovans are genuine people - more of you need to move here so I can eventually find a lifelong mate. :p

> I get the feeling that Canada is changing its opinion of welcoming immigrants.

Well, our government is at any rate. As a Canadian by birth I don't know that I feel we (the citizenry) have had a lot of input into the matter. :/

Being born in and still a citizen of a Commonwealth nation should make it easier for OP to emigrate to Canada.

(is it still called emigrate if it's from a country not your own to another?)

I think this is entirely fair.

The U.S. is not a country that loves anybody -- not in the way that countries like Denmark does. The U.S. works by mostly just getting out of the way and ignoring you at least compared to other advanced countries. You have more room to succeed or fail here than most other countries, but the government really won't do much to help you either way. Most interactions with the government here aren't all that wonderful no matter who you are.

Other countries offer better protections but can be more intrusive in ways that prevent both vast success and failures, with the tradeoff of creating more social stability.

The good news is that it seems like both approaches have managed to create great places to live provided you have some baseline understanding of what the place is like. There are a large number of well developed countries I'd be perfectly happy to live in, Canada included, because they offer great (if different) and reasonable living conditions.

Could you elaborate on Denmark? I always thought they were really tough on immigration.

I mean internally, once you get in. Most countries, especially G-20 level countries are very difficult to immigrate to.

If you're inside EU it's super easy. But that's hardly news.

As an American, I also strongly suggest you consider going to Canada.

The U.S. immigration system is so far gone that not even American citizens have the power to fix it. It has become a plaything in the hands of professional politicians. Just like many other things in the U.S., you won't get anything remotely like fair treatment unless you have rich or influential sponsors acting on your behalf.

Even if you do ultimately still have your heart set on the U.S., being a Canadian PR will also make that easier, due to Byzantine and Kafkaesque reasons that I don't fully understand myself. And if you don't ever make it, hey, Canada's not too bad a deal either, eh?

This is totally true. The difference between how US immigration treats me (Canadian) vs. my partner (Australian) is truly breathtaking. One of us gets the red carpet and the other gets a cavity search (almost).

If you're Canadian you have an advantage over any other non-American, no question.

I dunno about that. The E3 visa is exclusively reserved for Australians and its terms are very generous.

That's exactly what I did. I spent a lot of time and money on immigration lawyers trying to find a way to immigrate to the U.S. only because I don't have a degree.

After years of trying without any success I started looking into other options, only to find that it's significantly easier to immigrate into other countries (like Canada). Two months ago I got an offer from a Dutch company (even with them knowing about my degree issue), and I'm moving to Amsterdam next week.

Last month I spent two weeks in California, and, with this new reality, saw the whole place with new eyes. After the glamour wears off, you realize that the other options might be even better, specially after you see that some countries are much more welcoming to immigrants.

Can I come to Netherlands with you? I am sick of Australia and I enjoy riding bicycles.

Can I come to the Netherlands with the two of you? I am sick of America and I also enjoy riding bicycles.

Hit me up for a coffee, beer, or other beverage once you're settled, if you feel so inclined. I like meeting new people, and I've lived here for much of my post-high school life.

> my degree issue

This is interesting. Must you have a degree to immigrate if you have a strong work history?

The H1-B=>GC route to immigration does require a degree - 4 yr one is preferred but in some cases 3yr + ton of experience gets you buy. It's not guaranteed though.

You know, I am a Canadian PR too and while nowhere near as bad as the US temporary worker situation, the transition from PR to citizen is not easy if you have the audacity to travel. And, thanks to this wonderful new bill, you can be stripped of your citizenship basically any time the government wants to without judicial oversight.

Waho, that's bad, do you have more details?

I'm a Canadian citizen (but I live in the US), so I think I know what' hes' referring to.

With Bill C-24, whether you were born in Canada or were naturalised, if you qualify for another citizenship or hold citizenship from another country, the government can take away your Canadian citizenship if it considers you to be a terrorist or threat to the country.

I'm against it.

The citizenship-stripping issue is obviously off topic, although I don't disagree that it's a bad law.

Claiming the "love" is unrequited rests on the assumption that policy is at least strongly correlated with the people's will.

As far as anyone can tell, this is simply not true. Hence, average American people can like someone without that acceptance being written into policy.

> Claiming the "love" is unrequited rests on the assumption that policy is at least strongly correlated with the people's will.

It is, the average American doesn't like open immigration and they don't want immigrants taking their jobs especially after years of recession. Our immigration policy sucks because our people suck.

Do Americans strike you as pro immigration?

I think you have a skewed perspective of who the "average" American (and person, in general), is. They tend to be rather xenophobic.

> non-reciprocal love

Very true... same thing happened to me in Thailand -- 16 years there and finally got tired of the government's xenophobia and relentless efforts to push foreigners out of the country.

I am an American citizen, and the more I think of it, that is one reason I left America too....

Best to embrace a personal identity as an expat. It's a tribe or sorts, but it's more a state of mind. You lived in America as an immigrant. Live there as an expat, the attitude will free you, safe in the knowledge that if things really get bad, you can always find another place that /will/ love you... until they don't :)

> Here in Canada we have a much more open immigration policy

"Much more open" is a relative term, I suppose. I am a Canadian citizen, born in Canada with all my family (save my wife) living in Canada. I live in Japan with my wife who is Japanese. A few years ago my wife wanted to move to an English speaking country so that she could improve her English and live abroad.

I'll just be plain. It was easier for me to get a visa for myself and my wife to work in the UK than it was to get a visa for my wife in Canada. Had we decided to go to Canada, she would have had to come on a tourist visa. She would have no health care coverage, nor ability to work. After 6 months she would have to apply for an extension to her tourist visa on humanitarian grounds. Her application would be reviewed by a single border guard and could be denied for any or no reason. There is no right of appeal. If her application is denied, she would be barred from entering Canada again thereafter. If she is granted the extension, then she gets another 6 months. After the 6 months are up, she gets to apply for another extension on humanitarian grounds with the same restrictions. After a total of 18 months (and after paying $1500 for the application plus submitting all of our emails together for the last 3 years plus pictures of us together for the last 3 years), she might be granted permanent residence status.

That's for my wife!

In constrast Japan gave me a 3 year working visa after seeing the paperwork showing that we were married. The application was free and took 1 week to process. I can renew after 3 years. The last time I renewed my visa in Japan (before I was married) they just wanted to know if I was still working and after that gave me a renewal (the entire process took 1 hour and cost the equivalent of $60). After 5 years in the country I can apply for permanent residence status (which is similarly rubber-stampy). In the meantime I get national health care insurance and even a pension. (Note: citizenship is generally difficult to get in Japan, though. You must live in Japan for at least 10 years and you must show that you have integrated with the community).

Having said all that, being an immigrant myself I feel that immigration is a privilage not a right. If a country doesn't want immigrants, then that's their business. If you come on a student visa, or on a work visa that is intended to fill gaps in the local economy, then you are expected to return to your home country some day. That's just the way it is.

I feel for the guy because I would be devastated if Japan decided not to renew my visa for some reason. I love living here. I hope they invite me to stay permanently, but I still think that it's Japan's right to decide what they want to do.

I'm a Canadian citizen who just finished the process of sponsoring my Australian wife for permanent residency in Canada.

What you've written isn't true unless there's some extenuating circumstances you're not disclosing. My wife was automatically eligible for PR, and in fact it was much easier than the reciprocal process (me applying for PR in Australia). It took about $2000 all up, and took about 8 months in total. Easy!

> After 5 years in the country I can apply for permanent residence

AFAIK, IANAL, you can get a permanent resident after 5 years on a preferential/highly skilled visa. This may be difficult for some people to get. See this Excel table:

http://www.immi-moj.go.jp/newimmiact_3/en/evaluate/index.htm...

To get permanent residence on a normal visa, you have to stay at least 10 years. That is problematic for people who stayed in Japan before the preferential visa system was introduced: previous stay does not count towards the 5 years of preferential visa.

See here:

http://www.tokyoimmigration.jp/eng/eijyu.html

Furthermore, Japanese permanent residency is much weaker than other countries. Children born to permanent residents do not get citizenship (this is okay if you are from a 1st world country, but problematic for those from 3rd world countries who want to improve their situation). In Australia&UK, permanent residents' children can obtain citizenship. In Canada, USA it is unconditional.

And getting citizenship, when not married to a Japanese person, is next to impossible.

Is there a reason why you are not eligible to sponsor your wife for an immigrant visa?

In most Anglo countries, you'd have to wait for its approval (about 6-9 months) before your wife moved to that country. Is that what you're trying to avoid?

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/sponsor/spouse.asp

> After 5 years in the country I can apply for permanent residence status (which is similarly rubber-stampy).

You can apply after five years, but it only gets 'rubber-stampy' where you are basically sure to get it, after ten. YMMV though - this is only what I've heard and is not from personal experience as I've yet to actually apply for PR despite being here for well over a decade now.

By the way you are definitely missing some steps in moving to Canada with your wife. It is not nearly as hard for her to move there with you as you're making it out to be. Do some more research.

My Australian partner looked at emigrating to Canada and she was granted work rights 7 months after she first got off the plane. Yes, she had no health care and we had to live at my parents for those 7 months but it wasn't forever.

Now, we ended up settling in Australia instead (it was easier in the end for me to emigrate here instead) but Canadian immigration wasn't impossible. If anything it was just slow.

Coming to Ireland is pretty painless and the economic climate is favorable (but not the weather)

Are you sure about that? You still need an employer sponsored work permit, and you can't change jobs without getting a new permit. Then it takes five years before you are eligible for Long Term Residency. You can go from an H1B to a green card in less time if you are not from India or China.

Not everyone comes from the EU.

Minor nit pick, 'losing' not 'loosing'.

> move over, find another love,

I agree, I wanted to go to US from India but realized that its not going to happen so I went to Australia. Aus immigration is fairly simple process if you have tech background.

went to Australia. PR took more than 4 years. I gave up hope and started applying for a tech job in US. Now I want to move back to Aus with wife but the partner visa is so broken. I have to move to Australia, my wife has to move back to her home country. She applies, the govt decides whether we will reunite again or not after 6-12 months. They charge $4500 application fee that is non-refundable.

Aus immigration is equally as broken.

Ahh yes, I forgot about the partner visa, yes I agree its broken.

Why did your PR take 4 years?

Thank you for saying this.

I personally consider that opening borders is a moral imperative, but I understand why it is controversial. I understand that the arguments against "letting everyone in" have some merit, though I ultimately disagree with them.

What is a real head scratcher to me is the US policy on highly-skilled immigrants. There are certainly some political constituencies in favor of those, but I can't think of anyone against, at least not one with a modicum of political pull.

One could imagine a regulatory capture scenario where large companies benefit from the regime, because they have an easier time obtaining visas than their smaller competitors, but in practice even those lobby for more, not less immigration.

So who's lobbying against this exactly?

> So who's lobbying against this exactly?

If you've ever come across any posts on HN regarding immigrant workers in technology (who are on the same visa, the H1B†, that the author of the Vox article was on), you will see a shockingly offensive amount contempt and hatred for highly-skilled immigrants.

To answer your question more directly, despite high support for skilled immigration reform, there are currently 2 senators who are hell-bent on making life hard for highly-skilled immigrants. One of them is Chuck Grassley, chair of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and the other is Jeff Sessions, chair of the Subcommittee on Immigration. Both senators (esp. Sessions) thoroughly hate immigrants of all kinds, and have avowed to do everything in their power to block immigration reform from passing, and the committee and subcommittee they chair are key to immigration reform passing in the Senate.

Jeff Sessions has even go so far as to write a document full of half-truths and lies, with the goal of convincing other Republicans that even the tiny trickle of high-skilled immigration now permitted is detestable, and must be put to an end. The Cato Institute has an excellent fact-based rebuttal of it: http://www.cato.org/blog/rebuttal-sen-sessions-anti-legal-im...

