For some immigrants, becoming a US citizen takes a few years. For others, limited visa availability and annual country caps mean waiting decades before even applying.
Employment is the second most common path to a green card. In FY 2023, 16.7% of new green cards were issued through jobs or job offers in the US, though roughly half of those went to the workers’ spouses and children rather than the employees themselves.
The employment route to a green card requires more steps than the family-sponsored route. Most applicants need a US employer to sponsor them. In many cases, the employer first completes a permanent labor certification, known as a PERM application, through the Labor Department to prove that hiring a foreign worker will not displace qualified US workers. That process includes confirming a government-set wage for the position, advertising the job to US candidates, and documenting the results. Once the Labor Department certifies the application, the employer can petition USCIS for the worker’s green card.
Employment-based visas are divided into three preference categories, each of which is subject to annual visa limits:
- First preference: Individuals with extraordinary ability, outstanding professors, or multinational executives. Applicants in this category do not need a PERM labor certification and may self-petition in some cases.
- Second preference: Professionals with advanced degrees or exceptional ability. Most require a PERM labor certification, though some may qualify for a national interest waiver (NIW) that allows them to self-petition without an employer.
- Third preference: Skilled workers, professionals, and certain other workers. These applicants typically require a PERM labor certification.
The wait time for any of these visas depends on demand and country of origin. Because of the high number of applicants and the annual and per-country limits, applicants from India and China often face waits of 10 years or more.
Some applicants can pay for premium processing to expedite review of initial paperwork, but that does not shorten the overall wait for a visa number. As of 2025, Indian professionals who applied for Second Preference employment visas in 2013 were only just becoming eligible for green cards because of the annual visa limits. For context, that means they applied when Barack Obama was beginning his second presidential term.
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Comments
By ivraatiems 2025-11-1816:279 reply "Just do it the right way."
"Coming here illegally is a crime so everyone who does it is a criminal."
The legal moralism people apply to immigration is absurd, especially in the United States. We have purposefully made it impossible to do the right thing, so we can rejoice in punishing those who do it "wrong". It's shameful, in my opinion.
Look, the point is that democracy should mean democracy. You don't like our immigration laws. I really don't like our immigration laws. They're still our immigration laws, we should fight to change them. Nobody's human rights are being actively violated because they're not allow to immigrate here.
The entire reason the last 20 years of effective nullification (by blue states ignoring them and even subverting them) is so pernicious is because it's just plain anti-democratic. If, like marijuana, most people were effectively in favor then this wouldn't be a serious issue, but the problem is that nullification undermines rule of law. It's hard for us to argue for a reasonable immigration system when, if we don't get the system we want, we literally just say "fuck it, just ignore the rules."
By raw_anon_1111 2025-11-194:262 reply There is no more blue state ignoring immigration laws than blue states ignoring crimes like federal tax evasion. It’s not the state’s responsibility to enforce immigration laws or to help the federal government enforce immigration laws.
In fact, the Supreme Court actually said states had no standing to sue the federal government to enforce the law.
> There is no more blue state ignoring immigration laws than blue states ignoring crimes like federal tax evasion. It’s not the state’s responsibility to enforce immigration laws or to help the federal government
Local authorities often work with federal officials even though they are not obliged to.
https://missionlocal.org/2023/11/feds-tout-new-all-hands-on-...
You’re missing the point. I’m not saying nullification is illegal, I’m saying it’s inherently political escalation.
By raw_anon_1111 2025-11-195:102 reply And the difference is that drug dealing is a state and federal crime. Illegal immigration is only a federal crime. Has there ever been a state and federal partnership on federal tax fraud for instance?
I said in another reply that on Jan 6th of 2020, not electing Trump caused political escalation. Trump is going to find any excuse to escalate in Blue states - including sending the National Guard.
> Has there ever been a state and federal partnership on federal tax fraud for instance?
Yes, obviously:
https://www.fincen.gov/financial-fraud-enforcement-task-forc...
By raw_anon_1111 2025-11-196:101 reply Mortgage fraud is a state crime and a federal crime as are banking laws. I’ve signed 5 mortgages (well actually seven including two refinances), they all include state and federal laws. Foreclosure procedures are under the jurisdiction of the state and sometimes the local ordinances
The state isn’t helping the federal government pursue IRS cheats.
For instance this is the GA website.
https://dbf.georgia.gov/common-violations-cited-mt-exams
The state of GA could care less if you don’t pay your federal taxes, defraud the federal government of SSA and Medicare funds etc.
I’ve offered multiple examples of states and municipalities working together with federal enforcement of FEDERAL laws. The idea that this isn’t enough to satisfy you is ridiculous.
By raw_anon_1111 2025-11-1912:321 reply No you didn’t. You offered examples of stares and federal law enforcement working together when there were state and federal interest. Think about it for one second. Why would the state or local government forbid their money and resources to help the federal law enforcement unless people were also breaking state laws?
Your example of banking laws is clearly in the federal and state interests.
By raw_anon_1111 2025-11-1915:16 Horrible typos and I’m out of the edit window
No you didn’t. You offered examples of states and federal law enforcement working together when there were state and federal interests. Think about it for one second. Why would the state or local government use their money and resources to help the federal law enforcement unless people were also breaking state laws?
Your example of banking laws is clearly in the federal and states’ interests.
By FireBeyond 2025-11-1920:21 [delayed]
By watwut 2025-11-1912:51 > I said in another reply that on Jan 6th of 2020, not electing Trump caused political escalation.
No. Trumps inability to accept looses caused him to escalate. Not obeying the violent bully is not the cause of bullies criminal actions, bully being criminal is the cause.
By true_religion 2025-11-191:551 reply From what I can see, sanctuary cities were acting within the law. Their only stance was that they wouldn’t spend precious time and resources verifying immigration status for schools, and city services. As these are paid for and voted on by city residents, that seems fair.
If states, and cities aren’t bound to help the federal government enforce every law, unless congress writes a law to say they must.
CBP and ICE always had the general authority to be more effective, but did not use it. As we can see from actions in this era, enforcing immigration law at all costs has draconian side effects on civil liberties, and general happiness and wellbeing.
While it’s true, the immigration issue has been marinating for a while, the current policy is not a good solution.
I’m not suggesting that nullification is against the law. It’s not. States have the right to ignore federal laws if they choose to. However if the states refuse to cooperate with law enforcement, and especially when they pass laws making cooperation illegal, it is for very obvious reasons likely to result in political escalation, as the feds will need to spend a significant amount of resources on statewide enforcement.
When you refuse to allow city and state law enforcement to assist federal agencies, don’t be surprised if federal law enforcement show up. It’s not even unprecedented, it’s just an issue of scale.
Ultimately, this is about democracy, and how refusing to participate when laws we don’t like pass, it is a recipe for extreme political conflict because it’s inherently undemocratic.
By true_religion 2025-11-194:261 reply When it comes to cooperating with other entities, governments have to take a unified approach. Rather than have individual teachers deciding to question students on immigration status or not, they decided to not pursue the matter at all.
It seems fair. Immigration policy isn’t supposed to be enforced by local authorities to begin with. And unlike hiring a worker, there’s no easy way for people to verify immigration status. Finally, immigration offenses can be misdemeanors so spending effort in upholding hard to determine civil infractions seems unwise for local officials.
If ICE or CBP actually shows up and investigates, local authorities do help. Even in Chicago where the public is very much against it, the local police continue to cooperate with ICE … if nothing else just to shield them from protesters.
All sanctuary laws said is that local authorizes do not have to do thankless investigative work on people hundreds if not thousands of miles away from a land border with another country.
As someone who cares about democracy, I think it’s best practiced at the most local level possible, and if federal authorizes disagree with local policy they can override it via laws.
You just don’t see thus happening in many cases because local laws agree with federal ones, or are even more stringent. But this is a case where the locals could not, constitutionally, make a law (it has been tried, like in Arizona to have locals investigate legal immigration status but it’s been deemed unconstitutional).
For the record, I don’t think we a huge difference in opinion. I’m not surprised that ICE and CBP is out in force. I’m surprised it took so long, but think they could be more targeted, less brutal, and overall more competent.
