The leaving part is not the issue, as you try to immigrate into a country you're subject to the rules that country sets. You're always free to not immigrate into that country (this is not about asylum).

The issue here is that, if you just left the country to do everything the country asked you, you are now in limbo.

For how long? No one can tell.

Does this mean you lose your job? Maybe.

And when you decide it's no longer worth it, you might even have issues getting back in to get your stuff...

Retraining your people CAN be done without it being so disruptive, they chose not to.

The cruelty is the point.

And they may let you rot in a deportation facility for months “pending deportation proceedings” which they haven’t hired judges to handle? If we hired more judges with the money used to build and run the facilities we would work through the back log of cases in a humane and predictable way in line with our historical commitment to the rule of law. This is terror by design.

I can confirm Ireland does this as well. I'm not familiar with immigration law as have both US and EU passports and can travel to work freely between the two.

While I critique the US for a lot and it does get a lot wrong I think many countries do this.

Yes, but that should be on a case by case basis. Blocking everybody is just an ideologically stupid choice, besides being inhumane.

The issue I see still is with regards to property rights. Because to me it seems the USA also automatically seizes all belongings, e. g. if you purchased something before and paid taxes in the USA. That seems not fair.

There is a difference between what is legal and what is moral. If you think that there is no difference you also hold that slavery was moral up until the time it was illegal (and you might then wonder why abolitionists campaigned against a moral act.) Similarly, the visa system may have always had this uncertainty but that does not mean it is moral, or that it is moral to use it in this way.

Unless you use the visa to marry Donald Trump, as his 3rd wife did.

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Lots of countries have temporary worker status. The requirement to leave the country to re-up it appears to be a distinctively American thing.

I think you have a point, however a change of status for example (so from temporary to permanent) can require you leaving the country.

Also, the first paragraph of the article says it too:

"Immigrant visa applicants with interviews scheduled at U.S. embassies and consulates have been notified by email that their appointments are being postponed."

they did get it wrong

Not _this_ time but they were targeted previously: banning up to 75 countries from issuing visas, adding a $100k fee to the application, forcing visa renewals to go through consular processing instead of change of status, etc.

The end goal is to do end migration as a whole (especially from “certain places”) and expel all “undesirables”. To get there, they will test the waters, get the right precedents and judicial orders in place, and move the Overton window enough so the public sees these actions as “business as usual”.

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In the EU you do not need to leave to renew your visa. I don't know how common it is elsewhere.

Were the visas for the US? B1/B2?

I know stuff like this happens for digital nomads in southeast asia or Schengen but the US generally doesn't approve of "visa runs".

Common around the world? I'd be curious what other countries require this, pretty much everywhere else I know has you renew your status within the country (incl. US), and they give you some form of proof of residence that takes the place of a visa (excl. US).

In many cases I've seen this is either a sticker on your passport (incl. possibly a visa) or a physical card, and does not require traveling abroad for it for "consular processing". This is the case for Schengen countries, Canada, UK, Australia, Japan, Thailand, etc.

Were they able to come back when they did this?

Sorry, but that is not common around the world. Most countries do not have such a system. I.e. none of the EU/UK/Australia countries have that.

Is it? You’re generally able to renew without leaving. Unless you mean abusing a visitor visa?

Agreed. People seem to hold views that getting visas to the US is a human right.

It’s no fun, but these are adults (and often very privileged adults) that decided to move to a new country for more upside at the cost of no residency.

Conflating this with “inhumane” is just a basic misunderstanding of immigration and the contract these people signed up for.

Very uncomfortable, yet a risk these people took, and hopefully a conscious one.

> There is no human right to have a US visa interview; everything is a privilege that can be withdrawn.

I'm not sure what you're trying to argue with this strawman.

No one in the thread is claiming it's a "human right".

Since we’re doing straw man arguments, there’s not a single Republican in charge of the U.S. government today that cares about the inalienable rights given to you in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

We the people will be reminding them who is actually in charge.

Speak for yourself, I voted for exactly these policies.

You are talking about change (or extension) of status, not visa.

US is unique in that the visa sticker and your right to remain in the country (status) are two different things. The only purpose of the visa sticker is to allow you to travel to a U.S. port of entry, where you apply for admission, and therefore legal status. You can have legal status in the U.S. while the visa sticker has expired, and your status can be changed or extended domestically. However unless you have a valid sticker you cannot leave and return.

Based on my experience 20 years ago you could only renew the H-1B visa in the passport in-country under extraordinary circumstances. In the majority of cases they reject your request and would tell you to travel to a consulate.

Prior to the mid 00s you could renew at any consulate but they changed it so you could only renew in your home country.

The pause on visa appointments does not apply to H1-B and L1 as they are nonimmigrant visas. It applies to family based immigration visa, diversity visa, and EB-1/2/3 when you do processing abroad.

(You might have known that, but I thought it's worth clarifying).

A green card is permanent residency, not a visa process.