Opposition to immigration itself is pretty hard to believe in country like the U.S., but the opposition to economically beneficial high-skilled worker immigration, is even more shocking.

† Note: there are really no other alternatives than getting a work visa, if someone wants to immigrate as high-skilled worker. I've read ill-informed people on HN say ridiculous things like, they do not have a problem with people "coming to the US normally", but they hate to their guts anyone on a work visa. Ridiculous.

> If you've ever come across any posts on HN regarding immigrant workers in technology (who are on the same visa, the H1B†, that the author of the Vox article was on), you will see a shockingly offensive amount contempt and hatred for highly-skilled immigrants.

Well, that's probably largely because the system is being abused to bring in questionable workers and drive down wages.

Eat me. Change H-1B's to follow a worker from job to job and there is no problem with the program. The fact that anyone who wants to hire a H-1B worker away from their company also has to have acquired a H-1B means that it is abused by companies looking for cheap labor.

Secondly coming to the issue of American IT workers being replaced. Although I personally do not agree with using H1B to displace workers I also think American IT workers need to think about what kind of wages they expect for outdated and rapidly changing IT knowledge.. I have an excellent example in my own company.. A 48yr old American IT worker who makes close to 120-130K per annum... Let me tell you he does a good job but his work merely includes assembling PC's for employees, fixing bugs (rebooting Virus scan) and writing minor scripts once in a year to ensure email and server security. Majority of the time he just makes sure that all the employees machines are running smoothly. In terms of education he has an Associate degree in STEM and has been working for the company for 15 years.His position title says Systems Engineer. However a Systems Engineer in Google might actually be working on the Driver less car. Now the reality is that today the work that he has been doing can be taken care of by anyone even without a technical background.. so why pay him 120K? His knowledge was unique and fresh when he joined in 1998 but now in 2015 he is still in the same position , has the same qualifications and doing the same work everyday.. I am not blaming him..for this .. He is getting 120K for a skill set which is obsolete.. why would he think of trying something more or advancing his career..Since our company has a very small IT staff they might not take a step like Disney but otherwise this guy would have been long replaced. If I were him I would look towards more active roles within the company or else If I am so attracted to IT then I would go back to school update myself with the IT of Today and apply to a company that might need my new skills..

Overall my point is that the technical world is such that today nobody wants to buy an iphone 3GS today. Even if there are some buyers then they definitely do not want to pay $600 to buy it

I wouldn't say Sen grassley is anti-immigrant. He is infact open to h1b visa provided the tech sector accepts his bill as well to protect abuse. In short what Grassley is providing is a poison pill for Body shops but not for really talented advanced degree graduates. Sessions on the other hand is out right anti immigrant and a racist Pig. All Americans fail to understand that 30-40% of H1B's are Masters/Phd's for American schools.. Not all are body shop products like the ones used in Disney.

There's no strong lobby against more high-skilled immigration. But as sometimes happens in US politics, the uncontroversial reform is held hostage to the controversial one.

In particular, lobbying groups for and against having an official status for the millions of currently undocumented Mexicans in the US have opposed any immigration bill that doesn't include what they want.

Lawmaking does not allow cherry-picking bugfixes.

Very interesting take, thanks! That is probably what's going on. I wonder what other examples there are of such policies.

> Lawmaking does not allow cherry-picking bugfixes.

It ought to.

Any chance you'd be willing to write a bit more about your support for open borders? In particular, I'm interested in knowing whether you think this is a situation where it would be both moral and beneficial, or if you feel that it is simply wrong to limit where people can live and work based on where they were born (or even where their grandparents were born) even if the overall effect on current citizens of some regions would be negative.

Interesting that the author of this piece comes from New Zealand, because NZ is the country that often springs to mind when I think of a nation that might could change dramatically with open borders.

I haven't been there, but I understand New Zealand is a country about the geographical size of California and Oregon put together (a bit larger), with spectacular natural landscapes, and a very small population (much smaller than the island would be capable of supporting). What would happen to New Zealand if they unilaterally opened up their borders? To keep it simple, let's not worry about malicious people, I just mean honest, hard working immigrants who seek a better life. Should New Zealand open up borders to unlimited migration? Is there a moral imperative for them to do so?

The debate the politicians in my state (Schleswig-Holstein, a state in Germany) had about this was really interesting, sadly it’s in German.

Essentially, it boils down to two issues:

Morally, we all are descendants of immigrants, or at least most.

Economically, most immigrants are willing to work hard. Combined with the fact that our society has a birth rate below replacement rate (1.3 vs. 2.1) we need immigrants just to keep our standard of living. And if we can give them a better life at the same time, it’s definitely great.

One would think, countries like USA, Australia or NZ might be afraid of immigration because they know what they did to native inhabitants...

Generally, think about the situation where all (most) countries abolish borders, not just NZ or other small country. Moving is the basic human right, and the sooner we realize the better for mankind, assuming the culture of the host country is respected. Of course the culture needs adjustments to respect human rights as well.

> Interesting that the author of this piece comes from New Zealand, because NZ is the country that often springs to mind when I think of a nation that might could change dramatically with open borders.

You might want to do some research about New Zealand's current housing crisis and other socio-economic issues (such as Māori being significantly over-represented in poverty statistics) before unilaterally advocating a country that you admit you have never been to and know nothing about (other than its size and population) open its borders because you won't have to deal with the consequences.

We haver good immigration numbers at the moment, and society is ever-changing for the better as we balance a healthy mix of cultures. The trick is to constrain the rate of immigration so that the infrastructre and society can adapt. As it is out biggest city, Auckland, is experiencing insanely high house prices that folks in the Bay area would grimace at. Aside from that it's a wonderful wonderful place to live, and the start-up ecosystem is thriving.

It's a very tough question to answer because it's very hard to predict. I have some model of the general effects of allowing greater immigration, but the predictive value of the model breaks down the more radical the change.

- I see letting in anyone with the equivalent of a bachelor's degree (or say anyone that anyone is willing to hire for more $40k a year) as basically having no downsides at all. Empirical data on immigration reveals that it has no impact on wages except at the very low end, among unskilled high-school dropouts.

- As you allow lower incomes, welfare tends to become an issue. Currently, people do not immigrate in the US for the welfare (illegal immigrants tend to be net taxpayers, even when including healthcare) but people do immigrate to Europe for the welfare, so it's something that happens. However, if you take a country like France (where I grew up in), welfare payments aren't the biggest drag on the economy. Taxation is high, but other places with similar levels of taxation fare much better. Regulatory drag, in particular in the job market is a much bigger concern. In turns, this creates unemployment which aggravates any welfare problem. Evidence shows that as societies become more culturally and ethnically mixed, they tend to be less and less in favor of welfare. So higher immigration of welfare seeking immigrants may undermine popular support for welfare. It's a whole other discussion, but I'd consider disappearance of state funded welfare as a good thing. In addition, it's also possible to selectively deny welfare to immigrants, or to require a twenty year residency period before becoming eligible.

- Political externalities are often mentioned. Won't immigrants vote for the same policies that made their home country a living hell? I find this doubtful for two reasons:

  a) The evidence points that in most democracies, the policies that end up being enacted are the ones favored by a wealthy elite, not the ones that have popular support. If you compare the actual policies of the US compared to the views of the median voter, they are strikingly better than you'd expect. How this comes to be is unclear, but the effect is important.

 b) The favorite political view of most people is the status quo, or some very minor version around it

Now getting to New Zealand. Assuming only honest hard working immigrant seeking a better life? You've cut out the work for me! I think you'd see a lot of high rises build up in New Zealand. Consider that the current population of New Zealand could fit in a circle 7 km in radius in a city with the density of New York. If Stewart Island was all built up, it could hold the entire population of Canada.

In practice, as more people would emigrate, real estate prices would appreciate, to the point where it wouldn't be economical for immigrants to come in, even if the borders were open.

Absolutely they should. Open borders would enrich everyone, not just the immigrants and not just the poor. Please see my comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632

I'm not the OP, but I mostly support the idea of open borders and I'm from Canada. Canada has many of the same issues that New Zealand has. We are the second largest country (by landmass) in the world, yet our population is slightly smaller than California. Much of our land is quite rugged, or very cold but our country is still capable of supporting more than the 35 million we currently have.

The best argument that I have ever heard against opening up our border is that we are big, but size does not equal the ability to support a decent quality of life. Some argue that if we open up our borders, dreams of higher incomes will compel lesser skilled people to move to Canada. These people often will not understand basic labour laws like minimum wage, or the need for benefits and so they will drive down the cost of labour. Others argue that adding even five million people sounds like a good idea, but that it would require massive investments in health care, housing, and basic infrastructure.

Like I said, I mostly support open borders but have never been too impressed by the moral arguments. Canada is a great country and I love it dearly, but I have spent a little too much in some bad neighbourhoods and become friends with too many unhappy immigrants. Rather, I would argue that we are an amazing country, but that many immigrants who bought into the hype, came here and live in poverty far worse than that which they escaped. I say 'far worse' because, while our social safety net is fairly good, it involves navigating an intense bureaucracy that is difficult for native English speakers and near impossible for immigrants, especially those with more limited English language skills. And, unfortunately, parts of our population are very anti-immigration and argue that they should 'stay home' instead of clogging up our social services.

Morally, I think that I could just as easily argue that we should stop all immigration entirely until we can do a better job of caring for the immigrants that we already have.

My all-time favourite argument in favour of opening up our immigration system is that it is one of the best chances that we have of saving our manufacturing industry. Since the 2008 financial crisis, much of the manufacturing industry has been in a horrible shambles and years later, factory jobs simply have not returned to eastern Canada. Factory jobs have mostly been a victim of cost and so the theory goes that opening up borders to lesser skilled people will drive down the cost of lower skilled labour. If you drive the cost of lower skilled labour down closer to minimum wage and get rid of the often union negotiated benefits, suddenly the cost disparity between producing in Canada versus China or Mexico looks a little better.

Another argument I love is that the last time our borders were mostly open, we allowed an influx of mostly eastern European people to come into our country. (My last name is Hluska and my great grandfather was one of them). There were some growing pains and for many people (my great grandfather included), the move to Canada was really difficult. However, after a few generations, these immigrants' children and grandchildren have become important entrepreneurs, business and political leaders.

So, the argument goes that in our history, mostly open borders lead to a difficult decade or two, but that the kind of person who will immigrate tends to be resourceful enough to bring enhanced opportunity for many generations after.

I've spent about 8 years in Japan. I love parts of the culture (the good parts, not the bad parts). Things like the service ethic, politeness, safety, and the basic idea of "do whatever you want in your private life but don't put out anyone else while doing it."

My guess is that a massive influx of foreigners would likely destroy that culture.

Is there any way to open borders and still preserve a place's culture, at least the good parts, or is that just doomed?

No. Re: Sweden.

It wouldn't be doomed. Foreigners could have their cultural enclaves and Japanese theirs. Anyway, this is an extremely minor concern relative to the astronomic benefits of open borders. See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632

There are plenty of domestic groups opposed to open borders for high-skilled immigrants. Doctors, nurses, and others within the medical profession spring first to mind, and they are incredibly powerful politically. Ditto lawyers or really any other trade that controls its own barrier to entry via the certification process.

And let's not forget software engineers - just see what happens whenever H1-B comes up.

I have never encountered any opposition to high-skill immigration among lawyers. There would be no point--entry into the profession is already gated by the JD/LLM/bar exam requirements. The problem is that getting a greencard requires your employer to prove that they can't find a qualified domestic candidate, which is difficult when large law firms take only 10-15% of the domestic JD graduating class each year and a third to half are unemployed.

Doctors and Lawyers are already protected by the licensing requirements, why would they fear immigrants?

While open borders is an ultimate goal, it would be a bit perilous to allow 'everyone who wanted to' to enter a given country, as things stand.

First, I think we should seek bilateral treaties such that we can enter their country as much as they can enter ours and that both parties have reciprocal rights. This should allow all parties entering an agreement to slowly stabilize, or reach some kind of equilibrium.