By scoofy 2025-11-195:03 Yea, I’d say we generally agree. Though I think noncompliance laws like sanctuary city laws are a significant escalation over just choosing a different allocation of resources.
My point is only that if the feds are going to go full agents in schools and shit, I think we ought to follow the harm reduction principles so people don’t actually get hurt when the violence kicks off. My concern is we’re nontrivially flirting with a genuine civil conflict.
By raw_anon_1111 2025-11-194:281 reply Do you feel the same way about states that don’t enforce federal laws against weed and actively endorse it?
If by “feel the same way” you mean “wouldn’t be surprised if random folks start getting charged with marijuana possession if the administration starts enforcing the laws on the books,” then yes.
I don’t “support” what the administration is doing, I’m just saying we’re actually on the losing side of the argument… and we’re actually flirting with real political violence with a losing argument.
If the states that have legalized some kind of marijuana uses wanted to (40 of 50 states), they could trivially actually legalize it.
By raw_anon_1111 2025-11-195:131 reply There was “real political violence” because people wanted Trump to be president in 2020 and more recently a state lawmaker was swatted in Indiana because he didn’t go along with Trump’s redistributing demands.
In fact Romney said that some lawmakers were afraid to go against Trump because they were afraid for their families and they couldn’t afford armed security like he could. Is that really how we want to make decisions in this country?
Again, I agree with this sentiment. Unfortunately whataboutism isn’t an argument.
By raw_anon_1111 2025-11-196:041 reply There is no whatsboutism. Refusing to act is not “violence”.
I never suggested it was… which is exactly why pointing to unrelated political violence is whataboutism.
By raw_anon_1111 2025-11-1912:36 You claimed that not acting or helping the federal government to enforce federal laws that in this case the Supreme Court has said is none of the states business would increase political violence. My contention is that anything the right doesn’t like will escalate to political violence if it is scene to go against Whsfs desr leader wants.
By wan23 2025-11-1919:21 Do you think each person is responsible for enforcing federal laws? Like if you personally are not spending your own time and money to round up those in violation of federal statute then you're doing something wrong?
And if not, is it true of your neighborhood? Of your town? What level of grouping of people is big enough that they are required to help Washington with whatever thing they have asked for? Keeping in mind that our constitutional system is designed around a federal government that is supposed to be responsive to the desires of the people from the various states, not the other way around.
> Nobody's human rights are being actively violated because they're not allow to immigrate here.
Many people’s rights are being violated recently while enforcing immigration law
My point is about the laws themselves. If they were unjust laws, there is an argument for civil disobedience. They aren’t though, so civil disobedience here is just anti-democratic.
By 4MOAisgoodenuf 2025-11-1917:16 what is the objective criteria for just or unjust laws?
By simianparrot 2025-11-196:531 reply They’re criminals. Criminals give up some of their rights. That’s how the law is enforceable.
By ivraatiems 2025-11-1916:461 reply This is exactly the kind of logic that makes massive abuses of power possible. "Criminals" in this case is an arbitrarily defined category used capriciously by an uncaring and authoritarian government.
You could be a "criminal" tomorrow, if you look at the administration wrong.
By simianparrot 2025-11-2118:03 They broke the law at the time they entered the country illegally. That they weren't held accountable before now is an error, but it's not like the administration changed any laws. They're simply upholding it as should've been the case all along.
Your naiveté is what criminals exploit
so glad we have Red people running the country / ICE who obey every law on the books - phew…
So, is this what we are doing? Downvoting and non sequiturs that amount to deflection and whataboutism?
Not caring about democratic results — when human rights are not at issue — is a very dangerous precedent. I absolutely hate the current administration. They are not responsible you the laws on the books. They were successful last election, in some part, exactly because this is a very relevant political issue.
I don’t downvote people that have a different opinion so it ain’t me!
> they are not responsible for the laws on the books
so in 26/28 when Blue people take over they are free to disregard all laws because they are not “responsible for it”?
> I don’t downvote people that have a different opinion so it ain’t me
Totally fair. I’ve had a tough time with my good-faith, heterodox views on this issue lately.
>>they are not responsible for the laws on the books
>so in 26/28 when Blue people take over they are free to disregard all laws because they are not “responsible for it”?
No, my only point is that some seem to try to argue that “Trump is different because he is acting in bad faith,” and I generally agree.
The problem with that argument is that our immigration laws are decades old, and blue states nullification is also decades old. We’ve found ourselves dealing with federal enforcement of federal laws because of state nullification, we don’t like that enforcement — I don’t like that enforcement — but we could pretty much end all this escalation between blue states and the feds by just agreeing to enforce the laws on the books. No more flirting with literal civil war. Just dealing with the consequences of a losing position as humanely as possible, given the fact that it’s going to suck.
Then we can fight to change those laws democratically.
By TimorousBestie 2025-11-1912:12 > Totally fair. I’ve had a tough time with my good-faith, heterodox views on this issue lately.
They’re not heterodox views, so perhaps the problem is the presentation.
By mindslight 2025-11-195:571 reply > we could pretty much end all this escalation between blue states and the feds by just agreeing to enforce the laws on the books
This is incredibly naive. You've got an academic point in the context of rewinding the clock back twenty years, sure. But as to the current situation?
Federal law-breaking forces are attacking citizens for simply exercising their first amendment rights to protest. Federal law-breaking forces are abducting people based on skin color and the declaration of a shoddy facial-recognition "app". Federal law-breaking forces are terrorizing entire apartment buildings by ransacking them in the middle of the night. Federal law-breaking forces are aggressively attacking people to seize control of situations that would otherwise be closer to even-party civil disputes (eg the woman who was violently kidnapped out of her own car because the jackboots crashed into her). Federal law-breaking forces are hiding their faces to avoid having their crimes documented and possibly facing justice.
This is all a much stronger form of wanton illegality - anti-Constitutional, organized, criminal, and aggressively violent transgressions - than people being here illegally. This is not terribly surprising, because all signs point to the immigration issue being nothing more than a pretext for unleashing fascist paramilitary gangs on American civil society - specifically fundamentalist red state militias hopped up on social media delusions and pathetic revenge fantasies, ultimately serving nothing beyond naked autocratic power.
So if you are earnestly concerned about the rule of law (and I agree we should be!), you should be focusing your current ire on those federal law-breaking forces. And no amount of "perhaps we did something to deserve this" navel gazing changes this.
> So if you are earnestly concerned about the rule of law (and I agree we should be!), you should be focusing your current ire on those federal law-breaking forces.
More whataboutism… always whataboutism.
By bdangubic 2025-11-1914:28 This is an easy way out... if you want to have a honest discussion you should read and address the opposing views. you are trying to oversimplify things like "states are nullifying federal laws" etc... you need to dig deeper that to see WHY that is - you think some State folk woke up one morning and went "shit, why don't we see which Federal Laws that are on the books we want to break today?" or you think perhaps there are other reason why we have sanctuary cities, what prompted that to begin with...? if you think someone just woke up and said "hell, why don't we just make this up for the heck of it...?" then maybe but none of this is all that simple...
By mindslight 2025-11-1914:461 reply So that implies you agree with the bulk of my comment, directly related to the point you made, and only had a problem with my rhetorical sum up?
Also it's not exactly "whatboutism" to make a point directly adjacent to the subject. The world isn't automatically-executing self-consistent boolean logic (eg you yourself said several comments back you sympathize with lawlessness for marijuana laws, because many more people do not support their existence). When appealing to a general concept like "the rule of law", it's important to look at the larger picture for what specifically is being motivated by such appeals and what isn't. Otherwise you're just allowing your own lofty ideals to be abused by those who would appeal to them to get you to acquiesce, while themselves operating from a much different place of not actually sharing those ideals at all. And that open hypocrisy is a strong theme of trumpism.
By bdangubic 2025-11-1919:11 > And that open hypocrisy is a strong theme of trumpism.
trump would open the borders fully today if it meant he'd cling to power few days longer. also we saw what he was doing previously especially 2016-2020...
the 'red' doesn't care of about the law nor does it want to ever solve the immigration issue (or any other issue), only to make sure there's something to try and run elections scaring people with shit like 'migrant crime' and whatnot :) too funny...
By thephyber 2025-11-198:54 > Nobody's human rights are being actively violated because they're not allow to immigrate here.