I've had a couple of reports that this applied to. It's incredibly disruptive. "I've got to fly back to India to renew my visa." "Okay, when will you be back?" "I have no idea, it depends when I can get an appointment. It could be next week, it might be in a month." "[State department] We're pausing all visa appointments." "Well fuck."

Meanwhile I've got a tech lead who is 12 hours away from the rest of the team. He was at least willing to work US-East hours while in India (basically staying up all night and sleeping during the day), but there was a huge amount of management overhead and inconvenience for the employee involved.

Hire Americans?

Hundreds of thousands of tech workers have been laid off in the last two years. There are many skilled Americans on the job market. Foreign workers are here for the benefit of the United States, not as charity to the rest of the world, or as a source of cheaper labor for global employers seeking to undercut American wages.

Correct! Hopefully more people factor this into their decision to hire immigrants. Increasing the costs of hiring immigrants is good policy (and reflects the will of the electorate).

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You forgot [INCOMPETENCE]

And refugees - unless you are Afrikaaner. The US has processed a sum total of 153 refugee visas in the last 12 months for the entire planet that were not Afrikaaner (of which they have processed 10,105, because they are adjudicated to have refugee status by default).

Someone who appears to have actually read the article, or at least the first sentence! Wonders never cease.

Employment green cards are sometimes obtained via consular processing too.

In Canada you never have to leave to renew or change status; it's just sometimes faster to do so. It's always the applicant's choice. I went through the whole work permit to PR to citizenship pipeline without ever having to leave the country.

OP isn't criticizing the practise of leaving to renew. He's criticizing the this new policy of not letting you back in when you leave.

"Flagpoling" was the beautiful euphemism for this.

Really? My spouse and I lived in Canada on work permits and were not required to leave in order to achieve PR status; nor to achieve citizenship status.

The scale is new. Obviously a nightmare or even a tragedy for individual people that it happens at all. But this happening to (tens of?) thousands of people all at once is a whole different thing.

Not defending it, but that’s an intended feature and not a bug of the situation.

The term "illegal immigration" got moved to "people who have proper papers and did everything legally but were granted access by someone I don't like" - anyone who was an informed voter could see that "against illegal immigration" was just red meat for the base.

Not sure when you lived here but Germany does not require you to leave the country to renew the document that lets you re-enter¹, same as rest of Schengen. Renewal frequency is also 4 years for "EU Blue Card" holders (STEM workers).

¹: residence permit card in case of schengen, visa in case of "non-immigrants" in US.

Surely you would admit that this Administration’s approach to immigration has been both chaotic and cruel. The workers who were given status in the United States expected a predictable process, not one that changes weekly based on the unserious personal whims of a bored, ill-informed and vindictive man. In any case, the prioritization of citizens’ wellbeing writ large is demonstrably _not_ a feature of this Administration’s agenda.

The government should not be doing inhumane things to people. This should not be a controversial statement.

The first responsibility is to protect the rights of all people in the country. Citizenship is not required for protected rights

How, in any way does this help the wellbeing of a citizen? Why bring up that very strange point, which is completely unconnected to the massive harm here.

If anything, these policies harm the citizens of the US in a myriad of ways. There's zero benefit to be had from any of this. Except for the joy tha tthe cruel feel in causing others misery, but that's not citizens, that's just a few sick people.

The mere suggestion that this admin is doing this or anything else for the wellbeing of its citizens is a complete departure from reality.

It's very clear what the motivations are, and just because they don't seem harmful in isolation doesn't mean it's going to have no consequences for everyone else.

And its going so great for our citizens wellbeing. Oodles of programs for the needy smashed to bits. Corruption and self dealing out the wazoo. Protestors shot to death by ICE agents. A legendarily stupid war fucking up international shipping. Illegal tariffs changing daily.

Well it’s been 2 years since immigration has been massively curtailed so where are all the extra jobs they were taking? Have wages and employment rates gone up or have they gone down?

Lump of Labor fallacy

You can close the door without screwing over people that are already in the process

skill issue

It will take generations -- if we even get the chance.

This is for immigrant visas, H1-B is (for silly reasons) non-immigrant. This does close the path for green card for H1-Bs for now (alongside everyone else).

Fascism is the merger of corporate and government power. Powerful corporations utilize do not like this policy decision at all. Increasing costs of H1B means less workers who will work harder and cheaper than the market would bear if large amounts of immigrant labor were allowed in. So no, reducing immigrant labor is not a fascist move because it is not in the interests of powerful corporations and capital owners.

Yeah, this is a pretty big risk. I'm similarly married to an American and we have an American child. Other country seems to have screwed the family, though. Mine (India) offers a fairly indefinite visa called an Overseas Citizen of India. And my wife's other nationality (Taiwan) also permits foreign spouses to live there after some straightforward paperwork. So, in theory, we could live in either of these other places together. I suppose I will only know when push comes to shove.