One of the downsides is that this adds to globalization and homogeneity of culture, language, etc. Although personally, I don't think that's a big problem --it's mostly an emotional issue rather than actual, but it's still an issue given how people cry 'globalization', 'imperialism', 'monoculture', 'mainstream', etc.

From Europe, where people share some culture, they never the less still experience integration issues where locals resent foreign populations, example France and polish workers, or Germany and Serbs or Turks, or Spaniards.

Maybe grant larger quotas based on population would be fairer and then harden the borders, else the closer neighbor has an unfair advantage. So say Italy booms, quotas would make living in Croatia no better than new Zealand or south Africa in terms of odds of getting into Italy (or Canada the US or Nigeria.) But politics would never allow a fair quota system to work.

> From Europe, where people share some culture, they never the less still experience integration issues where locals resent foreign populations, example France and polish workers, or Germany and Serbs or Turks, or Spaniards.

It's not really foreign populations per se. The resentment is really mostly socioeconomic. Nobody resents Persians in the Netherlands because the Persians who migrated here are mostly upper-class with a long tradition of higher education. Whereas the Turks you mentioned were considered guest laborers, Dutch companies literally drove busses to the poorest little villages in Turkey in the 60s and found the people with the least education, who couldn't read or write and had perhaps 2-3 years of primary education, then offered them a job working unskilled labour in a factory hoping they'd go back home after 10 years, basically the 1960s equivalent of off-shoring production to China at a pre-globalisation time when the factories were still back home.

Knowing what we know of lower-socioeconomic classes (higher rates of crime, lower rates of education, higher pregnancy rates, more conflict with authority etc etc), it's no real surprise it turned out this way. The sad thing is that in Europe the debate about these problems acts as if it's a cultural issue (e.g. Turkish culture or Islamic culture), when it's really a socioeconomic problem (taking the least educated people from an already poor country, putting them in factory housing and not teaching them the local language, and expecting them to go back home or thrive), not a cultural one. And this debate has essentially created tons of animosity because it invites all this 'class of civilisations' bs rhetoric and turns it into what in the US is referred to as a 'racial' problem.

Well, i'm glad you see open borders as an ultimate goal, kudos there, but why do you think its important for "bilateral treaties". Workers are engines of production. They're valuable. We want more of them. Even if they're poor, they can still produce value. Production is the root of all prosperity. So there's no harm in letting people come here at whatever rate is best for them - if it's a sensible move for them, that implies that their productivity (reflected by their income) is increasing. More productivity = more stuff = more stuff for everyone in the economy to enjoy. Again, there's no harm in letting people come. Only increased production. So we should definitely let in anyone who wants to come. And so should every other country. But if the other countries remain economically stupid / bigoted and want to keep valuable workers at bay, fine, doesn't mean we should make the same mistake. It's still hugely beneficial to us (and everyone) to let them come here unilaterally.

Please see my other comment in this thread for more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632

Please see all my comments elsewhere in this thread for context on this issue from someone who has read a lot about it. I've responded to the points you've brought up, but in different comments. Feel free to respond to me here.

>So who's lobbying against this exactly?

About a decade ago I attended an internal presentation at Microsoft, made by a person who was lobbying immigration changes on behalf of that company. He explained this phenomenon - in some parts of the country the voting public does not have the attention span to listen long enough to make the distinction between "immigrants" and "high-skill immigrants". For that reason many politicians who are privately supportive of high-skill immigration still prefer not to try the patience of the voters, and come out against all immigration in public. Especially when there is an opponent who is ready to yell "he's soft on immigrants!".

Immigration is broken. But you cannot have open borders and a welfare system. It is completely unsustainable.

Wrong wrong wrong.

Reality check: (1) Immigrants are actually NET CONTRIBUTORS to the welfare system. (2) Immigrants (at least the poor ones you're apparently worried about) are hard-working and yearn for financial stability; leisure is an utterly alien concept to them. (3) As societies become more heterogenous, welfare systems decline, because of inherent racism/xenophobia. The various elements of the population don't want to contribute to welfare cause they don't feel in communion with those "others". (4) If the welfare system becomes overburdened, I say Great! It just forces us to fix our broken system sooner than we otherwise would have. (Although again mainly because of my points 1 and 2 this would never happen.) (5) We can charge immigrants an entry fee, or a tax premium, or we can exclude them from benefits altogether. Any of those options would be vastly more humane than the status quo where we keep these foreigners trapped in their unproductive backwaters making ~$1 a day, starving.

Please see my other comment on this thread here for more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632

It's more sustainable if you have US style welfare where benefits are things like wage subsidies, for a limited duration after employment, or in kind in some way like Medicaid or food stamps.

EDIT: I think I should point out that the tradeoff is that this way of doing welfare is less efficient but requires less trust.

By that logic, you cannot have a welfare state without mandatory sterilization of the poor. Most will recoil in horror at this, and yet, the harm done by closed border is far greater (people are literally dying while eating dirt because they were born in the wrong country).

But that's beside the point since I was specifically addressing highly skilled immigration.

When going through the US immigration system, as part of the green card application you need to specify a sponsor who will be responsible for you financially if you hit hardship. As an immigrant, you do not get welfare in the US.

Source: US immigrant, did the paperwork.

Just out of curiosity, can you sketch out some back-of-napkin numbers that would actually show how it's unsustainable?

Moral imperatives do not always correlate with survival imperatives. I'm not going to say whether or not I believe in immigration, but there are two things I will say:

1. Arguments against immigration stem not from moral imperatives, but from survival instinct.

2. If we open up immigration, America as we know it will change dramatically, in either a good or bad way. I think what we have now is already pretty good, so why change the status quo?

Firstly, America as we know it has been changing dramatically and continuously since its inception. I don't see anyone mourning the loss of the Bourbon Democrats or tariff acts, but suffice to say they aren't here anymore.

Secondly, what are you referring to by "what we have now"? Immigration law in particular, or U.S. policy on a macro level?

You seem to be talking exclusively about the survival of the American economy, rather than then the survival of humankind.

Those who don't want the wages for "highly-skilled" jobs depressed to sub-lower-middle-class levels?

> I personally consider that opening borders is a moral imperative

Or close them. The moral imperative is to have a consistent and fair rules. You can't really be the US and let people live for decades in a grey state with all the obligations of a citizen but little of the rights. You take them in or not but that should a quick and permanent decision (i.e. no 3 year limit nonsense)

That's by the way not a US-only problem. That is the same in the UK and most of Europe, even worse, I believe, in Japan.

Using a lottery system for skilled workers tends to select from the world's wealthiest people, too. So if you think inequality is a problem now... On the other hand opening borders would create a stampede. Pretty sure that would cause a completely different set of social problems.

"open borders" doesn't have to mean you open them overnight. You can attenuate the flow to a rate that's manageable to keep up with, to give the various infrastructure a chance to grow/adapt to meet the influx. You've attacked a straw man.

Please see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632

Opening borders works for multicultural countries built on immigration. For countries that are based on a unique language, ethnicity and culture, it is damaging.

He's referring to america... and I have to disagree.

What's so important about an ethnicity that it has to be kept at all costs? Culture is probably worth preserving, but often culture is simply "the way it's always been" -- I'd argue the opposite, bringing different cultures together, if done right, will promote creating new culture that make more sense for today's reality, and not some 19th century status quo. Creation of culture is more important, imo, than maintaining culture -- as the latter can be done with history books while the former is a real policy that might enrich the lives of citizens.

> For countries that are based on a unique language, ethnicity and culture, it is damaging.

Let's take those one at a time.

Language: Sure, granted, there's a tendency to gravitate towards more common languages. Arguably that's a net benefit for people who would otherwise have grown up only speaking a less common language; learning a more common language grants access to a much larger set of speakers, information, and opportunities. That said, language doesn't tend to be lost, just not kept as an exclusive cultural barrier. Witness the massive efforts to internationalize information, to improve accessibility. And it's still common in many countries to look down upon anyone not speaking the native language, if that can be considered a feature.

Ethnicity: What do you have in mind other than language and culture, here? Because I hope you're not suggesting "racial purity" as a property worth preserving.

Finally, culture: Only if that culture is unable to propagate itself on its own merits, or in other words, if that culture has merits worth propagating. Some cultures have incredible history and traditions, and those have typically been preserved and spread further than they ever would have been otherwise. On the other hand, there are cultures built on oppression, indoctrination, suppression of dissent, lack of opportunity, and other undesirable properties; those cultures don't tend to survive exposure to broader information and the outside world (as well as the visibility of those cultures and their traditions to the outside world), which is all the more reason for such exposure. Not all traditions are worth preserving.

> For countries that are based on a unique language, ethnicity and culture, it is damaging.

Where are these places? Very few countries are based on a unique language, ethnicity, or culture, and those that are have generally only become so as a result of active suppression of minority cultures and languages.

In fact, apart from a few microstates and isolated islands, I can't really think of any monocultural nations.

Foreigners could have their cultural enclaves and Japanese theirs. Anyway, this is an extremely minor concern relative to the astronomic benefits of open borders. Please see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632

Damaging in what sense?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769826

Unless the center of your argument is based on race, every country would have to ban Netflix, McDonalds and Hollywood movies.

Opening borders is not controversial. It's a dumb idea.

The problem with your question is that you assume that all policy is driven by lobbying by big business. Political ideology and voter sentiment are also drivers of policy.

Other explanations are inertia (the system started out restrictive, and has been gradually loosened), or appeal to voters regarding either jobs or general dislike of immigration.

As a New Zealander going through the US immigration process, this whole post rings extremely true to me. People who have not gone through immigration before have no idea what its like for your entire life to be dictated by the whims of an opaque bureaucratic system. The most frustrating thing about it is that you have essentially no opportunities to better your situation via your own initiative. Don't like your job, well you can't go and find a new one unless they are willing to sponsor you for a visa. Want to start a side business - nope, thats a grey area that I've had immigration laywers advise me against. Think you deserve a promotion - nope, your residency application was for a particular job description. The list goes on.

A few months ago, I came very close to being deported due to the business unit I worked in being divested to another company - this isn't a problem for H1B employees, but I had an L1 which is non-transferrable to a new company, and since my job at my existing company was no longer present I would be made redundant if I couldn't get employment at the aquiring company. Luckily for me, my residency application became current 2 weeks before the aquisition closed (I had been waiting on this application for almost 3 years), so I was able to move into another immigration status that allowed me to move over to the acquiring company.

If that hadn't happened I would have been left with no job, A pregnant wife (who would also lose her job - as her work auth is tied to my visa) and facing an expensive move back to NZ (relocating a family internationally is really expensive btw). Fortunately for me I'm now on the home stretch (I hope) and I check my mailbox religiously waiting for the day my greencard turns up, and I can start living life on my own terms.

We had a number of very annoying things happen as well for my parents, me, and my wife. I'm glad things worked-out for you by dumb luck too. People here are always surprised when I tell them our particulars.

Why did you leave NZ? I ask because I was thinking about moving there.

Career opportunities mostly. The startup I was working in was acquired by a US tech company and they decided to close the NZ office and give us the option to relocate to San Francisco (or stay in NZ and find another job :). I was pretty happy with this situation though as there isn't much in the way of a tech industry in NZ, so there's much more interesting work available here, especially in the bay area (same goes for my wife who is in biotech). Oh and despite the insane living costs in the bay area, the pay is far higher than you can get in NZ, I make more than three times as much here as in NZ (Plus NZ tech companies are notorious for not giving out equity or stock options to employees - even early startups).

NZ has its good points with regards to being able to have a more relaxed lifestyle, and its great for outdoorsy types - but skiing, hiking etc. doesn't really interest me that much, and I kind of like the bluster and hustle of the bay area.

Things are getting better wrt companies granting options here. The law has improved slightly but still isn't perfect. At least it's simpler than the US.

What visa do you have now?