US law enshrined both refugees and asylum seekers as separate categories of immigration specifically to deal with human rights issues observed in the 20th century. While that doesn’t mean any person anywhere has a right to be a citizen in the US, it is closer to true than your statement suggests.
“Sanctuary policies” are about enforcing the 10th Amendment. The Federal government alone is responsible for immigration policy. The states should not have to participate, and sanctuary policies are a public declaration that they won’t (usually because local law enforcement knows that it makes their primary job of enforcing the criminal code harder if residents won’t testify).
The reason we haven’t reformed US immigration laws is that everyone agrees it is broken, but nowhere close to a supermajority agree on _how_ it is broken or the steps needed to fix it. See “gang of 8” negotiations circa 2013. This is the inevitable outcome of the founders making Congress slow/stagnant by default. Also damn near half of the voters being propagandized with immigration ragebait for decades.
When my family came over to what is now the USA, immigration was as simple as paying for your own boat trip and passing a health inspection. It was hundreds of years of very “open borders” before Congress decided to go hyper racist and xenophobic in the 1870s.
It’s worth poiting out that Republicans have long insisted that “we can’t reform immigration laws without _first_ kicking out all illegal immigrants. It’s neither a reasonable expectation that we can do that, nor is it a reasonable precondition for reform negotiations. It’s also hilariously false that all recent immigrants vote for Democrats — that demographic is FAR more likely to be Evangelical Christian or Roman Catholic Christian, which heavily vote towards Republicans (not to mention all of the Socialism/Communism haters from Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela who think Democrats are somehow equivalent to “far left”).
Nullification doesn’t harm US law. It is the escape valve people in the US use judiciously when US law becomes unruly and malicious.
By hackable_sand 2025-11-195:42 These comments are like those dudes that paint themselves silver and gold to convince you they are statues.
> They're still our immigration laws, we should fight to change them
It’s good advice, but a big hill to climb. The Dem politicians walk a fine line here. The influx of illegal immigrants is truly unpopular, not just with folks on the right, but also many in the moderate left and independents. They dems realize it’s a hot potato which is why you get a lot of immigration rhetoric to try and satisfy the anger, but don’t really get any effort to change any laws even when they held both branches and the presidency through 2021-2022.
Prior to 2016, both parties were pretty aligned on it, only when Trump made it a core issue did the parties start to diverge on the topic.
> The influx of illegal immigrants is truly unpopular
Does it apply to rich immigrants?
Not having housing, high medical bills, gun violence are unpopular. To blame poor immigrants is the scapegoat and many people think that kicking all of them out will solve the problems that they want to be solved. It will not.
The current state of things is that big corporations and the rich want immigration, they just do not want immigrants to have rights. The solution that they have found is to make most immigrants illegal so they have no rights, they can be paid below minimal wage and they can be blamed for being criminals so nobody looks at the rich while they literally rape minors.
I agree that is very difficult to change. But not because the average voter would not accept it, but because the rich are pushing for a narrative were immigrants are at fault of all the excesses of the rich.
By kcplate 2025-11-1916:11 > Does it apply to rich immigrants?
I think if they are illegally here, it doesn't really matter. A rich illegal immigrant may not have the same social services strain as the poor do, but it’s still someone willfully breaking a law to gain an advantage. I am not sure how a society stays orderly if its laws are meaningless.
Plus my guess is if you are rich, chances are you are here on a legal path, because you can afford to do so and you have more to lose if you dont follow the law.
> big corporations and the rich want immigration
But I don’t think they necessarily want illegal immigration. They can certainly get around I-9 employee requirements by hiring contractors, but unless on site work is needed, why not just offshore and get it even cheaper and not have to deal with gray areas of legality by as a company trying to bypass immigration laws?
You can also call it undemocratic, not just because blue states are actively subverting them, but because the intent of the subversion is to create new voters and shift demographics into their favor.
I actually don’t think that’s relevant. I don’t think people vote for one party or another because of their race or ethnicity. I think assuming people vote along ethnic lines is honestly pretty idiotic, and I think the last two elections have demonstrated this as being entirely sensible.
By woodpanel 2025-11-197:59 Interesting that you imply I said anything about race. I didn’t.
Never mind that the reason people point out the last two elections is that they show statistical anomalies - which is by itself proving my point. The data is clear on this.
But further it runs counter to simple game theory.
If a Country, governed by Party A, enacts a law, prohibiting Nazis from immigrating, but Party B undermines that law in municipalities they rule in (by providing „sanctuary cities“, stopping law enforcement on such matters entirely, providing services including legal help for naturalization, and more things) basically stretching the timeframe as long as possible for illegal Nazis to be present in the country, so that they either become eligible Nazi voters locally (by residence status), naturalized Nazi citizens eventually or at least have Nazi offspring with a citizenship title – then obviously the Nazis are going to vote for the party that allowed that to happen (Party B), and against that party that tried to stop this (Party A).
And this will (decreasingly with each generation) be true for their Nazi offspring as well.
By 4MOAisgoodenuf 2025-11-1917:211 reply > "To create new voters"
How do you imagine this working? You do realize that voter registration requires proof of citizenship, correct?
By woodpanel 2025-11-1918:32 See comment thread below
Actually the United States stands out not from the moralism, that’s very common in other countries.
What amazed me is how many Americans think immigration laws are optional. That entering and working illegally is no biggie.
Every other country I’ve lived in has much more strict immigration laws. Even the 3rd world countries that can’t seem to deliver potable tap water.
Deportations are standard, quick and supported by the population. Actually “supported” is wrong, it was more “yeah and…?”. No anger, self-riteousbess, just “thats how it’s supposed to work”
Most countries consider immigration enforcement is as standard as enforcing laws against bank robbery or littering. “Why wouldn’t you do it?” is the most typical take.
By TheCoelacanth 2025-11-1922:161 reply I don't think it's a very common opinion in the US that immigration laws should not be enforced. There is a small contingent on the left that wants that on humanitarian grounds and another small contingent on the right that wants very loose immigration laws for the business benefits of immigrant labor.
There were an enormous number of deportations under previous administrations without much pushback.
What distinguishes this situation is that the deportations are proceeding with a complete disregard for US law and human rights. People are being deported without getting a chance to fight it in court, a violation of the constitutional right to due process. People are being rounded up as suspected illegal immigrants solely based on their skin color or the language they are speaking, a violation of the constitutional right to be secure from unreasonable search and seizure. People are being deported while it is still being determined whether they are eligible for asylum or refugee status, a violation of US statute.
The US is supposed to be a nation of laws where everyone can be certain that their legal rights will be respected. That is being grossly violated with the current deportation push.
Opinion polls are around 60-70% supporting enforcement of immigration laws.
That’s means a quarter to a third don’t believe they should be enforced. I’d call that significant.
And the US “disregard for human rights”? You mean the right to contest your deportations multiple times? That’s far more than other countries provide. It’s more typical for an officer to not find proof of legal entry being the sole decision maker. You’ll be on a plane the same day leaving the country.
There are people in the US who have been here for years awaiting a decision on their case. You feel that’s an abuse of their human rights?
By TheCoelacanth 2025-11-2118:111 reply People are literally being deported despite having a court order ordering that they not be deported.
People are being searched without a reasonable suspicion they are in the country illegally.
Both of those things are illegal under US law. What other countries do is not relevant since US law does not apply there.
These clearly aren’t happening on a broad scale, and exceptions don’t disprove the rule.
Aliens in the US get far more due process than most countries give. That’s the measure.
By TheCoelacanth 2025-11-2516:19 That is not the measure. The US must follow its own laws; not those of other countries.
By 4MOAisgoodenuf 2025-11-1922:261 reply Until the 1920's it was not a crime to enter and work inside the US without prior authorization.
Staying and working beyond the initial authorization of a visa is a civil violation, not a criminal one in the US.
Laws are created by men with a specific intent not handed down as truth from god. In the case of the US, immigration law has largely been shaped by a racist quota system formed as a reaction of previous immigrants towards the next flight of immigrants. A "fuck you, I've got mine" mentality.
By refurb 2025-11-229:06 I mean it wasn’t illegal to send your 10 year old to work in a mine either, but that doesn’t mean we should allow it.