I don't want to minimize your friend's situation. But, a spousal visa is very different from being a permanent resident (maybe I am misunderstanding). If he got it through marrying a US citizen, there's a 3-year wait for naturalization and otherwise it's a 5-year wait.

Naturalization never required leaving the country, at least in my experience but things might have changed.

Didn't we used to fast track citizenship for immigrants who married a US citizen? I mean, the default should be that after the wedding you're now on track to be a citizen within a year or two if the marriage is still in effect by then.

> His wife and child aren't citizens of his home country either, so it's not like they can move to be with him. Their lives are shattered.

What would the steps be for this? Hopefully the other country has easier entry and that would be a possible route?

> His wife and child aren't citizens of his home country either, so it's not like they can move to be with him.

Why doesn’t their home country have a welcoming immigration plan allowing his spouse and child to move with him? Which country is this?

This doesnt make any sense. If you are married to a us citizen you qualify for a green card. Then you need 3 years for citizenship. You never need to leave the country. Ive been through this process, this is absolutely wrong.

This story can't be true. The green card freeze policy only went into effect in January 2026...earlier this year, and was struck down several months ago.

Also, UCIS has limited discretion to reject a spousal green card applicant; an undisclosed criminal record or immigration violations are basically the only two that would apply if he's been married for years.

It's just such mindless cruelty. It's hard to imagine so many people support this.

The details of this story have glaring mistakes and don't make sense. I know this because I'm a naturalized citizen to the US and I came in on H1B.

> He's been doing the paperwork to finally become a citizen, and as one of the final steps he was required to leave the country

You don't have to leave the country to become a citizen. I recently became a US citizen a few years back and leaving the country is not required.

If you somehow meant Green Card, the timeline still doesn't make sense. Until May 2026, 3 months ago, you could do Adjustment of Status within the country without having to leave. So there's no reason why you friend would need to leave the country to get his Green Card unless he chose Consular Processing.

Getting denied CP is rare, but it means that they lied about something.

And if he did live in the US for decades without having his GC, well, applying for GC under Trump in this climate was a huge mistake, especially leaving the country having been in here for decades illegally. He should have waited 2 years until the Republicans were voted out and maybe he would have some modicum of amnesty where at least ICE would get him.

> His wife and child aren't citizens of his home country either, so it's not like they can move to be with him.

This also doesn't make sense. First off, the country's immigration is even more restrictive than the US?? They can't even visit on a travel visa??

They can definitely move to his home country, since he's a citizen. There's a spousal visas for almost all countries, and the child is most definitely allowed to come in since they can usually get citizenship via the father.

But there's no way he hasn't seen his daughter in over a year since the forced Consular Processing didn't start until this past May, and his spouse and daughter can most definitely travel to see him.

None of this story makes sense, so either you have the details very drastically incorrect or this is completely fake.

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Kick out all the foreigners - drawing an arbitrary line at anyone who arrived (or can be linked back to arrivals) after 1492.

> 90% of new jobs since 2020 went to people not born in America. That's a passive-aggressive invasion.

Do you have a source for this claim?

I think one of the fundamental problem with h1b is that it is labeled as "non-immigrant" whereas for all practical purposes it is really an immigrant visa. Why would a person who is supposedly having rare skills come to a country and spend their best years here without reasonable guarantee of permanency? People buy homes because it is a reasonable belief that they are going to be living here permanently and it has historically been true.

In any case I don't see the point you are making. Should America be treating immigrants poorly because whichever country you're in makes you slightly uncomfortable to buy a home there? It's not an excuse for all this pain and cruelty. America should hold itself to higher standards.

This comment vaguely blames immigrants for not having an escape plan. Millions of people immigrate to the US through all the right mechanisms and follow all the laws and have every intention of staying forever and becoming citizens. Scaring their pants off is an unnecessarily hostile and unwelcoming act that is unbecoming of this country.

> in order to keep housing prices lower for residents

And where do they live? They rent. So this jacks up rents for everyone, not just for immigrants, but for any who cannot afford to buy.

Basically everything you say and also imply makes life worse for immigrants and better for wealthy residents. It even makes life worse for poor residents.

There are arguments from the other side too. Many H1B folks do keep one foot back in the country they are from. But then a lot of backlash on specifically Indian folks for sending most of their salary back home. They know that this is transient state, many of them have rented housing, but still these visas are not like weekly visas, they are for 3 years, people would build somewhat of a life in that time and uprooting them instantly is inhumane indeed.

> H1B is a temporary non-immigrant visa.

It’s a dual purpose visa. You are allowed to pursue immigration (i.e. a green card) while you have an H1B.

H1-B is a dual intent visa, which means that, while technically a non-immigrant visa, one can apply for an immigrant visa (aka Green Card) while on it. Because there are per-country yearly limits for immigrant visas, some countries have insanely long wait times. If you’ve applied for a Green Card, you can renew an H1-B visa indefinitely until the Green Card is approved. Realistically for someone from India, that wait time can be decades long. Are you saying someone that has lived in the US for over a decade, may have kids born here, may have lived the majority of their adult life here, should not try to live a normal life and buy a house and settle down?