In AOS (Adjustment of status) now - its sort of a limbo before getting a greencard

Me too :|

We (my company and I) are desperately waiting for this to go through so that I can get the clearance to work on a wider range of unmanned air vehicles.

As a foreigner (including myself) the OP should have realized what's required to stay in the US beyond the H1B. In his case, it was applying for the green card lottery and employment based green card. Since he is a citizen of NZ, if he had applied for an employment based green card, he would've obtained it in less than 2 years. This might sound harsh, but there is no point complaining about the immigration system which we have no control over. It was his responsibility to make sure he accept a job offer with written commitment by the company to apply for his green card (this is commonplace in STEM, I'm not sure about law firms, but hey anything is negotiable). If they said no or stalled at his request, move on to the next employer. I know I'm making it sound as if it's easy to get another job, but wishful thinking or being lackadaisical is not a solution either.

If you read further, you'll see that his employers refused to sponsor him for an H1B.

He did in fact go for another job, which has fallen through. And so he must leave the country.

Well he only mentions that the higher ups wouldn't sponsor the employment based green card. The only thing he mentions about H1B is that it is renewable only once for 3 years. Where do you see that his H1B wasn't being sponsored? He would've being working on an H1B anyway.

US immigration process is cumbersome, and painful for people born in some countries (like India and China,) but certainly not prohibitive.

Quote:

    Additionally, an H1-B visa (the most common form 
    of work visa and the only form available to most)
    is only valid for three years and renewable only
    once. This means that the skilled legal immigrant
    must obtain permanent residency or a green card if
    he or she wishes to stay for more than a few years.
    Again, an employer can sponsor an employee's green
    card, but the employer must again bear the costs,
    which can run to the tens of thousands of dollars,
    and again the employee cannot offer to pay the cost.

I personally was able to find online (!) lawyer who did all the greencard paperwork required for about $1,500 (most of it indeed had to be paid by company, but not all of it.) About the same had to be paid to federal government by company, and few hunder later to actually adjust status and receive greencard (paid by me.)

Unlike OP I had no money to pay for college, so I found Austin company, worked for them as a freelancer and then convinced to sponsor H-1B visa. Unlike OP I had no way to just come over to talk with potential employers while on tourist visa - US embassy twice refused to give one to me because of a high risk me staying illegally in their opinion. So, sorry, but this story is just a story about "how privileged i feel, i got two degrees", not about "impossible to get citizenship". It is weird that after obtaining two degrees OP still could not follow bureaucratic process...

Without discussing the larger issue of immigration, might I suggest that the right outcome was reached in this particular case?

Job opportunities in the legal profession have decreased drastically in the last decade, and for all his rhetoric of "America wanting the best and brightest", it may have been hard to justify letting him stay when there is a glut of lawyers. This probably factored into the decision of his bosses not to pursue a green card for him.

The outcome would have been the same if the author was an engineer as well. The point is that the immigration is tied to your employer and unnecessarily long/complicated and full of uncertainties (such as lottery).

For example, let us say you are from outside US and got an admission to Harvard for MBA. Now what you have to decide is whether it is fine for you to spend ~$200k in 2 yrs in education at Harvard and then potentially returning back to your country since if your name doesn't come in the H1 lottery - that is what you have to do. There is no 2nd chance. These kind of decisions is what is keeping out a number of bright ppl from coming to US and look elsewhere for opportunities.

I'd say sponsoring for a green card is usually not a good move for an employer, as the employee will have more freedom to change jobs once he gets the green card. Also it's a very long and costly process.

They'd have to really want to keep the employee, and to have exhausted all other visa options.

I know that some employers treat green card sponsorship similar to a bonus: if you leave before z years after getting the green card, you owe them $x0,000.

Pretty sure that's illegal.

this sounds like indentured servitude, and i suspect there are laws against this.

I work for customers in the US as a software consultant (paid at New York rates) but because of the hassle and difficulties to get a visa there, I do not live there. This means that I get money from the US but I do not reinject it in the economy, I also do not pay taxes in the US. I'm a net loss for this country all because of the visa policies.

same. i work for us companies but i contribute 0 to us economy while contributing a lot to local economy.

scratch that -- i contribute a little by traveling to the us every once in a while (on vacations).

and even that visa, business/vacation was a big pain in the ass to get because for the us gov't i was going to stay in the us forever and ever because i happen to do work for american companies. i had to show the us gov't a ton of documents (from my marriage certificate to my tax returns and bank statements) to prove that not only i lived here but i also would go back.

and you know what the guy that was interviewing me said at the end of the visa interview? "i'm going to trust you". even after showing a ton of documents, it came to that -- a guy trusting me or not.

(btw, my wife also got her visa but it was way easier. she basically showed my passport with my visa and entry stamps and they said "ok!")

(btw 2: i was never more scared in my life than when i went to us for the first time. the border control point inside the airport was just insane, it felt like i was going to get arrested and deported at any time. there, i also had to provide a good reason for coming into the us + show the border control office my plane tickets, hotel reservation, money i had with me, credit card statement... otherwise i would get deported).

I agree with the gist of what you're saying, that the US is losing out on that valuable tax money.

However, I'd argue you're still a net gain for the US, because your work - the value derived from it - is very likely quite a lot more valuable than what you're charging for it. In tech, often worker input is worth several times what they're paid for it. You're making a valuable net contribution to the US economy.

Not as much of a net gain as it would be if you were here also paying taxes.

That is true. Otherwise I wouldn't be working for very long :)

The services you provide to US customers are more valuable than the money you are paid for those services, so it's still a net gain for the US.

There's still an opportunity loss.

It's tough to say without knowing all the details, but even though you may be getting New York rates going into your pocket, the companies that are hiring you are not paying taxes into Social Security, unemployment, workers comp, etc.

So you're actually still cheaper for those employers than having an employee in the United States; ergo, you're undercutting American workers.

Well, not really in my case, I charge as much ($150/hour) as a contractor in New York that would be paying Social Security tax and so on by himself (mostly because I also have to pay all of those things and it's not cheap in France: 42% of my income about)... But yes it's true that this also happens in some situation

Could I ask what exactly is it that you do and how do you get on this path? I'm trying to explore options where I can work for US companies from somewhere else.

But you're a net gain for the country where you do live.

I'm also from New Zealand, also went to Yale (albeit as a graduate not undergrad), and also had my mother tell me I was "very American". And I also ran out of options for US visas after 5 years (10 years away from NZ in total), despite a Yale MBA and McKinsey on my resume.

More to the point I stopped trying, seeing that the system was structured against me, and that my ambition of starting my own company(s) was not going to be doable in the USA. (I'd previously started a company in Canada, and already knew that stable immigration status is a prerequisite for a stable/growing business.)

I've been in New Zealand since 2003. It's increasingly wonderful here.

It's so easy to start businesses (I've co-founded several), to invest in businesses (over 20 so far) and to get things done. The early stage eco-system is taking off, led by companies like Xero, Trade Me, Orion Health and Vend, and with others like Timely (@timely), Raygun.io and a growing ecosystem around Xero following. We have seen successful start of crowdfunding, but raising money is still not as easy as it could be (I'm trying to help change that).

Meanwhile the politicians are accessible and not corrupt or extreme, the country is staggeringly beautiful, the food delicious and nutritional, and the economy floated through the GFC as our bankers were sensible and bolstered by solid laws. Auckland is increasingly multicultural and we have free trade agreements with China and many other countries - over 2 billion people worth. And we consistently get near the top of the World Bank's Doing Business rankings and Transparency International's (lack of) Corruption Index - justifiably. I hope the author comes home - NZ is a different place 15 years on.

Investor in some of these, directly or through Punakaikifund.co.nz.

I graduated in Auckland 2 years ago and had assumed I would have to leave the country to find interesting work. Stumbled into the startup community and now I'm completely addicted, yet don't see myself needing to leave the country any time soon. And I'm not even working out of a main center.

Politicians not corrupt? I haven't lived in NZ for 8 years but they are more corrupt today than 8 years ago, without a doubt.

It seems to me that labor is at a significant disadvantage when capital can move from country to country and is welcomed with open arms wherever it goes, but workers are locked into whatever situation they were born into.

Free movement of goods, labour and capital. Miss out one and you don't have a free market, you're just being scammed.

And that’s what makes the huge difference between Schengen and free trade agreements like TTIP. (If one ignores the protection part of TTIP)

Schengen is for citizens only. If you are third-country national who is a permanent resident of a Schengen country, with an unlimited right to work, you have exactly ZERO right to live or work in any other Schengen country. Sure, you can travel by land without having your passport checked, but that's as far as it goes.

The European Union is a Union until you need it to behave like one, and then it isn't.

A friend of mine works in shipping at a reputable and profitable firm. His roommate, a Greek national also engaged with the firm, was "deported". Twice. He wasn't literally thrown out of the country but it amounted to as much, having similar visa issues.

His employer, unlike the author, sponsored him. However, two separate lawyers were unable to secure him a place in the country. One made a costly mistake and was fired, however the damage was done. My friends roommate made it back to the company for a month or so, before having to permanently relocate to one of the other offices, again, this time permanently.

These stories are not unique. People who are well educated and top performers in their sector are being turned away. Look at many successful entrepreneurs, Levchin, Musk, Collison, etc. and it is obvious the US benefits extremely well from allowing well qualified individuals immigrate.

Has it actually been shown that if we were to throw open the borders to STEM employees that it would result in a net economic gain? Because as far as I can tell, movements to get droves of women and immigrants into software is entirely driven by companies' desire for cheaper labor.

We're not really talking about opening the borders to STEM employees. We're talking about keeping highly educated people, educated at US universities, in the country.

There is some exploitation that happens, but by and large people are going to pay market rate +-15%, minus administrative costs. Administrative costs for hiring immigrants are extremely high, so it makes sense that their wages might be a bit less. (The best way to raise their wages is to reduce the administrative costs.)

The system as it is structured right now is basically designed as a foreign aid program. It encourages foreigners to come to the US, get a degree, work for a few years while saving a lot of money, then go home and invest it in building a new business not in this country.

I don't know of a comprehensive study that has been done (although there probably is) that links qualified individuals immigrating with net economic growth. However, if you look at it like VC investing, it would be worth letting 1000 people in to get an entrepreneur capable of making a Stripe, Tesla, etc. According to this forbes article[0] 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies were started by immigrants. Obviously, many were started a long time ago, however I think the sentiment is the same. We want to benefit from brain drains in other countries, and we want smart people who are emigrating to see America as a top choice.

[0]http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml

There's no way to show that but to do it. I welcome such an experiment.

By similar logic, it is obvious that the US benefits extremely well from allowing political asylum.

Levchin's family got political asylum in the US. Levchin was about 16 yers old at the time. Unless you include political/religious oppression as one of the qualifying attributes, his immigration to the US wasn't due to 'allowing well qualified individuals [to] immigrate'.

Sergey Brin's family also decided to move to the US because of political/religious oppression. His father had a PhD in math and a job at GOSPLAN, then a temporary research position at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques. Did that make him well qualified?

"Numerous American friends, when the subject of my immigration status came up, have said to me things to the effect of, "Why don't you just become a citizen?""

I totally recognize my own friends in this. Americans have no clue how difficult it is to obtain a green card or a citizenship.

One of my friends was dating a girl from Asia, she was in the US under a work or student visa. She decided to attend a school in Europe for 2 years, their plan was to do the long distance thing for 2 years and then she would come back. I told him many times "Dude, if she leaves and gives up her visa she won't be able to come back". They ignored me, naively thinking that she would just get a new visa. 2 years later, she couldn't make it back to the US and stayed in Europe (or moved back to Asia, not sure).

fiance visa, can take a long time and she has to stay outside of the US during that time, but that was the proper though very annoy approach for that situation.

As an American who immigrated to The Netherlands I would like to know of this mythical country in the world with a working immigration system. AFAICT they're all rather broken.