If you don’t like immigration laws then change them. Otherwise they should be enforced.
By akimbostrawman 2025-11-2012:27 >that’s very common in other countries
That is how successful the Overton windows has been shifted same in europe.
Illegal immigration is a crime. So is jay walking and software piracy and murder. There’s a lot of nuance to be had here in how big of a deal it is and how people who do the deed are treated.
It’s always felt weird though that it’s become taboo to call it a crime, but maybe that’s just me.
By scoofy 2025-11-193:35 The issue is that it is illegal AND a nontrivial part of the electorate wants it enforced.
The “let’s all step back and consider my side’s view of this” isn’t really relevant after our side loses elections. If the will of the people is to start enforcing jay-walking, for better or worse, we’re going to see a lot of jay-walking enforcement.
By 4MOAisgoodenuf 2025-11-1917:39 The vast majority of undocumented immigrants arrived legally and are visa overstays, which is NOT a criminal violation but rather a civil violation.
For most of America's history it wasn't even illegal to enter the US without prior authorization. The law that made it a crime to enter the US without authorization (8 U.S.C. § 1325) was specifically created in the 20's to restrict immigration by race. And the violent enforcement of this law has really only ramped up in the last few decades.
It is very strange to see many people in the US (and in this thread) accept the current enforcement framework as simply a set of static rules that just happen to be here, and not a relatively recent phenomenon that was enacted and enforced for a project of racial prejudice.
By ivraatiems 2025-11-193:041 reply I think it's more that something being a crime doesn't make it immoral, and something being a crime doesn't mean it should continue to be.
I do not think most illegal immigration should be considered a crime. That's my position. Moralizing about it by saying "well these people are CRIMINALS" because they crossed an imaginary line on a map is odious to me.
By QuiEgo 2025-11-1916:11 I guess I don’t have a huge association with calling someone a CRIMINAL as a big deal. Like I speed on the highway every day, I’m a criminal too. I don’t really feel like I’m doing anything wrong if I drive safe and there’s no traffic near me. If I got a ticket though I did the deed and so be it. It’s not some black and white, “you’re a criminal so you’re evil” thing for me at all. The punishment should fit the crime.
By ThrowawayTestr 2025-11-190:31 No one has the right to immigrate to another country. If that country has steep requirements, that's its prerogative.
It should be telling that a great portion of these people are young men, and young men from certain regions view women, minorities, and ideas like honesty and fairness much differently. Europe is facing this right now. What are you suggesting? All of India moves to the US? Are you even aware they'd do that if they could? That is _not_ practical.
By bulbar 2025-11-1819:25 What do you mean with "telling"? That they are in tech because that's the demographic of tech folks? Or that men in most parts of the world are responsible to make enough money for the whole family?
It's more rethorical but I seriously don't know how that's telling.
> Europe is facing this right now.
What exactly? War in Syria was ten years ago.
> What are you suggesting? All of India moves to the US?
I find it clear that the suggestion is: Provide a clear and feasible path for people who wish to migrate and will benefit the society. We lack that in Europe/Germany as well and ironically are missing the laws to deal with criminal immigration effectively.
It's sad many people don't even know or think about the difference of regular migration and coming as a refugee. Migration of skilled workers must become much easier in Europe, while refugees are a very different topic.
By stronglikedan 2025-11-193:02 > We have purposefully made it impossible to do the right thing
We have the most people trying to get in and let the most people in legally year after year, so not only is it no impossible, but we're the best at it.
> so we can rejoice in punishing those who do it "wrong".
Except no one is rejoicing that, but I can see how certain bubbles may have interest in spreading that misinformation.
By BobaFloutist 2025-11-1818:032 reply Also a lot of people applying that legal moralism consider it not just acceptable, but laudable to try to cheat on your taxes, a pretty significant crime.
By happytoexplain 2025-11-1818:172 reply Combining qualities you oppose into theoretical groups is a common, very human fallacy, but it will poison your mind against humanity. It's the origin of tribalism.
For example, I'm a white non-religious straight liberal US man with a hippy upbringing that I value dearly, and I think the opportunity to immigrate should be as available as possible to all good people. But I also recognize that it must be responsibly controlled, and the native culture and quality of life must be prioritized (for all nations, not just the West), and one piece of that is stopping illegal immigration. And it's not unreasonable to have an opinion that we are, to some degree, failing at all the pieces.
By AngryData 2025-11-1823:43 Because otherwise why should native residents support the government or agree to submit under its laws and regulations?
By happytoexplain 2025-11-1914:18 Maybe I wasn't clear - I mean each country must prioritize its citizens and native culture (i.e. the default position of most nations). Not that they must prioritize their native-born citizens over their immigrant citizens (once they are actually full-fledged citizens). The point being that one affects the other: Bad immigration practices (bad laws, bad enforcement of good laws, etc) negatively affect citizens, but the people trying to immigrate become citizens who we are morally obligated to then prioritize equally, so it requires a balance.
You may make the argument that a country shouldn't prioritize anybody in the world, but it falls into the same category of argument as "there should be no borders". Yes, you are envisioning a beautiful world, and maybe in a few hundred or a few thousand years we will be able to get there. But each day in between we must give a shit about reality.
By krapp 2025-11-190:47 >But I also recognize that it must be responsibly controlled, and the native culture and quality of life must be prioritized (for all nations, not just the West), and one piece of that is stopping illegal immigration.
I agree, it's about time we prioritized natives over illegal immigrants. We should start by giving back the land we stole from them, honoring our treaties and respecting tribal sovereignty. Maybe give Mount Rushmore back to the Lakota.
By potato3732842 2025-11-1823:431 reply Reverse the order of the crimes in that sentence and you can find that opinion in droves on HN any day of the week.
What we really ought to be ridiculing if not punishing and marginalizing is inconsistency and cognitive dissonance.
There are so many issues possible in a nation of 300+mil that we cannot form opinions on policy based on vibes and emotions, we must have principals and let them inform our opinions.
By happytoexplain 2025-11-190:55 The vast majority of accusations of hypocrisy in social/political arguments are based on subjectivity in the first place. There is simply no such case where X is objectively the same as Y - or else it would be X, and not Y. You can always form an argument around the difference between the two things. Maybe it's a weak argument and the person making it is obviously engaging in a double standard - but there is no way to draw a line.
Illegal immigration isn’t bad because people didn’t do their paperwork. It’s bad because it overrides society’s determinations about which foreigners to allow into the country and how many. So “making it easier to immigrate legally” misses the point completely.
And this concern about “who and how many” is well founded. Alexander Hamilton himself noted the dangers of cultural division from immigration. https://www.iwp.edu/articles/2016/12/21/hamiltons-actual-vie.... He wrote: “The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education, and family.”
Silicon Valley understands that culture drives outcomes when it comes to companies and startups, but have a huge blind spot about culture when it comes to countries. But culture matters just as much for countries as companies. Immigrants bring their cultures with them—typically from places less successful than the U.S.—and that culture persists for generations: https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran.... That has serious consequences for society. You can easily look at Minnesota versus New Jersey and see that immigration patterns have left an imprint on culture centuries later. And it’s equally clear that certain parts of the country are culturally better than other parts of the country. America would be much more orderly and well governed if more of it was like Minnesota and Utah and less like West Virginia or New Jersey.
By ivraatiems 2025-11-193:182 reply > It’s bad because it overrides society’s determinations about which foreigners to allow into the country and how many. So “making it easier to immigrate legally” misses the point completely.
No it doesn't. What if I want more foreigners? What if I want people to come here? Somehow, these arguments only ever seem to rachet in favor of people who want less immigration, not more.
I'd say the federal government of the United States is currently overriding my preferences about who to allow into the country and how many, actually, by aggressively enforcing immigration laws in ways they likely were not intended to be enforced, and in ways which are repeatedly being found to be illegal, actually.
> And it’s equally clear that certain parts of the country are culturally better than other parts of the country. America would be much more orderly and well governed if more of it was like Minnesota and Utah and less like West Virginia or New Jersey.
You need to add a "to my preference" here when you talk about which parts of the country are "culturally better" than others. You clearly have strong ideas about what you'd like US culture to be, many of which I suspect I deeply disagree with.