I went through the whole immigration process from H1-B to citizenship. In general I agree with your mentality, and I did not consider buying a house until I got my Green Card. But I am not Indian and it took me 6 years.

Non-US citizen here. 100% Agreed.

Where does this notion come from that a host society has any obligation to the foreigner / non pr? As if he was forced to move to America.

(a) The WSJ article is talking about "immigrant visas" a.k.a. green cards, not H1-Bs.

(b) Even if we are talking about H1-Bs, it takes someone in India 10-15 years of waiting in line to get a green card. If someone were to buy a house in the interim, it doesn't seem so irrational to me.

Its easy to blame the victim and say they should have known.

Completely random, and not leading in any way, but where do you live currently? As in, which country, which city?

When I was in the US as a student (F1 Visa) that is why I decided to go back home instead of trying to optain an H1B. It was just too risky for too long. I did not want to live a life where I had to expect to leave the next day. Besides, it was right at the beginning when Trump won the first time.

i think your problem is you havent also experienced the american immigration system to properly compare

also h1b is “non immigrant” but it is dual intent. this means it is perfectly legal to seek an immigrant (ie green card) visa. again, you have no idea what youre talking about

Genuinely how are people like you still around and semi-concious after the past 8 years

Immigration is a privilege, no more unfair than all of capitalism. If a country decides things are x or y levels hard to immigrate thats great.

The problem is the moving of goal posts. For decades, h1b (which is an immigrant visa) was a stable path to immigrate to America. People see that, and there was an implicit promise made there. If the US wants to decide not to continue with this practice that is fully fair. Just make up the rules clearly and give people a heads up. Is that too much to ask?

That's by design too because immigrants visas are capped by country of birth. And the quota has nothing to do with reality.

The intentional cruelty must be visible because they're doing it to gain support from those who want to see immigrants mistreated.

They're not trying to change the rate of immigration, they're just looking to score political points.

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H1B is explicitly a dual intent visa. You are allowed to pursue a green card while in the country on an H1B. It has been an accepted, valid path for a very long time now. If the government wishes to change that of course they can. But the humane approach would be to let those who have already started the process finish it.

Your first sentence is factually wrong.

I highly recommend that you refrain from commenting on any immigration related topics until you can get your facts correct.

brother H-1Bs are transparently vectors for foreign educated workers to come to the US to build lives and eventually get a green card, so the US doesn't have to actually build a functional education system.

no one talented will come pay taxes and make your nice tech companies carry the S&P500 and in turn, everyone's retirement funds, if you treat them like hogs

Thanks for the info. But the WSJ article is taking about green card appointments, not H1-Bs.

>successive administrations ignored the intent of the law, for so long that people began to rely on assurances that the law never promised. Now that the law is getting applied properly, those people are facing the consequences.

No, there's nothing proper about it and it has nothing to do with the merits of the visas in question. There is no law saying that the state department should make travel impractical for people USCIS has already decided can live/work in the US. The reverse is much more likely. They want to push people off of legally obtained visas by causing unreasonable delays.

H1B is temporary but you can have immigrant intent. It can be extended indefinitely with an approved green card application. Your employer is going to pursue that if you're on h1b and they want to keep you around. Many if not most h1b holders are in that category and will get a green card eventually. They are simply waiting for that to be available due to quotas based on their qualifications and birthplace.

It is always possible to make rules stricter for the new applicants. While there was some complaints with visa price hikes, they were for new visas so it was okay. Denying existing legal visa holders entry or time to wrap things up doesn't seem bad to you? These are not criminals per say.

So you agree with the person you're responding to, but you're attacking them for stating it with less melodrama than you would prefer? What a useless comment.

You're getting downvoted but this is literally true.

> According to The Atlantic, while helping Trump prepare for a debate in 2024, Miller got into an argument with an ally on immigration. Trump reportedly said, "Stephen... if you had it your way, everyone would look exactly like you", to which Miller replied "That’s correct". In another incident reported by The New York Times, Trump told a campaign meeting that Miller only wanted 100 million people who looked like him to live in the United States.

That’s what my company is doing. Instead of hiring more people in the US they are hiring almost exclusively in other countries. The tariffs seem to be backfiring in a similar way. More production is moved outside the US to avoid the tariffs.

Sure, he should just have lived as a slave and not socialize with anyone until he left.

H1Bs have been used as a path to citizenship for a long time. You can't just change the rules like that without destroying so many lives in a senseless act of cruelty. But the cruelty is the point.

Did you read the article? They postponed all appointments.

I work in a global company. As an interviewer, I don't even know if the person I interview is a US citizen. I don't even know if they live in the US or another country, and I'm probably not allowed to ask. I just rate their performance. And everybody is paid the same.