US immigration might be broken in different ways than some other countries, but from the many stories I've heard of friends moving all over the world, they all pretty much suck.

Australia. I got my PR (green card equivalent) after working 3 years and applying for citizenship now (5 years since I arrived here). Spent less than AUD 10k total for immigration, including my partner visas. Processing times are reasonable and very transparent.

It's not a perfect system but way better than most countries.

I'll admit it's less broken than most places, but it's still pretty nuts at times: http://gyrovague.com/2012/08/10/notarizing-your-fingerprints...

Singapore used to be ridiculously awesome (work visa approvals usually processed in under 24 hours), but they've really tightened the screws in the last few years, particularly on granting permanent residence, due to political reasons.

As an immigrant to both France and Germany I agree with you. Every immigration system seems completely broken and disconnected from reality.

Canada is pretty good. The points system sets a reasonably high bar but at least it's fairly objective. Once you're in the path from temporary foreign worker to permanent resident to citizen is well defined and works fairly well despite the slow processing times.

Australian immigration is fairly simple if you have tech background and all your papers are in order.

I moved from India to Aus on PR visa.

This strikes too close to home. I am packing my bags and heading out soon too. I have spent 5 years here and have a masters in computer science from a top ranked school. The H1B visa is essentially a lottery which locks out talent from American companies. I failed to get a visa through the lottery process and I have to head back home too.

The H1B is now primarily used by outsourcing companies to move jobs overseas. Previously 15 years ago it was largely used to bring talent to the US not to take the jobs outside.

Changing the H1B so it a) it cannot be used to transfer jobs outside of the US and b) provides a path that after the first 3 years the employee can apply for a green card without sponsorship.

Both those things would largely solve a lot of the current H1B issues.

> The H1B is now primarily used by outsourcing companies to move jobs overseas.

How do they do that?

It saddens me to hear this. I wish you had been able to stay. I know how painful it is to leave a place that you made your home for 5 years. Your situation reminded me of a similar story I read of a while ago: http://app.fwd.us/stories/429

The immigration system here is really broken. I wish people would recognize that more, and fight for change.

If he came illegally from Mexico, there would be plenty of people fighting for him to stay.

Drawing on this story and [others](http://politicaloutcast.com/2013/02/usa-trying-to-deport-chr...), it seems immigrants are only protected if they are willing to break U.S. law. It is a very dangerous incentive to deport those not breaking the law and welcome those who do. People might get the wrong idea.

As somebody who has lived 18 years in this country and just _barely_ managed to get a green card 2 years ago, I completely understand what you are going through. I am sorry it has come to this - it sucks big time and most people will not understand how little you can do about this. IMHO, the best course of action would be to find an employer and apply for a visa next April. If you are lucky, you'll be able to get back here by September. I hope it all works out.

I am in a similar situation, except I am an entrepreneur. I came to the US in 2007 on an L-1 visa to start up a new business here. The business needed to reach ten full-time employees to allow me to transfer to a Green Card, but after six years and hundreds of thousands of dollars investment of my own money, the business failed, and with it my visa and any chance of the Green Card disappeared. So now, after all that investment, and years of employing U.S citizens, I have to start the entire process again from zero. I have to leave the U.S. and re-apply. That said, it's worth it because the U.S. market is where the action is. I hope that the entrepreneur visa will come along soon and make it a little easier for job creators like me to be able to stay here.

Reading this types of cases and I really don't understand the american immigration system, I am from Honduras and there have been hundred of thousands hondurans migrating illegally to the US since the 90s, and a lot of them became legal due to threaties like the TPS, and most of them don't even have university degrees

It's a feudal, authoritarian immigration system. I suggest a return to pre-1914 policies: any peaceful, healthy, productive individual is welcome. (Footnote: this means abolishing the Welfare State. Ready?)

Yes the immigration system is broken; it's difficult to obtain sponsorship from an employer. But I feel like the author gave up after asking the few places where he worked. Sometimes you need to try harder.

With 2 renewals of 3-year H1B work visa, you do not have much time to shop around for employers sponsoring permanent residency. It is a long process in itself , and usually companies want the employee to work for them until they file the paperwork. That means, you are not putting yourself out there for bigger and better options, even if you have any - since you're tied to the employer until they file. Also the author said it correct - it is extremely difficult for one to startup on their own - since it is not favorable as well on work visas. It just does not make sense that an immigrant having got their higher education in US, are asked to leave and usually the ones that leave may be ambitious, having hopped multiple jobs without tying themselves to one employer and gathered enough expertise in their fields, both academic and industry. Immigration reform in this aspect, is therefore, warranted.

I agree. I'm an Italian national and I studied at a U.S. university. Reform is badly needed. I just don't think people should be entitled to stay in a country just because they have pursued a degree there.

"Sometimes you need to try harder." You mean search for an employer whom would sponsor citizenship? The article explained it is quite expensive - do employer sponsored citizenships happen?

Nobody sponsors citizenship. They can sponsor you for a green card (permanent residency). It costs thousands of dollars (I have been told in the range of $12,000, without considering attorney's fees). But it locks you in with the employer for several years, and when you consider the amount of money that you can generate for a company, combined with the fact that you will probably get an average or below average salary to compensate for the green card costs, this is not an absolutely terrible deal for the employer. You have to have some valuable skills that justify the employer knowing right away that he/she wants to keep you for several years!

He means "Search for an employer willing to sponsor your green card". There is no direct route to citizenship unless you are born here.

Citizenship is trivial once you have a green card, you just have to wait 5 years and pass a civics test.

Getting the green card is the hard part.

It's difficult for the reasons stated by the author. You have to convince an employer to sponsor your H1 befor you even start working for them. Also, they need to apply for your visa and hope it comes through before you start work.

I agree with the author that the process is absurd, as many of my colleagues have gone through it. But, as far as I understand it, employer sponsorship is not the only path to a green card. One colleague and friend works at a startup, and he is pursuing his green card himself, through an immigration lawyer he hired. It is not cheap - with lawyer fees and all, I believe it's in the $20,000 range - and it requires making the case that you're a top performer in your field.

At the least, if you find yourself in the author's position, consult an immigration lawyer.

I know someone who went down this route; an honors ivy league graduate who chose a smaller, more exciting firm rather than a large stagnant one.

The lawyer didn't raise any concerns based on historical precedence, but immigration had decided to apply their rules with increased strictness: her firm was not large enough and she would have to leave within 3 months, and could not re-apply for 6.

Good use of $20k.

That top performer category is hard to get. It's for world class people, like professional athletes, world renown artists, or Nobel Prize winners.

It is hard to get, but I don't think you need to be literally a Nobel Prize winner: http://www.curranberger.com/eb1_niw/eb-1a-frequently-asked-q...

I believe it's the category my colleagues have gone for, but meeting 3-5 items in that list comes as a result of graduating from a PhD program.

Here's one solution: http://www.hblist.com/immigr.htm

"This is a defense of a policy of absolutely open immigration, without border patrols, border police, border checks, or passports."

Its a slow evening and I was curious about how many times people mentioned different places (countries) in the comments to this post. So I ran the Stanford (Named Entity) Analyzer on the copy of the comments so far.

Here is what I got so far (a gist is here: https://gist.github.com/ayush/6efe681ba968123605fd):

US 108 Canada 42 America 42 U.S. 25 Zealand 20 Europe 18 NZ 17 Japan 16 China 13 France 12 India 11 UK 10 USA 10n Australia 10 EU 9 Germany 9 United 8 Switzerland 7 States 6 us 6 Netherlands 5 Korea 5 South 5 Asia 5 area 4 York 4 Auckland 4 Mexico 4 California 3 Italy 3 Spain 3 china 3 U.S 3 Bay 3 Brazil 2 bay 2 London 2 Ireland 2 Norway 2 Denmark 2 kameez 1 Usano 1 america 1 Francisco 1 Arabia 1 North 1 Vatican 1 Colombia 1 devouredSouth 1 Berlin 1 Africa 1 Britain 1 U.S.Another 1 City 1 Hollywood 1 Turkey 1 Saudi 1 Tesla 1 Honduras 1 U.S.A. 1 S. 1 Amazon 1 Oregon 1 San 1 south 1 shalwar 1 Pakistan 1 Amsterdan 1 PERM 1 Amsterdam 1 Numbeo 1 Nigeria 1 Croatia 1 Philippines 1 StatesFolks 1 Samoa 1 States7 1 GOSPLAN 1 earth 1 Israel 1 Schleswig-Holstein 1

Here is an update on this US 132 Canada 49 America 46 U.S. 32 New 23 Europe 23 Japan 20 Zealand 20 NZ 18 Australia 17 China 16 USA 15 India 13 France 13 UK 12 EU 10 Germany 9 Switzerland 9 Netherlands 9 United 7 Haiti 7 Mexico 7 us 6 States 5 South 5 Brazil 5 Auckland 5 Korea 5 Asia 5 Britain 4 Amsterdam 4 Spain 4 area 4 Italy 4 York 4 china 4 California 3 Pakistan 3 Ireland 3 Norway 3 Denmark 3 U.S 3 Bay 3 bay 2 Turkey 2 London 2 Nigeria 2 Croatia 2 Samoa 2 Israel 2 Montreal 2 Schleswig-Holstein 2 Colombia 2 Honduras 2 Portugal 1 america 1 Western 1 Francisco 1 Vatican 1 devouredSouth 1 Seattle 1 17 1 18 1 Africa 1 Hollywood 1 Saudi 1 Tesla 1 U.S.A. 1 S. 1 Amazon 1 Yemen 1 south 1 Adelaide 1 Thailand 1 Amsterdan 1 btw 1 the 1 States7 1 GOSPLAN 1 kameez 1 Usano 1 Arabia 1 North 1 new 1 Berlin 1 Moldova 1 U.S.Another 1 City 1 Texas 1 Oregon 1 San 1 Afghanistan 1 shalwar 1 Manila 1 Russia 1 Rotterdam 1 PERM 1 Numbeo 1 US.I 1 Philippines 1 Quebec 1 StatesFolks 1 earth 1

Articles like this describe one of my biggest problems with proposed immigration reforms. How many countless people have left the U.S. due to losing their legal status - or been outright denied a visa to begin with? It seems to me that giving status to people that have already broken the law is downright unjust to those that have followed it...

For people from some countries like India and China, the wait after finding an employer willing to sponsor green card is still a big killer. Typically people have to wait for 6-7 years now to get green card after first filing it. While I agree with the author, I feel he did not try to find someone willing to sponsor his green card with other employers. If your employer does not respond favorably to your requests about sponsoring your green card, find another employer willing to sponsor it while you still have time left on your current visa. And since the author is from NZ, it would not have taken him more than a year to get his green card had he found someone willing to sponsor him.

It looks like the author was working in the legal profession, with a large number of lawyers also looking for work. I suspect that in this case, it becomes harder for the company to file a green card application.

Last I checked, there are a lot of unemployed lawyers, including grads from Ivy League Law schools. So why should someone from another country be employed law job (as opposed to some esoteric field of science where there simply is nobody to do the job) when there are Americans that are searching for jobs?

Instead of choosing a profession like law where there is a surplus of lawyers, he should have chosen a job like nursing where there is a shortage and then he could have been a US citizen.

Simply baffling to me that this guy chooses a career like law where there is a surplus of Americans looking for jobs instead of a career like nursing where there is a shortage and then he complains!

Is it much easier in the EU? For example, can I go to Switzerland or France and easily get permanent residency?

Switzerland is not a part of the EU.

Right, but it's part of the Schengen area, which also covers most of the EU countries, so once you got a visa to e.g. France, you're free to work and live in Switzerland as well.

Alright what about France and Germany?

It depends where you are from. But it's not that hard for US and Canadian citizens if you have a job or want to study. You won't be thrown out as quickly as in the US.

You don't need to do anything inside the Schengen area in order to be allowed to "reside permanently". For the citizenship, it's a different issue I guess.