Is your argument that West Virginia is "disorderly" or "culturally inferior" because of immigrants? Which groups, and from when?
By yes_really 2025-11-193:43 > > It’s bad because it overrides society’s determinations about which foreigners to allow into the country and how many.
> No it doesn't. What if I want more foreigners? What if I want people to come here?
Then that's your preference, that's not society's determination! We theoretically live in a democracy. Policy should be determined by the Rule of Law determined democratically, not by @ivraatiems's preference.
> What if I want more foreigners? What if I want people to come here?
Your view doesn't reflect the electorate. Cato, an extremely pro-immigration organization, did a study in 2021. They found that, after being informed about current immigration levels, the median respondent stated 500,000 immigrants should be admitted to the US annually: https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/styles/aside_3x/pu.... A recent Pew study found that 11 million immigrants arrived from 2020-2025, or over 2 million per year. That's four times what the median American thinks the immigration influx should be.
The New York Times did a great podcast about how Congress has been (falsely) promising since the 1960s that changes to immigration laws would not result in increased immigration: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi....
> You need to add a "to my preference" here when you talk about which parts of the country are "culturally better" than others. You clearly have strong ideas about what you'd like US culture to be, many of which I suspect I deeply disagree with.
It's not purely subjective. Communities in America settled by Puritans, Quakers, Dutch, Scandinavians, and Mormons simply do better on objective metrics. For example, a UCLA study found that Mormon men live 10 years longer than white men generally: https://www.deseret.com/2010/4/13/20375744/ucla-study-proves.... The two states with the highest social mobility (Utah and Vermont: https://www.archbridgeinstitute.org/social-mobility-in-the-5...) are polar opposites politically, but are similar in that both were settled by people from particular parts of Britain.
But the subjective matters as well. Lee Kuan Yew visited London in the 1960s, and was amazed by an unattended news stand in Piccadilly Circus with an "honor system" cash box: https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/1mn8moh/how_do_you_.... As someone from Bangladesh, I fully concur. My preference is the opposite of Bangladesh, something like an orderly New England town full of high-social trust people who raise their kids with sayings like "there's no such thing as a free lunch."
> Is your argument that West Virginia is "disorderly" or "culturally inferior" because of immigrants? Which groups, and from when?
Appalachia was settled by people from a culturally distinct region of northern Britain: https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/four-folkways. Hundreds of years later, this group remains culturally and sociologically distinct from other British Americans.
By ivraatiems 2025-11-194:522 reply > My preference is the opposite of Bangladesh, something like an orderly New England town full of high-social trust people who raise their kids with sayings like "there's no such thing as a free lunch."
How do you reconcile your preference for this with the fact that a lot of the other people who express this preference would prefer you hadn't come from Bangladesh to join them?
It really seems to me, genuinely, like the rules you advocate for would exclude you if they were applied to you today. You can read elsewhere on my profile the story of my Indian roommate who had very similar views to you, and his illegal deportation. The system is not and has never been "let's see if you're the sort of Indian or Bangladeshi or whatever that we'd like", it's "you're from those backwaters? no thanks."
Does it bother you that other people from Bangladesh - or anywhere - who wanted the sort of society you want will likely not be permitted to join it if you build it here? Frankly, my experience with a lot of non-immigrant folks with the views you espouse is that they wouldn't welcome you no matter what views you had.
That's the problem with the views expressed by the GP. It's rights for me but not for thee right up until the moment that the knock on the door comes and then suddenly they're wondering why nobody stands up for them.
In general kicking the door shut behind you is bad form but I can understand it, especially if you're financially successful, then you don't want to be associated with all of those really bad and embarrassingly poor people from $COUNTRY that you or your parents emigrated from. But ultimately it is an intellectually dishonest position, those illegal immigrants are no less people for trying to improve their lives and since they are not a drain on the system (healthcare, voting and other rights are closed off to them) their net positive effect is actually a massive economic boost for the country.
But that is not something you'll be able to explain to someone who has set their mind on 'illegal immigrants bad'. It is interesting that this is now the 'conservative viewpoint' when actually it is just racism masquerading as enforcement of the law. If and when that difference manifests in the GPs life it will be too late.
My position is only hypocritical or contradictory under your unstated assumptions about how society works. You believe that cultures are fungible. You think that if you took 10,000 people raised by Dutch mothers and had them build a city, it would turn out the same as if you took 10,000 people raised by Bangladeshi mothers. I reject that premise. I think if you ran that experiment, with all else being equal, the city founded in Dutch culture would be more prosperous, better governed, less corrupt, and more orderly.
Since I don't accept your cultural relativism, then there is no contradiction in my view. Quite rationally, I want to live in the city founded on Dutch culture rather than the city founded in Bangladeshi culture. And there is nothing contradictory about moving to a place but opposing mass migration of people behind you that changes the character of the place that you found attractive to begin with. That's the mindset of literally everyone who moves to a quaint little town in the country.
> You think that if you took 10,000 people raised by Dutch mothers and had them build a city, it would turn out the same as if you took 10,000 people raised by Bangladeshi mothers. I reject that premise.
Are you trying for some kind of world record in strawmen? If so this one should definitely be nominated.
You've cut off part of the hypo: "I think if you ran that experiment, with all else being equal, the city founded in Dutch culture would be more prosperous, better governed, less corrupt, and more orderly." So when I say "the same" in the hypo, I mean "substantively the same" modulo superficial differences like food, clothing styles, architecture, etc. Does that clarification fix the hypo for you? If not, what part of the hypo do you think is inapt?
No, you can add whatever crap you want after that it is founded on something blatantly dishonest.
And you are apparently in love with some aspects of dutch society while you ignore the fact that - just like in your country - we have a massive issue with racism, have a huge problem with drugs and drug related crime as well as with human trafficking. Bangladesh, I'm sure has problems but they are just different problem. Food, clothing styles and architecture are not superficial, neither are family and friendship bonds, etc. Besides that we also have a massive pollution problem, have some of the largest CO2 emissions on the planet per square meter on account of our incredibly successful but also ridiculously dense pig, cow and chicken factories and associated slaughterhouses and so on.
Yes, Bangladesh is poor, and yes, there are issues there. But those issues have nothing to do with immigration and there is zero chance that Bangladeshi immigrants would recreate the society they left behind. Just like you and your family did not.
By rayiner 2025-11-2018:31 > And you are apparently in love with some aspects of dutch society
I love the fact that Dutch society is orderly, prosperous, and technologically advanced. Purely objective criteria.
> we have a massive issue with racism, have a huge problem with drugs and drug related crime as well as with human trafficking. Bangladesh, I'm sure has problems but they are just different problem.
The problems in Bangladesh aren't just "different," they're more foundational. Just like individual's have a hierarchy of needs (https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html) societies have a hierarchy of problems. Bangladesh fails to get fundamental things right. While Dutch society has developed sufficiently that they can worry about stuff like the density of slaughterhouses.
> zero chance that Bangladeshi immigrants would recreate the society they left behind.
If you go to Little Bangladesh in Queens, you can see with your own eyes that tens of thousands of Bangladeshis living in a community do, in fact, recreate their home societies. The only reason Little Bangladesh doesn't even more strongly resemble Dhaka is that the Bangladeshis are living within a society governed by Americans.
By ivraatiems 2025-11-1918:134 reply Not to pile on, but I think part of the issue is that the GP's argument has cause and effect reversed. He believes Bangladesh is poor and unpleasant in various ways because of their culture, while in fact it runs the other way. Culture is in many ways downstream of economics, not upstream.
Of course it's more complex than that in total, and it can go both ways, but that's my view.
By rayiner 2025-11-2018:49 You're correct that the direction of the causality is the key question. I'd argue that your view, however, suffers from results-oriented thinking. You assume cultural equality as axiomatic. That forces you to assume that Bangladesh's culture is caused by poverty and not the cause of its poverty.
I think most of the evidence points in the other direction. Bangladesh today has a per-capita GDP, adjusted for purchasing power, of over $12,000 (in 2024 U.S. dollars): https://www.worldeconomics.com/Processors/Economics-Countrie.... That's about where the U.S. was at the time of World War I, adjusted for inflation. Despite having economic productivity comparable to WWI-era U.S., Bangladesh is a vastly inferior society in terms of governance, political stability, cleanliness, law and order, etc. It excels in a few areas (low homicide rate and surprisingly good health indicators) but otherwise lags far behind.