I think the situation is quite simple. Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better.

If tomorrow you were to tell (let say) Google they now need to hire only US citizens, would they lower their hiring bar, or would they expand their Shanghai or Zurich offices? Are US citizens entitled to work at Google more than others for the sole reason they have a particular citizenship?

I was a hiring manager. H1B candidates got exactly the same wage as native born. There were no differences.

Recently[1] Microsoft laid off several thousand domestic employees while simultaneously hiring a couple thousand employer-sponsored-Visa workers.

[1]https://www.newsweek.com/microsoft-layoffs-2026-xbox-h1b-vis...

The problem is the H1B visa is a lottery not a points based system. As someone who applied for an H1B 5 times and never got it, despite being highly skilled and having a PhD and a well paying job. The only way in was on an intern visa or an Einstein visa. Insane system

Then fix that. This administration is eager to point out problems and propose "just don't do that" as a solution. The problem is that to them, pretty much everything is a problem, so they're proposing we do nothing.

As a hiring manager no one tells you who is an immigrant and who isn’t when you interview them.

Isn't that a work visa and not an immigrant visa

Actually they get normal wages now. H1B’s get hired because H1B’s are now in hiring, recruiting, HR, etc.. they stack the candidate pool with their own shamelessly. I’ve seen it first hand.

It’s wild to me that the US tries to resolve labor issues with immigration control rather than just having good unions. Back in the 80s we decided we wanted free commerce at the expense of all else. Well guess what, that means you’re competing with the global labor pool. This shit is like trying to have your cake and eat it to; we want only the upside of the global neoliberal order, and try our damndest to outsource all its downsides.

OP and you are obviously on different end of the spectrum. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.

There are minimum salary requirements for H1-B visas which are actually above market rate. Be careful, your racism shows.

The news is about immigrant visas and H1B is temporary non-immigrant visa...

Nonsense. Job applicants at the H1B level are all highly competitive, well-educated specialists of some sort.

You can't hire scab helicopter blade design engineers. Not even from abroad. You have a small pool of those who qualify looking for work (or actively keeping their ears alert for new work), muddied by many people tangentially quasi-qualified who want a job.

After you filter (imprecisely, but as well as you can), the pool is small, and you don't have enough qualified applicants to routinely work one group against another.

And yet, they never applied the simple option of ranking the visa applications by salary, and approving in order of demand for the talent.

That would be a market based solution that allows everyone to get the talent they need without driving down American wages.

But the point isn't about helping Americans, it's about being peedormatively against letting in brown people.

How does companies hiring h1b-holders (a non-immigrant visa) relate to a pause on immigrant visa applications?

Oh cool, good thing labor isn't fungible and nobody ever outsources.

What a brilliant plan. Lets make sure that we restrict the supply of doctors and medical personell, that's sure to improve care!

It looks more like homicide to me. Almost exactly like being pushed out the window of a skyscraper. But who would do such a thing?

They will and after a cyberleek incident they'll rethink that plan.

I've never worked at a company that gave offshore teams the same responsibilities as onshore employees. When shit gets real, and someone's head needs to be on the chopping block, it's always a same-shore employee. But reduced responsibility also means reduced impact. Let's see if that changes, and I'd love to see it happen, but I'm not holding my breath.

Who cares where this so called innovation happens? Won't it be cheaper for all of us if the salaries are in much lower cost of living places? Why would a US citizen give a shit?

How can you with a straight face equate “fine for 1921-1965” with “best for 2026”?

Even odder: what makes you find it plausible that an understanding of the policies of this period and their effect on the economy were part of the decision-making process of this administration - especially when they have actively voiced opinions that fully explain this action? At some point bending backwards to provide some benefit of the doubt is saying more about the speaker than the topic - I am certainly of the opinion that we are well beyond that rubicon. I cannot fathom the reasoning at this point.

"Worked fine" is a pretty vague description for the year we had a Great Depression, world war, Jim Crow, Japanese internment to name a few.

And the U.S. has been doing even better since 1965. So really the question goes back to you.

Either way, your whataboutism isn’t even relevant since those were congressional changes.

This is the executive trying to undermine the law.

Oh god I hope this lie is part of an attempt to get right-wingers on board with a “let’s roll immigration policy back to what we had in 1950!” push.

I hope this because it’d be hilarious if they got what they wanted and realized that meant actual open borders with most or all of the Americas.

Like if your racist grampa got put in charge of US Treasuries, tell me how things would be worse.

Who is talking about illegal immigration? This thread is about legal visa holders following the law.

That was an isolated incident triggered by local police. Not an active nationwide policy to deploy immigration officers to all migrant protests

Even if this was true how would it be in Israel's interest to weaken the US of all countries?

I see you trying to kick a field goal all the way from the school parking lot, good luck with that.

> The US is like a sports team that gets to draft the best players in the world

Americans tend to overestimate how attractive it is to live in the US. It's true you can make a lot of money, more than you would in Europe working for the same companies, but you'd also be willing to live in a very different society, with high inequality and almost no worker rights protections. There was a time I wanted to, but not anymore.