> Is it much easier in the EU?

You still need a job offer to first enter the country, but changing jobs will involve less bureaucracy than in the USA, and after having been employed in the country for 5-10 years, and speaking a local language, you can apply for permanent residency or citizenship yourself, so the hassle of needing you employer to do it for you, does not exist.

In the US, most H1B hires I personally know have had their green card sponsorship started within an year of hire. Then it takes about 2-3 years to get it finalized. I knew of one who even got the process started in 2 months.

So there are some differences from other countries but no 5-10 years wait.

The article comes across as whiny because he's a New Zealander. So cut the guy some slack, he can't help it :)

As an Australian working for a large tech company, I totally feel this guy's position. It never leaves me, the sense of being an imposter in this country on limited time. I've paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes in this country, hired dozens of Americans as a manager, and mentored many of them to greater heights. I am lucky to work for a company with deep pockets that wants to invest in my green card process, but if I step outside this bubble I step immediately into the world this author describes.

It is madness for the United States to put road blocks in front of skilled immigration. As a hiring manager, I can tell you that I always prefer to hire a local American where possible, simply because it's easier. That in itself is not great - to serve this large American company's interests on American soil, I should hire the best possible talent, not the most convenient talent, no matter their origin.

But in my case there is little American talent to hire. It is not because I'm a picky arsehole (although some would say I am), but just a function of the kind of positions I hire for and the place I do it. Once you cut it down to:

1) people who want to relocate to the Bay Area

2) people who want to work in the South Bay

3) people who want to work for this company

4) people who want the job

5) people who can actually do the job

There is just a tiny trickle of people left, and frequently I'm in competition with other tech companies to acquire them. And for foreign candidates, you can tack two small items on to that list:

6) people who want to move to the United States

7) people who qualify to get a work visa for the United States

Folks carry around this assumption that foreign workers are cheap Indians on H-1Bs who can blow in and out of the country on a whim, and that a large % of unemployed Americans are waiting in the wings to swoop in and take those positions if tech companies only paid the prevailing wage to attract them. The reality is way more complex than that. Not every immigrant is an Indian and not every unemployed American is a reprogrammable robot, able to do any open position I have on my books.

What I want to bring to this country - not that the United States government factors this in to my immigration status - is growth. That is what gave me the opportunities that got me here, and that is what I want to give back. Right now, I can go talk to my boss and create a job. I can create a job out of thin air! That pays >$100k a year! Me, a foreigner, I can do this. There is always more work to do.

And if I can hire the best and brightest then I can be more successful, and create more jobs. I stand a decent chance to create economic circumstances that bring opportunities across a spectrum of skills inside and outside my company. With more jobs, I can take risks on hiring under-qualified Americans to train them, just like people took a risk on me, a university drop out. And with more success I can attract more of the best and brightest Americans too.

My tangible contribution to this conversation is that work visa holders should have a full year to find another position, and should be allowed to start companies during that year. That would enable valuable economic risk taking for the people already here. For those trying to get in to the US, that's a diatribe for another day.

@hagmonk You have made some very good points. However "Not every immigrant is an Indian and not every unemployed American is a reprogrammable robot, able to do any open position I have on my books." is true but incomplete. Not every Indian is a cheap immigrant who's willing to work for less than their American counterparts. H1b was meant to "supplement" American workforce and not to "replace" them. Also in majority cases, H1b is filed by companies and the not individuals, so the way it is used is largely dependent on the business model of that company and how it best suites them. It's sad to see that an educated person like you boxes all Indian Immigrants as cheap laborers.

I agree that comment was probably unnecessary, but to be fair he said "... this assumption that foreign workers are cheap Indians on H-1Bs". He did not say all Indians are cheap or on H-1B's.

So no one seems to mentioning the one obvious fact (to me)... it seems like it's working as designed and there is a good reason why:

Part of US diplomacy is to educate foreigners and let them go back to their own countries so that those who are improving/leading said countries are more friendly to the US. It also is part of diplomacy to spread education so that the rest of the world can buy into our model of functional capitalist countries so we can have trade and not war or famine.

Wow a bunch of down votes, and why? Is it inaccurate? If so, leave a comment.

This article hit so close to home, and it brought a tear to my eye for the author. Just minutes before I saw this show up on my feed, I got an email from USCIS saying that my O1 petition has been approved after having attempted to get a visa for about 4 years (I know, it's kind of magically short in the grand scheme of things) down a variety of paths. It's still kind of surreal and hasn't fully registered, I can't wait to go back to the only place I've ever called home, the Bay Area.

My heart goes out to anyone else who is going through or will have to go through what I had to for the last 2-3 years, trying to work on my startup remotely as a digital nomad. It sounds like a romantic lifestyle, but it's wrought with difficulties leaving one on the edge of depression the whole time.

I'm happy to lend an understanding ear to anyone going through this right now. Having a government whimsically decide what direction your life takes professionally, socially, and culturally with no say of your own really makes you feel powerless.

I suppose immigrant laws are very scrupulously applied in case of immigrant lawyers. Why make it easier for foreign competition?

Wow, as an american I find this situation intolerably embarrassing. People like this built this country, and the fact that some useless bureaucratic entity designed by xenophobes and racists is kicking people out is incredibly depressing. I'd rather deport the inventors of these idiotic rules, we'd all be better off for that.

nothing is going to change, not anytime soon. At a minimum, this generation of immigrants is doomed.

I am fortunate enough to work for an employer who does sponsor employment-based residency. I'm also fortunate to be in the home stretch (should get my PR later this year). I'm also fortunate to be born in a country that doesn't have a massive backlog that add years to the process (those countries being India and China primarily).

Even so, by the end it will have taken almost 4 years. This isn't bad by the standards of what others have gone through but it's terrible we're in a situation where 4 years for PR is defined as "not terrible".

So I sympathize. I want to stay here too. But there are three things I want to say here.

1. As another poster said: maybe this is how it should end up. There is, after all, a glut of lawyers. This makes it difficult for an employer to justify the expense of going through the process;

2. Job losses and an abundance of qualified applicants make getting an LC far from certain. This isn't really a problem for tech companies. I imagine it's a huge problem for a law firm;

3. I see no mention of the DV lottery. I don't know the exact probabilities but applying 10-15 times from New Zealand must have a decent chance of your number coming up. Did he ever apply? If not, why not?

Contrary to what at least one poster said, it absolutely has zero impact on your nonimmigrant visa applications to have entered the DV lottery. over the years I applied probably 6 times? My number never came up. Not unexpected. I've met several people whose number did come up.

How long is the typical career in corporate law? How long does a job typically last with a law firm? I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. Is it 5-10 years? If not, will the employee still be around at the end? It seems reasonably likely they won't be.

So, my sympathies. It's a shame you're not Australian, because we have it easiest of probably anyone barring arguably Canadians.

Also a New Zealander. I did a 3 month internship in the Valley, and then did a 1 year internship after graduating - the idea was for me to get a H1B and stay on after that, but due to the cap being reached and losing out on the lottery my application was returned unprocessed. So I returned back to NZ and started a company here instead, we recently made our first two hires.

I still love the US and would much prefer to be building my company in the valley, but apparently I'm not wanted even after paying over a hundred thousand in taxes within a year of being there. The stress caused from not being able to stay in the country where I was building my life due to purely random chance, with nothing I could do about it, was massive.

I do hope to return to the US permanently at some point and that the system will be improved, but it seems that will take a while.

100k in taxes? You made 300k as an intern?

How different is American immigration policy than other similar countries, like Canada, the UK, Australia, and the author's New Zealand? I'm sympathetic to everyone trying to immigrate to the US, but I'm guessing he would have similar issues in any country. Probably less frustrating, though.

At the moment the UK is somewhat hostile to immigration from outside the EU. The UK government has pledged to reduce the number of immigrants coming into the UK but can't do anything about people coming from within the EU so is targeting immigration from outside the EU.

It is also difficult to get visas for non-EU spouses. Unless you can demonstrate sufficient funds to support them. You either need a good chunk of cash in the bank or a job paying at least 25k GBP per year (more if bringing children). This has made it difficult for a lot ExPats to return home with their families and has caused a lot of anger in that community.

There is also talk of further restrictions on non-EU immigrants such as requiring non-EU immigrants who aren't earning sufficient amounts to leave after 6 years. At the moment its just talk but given the current government it could easily become law.

It's almost trivially easy to get to Australia as long as you work in an "in demand" sector: STEM, nursing, etc.

Source: I did it.

By "get to" do you mean "live in Australia more or less permanently" or become a citizen? Just clarifying, since the article was discussing the latter.

I'm a New Zealand citizen. It's true. We do dream like that. But I visited America and I don't think I'll ever go back. I didn't see any culture. But I live in Asia now. There's heaps of culture here.

I didn't realize that culture was quantifiable?

what's your definition of culture?

I ask this to everyone else too

Honest question: If the author "had come to America to attend Yale." didn't they also research the requirements for citizenship or an extended stay? Did they decide the benefits outweigh the cons or did they just "hope" things would work out? Maybe they made the decision after attending Yale - was this decision not well informed?

I think criticism of the immigration system is warranted and valid, just that potential immigrants need to understand the flaws in the system before they invest in a new life within America's borders.

It is very unusual for 18-year-olds to accurately plan for what they will when they are 33.

Most people don't plan their lives out like you are suggesting. They take opportunities as they come, and build their life as it comes along. He attended Yale, liked America, stayed, worked and built a life for 15 years. I find this reasonable, and consider it unrealistic to expect him to, at any point during that time, to just abandon his current life because he might not be able to stay.

Right, but what happened between 18 and 33. At some point the author must have realized "the system is fucked" but decided (for multiple reasons) to risk continuing to work and live with the US.

It's one thing to attend university for 4 years, get a job and then head home. Quite another thing to base/commit your entire life/career in the US without a clear path to citizenship.

I'm not saying the author should "suck it up" but rather it seems many take this risk, knowing the dangers and therefore shouldn't be surprised or shocked to eventually have to leave (given a gap in employment)

I am in the situation you are suggesting.

People like the author and me are not surprised, but rather disappointed (and sad).

Basically, the rule is that your first job after college should be with an employer that will sponsor your green card application. I knew that when I graduated and it was my number one criterion when looking for a job. Most of my foreign-born friends knew it too and they did the same. Most, but not all. The ones who didn't due to naivete, carelessness, or limited job opportunities ran into problems later. You have only 6 years on an H1B and time flies quickly. US society is in general very welcoming to immigrants, especially highly-skilled ones, so it's easy to forget that you are just a guest here subject to the vagaries of the system. Getting the green card should be the absolute priority when selecting an employer, no compromise.

The problem is that you generally don't realize "the system is fucked" until you've spent several years in the system and you suddenly drop into a kafka-esque black hole because someone put one wrong date on a 50 pages filing.

Also due to the duration of time involved changes in the law can both screw you up or make it possible. Can you predict what the legal system will be like 6 years down the road ?

Read the article. The author mentions that he repeatedly requested his employer to sponsor his GC. They made him wait and eventually declined. He tried to change employers at that stage because he knew he needed a path to GC, but was unlucky and got screwed at that stage.

There is not much more he could have done.

I have friends from Europe who went to graduate school in the USA. They had to go back to Europe after a decade in school here because they didn't get jobs. They had another friend who was in a similar situation. They knew is was hard for international students to manage to get hired in my field but, like all of us, thought they would beat the odds. They didn't and now have had to rebuild their lives back in their home country.

Even when we know the odds are against us we want to think we will be special and make it even if we know it isn't realistic.

The Yale degree is still valuable even if the author can't stay in the United States.

Yup. There's quite a bit of white privilege dripping from this article. I'm supposed to feel sorry for a Ivy League lawyer? What if this was written by a 33-year old Haitian who went to Cal State Fullerton? Would it get the same reaction on HN? Or would it even be published by vox?