You can also compare across countries that were similarly poor until recently. When my dad was born in what was then Pakistan, China was poorer than Pakistan. Today, China is much richer, more stable, cleaner, and more advanced. And Bangladesh, as bad as it is, is pulling away from Pakistan.
By Sucelos 2025-11-1921:57 [dead]
The resource curse, geographic location and climate are huge factors as well as those 'successful' western countries usually taking advantage of being a few decades ahead on the tech curve. That alone accounts for a huge fraction of the wealth and perceived advantages of one country over another. Bangladesh has a very rich history and was at times way ahead of the curve but the combination of various western (mostly British) influences in the region as well as a series of wars and coups have left it in shambles. But no Bangladeshi born today had any part in that, just as no Dutch person born today can take credit for where NL sits (not that there is all that much to take credit for, if anything my national pride extends as far as the waterworks and ASML but not much further than that and I'm well aware of the history of both).
By rayiner 2025-11-2022:12 > The resource curse, geographic location and climate are huge factors as well as those 'successful' western countries usually taking advantage
You have a theory of why some countries are rich and others are poor. I also have a theory. How are you so stridently confident that not only is your analysis is correct, but so obviously correct that my contrary view somehow is outside the boundaries of debate?
> Bangladesh has a very rich history and was at times way ahead of the curve but the combination of various western (mostly British) influences in the region as well as a series of wars and coups have left it in shambles.
Britain didn't conquer the subcontinent through superior weaponry. The Mughal Empire was one of the gunpowder empires: https://www.thoughtco.com/the-gunpowder-empires-195840. Britain was able to conquer the subcontinent using superior institutions and organization. In contrast, the Mughal Empire lacked such institutions, or any sense of nationalism. Indeed, the British East India company conquered India with an army largely comprised of Indians. https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/armies-east-india-company.
Instead, the technology that enabled Britain to succeed was cultural technology. In Britain, nuclear families were the norm back in the 13th century. Those weak family ties--which, frankly, I find upsetting even as someone raised among Americans--spurred the development of civic institutions to perform functions that in other societies were handled by extended family networks.
By ivraatiems 2025-11-1915:54 You're correct that I think you're entirely wrong about how culture works, but that's not what I'm asking you about.
My point is that under your rules and worldview, you should not have been allowed to come to the US, because you are from the "bad" culture.
Why should an exception have been made for you? Why are you and your family special and different from everyone else in your home culture? Under your own rules, that makes no sense.
Why even bother? Rayiner is just vile and will not be moderated no matter how much bullshit he spews.
By jacquesm 2025-11-204:34 That's a tough one. Because I think to let this crap stand unopposed is degrading HN and I should either stop using this site (which I've already done for well over a year) or keep speaking out. Not speaking out while continuing to use the site would make me a 'good German' and that's not something I'd be comfortable with.
But between the likes of drysine and rayiner HN is poorer and even though the motto is 'curious conversation' this isn't that and it is making me wonder to what degree 'curious conversation' and 'rage driven engagement clicks' are the same thing but with a nicer name.
By TimorousBestie 2025-11-2017:58 Context for this claim: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44882722
What’s there to reconcile? My view of what’s good for America doesn’t need to validate my cultural identity or serve my personal interests. My dad left Bangladesh even though we were rich back home because he didn’t want to raise his kids in the culture. So nobody is hurting my feelings by saying that we should resist importing that culture into the U.S.
And to be clear, I don't view myself as an exception! My mom never really assimilated--culturally, she's a Bangladeshi elite--and children mostly receive their culture from their mother.
By ivraatiems 2025-11-1915:581 reply I ended up replying a little further up in the thread to a related point you made, but to sort of restate:
Have you considered that under your own rubric, you're "bad for america" because you're from a "bad" culture? It sounds like by your rules you shouldn't have been allowed to come.
You say you don't view yourself as an exception, but clearly you are, so why are you special? If people like you and your dad can come from cultures like the one you left, how is it that culture is stagnant and unchanging as you say?
> Have you considered that under your own rubric, you're "bad for america" because you're from a "bad" culture? It sounds like by your rules you shouldn't have been allowed to come.
Correct, but so what? I think it's important to be objective and detached. It would be intellectually dishonest of me to color my thinking by trying to come to conclusions that would validate my own presence in the country.
> You say you don't view yourself as an exception, but clearly you are, so why are you special? If people like you and your dad can come from cultures like the one you left, how is it that culture is stagnant and unchanging as you say?
Societies aren't monoliths. Even Bangladesh has people like my dad, who arrive everywhere early, are horrified by corruption, and love waiting in line. But immigration isn't about individuals, it's about populations in the aggregate. And the evidence shows that populations have identifiable cultural averages that are durable over generations.
"Trust, for instance, is one of the more commonly studied attributes: economic cooperation relies upon it, yet it varies substantially from culture to culture. Mr. Jones, an associate professor of economics at George Mason University, notes that, even after four generations in the U.S., immigrants continue to hold attitudes toward trust that are significantly influenced by their home countries. On a host of other matters, such as family, abortion and the role of government, fourth-generation immigrants on average converge only about 60% of the way to the national norm." https://manhattan.institute/article/the-culture-transplant-r...
"Analyses using data from the World Values Survey and the cumulative General Social Surveys indicate that the civic attitudes of contemporary Americans bear a strong resemblance to the civic attitudes of the contemporary citizens of the European nations with whom they share common ancestors." https://cis.org/Richwine/More-Evidence-Cultural-Persistence
By ivraatiems 2025-11-1918:091 reply > Correct, but so what? I think it's important to be objective and detached. It would be intellectually dishonest of me to color my thinking by trying to come to conclusions that would validate my own presence in the country.
But you and your family are by your own metrics evidence that your line of thinking - "people from culture X are not worth bringing to the US" - is false.
> Societies aren't monoliths. Even Bangladesh has people like my dad, who arrive everywhere early, are horrified by corruption, and love waiting in line. But immigration isn't about individuals, it's about populations in the aggregate. And the evidence shows that populations have identifiable cultural averages that are durable over generations.
If you believe the first sentence, the second sentence doesn't follow. Isn't the whole point of immigration laws to construct systems by which people whose traits are desirable are allowed to immigrate?
If your dad exists in Bangladesh, surely he's not the only one. If Bangladesh, with ~170 million people, has 500,000 of your dad (or whatever), surely it's to our benefit as a society to get as many of them as possible here?
But the people in control of policy on this issue, frankly, are people who are so bald-facedly hypernationalist that they see "Bangladeshi" and think "not American," and stop there. They do not care to implement a system that would work better. They don't want a system at all.
If you think societies aren't a monolith, whether they can change or not, then allowing movement between societies to help people find ones they fit into better is a good thing. If you think the US is better off with you in it, then "just reject everyone from country/culture X" is not the right approach. That is not the position current immigration policy espouses. My original point was that the US immigration system is designed to make it impossible to immigrate legally. Not just difficult or subject to scrutiny - effectively impossible.
Is that what you want, given your beliefs?
(To be clear, I still hold to my original point which is that I think your fundamental view of peoples and cultures is misguided and wrong, but we're not going to agree on that, so I don't see a point in arguing it. If it were up to me the system would be very very different, but as others have pointed out, it isn't currently up to me.)
> But you and your family are by your own metrics evidence that your line of thinking - "people from culture X are not worth bringing to the US" - is false.
I didn't say that, and I had no reason to say that because it's irrelevant to my point. You're talking about someone like Fazlur Kahn, the Bangladeshi who moved to Illinois on a Fulbright Scholarship in the 1950s and was the structural engineer who designed the Sears Tower. I'm talking about 100,000 Bangladeshis moving en masse to New York, and establishing a Bangladeshi enclave in Queens.
Your final caveat that you think culture doesn't actually matter is exactly why I think your "system that would work better" is a red herring. You'd never accept the immigration system we had back when Fazlur Kahn came here, because you believe in magic soil. If we implemented such a system, immigration proponents would immediately shift their focus to eliminating any bargained-for restrictions, which is exactly what they've been doing since 1965.