I miss visiting the US though - it has wonderful places and people, but I wouldn't want to live and raise kids there.

What do you think EB visas are: immigrant visas or work visas? Answer: they are both.

Immigrants don't work?

This is the most missed point in all of the flame throwing in this thread.

I think many (if not most) countries in the developed world should reduce immigration, and usa in particular should abolish birthright citizenship.

The first because a lower supply of labor is going to create breathing space for an entire working population who will see tremendous job upheaval due to AI automation. A lower aggregate demand on houses, services will also be welcome to take the fuel out of inflation, and maybe we'll regain some of that experience of true affluence, where scarce things (e.g. access to cabin in the woods, a rowhome in a walkable city, ...) are in abundance. There is also the import of an idle, criminal element that has very clearly reduced quality of life and safety in many places.

Birthright citizen should be abolished because birth tourism and illegally crossing the border to have anchor babies are a vector for foreigners to participate politically and claim imho undeserved welfare benefits.

I think largely these are the stated reasons of the administration too.

Conflating not wanting to compete with foreigners for jobs in your own country with racism is bad faith bullshit. Foreigners of the exact same race are equally unwanted competition.

Birthright citizenship is so weird, because when I think of my son’s birthright, I imagine things he’s entitled to because he’s my son. He’ll inherit from my estate, he’ll enjoy my love and encouragement and support, etc. The location of the hospital where he was born doesn’t really have anything to do with it, but now I have an entirely new fear about foreign countries claiming my child if my wife happens to give birth early while on a vacation. Like, I want to go to Israel, but don’t they have compulsory military service? I wouldn’t want the baby to accidentally become an Israeli citizen and forced to serve for some foreign army. Same with China. I’d love to see the country, but they’ve had some weird and draconian laws like the one child policy. For all I know they take some children to be raised by the state. Whatever their laws are… I don’t think they should apply to my children.

Attempts to find plausibly deniable rationales for this administration's anti-immigrant policies other than "gutter racism" are ridiculous.

Occam's razor. When somebody shows you who they are, believe them. Nativism is possibly the only stable and coherent political ideology this admin holds. Everything else is negotiable, but not this one.

didn't big tech co's layoff thousands of people here and then filed for thousands more h1b ?

> The physical card itself expires every 10 years, but your status as a permanent resident doesn't. That can only be revoked by a legal process.

They're working on that. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/doj-deploys-tactic-to-stri...

It is pretty much the same. You are legally required to have the card with you at all times. The practical issues you refer to are non-trivial. Inability to travel is a non-starter for many. Think ICE will be friendly? They repeatedly show they do not care about legal technicalities.

SSN card + ID works for employment purposes.

Simply applying for renewal or naturalization extends the card as well.

I am referring to renewals. Not initial applications.

The funny thing is I bet ending birthright citizenship is an amendment that could actually be passed. You don't have to be a virulent racist to think the context has changed when you can get almost anywhere in the world in about 24 hours.

(I'm not sure where I stand on it but I can at least see an argument for revisiting the question)

It was one vote away from going Thomas's way, so I wouldn't say it doesn't matter what he thinks.

As a non-american, I would have enjoyed the precedent that the logical conclusion had to be that I would not be subject to the laws of the US, when visiting.

The Thomas interpretation must logically have given diplomatic immunity to anyone on an ESTA too.

It's also amusing that you won't ever hear conservatives like Thomas making the same argument when it comes to, say, the 2nd amendment.

I'm guessing that you did not actually read his dissent.

Far from agreeing with the Trump administration; his view would effectively end birth tourism but preserve birthright citizenship (and maybe even stronger) for the children of non-citizens, legal or otherwise, who are domiciled in the US.

As for it being cut and dry, do you earnestly believe that "and subject to its jurisdiction" is cut and dry? You might have your view, you might have some historical receipts for it, others have other views, and historical receipts, and others rely on common law readings. There's no single unambiguous interpretation of this phrase. Thomas's dissent is well reasoned and has ample historical antecedents and if adopted would have been the best possible interpretation.

Right, because they might find themselves agreeing with it! Can't have that, democracy thrives in darkness with a closed and restricted 'marketplace of ideas'.

>Who corrupted it?

As usual, it started with Americans screwing over other Americans while getting you to blame the brown dude. Gosh, darn!

Labor is no different than goods/services. Why should the world allow coca-cola, netflix, mcdonalds and hollywood access to their markets while their local equivalents suffer? Competition? Fuck that. Nobody wants their 401k to appreciate as US companies grow their customer base in overseas markets. Stupid, silly capitalism. FUck that, lets go all in, super mega great depression style.

'Cultures' have never been units of 'insiders' isolated from 'outsiders'. Cultural change is inevitable and there is no reason assume 'changing significantly' is inherently bad. That's what history _is_.