For me most awful thing in immigration that i can't marry green card holder at all. Because we need to wait 5 years abroad and she can't leave country for more than half year for conversion Green Card to citizenship and i can't came to US because i am married in permanent resident. Why, hell, i can't may woman that i love and with whom i want to make family? I am extremely skilled worker and done two businesses in my country and i wanted to make more in US.

Are there any countries where the immigration system is not "broken" in this way?

I have seen some in the past with "entrepreneur" or "retirement" visas: you are allowed to stay in the country if you promise to spend a lot of money, but that doesn't seem optimal for this kind of case. I've also heard of places desperately seeking workers, but that also doesn't seem to fit the current American situation.

Canada (and I believe some other countries, like Australia) has a points based system. You can fill in a PR (equivalent to US Green Card) application from the comfort of your home country. When you are filling up the application, you can tally the points and know for sure whether you meet the cut-off to have your application be granted - i.e. you don't need to submit if you aren't going to make it. Points are given for your age (younger is better), education (masters is better than just bachelors) and your language proficiency (in English and French), among others.

Then, you wait a while and once the application is granted, you directly get PR. You have a period of time - say 1 yr - to move to Canada, and another period within which you should find a job.

i.e. - when you apply for a job, you are already a permanent resident.

Now that's what I would call a humane immigration system that also manages to attract 'desirable' immigrants. If Canada had America's weather, I would have never moved to the US.

I spent many years waiting to get my Canadian paperwork sorted out and spent a small fortune doing so. In the end I gave up and moved back to NL.

> Are there any countries where the immigration system is not "broken" in this way?

It's interesting because you'll often see people complaining about how immigrating to Japan is hard. It usually gets brought up when news about their declining population hits the front page. "Well maybe if they made it easier to immigrate they wouldn't have a problem!" is a common comment to see.

Only, that's wrong. Their immigration is pretty standard. It has nearly identical requirements as the U.S and Canada. In fact, it's actually easier to become a Japanese citizen than it is to become a U.S citizen. Japan allows immigration from more countries than the U.S.

Another thing is that if you're married or have a job in Japan, they'll let you stay with a green card indefinitely. No need to become a naturalized citizen. It's incredibly rare for them to "change their minds" and revoke a green card. It's practically unheard of unless you commit a crime of some sort. Even then, there's still a good chance they won't unless your crime is severe.

My point is that most countries have similar requirements for immigration. If you've only tried immigrating to a single country, you have nothing to compare too. Immigration isn't supposed to be easy and you should expect tedious and head banging bureaucracy.

Forget the immigration laws.... It's impossible to live legally in US as skilled worker or anything like this. I know a lot of people who went there, lived as illegals without graduation or any kind of specialization for a long time and now they have green card or citizenship. But I also know two guys who had H1B or academic visas, the only one who is still there got married, to other one had to come back.

This hits home in so many ways than one. I came to this country at 17 to attend college, 2 degrees and 8 years later I was recently let go. Thankfully I'm an Engineer in SF so it shouldn't be too bad to find another employer and get back, but still I'm looking at a good 6-7 weeks out of the country in order to get a new visa for a new employer before I can transfer my status.

Considering U-6 unemployment is about 12% right now, perhaps this is a feature and not a bug. I still don't understand why Disney and others are allowed to do the things they do with abusing H1B's. Or why firms think they need someone with some fraudulent/substandard foreign degree instead of investing in domestic workers.

There's a discussion about labor to be had here and it should be focused on domestic labor abuses. Unfortunately, these things are rarely discussed and H1B and other abusive programs only rarely flare up in the news, everyone sees them for what they are, but there's no political will to fight them.

Immigration's external costs are ignored as well. The source country is constantly having a brain drain, for example. Its amusing to me to see HN'ers with this pretentious global perspective who have no problem taking the top 20% of the people from countries that need them and thinking themselves humanitarians because they got them a coding job in the valley.

If we started being serious about cutting immigration, there would be more political pressure for these foreign countries to get their shit straight. More local entrepreneurs, more devs focusing on local problems, etc. The status quo right now of fleeing to Western ecomomies just guarantees poor outcomes in poorer nations. We shouldn't be proud of that. Jogesh shouldn't be writing disposable freemium games for some rich guy's son who thinks himself "the next Steve Jobs," he should be helping Indians and the Indian economy with his skills.

Why should hiring managers be required to give you preferential treatment vs. someone born in a much poorer country who happens to be willing to do the same (or, likely, better) work for a lower cost?

Its a cute fact that you and the hiring manager were both lucky enough to have parents who lived in the U.S. when you were born, but that doesn't make you a better or more worthy person than someone born in a poorer country. (You already have access to a stronger social safety in the form of unemployment, social security, subsidized healthy insurance, etc if you find yourself unable to compete with foreign talent.)

The idea that some people should be considered more worthy than others by our society just because of where they were born or who there parents are is the definition of xenophobia and racism.

You should read up on the literature on brain drain. In addition to your comment being morally abhorrent ("people born in poor countries should be forced to stay there and fix shit so people born in rich countries don't have to deal with it") its also not well supported by the facts. Giving people the chance to get high returns from their education incentivizes a much larger group of people to invest in their education than end up leaving the country.

Given that the same worker ends up making 2-3x in a developed country what they would with their exact same skills in a poorer country and ends up sending much of that extra money back in the form of remittances, immigration is generally a positive force for those "left behind" (not to mention those who immigrate).

"If we started being serious about cutting immigration, there would be more political pressure for these foreign countries to get their shit straight."

Spoken like someone who never had the idea of moving to another country.

Here is the problem - those 12% unemployed will still walk around pretending that USA is the bestest country in the world where people have 'gotten their shit together', than to move to a different country and get a job - something that is unbelievably insanely easy if you are an American citizen.

Well said. Those 12% can move abroad, with the manufacturing jobs, for example. But no, that would be out of the question.

Why don't you let Jogesh decide for himself what he'd like to do?

He certainly can, but as a citizen I should have preferential right to work instead of my job taken from me and handed to H1B's.

Consider this: Maybe one of the biggest challenges today for the USA to unleash its true potential, is the sense of entitlement that has been allowed to grow on top of the foundation that the US society builders laid down through hard work. Many of which were immigrants, ironically.

Do you have a law degree?

Do Fortune 500 companies trust you to represent them?

The job will just remain unfilled when the author leaves the US...

Come to Australia. If you have two degrees and speak English, should be reasonably easy. Also Australia is better than America :)

I sympathize with the author, the path to a green card is ridiculous. [1] But that's where my sympathies stop.

It's not a hidden process either. If staying here matters to you better work tirelessly to put yourself on a path to permanent residency and you better be the one to push it daily or it won't happen.

Here we have a highly educated, Ivy Leaguer with a LAW DEGREE, who didn't.

But about 500,000 people a year do and I can guarantee that very few of those people have the kind of education chops this guy has.

> From college to law school to professional life, from student visa to work visa, I have scrupulously followed every immigration regulation, paid all my taxes, filed all the papers I had to file, and have not so much as received a parking ticket.

Fantastic, thanks for being a conscientious visitor. None of these things are part of getting permanent residency.

It sucks, but here's the options for somebody in this pickle:

1 - Only take a job that's willing to put you on a path to a Greencard. It costs your employer money, so be willing to take a pay-cut to compensate. It might suck, but deal with it because once you get your papers you're home free and can go out and pursue other work on the market at higher pay. It might take years to get it, but you need to keep pressing this issue if it matters to you. It mattered to the author, and he left it up to the whims of other people.

2 - Marry a citizen/permanent resident. Welcome to America, we have literally tens of millions of prospects for you. In this case the author had 15 years to hit the dating scene. (this is how my wife immigrated, and we were stupid college kids without a lawyer or any degree, before there were several major simplifications to the process and we managed it on our first try by using the novel technique of reading instructions, following them, then following up with immigration to make sure things were progressing. It took us about 3 solid years, but we managed it. I understand from other people who've been through the process more recently that it's much simpler and faster than what we went through back in the stone age)

> But if you wish to follow the rules, as I do, then it must be a bona fide marriage. And if you take important personal decisions such as marriage seriously, then you may not wish to have their timing dictated by Homeland Security...And now is not the right time for marriage.

Insert snarky response about not finding somebody after 15 years of hitting the dating scene. It can't be that bad.

3 - Apply for the Lottery. 50,000 Green-cards are issues yearly.

It doesn't appear that in 15 years, the author bothered to do that. [2]

Sorry that's the way it is. But it is what it is. I have a hard time stirring up any more sympathy. This is an essay of excuses.

So given the three available options, two of which the author appears to be aware of (and learning about the 3rd took me all of 35 seconds), he didn't strongly pursue any of them? Part of the American Religion is figuring this stuff out. And the hundreds of thousands of issued green-cards per year, often to people who don't even speak the majority language, is testament that this is not only achievable, but is regularly achievable -- it just takes a little tenacity.

It's a terrible system, possibly the worst in American government, but it's not like it's unknowable or unachievable. In fact here's the website to do it [3]

Reading is hard, action is harder.

1 - http://immigrationroad.com/green-card/immigration-flowchart-...

2 - http://www.uscis.gov/green-card/other-ways-get-green-card/gr...

3 - http://www.uscis.gov/greencard

Thank you for this. I know janitors, housemaids, and carpenters, as well as engineers and college educators who managed getting a green card just fine. People come here not speaking the language and make their way through the system. It's a byzantine, insane system, but that's government for you.

There are people screwed by the immigration system, by Homeland Security, and by pure bad luck. This kid does not sound like one of those people. He left the job tied to his work visa - awesome, that's your choice. Your altruistic job fell through, leaving you high and dry? Where was your back up plan? I find it very hard to believe someone with an Ivy League education can't find a job in this country.

> It doesn't appear that in 15 years, the author bothered to do that.

The author seems to have a very specific mindset, that possibly only some New Zealanders and North Europeans have, that they feel it's morally wrong to try to game the system.

He tried to play by the rules. Not only in letter, but also in spirit, and he assumed the system would respond in kind.

If you are from a country where gaming the system is the social norm, this mindset may be very difficult to understand.

I think you overestimate the straight-forwardness of this. Option #2 means including economic incentives in your relationship ("I better rush towards marrying someone, lest I get kicked out!"). Option #3 is very restricted -- if you are on a non-immigrant visa (e.g. student visa), then the simple fact of applying for the lottery (and thus signalling immigration intent) will likely make you ineligible for a renewal.

Option #1 is actually fairly easy. But it often means taking a less exciting job than, say, an early stage startup. I have to agree with you that the author didn't have his priorities straight.

It is very likely that the first time he applied for the lottery he would lose his visa and have to leave the US for an indeterminate period of time. The way it works in practice, people that had another visa before are at a disadvantage in the lottery. It is also not free.

Military service was potentially another route though, but may have been intractable due to circumstances like student loans or military fitness requirements relating to a disability or some such.

Moderate, specific levels of immigration, legal only. Weighted point system; random draw.

Capital can move to where labor is cheaper. No need for USA to have population density of Japan, China or India.

I can't blame people for wanting to flee corruption, but some people staying and fighting is a better way to make the world better.

I spent 2.5 years living in Europe and just moved back to the US because my wife couldn't find a job there. After two months back in a place with values (buy all the things) and culture (work all your life) I find abhorrent, I'm terrified we won't be able to get back in.

Possibly more important, "becoming an American" (which seems to mean Usano as I am an American because I live in one of and have citizenship in one of the countries of America) means you get to pay US incometaxes on your income anywhere in the world for the rest of your life.

"Again, an employer can sponsor an employee's green card, but the employer must again bear the costs, which can run to the tens of thousands of dollars, and again the employee cannot offer to pay the cost."

Why don't you just reimburse the employer the costs?

This isn't how the law works, a court would most likely not treat this any different than directly violating the law

It is kind of surprising to learn that those Big Law Firms rolling in huge piles of cash minute by the minute do not want to spend a mere couple of thousands for a member of their team.