So in reality, the choice is binary. You either severely restrict immigration, or you have mass immigration and Bangladeshi enclaves in your city.
By ivraatiems 2025-11-223:081 reply You ignored the things I was actually trying to ask you about and instead focused on a point where I specifically called out that we wouldn't agree - a point I specifically conceded for the purpose of this discussion because I didn't think arguing it was productive.
When you say:
> You'd never accept the immigration system we had back when Fazlur Kahn came here, because you believe in magic soil. If we implemented such a system, immigration proponents would immediately shift their focus to eliminating any bargained-for restrictions, which is exactly what they've been doing since 1965.
I am not talking about what I'd accept. I'm asking why you aren't advocating for it as something you would accept. The critical point is:
> the people in control of policy on this issue, frankly, are people who are so bald-facedly hypernationalist that they see "Bangladeshi" and think "not American," and stop there. They do not care to implement a system that would work better. They don't want a system at all.
> If you think societies aren't a monolith, whether they can change or not, then allowing movement between societies to help people find ones they fit into better is a good thing. If you think the US is better off with you in it, then "just reject everyone from country/culture X" is not the right approach. That is not the position current immigration policy espouses. My original point was that the US immigration system is designed to make it impossible to immigrate legally. Not just difficult or subject to scrutiny - effectively impossible.
> Is that what you want, given your beliefs?
You may say that you don't actually think "people from culture X are not worth bringing to the US," but given the above, that is what you are functionally advocating for. You are advocating that the ladder be pulled up behind you, and me, and everyone else in this country who is successful as the child of immigrants.
If you think that an immigration system that isn't just "disallow all foreign immigrants" is worth fighting for, even if the system you want at the end isn't the one I want, you should be fighting for it instead of arguing it's OK we don't have it.
> You ignored the things I was actually trying to ask you about and instead focused on a point where I specifically called out that we wouldn't agree - a point I specifically conceded for the purpose of this discussion because I didn't think arguing it was productive... .. I am not talking about what I'd accept. I'm asking why you aren't advocating for it as something you would accept.
I'm not trying to talk past you. My point is that, in formulating my own policy, I cannot overlook our ideological conflict. If we agreed on the premises that culture is a cause of societal prosperity, and that culture is durable in immigrants, and we only disagreed about degrees, then it would be possible to reach a nuanced compromise. But it's not possible to formulate a stable compromise with people who cannot, starting from their ideological axioms, rationally justify any restrictions on immigration. No compromise will be enforced, and we will have mass immigration by default. That's the history of immigration law dating back to the 1965 INA.
Given that, it's rational to simply pick which of the two maximalist approaches you prefer. When a Biden gets elected, the borders are opened and we have mass immigration. When a Trump gets elected, the reaction must be equal and opposite.
> You may say that you don't actually think "people from culture X are not worth bringing to the US," but given the above, that is what you are functionally advocating for.
No, that doesn't logically follow. Just because I think the costs outweigh the benefits--because any openings left open will be abused to enable mass immigration--doesn't mean I think the benefits are zero.
> If you think the US is better off with you in it, then "just reject everyone from country/culture X" is not the right approach.
I think my immigrating to the U.S. was a regression to the global mean. America is more like Bangladesh as a result of my coming here. (Ask my wife, who has to deal with the elaborate but inefficient rituals of being a Bangladeshi daughter in law.) All else being equal, American citizens would have been better off importing an orderly Dane or Norwegian or Japanese instead.
> You are advocating that the ladder be pulled up behind you, and me, and everyone else in this country who is successful as the child of immigrants.
Your "pulling the ladder up" analogy implies I should favor extending a benefit to an immigrant because I received that benefit myself. But, as a citizen, my duty runs to my fellow citizens, not to foreigners who share my immigrant background. In my analysis, only the benefit to existing U.S. citizens matters. And I don't think American citizens benefit from expanding Bangladeshi enclaves around the country.
By selimthegrim 2025-11-2215:55 Your consistent refusal to engage with the Bengali population here before 1965 is telling
By TimorousBestie 2025-11-1914:311 reply >> Is your argument that West Virginia is "disorderly" or "culturally inferior" because of immigrants? Which groups, and from when?
> Appalachia was settled by people from a culturally distinct region of northern Britain: https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/four-folkways. Hundreds of years later, this group remains culturally and sociologically distinct from other British Americans.
Albion’s Seed is not a reliable narrative as it concerns the region: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40933452 (1992)
In particular, “Borderers” are a myth Fischer concocted out of whole cloth by selectively ignoring inconvenient bits of his primary sources.
The weird second life it got from the glowing Slate Star Codex review is yet another instance of Rationalists wrongly assuming competence outside their domain of expertise.
Your naive adoption and regurgitation of American biases against Appalachians does not endear you to me, either.
Appalachian culture has many commonalities with other cultures from mountainous regions: systems of honor, strong extended family ties, and low social trust. These cultural traits are also present in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. And all these places have had trouble adapting to industrial society. That's not a coincidence. There's a lot of research into how family clan structures, for example, inhibit the development of functioning civic institutions.
Zooming out, Mormons built thriving, orderly cities in a hostile desert after being chased out of Illinois by the federal government. The plight of Appalachia is not due to external factors.
By TimorousBestie 2025-11-1916:20 Cling to your folk anthropology if it pleases you, but don’t expect a friendly reception.
By shalmanese 2025-11-193:342 reply But society's determination is that a certain quantity of illegal immigrants should enter every year because they have less rights and can be better exploited by businesses. Being deliberately blind to this reality is also living in a fantasy land.
By ivraatiems 2025-11-194:591 reply An easy solution to this would be to grant those individuals legal status once they are in the country.
(Yes, I know this has many many other consequences. I am not necessarily actually advocating for it just happening with the stroke of a pen. But holding that up as a reason to prevent immigration itself rings hollow to me.)
By shalmanese 2025-11-195:41 The purpose of a system is what it does. Proposing solutions is unhelpful because the system is not interested in the problem being fixed. The problem is a designed in feature.
By hollerith 2025-11-1914:27 Yes, many US businesses are eager to hire illegal immigrants because they work for less, but they're also eager to hire legal immigrants because they will work for less than citizens will.
By raw_anon_1111 2025-11-194:31 [flagged]
By like_any_other 2025-11-191:474 reply > especially in the United States.
China has 1.4 million immigrants, and 12000 foreigners with permanent residency. Not per year, but total, cumulative [1]. Despite having 4x the population of the USA.
Meanwhile the USA has gone from 83% White in 1970 [2], to White children being a minority [3] in less than 50 years. And most of that change was due to legal immigration (that they were promised wouldn't change anything [4]) Yet still they're called out for not erasing their own identity even faster.
So do you just not believe in the national right to self-determination, to decide who may live among them? Do you also not believe in this right for Kashmir [5,6] or Palestine?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...
[3] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/less-than-half-of-us-chil...
[4] Secretary of State Dean Rusk and other politicians, including Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), asserted that the bill would not affect the U.S. demographic mix - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Ac...
[5] Kashmir’s new status could bring demographic change, drawing comparisons to the West Bank - https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/08/08/kashmirs-new...
[6] Human rights activists said that the moves to change Kashmir’s status were only the first steps in a broader plan to erode Kashmir’s core rights and seed the area with non-Kashmiris, altering the demographics and eventually destroying its character. Previous laws barred outsiders from owning property. - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/world/asia/india-pakistan...
By hshdhdhj4444 2025-11-192:363 reply How long did it take America to go from 0% white to almost complete native erasure?
If we’re gonna apply your definitionally racist argument then whites (ie Europeans) (or Asians or Africans) shouldn’t be in the country.
Also, apparently you’re ok with America’s population doubling with immigration as long as those immigrants are white Europeans?
The share of immigrants as a percentage of population is about where it was between the mid 1800s and early 1900s, but you’re fine with that because it was primarily Europeans? (Although, ironically, a lot of those Europeans were also not considered white contemporaneously and it’s only now that their descendants consider themselves white and rail about all the non white immigeants).