> Letting the entirety of the world into your country without stops is cultural suicide.

The natives of the Americas, Australia, and the many nations previously colonized by European countries, know that better than any descendants of the colonizers.

Did they get to have any say?

There's no real Us culture to preserve.

> that sort of individuated cosmopolitanism only works for educated men and women with means, who have or have the capacity to self-actualize.

So because not everyone can afford to travel freely we shouldn't let anyone do that?

There's no reason why we should worship borders, or the state.

> and given that they took hundreds to sometimes thousands of years to form, i don't think borders are artificial in the least.

"Borders" as they are treated today began barely 200 years ago, and only started being enforced so strictly since WW1 and then even worse after WW2.

For the vast >95% of human history, if you could walk to somewhere and survive there, you could live there.

The real ironic shit is that most of the travel and immigration restrictions of today are instituted by the descendants of people that invaded and occupied the lands of other people :')

You can't ignore the impact of China also becoming a better place to live as well. China is a different place no than it was 20 years ago, and the need to go overseas anywhere is probably felt less today than back then.

What is a "normally skilled" job? Working at Home Depot?

No one just starts companies as soon as they land. It takes decades of hard work and building yourself before they are at a point where they can start companies.

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Doesn't mean he's not right. The evidence is overwhelming.

That's not accurate. H-1B is a non-immigrant visa. It's not intended for tourists.

From CBP's own website[1], emphasis is mine:

    An immigrant visa (IV) is issued to a foreign national wishing to live permanently in the United States.

    A nonimmigrant visa (NIV) is issued to a foreign national with permanent residence outside the United States but wishes to be in the United States on a temporary basis for tourism, medical treatment, *business,  temporary work, or study*, as examples. Note: There are more than 20 different categories of nonimmigrant visa classifications.

That is reference to people who have applied for asylum after having come in on a tourist visa. Technically their status is legal, because they have a pending application. This is an attempt to make their status illegal, so they can be deported.

Your statement is patently false based on the historical record and current statistics.

Without question, Americans should have a say their democratic process and bring change when needed. They should never fall for the false narrative used to trick them.

Artifact ?

What do you mean? I stated where I found this claim.

> Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism by Anne Case, and Angus Deaton.

And all the references it has.

So the US is being very selfless here and deciding that all these "exceptional" migrants should instead improve their own country. Pretty noble of the US if you ask me.

I don't really gain much when we bring people over here to write shitty java spring end points or react components, these are things Americans can do. Also the idea that the trillion dollar tech companies can't find talent should be rejected on its face. If they can't find talent they should train it here. They're about to find out why and it's going to go in places where they least suspect it.

No. At the same time I do believe it’s a huge problem when even a small number come here fraudulently and abuse the welfare systems we have to unduly enrich themselves at the expense of American taxpayers.

I'm not judging just debating the topic.

I won't dox myself. If I ever need to visit US there is always a chance for your paramilitary police to take my phone and find anything and make an excuse. I am not here to defend something is better, I am saying it is different. Note that I never said I agree with the policy, I am saying it exists and why.

From your comment you see people as tools for work supplementation. Immigrants are also a peace tool. They help establishing short and long term associations with other countries and spread cultures both ways. There are reasons to think this is the main reason why immigrants are being attacked. I don't know if it is true but it could make sense.

I won't dox myself, but you'd be welcome if you needed to.

Following World War II, we took in European immigrants who had lost everything. More recently, we have welcomed individuals from countries in the Middle East and South America.

Within a few days, you would receive your citizenship and be integrated into the system. I believe there are some initial advantages, but based on what I've heard, the expectation is that you'll need to become self-sufficient very quickly because the financial support diminishes rapidly.

Despite not having a community center or NGOs for that, the overall community would find out and help.

You can find out where I am by searching for the single country in the world that continues to uphold all post-World War II human rights.

My position to this policy changed when I encountered a refugee who had successfully integrated into the community.

He has lost his wife and two daughters and his only remaining daughter was all he had when he got here.

He rebuilt his life working his a* out to be able to provide to his daughter. We never know what people are going through.

I am not aware. What loophole do you mean? And what risk do you mean?

I am not being pedantic. I think I lack lots of context here.

> I'd also say the general lack of a safety net compared to more socialist countries mean you pretty much have to hit the ground running and work, which usually means learning English quickly and all of the social components that come with work.

Even before that, the US only attracts people who are at least willing to work.

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It's funniest if the economic collapse begins with Republicans still in power everywhere to pretend that things are fine. Once Democrats are elected, even if they're not actually doing anything yet and so couldn't plausibly have any role in the problem the US media will insist it's their fault which is very boring to watch.

So only PR applications are affected?

It’s not slanted, it’s accurate.

The right wing doesn’t want to run the government, they want to occupy it so it doesn’t run except to enrich themselves.

It most certainly is hypocritical. You can not be simultaneously pro-legal immigration and support banning legal immigration. If you support banning legal immigration, you are by definition anti-legal immigration.