Is it because petitioning for a candidate without a STEM degree is that much harder?

I should think it makes sense to name this law firm so others can be warned.

It's exploitative to hire somebody brilliant with full knowledge that you can simply do nothing and you won't have to deal them into partnership.

For most people to sponsor an employment green card you have to show that you cannot find a qualified citizen or PR to fill the position. This is easier for some professions (STEM most notably) than others.

Also there are restrictions on when a company can file. For example if the company has gone through layoffs then generally it can't sponsor people for several months.

I spent 14 years in France on the same fool's errand. Same situation.

The biggest factor in one's chances of success in life depends upon one's country of citizenship. That's a fact. It should be obvious so I am not stating any sources or research data.

As a Canadian here on a work visa, this was sad to read.

Luckily us Canadians have NAFTA so its easy to get a work permit. It's sad that this great country is turning really intelligent people away.

Yeah similar story is happening to me. The USCIS denying my VISA transfer requests for no reason. They fail to provide anything other than utter bullshit.

The article mentions we kick out the brightest, but there's actually a way to specifically immigrate using your educational prowess [1]. Basically, you need a masters of higher.

You got 2 degrees, were here for ~15 years.. surely research was done to find out how to immigrate? If you spent the time to get 2 degrees, I'd figure getting a masters would have been the more obvious choice...

[1]: http://www.workpermit.com/us/employer_eb2.htm

Green Card needs to be filed by employer and cannot be independently by the immigrant himself. The author is not disputing the point that there is a way to get in. The challenge is that at all points you have to completely rely on your employer to file and pay for all the visas and green cards. As anyone who has gone through the green card process can attest, it is a very complicated and lengthy process. It requires you to convince your company to spend 10s of thousands on dollars to file for your green card which doesn't potentially benefit the company itself. It requires putting out ads on newspapers, interviewing some candidates and then explaining why they can't be a fit. This is unlike some other countries (such as Australia or UK) where you can file your own immigration application if you check off certain things (such as level of education, no. of years employed etc.)

Also, the visa itself is not a guarantee considering it is a lottery. So even if you have a masters degree, it won't help you a lot in terms of getting you through the H1 lottery.

He says he got a law degree (J.D.) and actually links to the Columbia class of 2009 where he is listed. So that's a "professional doctorate," definitely greater than a masters.

There is another way to get a green card that I don't think anyone has mentioned. EB5. However, you have to already be rich to apply.

and the reverse? how hard is it to become a citizen of New Zealand?

Easy compared to the US: https://www.newzealandnow.govt.nz/

TL;DR: Get a job offer for a "skill in demand" (like IT), live in NZ for five years on a work visa, and granting citizenship is almost automatic.

US immigration rules would be much saner if people born here had to jump through the same hoops, wait in the same lines, fill out the same forms, and go through the same process for citizenship, as people not born here.

In fact, it's downright oppressive that the government of the United States treats its own citizens differently than citizens of foreign countries.

"I have two Ivy League degrees. And I am on the verge of deportation."

So you obviously deserve to come here, while the people living on $1 a day in extreme poverty and under oppressive regimes, they should be kept out? No, you didn't say all that, but I'm passionate about the cause of open borders (http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/08/the_efficient_e...., http://www.openborders.info), and I can tell you a lot of Americans think exactly that way - they have a poor understanding of economics and they imagine that importing relatively unskilled laborers into our country would somehow 'taint' or bring down our economy toward their levels of poverty. (See here: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/02/always_keep_you.... if you have yet to be disabused of this fallacy.) And your suggestion that you should be allowed in because of your degrees is suggestive of that kind of broken thinking. Productivity is the root of societal prosperity. And labor, whether skilled or unskilled -- in fact, especially unskilled labor -- is able to be much more productive when allowed to move to the first world. That extra productivity benefits everyone. Economists estimate, on average, that a move from the status quo to fully liberalized migration (open borders) would result in a DOUBLING OF GLOBAL GDP. That's an INSANE silver bullet.

And most of those gains would go to the extreme poor: in fact, it would be by far the most effective step we could take to reduce extreme poverty - which a lot of people don't realize is the single worst humanitarian crisis of all time, killing ~10 million people per year, a higher rate than WWII, which was the deadliest war ever. Open border should be foremost on every smart, informed, ethical person's mind, and it's a crying shame that it isn't. Instead you see people whining about the plight of 1st-world Uber drivers and middle class Americans and not being able to stay in the US with their Ivy League degrees. Spoiler alert: all those people are crazy rich relative to the extreme poor. There are ~1 billion people, 1/7th of the world's population, living in extreme poverty, which is defined as making less than $1.25 per day. That's PER DAY, NOT PER HOUR. They are literally starving, malnourished, have no clean water, no education - they have practically nothing. So unless you can show me evidence that you've spent many hours worrying about open borders and the extreme poor, screw your first world problem.

And by the way, I'm a rich american with an Ivy League degree myself, so this is not coming from a place of ivy-envy or anything. I've just spent a lot of time reading and thinking about open borders and the state of the world and I'm disappointed in my fellow educated first worlders that they're so oblivious, apathetic, uncaring, so this gets me angry.

Please see my other comments in this thread for more of my thoughts.

Great links: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2014/01/sitting_on_an_o.... https://vimeo.com/15000835 http://www.bottombillionfund.org/extreme_poverty.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/magazine/debunking-the-myt... http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/04/if-... http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/08/the_efficient_e.... http://www.openborders.info

Excellent comment, thanks!

I feel that even something much smaller (esp. in the US), like allowing labor shortages to be filled would make a huge difference. Simplifying the process so that a farmer in need of workers doesn't have to hire a lawyer to do complicated paperwork that takes 6 months would be a first step. Granting these workers green cards on entry (instead of the restrictive H-2 visa) would ensure their freedom. The same goes for skilled workers. Even just allowing all workers in fields where there is a huge variation in skill (e.g. STEM, journalism, culinary arts, etc) to immigrate on the basis of well-paying job offer would make a huge difference.

The efficient, egalitarian solution to poverty is improvement of the home countries, not open borders. This is most obvious for China; that country has so many people that if one attempted to "solve Chinese poverty" via brute force importation of their people, the entire First World would have flipped to a Chinese majority. Instead, Chinese poverty is being solved more than an order of magnitude more efficiently and less disruptively--this is a thing that is actually happening, not spherical-cow theorizing--via trade, technology transfer, and related methods.

Open borders may still have merit (I'd certainly value the additional convenience), but your argument for it is obviously wrong.

cannot agree more

It would actually be a great experiment to create a new libertarian nation which could let in everybody who is willing to contribute (work/business experience/bank account statement as proof) and see how that turns out. Something like a new US/Singapore started from a fresh slate.

Honduras tried (is trying?) a libertarian city in special development regions. The article I remember reading is actually from December 2011; I didn't think it was that long ago and I haven't read anything new. Here's the article that might be a good starting point for you though:

http://www.economist.com/node/21541391

And here's an article on seasteading (basically huge platforms/ships that sit in international waters) from around the same time:

http://www.economist.com/node/21540395

To take this suggestion a step further, it would be great if this new nation was run as a Futarchy [1]. The basic idea is we use prediction markets to determine if certain policies would raise GDP, and those that do become law. Projects like Augur [2] are trying to make ubiquitous prediction markets possible by relying on Blockchain-like decentralization.

[1] http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/futarchy.html [2] http://www.augur.net/

Where?

I get it that a degree in US law is only relevant in the US, but after 15 years you should really take a hint and move on.

He's thinking like a desperate poor person and not as the affluent American he aspires to be.

If I were in this position, I'd start a company to employ me and get an investor to foot the bill for keeping me in the US. Someone as smart and well-connected as the author should be able to manage that. It's difficult to get personal goals to align with the government's wishes, but it's not difficult at all to throw money at the problem.

There are scores of ways to get into and stay in the US, the problem is understanding and navigating the bureaucracy. He managed for 15 years. I read stories all the time of creative strategies yielding a green card and eventual citizenship. I don't even ask the many non-Hispanic immigrants I meet whether they have citizenship or not, they all managed to work the system.

Did you read the part in the article where he his legal forbidden from starting up a company or even working at a startup?

He should have just stuck with the job until he found another one that would support his green card efforts. Switching careers part way through he should have known was risky. The lack of information that is presented on him for his reasoning besides "Well they weren't sponsoring me anyways" seems pretty lack luster and not well thought out for someone who is well educated and as intelligent as himself. This article seems like a desperate plea after making a mistake.

I hope he finds a legal way to stay in the country, or come back but the article was pretty whiny about something he already should have known.

There a lot of things "broken" in this country: healthcare system, elementary/middle school education, guns out of control, racial issues, etc. Still probably the best place in the world.

Have you loved for a longer period in another country? :)

Not enough job supply for all of the law school graduates and this guy is surprised that they dont allow foreign competition to immigrate. Sorry to break it, we dont need more lawyers at the moment. Maybe try again in 10 years?

What a terrible thing to say. The guy also did his bachelor's here, has friends here, and lived enough to consider this place his home.

He's doing it wrong. He just needs to get married.

Should have just snuck across the border in Mexico. People who follow the law are treated like criminals and those who break it are treated like heroes in California.

Not many of those have professional careers in STEM, law or medicine, the "highly qualified" potential immigrants in question.

The slavery-like dynamics of the immigration system is a surprising mismatch, versus the typical American business culture.

For comparison, I've spent time in a few countries where a slavery-like relationship with employers is completely expected and even supported by the employees. (Culture shock!) They imagine that it's the only way that businesses can function.

This isn't the type of business culture you want to live in, no matter the perceived benefits.

> a slavery-like relationship with employers is completely expected and even supported by the employees

Actually, that sounds like America's start-up culture

"even supported by the employees"

To which countries are you referring to?

I fail to see how your complaint is valid beyond just a personal disappointment and/or frustration. The two main bullet points in your post and my comments are :-

1. When the rest of the world sends America its best and brightest, America says, "Go away" : No country/entity sent you here. You came here of your own volition. You said that you have lived here legally. That means you followed the law. The US immigration enforcement agency also has a law to follow and they are precisely doing that. As a result of the law you are not qualified to become a permanent resident or citizen (yet). There is absolutely no law here that says the US is required to absorb all of the world's best and most skilled. It is not in the US constitution.

2. American immigration law leaves the skilled immigrant feeling like an indentured serf : I disagree w.r.t skilled immigration. It cannot be true as a blanket statement. All the labor laws treat US workers equally regardless of their immigration status. Some corporations misuse loopholes or down right violate them. That is not the fault of the immigration system. It is against the law and the law will punish those corporations/businesses to the extent that is practically possible (not an excuse for failure to do so). And where the laborers, skilled or otherwise, are being exploited it becomes the duty of lawmakers and enforcers to take action.

Each country has their own laws with regard to immigration. It is their right as a sovereign nation to craft laws as they see fit. In come countries it is almost impossible to permanently immigrate unless you are born there and in others you could virtually buy citizenship. Even the country you come from has immigration laws and I am certain that many find it burdensome or extremely difficult. But it is still within their right.

You've got some flawed logic in your second point. While labor laws say that you must treat workers the same that has no impact on immigration law. If a skilled worker on a visa loses or leaves their job they need to leave the country unless they start a new job in a short time frame. This is a huge burden that citizens and permanent residents do not have.

(1) This is not law that matters much, but how it enforced.

If you here illegally, chances are you are good to stay. Follow the law by a letter, and you destine to go through kafka-ian bureaucracy, spend years waiting for some permit.

For your (2) bullet, skillful immigrants in vast majority are lawful individuals.

I'll supply an anecdote of my own. My parents both immigrated to the US, both obtained permanent residency, and are both on the path to citizenship.

This guy has been trying for 15 years. It doesn't explain in the article why he doesn't at least have his residency yet.

The article explains it very well and in detail. None of his employers wanted to sponsor a green card, because it was too expensive, too much hassle, and too risky.

did you actually read the article?

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