> Being anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration doesn't mean you want to flood the country with legal immigrants.

If only there were something between 0 and unrestricted immigration, some sort of program where people apply for permission and the government issues approvals for individuals to enter its borders after meeting legal criteria.

By "they" it is that every single politician lies.

So of course that is the tiniest small print of every promise any politician makes, such that once it is a promise broken it is someone else's fault and not theirs.

Therefore their entire job is to lie.

The irony: many native Americans believe that all of your own immigrant ancestors should never be allowed to enter the US.

If you really believe what you wrote then I'd suggest to "GetThemOut*" your own immigrant heritage out of the country.

* as your trolling username says

Jobs will just move abroad then: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-11-11/trump-s-h...

Ultimately, there is some value in each position, and in a corresponding set of positions on the left. Unlike many issues in US politics, in the long run this one is not well left-right aligned, and there is no single correct number for how much immigration is best. It's a bunch of trade-offs, which should be made democratically and end up somewhere around the number that the median person wants, such that roughly half of us are unhappy because too many immigrants come in and roughly half unhappy because too few. Arriving at that number and changing it slowly would be far better than wild swings.

> don't want to become a minority in their own country.

Yet in the next thread over, people are crucifying DHH for saying the same thing, except they are spinning it as "denying their right to exist"... somehow.

I’d guess Miller is the main driver of this given what we know about that loser (and freak).

I often think about how far the Republican party has fallen from Truman with his "The Buck Stops Here" plaque on his desk to Trump's "I don't take any responsibility at all" response to poor Covid testing in 2020.

And in the interim he's positioning his family and cronies to benefit from any rebuilding. Just as he literally sat in the White House and said, verbatim, "My children insider trade all the time".

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And they are. I read somewhere a few days ago that France is vacuuming up academics and advanced students that have been displaced by various recent policy changes that have proven to be hostile towards academia and research.

I mean this in the best possible spirit, but if it does seem intentionally inflammatory, then I think it's mostly a result of your political priors.

The 4th top reply on this submission is: "the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents."

If I were a less patient man I would also find this inflammatory, but I know the person saying it just says it because they genuinely believe it, they aren't saying it to make me angry. Furthermore, because of the political bias prevalent here, most people here would agree with it, instead of disagree with it, so they would not find it inflammatory at all and do not consider what people with other political views than their own think of it.

I get more people will disagree with my comment than with the comment I quoted, and downvote my comment, but that is their choice. I posted it because that is my sentiment on this matter, this is what I genuinely believe. This to me is good news. As good as news can be. This is just the reality, and there is nothing intentionally inflammatory about reality. It just exists.

Afrikaaners are a subgroup of what you refer to as Caucasians in South Africa.

The evidence is the title and the content of the article, so read it. I am not the one to jump to conclusions.

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Also, lol @ "the courts will fix it!" Fat fucking chance. I'm looking into my crystal ball: I see a 6-3 supreme court ruling supporting the administration's executive order to liquidate congressional power and fold it into the executive branch (as the founding fathers intended...)

> "We have nooooo idea how long this will take!"

It will take about two weeks. Is that right, two weeks? We'll have it done in about two weeks I'm told by some, very intelligent people.

// Wouldn't it make more sense to make the legal process shorter and less unnecessarily bureaucratic so that people are less likely to come in the country undocumented?

Lowering the bar until the kinds of people who are happy to break the law to come here are now legal is not the goal.

Immigration policy changes all the time. H1B was not a thing until the 90s. The country has the right to evaluate what it needs at a given time.

A judge vacated the previous “more humane” way the state department was doing this (targeted pause on specific problem countries) so this is reactionary. Not including that in the calculation feels disingenuous.

This was not mentioned in the linked article so I wasn't specifically holding that (nor did I see this mentioned in a lot of comments?)

Without knowing much about it - that sounds likewise like a something to be sympathetic about but also makes sense that it's part of the overall visa process.

A poem on a plaque on a foreign statue, written 107 years after the formation of the United States is neither legally binding nor central to what the US is. And the poem doesn’t endorse visa scammers.

To be fair that's a poem written a hundred years later.

While we're at it, I guess we should kick out all the descendants of Europeans, etc, and the only people who should be able to get jobs and count as true citizens are the direct descendants of the Native Americans.

What an offensive comment. You earn the benefits of citizenship by paying taxes, and ideally participating in your community (though _many_ americans also just disappear into their houses and watch tv / tiktok instead of being part of the community, both first generation citizens and people from a longer line of citizens).

First generation american citizens are every bit as much citizens as nth generation citizens. They all pay taxes equally and are subject to the same laws.

Pity. Cause that's the system that needs overhauled or killed.

H1-Bs are usually paid MORE, not less, because of wage parity laws that have existed for DECADES. The application process has a 6 month delay just to determine the minimum wage that the government forces employers to pay.