By like_any_other 2025-11-1921:08 > Although, ironically, a lot of those Europeans were also not considered white contemporaneously and it’s only now that their descendants consider themselves white and rail about all the non white immigeants
This is outright false: https://www.academia.edu/69843076/The_Becoming_White_Thesis_...
In fact it is so false, that 8 Irishmen signed the US Declaration of Independence: https://www.irishpost.com/life-style/meet-8-irishmen-signed-...
The myth was likely started by Noel Ignatiev's "How the Irish Became White" book [1]. The same Noel Ignatiev that co-founded the "Race Traitor" journal, "which promoted the idea that "treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity"". Who would have thought such an unbiased and objective academic would be falsifying history. It's an exercise for the reader how something both so unbelievable, and so easily falsified, could persist for so long in academia.
By like_any_other 2025-11-1918:01 So the Americans deserve it? Well, thank you for your honesty.
By pandaman 2025-11-193:17 I would not be using the "natives were wiped out by foreign conquerors" argument in support of uncontrolled (or any other kind) immigration, if I were you.
By ivraatiems 2025-11-193:142 reply > So do you just not believe in the national right to self-determination, to decide who may live among them? Do you also not believe in this right for Kashmir [5,6] or Palestine?
On a personal moral/philosophical level, I think lines on a map which we call "nations" are a foolish way to decide who is allowed to go where and do what.
So from first principles, I don't accept the framing. I don't think "national" right to self-determination is a meaningful or valid term. It exists in practice but it is not valuable except in terms of pragmatism/realpolitik.
Therefore, I advocate for immigration policies which are much more focused on helping people and bettering society around me than on any nation-based concept of identity. That doesn't mean I want to bring more people who would hurt others into my society. But it does mean I don't care about whether the people who come in are "like me" in some meaningful way.
(That doesn't mean I don't act like nations exist or agree that they do, just that my ideal world probably would not include them in that way. Nor does it mean I don't think national lines ever echo the lines of societies or that I'm an anarchist who doesn't believe in governments. I just don't accept the idea that "this person lives on this side of the border" is a meaningful way to decide if they get to live in a place or not.)
Also, it sounds like what you consider "national" framing is actually racial framing. Given that you spend a lot of time talking about white people in a nation that has never been just white people, is that not correct?
>> I just don't accept the idea that "this person lives on this side of the border" is a meaningful way to decide if they get to live in a place or not.)
I curious where do you draw the line then? Can a random person move to your backyard or your house?
By djohnston 2025-11-2019:55 You can be sure that, like most people who espouse such open-borders views, he has never been impacted by the negative externalities of such policies.
Like the Uk Green Party leader who lodged a complaint about planned migrant camp in her town. It’s all about optics and as soon as it impacts them directly they revert.
By like_any_other 2025-11-1918:00 > lines on a map which we call "nations" are a foolish way to decide who is allowed to go where and do what.
A nation is a group of people. What you're referring to is territory that belongs to a country.
> But it does mean I don't care about whether the people who come in are "like me" in some meaningful way.
That's great if you don't value national identity or the differences between nations in any way, but many people do value those. They (myself included) wish to see their and other groups retain their distinctions, and not be homogenized into a globally indistinguishable mush, which is what you propose.
> Also, it sounds like what you consider "national" framing is actually racial framing.
That is what "national" means [1]. The "people who share a passport" alternative meaning is a very recent redefinition.
By akimbostrawman 2025-11-2012:29 Careful with the facts you are committing serious wrong think
By raw_anon_1111 2025-11-194:33 Why are you so concerned with White people being the minority? Does the US somehow have a history of not treading minorities equally or something that I’m not aware of?
By spprashant 2025-11-1816:294 reply The US is doing something right if so many people are ready to wait in limbo for decades of the one life they get on this planet.
For people on employment visas - they are one economic downturn away from everything being undone. They ll get 60/90 days to leave the life and relationships they have spent years building.
By testing22321 2025-11-1816:372 reply Billions of people around the world live in poverty without running water or power, let alone economic opportunities.
Saying the US is doing something right because people want to immigrate there is setting the bar very low.
Those billions would happily go to any Developed country, and per capita, the US doesn’t have particularly high immigration (Australia is the highest)
By ThrowawayTestr 2025-11-190:321 reply >Those billions would happily go to any Developed country
You'll find it's a lot more difficult to immigrate to those other developed countries
By testing22321 2025-11-190:362 reply The US is very commonly regarded as the hardest country in the world to get a work permit as a foreigner.
I had two to the US, and have had them for three other countries.
By dragonwriter 2025-11-191:061 reply Work permits and immigrant visas are not the same thing, though they are overlapping categories.
By testing22321 2025-11-193:20 Agree, and immigrant visas are harder than work permits
By like_any_other 2025-11-191:49 The only thing that proves is how badly misinformed and propagandized on the matter the common person is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China
But they aren’t going to those other developed countries, they are coming to the US. Even overseas immigrants are flying into neighboring countries and then crossing over.
That tells you something.
By tenacious_tuna 2025-11-1915:461 reply > But they aren’t going to those other developed countries
Canada is also in the midst of an immigration crisis. Western Europe has been debating how to deal with a steady stream of "refugees" for as long as I can remember being conscious of the news.
This is a remarkably shortsighted position and ignores the many, many other factors at play, e.g. the US's relatively high wealth / currency stability.
It almost seems like a collusion among the developed countries to allow in so many immigrants. Canada allowing in almost a million students, mostly from India. USA had basically an open border to the south, probably around 10 million. I'm not sure about Europe.
They must have known it was deeply unpopular, yet it was still done.
By tenacious_tuna 2025-11-2023:09 > collusion
I don't really think it's "collusion" so much as it's a question of incentives. Most Western countries want cheap/captive labor, and immigration policy is one way to achieve that with a very long historical precedent. (Much of the Western US railroads were originally built by a predominantly Chinese immigrant workforce; earlier, the colonies relied heavily on Irish laborers as well.)
How much of our labor is comprised of immigrants, documented or otherwise? We've seen what happens when we make it difficult or impossible for cheap labor to make it into farm fields with Brexit: fruit rots on trees and farmers lose piles of money and grocery stores go without berries for the season.
Similarly, what will happen when cheap labor for hotels, construction, landscaping, or manufacturing dries up?
To be clear, I think the status quo is also bad: those jobs trend towards being exploitative, and immigrants are easier to exploit than native populations (generally speaking), my point is that there's been historical economic incentive at the population level to encourage immigration.
> They must have known it was deeply unpopular, yet it was still done.
Realistically something as complex as "immigration policy" is not going to boil down to a single straightforward cause. Similarly, while it certainly was "deeply unpopular" with certain portions of the population, it's absolutely popular with other portions. At a minimum there's been strong humanitarian arguments that resonate with many people, at least in Europe: what else are you going to do with thousands of people fleeing a warzone?
Similarly, the American Dream is so widely known for the promise of being able to make a life there regardless of where you come from. I vividly remember my civics textbooks in US gradeschool being proud of our immigrant heritage and how much newcomers had contributed and achieved there.
Additionally, this is one of those cases where there's counterintuitive forces: restricting immigration leads to a larger undocumented population [1]. If the state's goal is to drive down the number of undocumented immigrants, then it's incentivized in part to make it easier to legally cross the border.
[1]: https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/2024/offering-...
By testing22321 2025-11-1920:50 They are going to those other countries.
As I said, Australias immigration rate is higher than the USs
By glimshe 2025-11-1817:23 As someone who was in this limbo and eventually became a citizen... It's better than the other options. In particular, I could take my dollar savings back to my home country and I'd still be much ahead of my friends who never tried to come to the US.
By scarecrowbob 2025-11-1817:241 reply Well, in it's favor the US is one place where the CIA probably won't overthrow the government (the 1963 coup notwithstanding).
> (the 1963 coup notwithstanding)
I too believe that contrails are mind control.
By scarecrowbob 2025-11-1820:43 I mean, I personally don't believe in chemtrails or "mind control" myself, but to each their own- even if the CIA had explicit programs because -they- (falsely, in my opinion) believed in "mind control.
And you can ignore the 2009 US-backed honduras coup and everything back to the 1953 coup against Árbenz if you want, and take my tongue in cheek reference to the murder of JFK as evidence that I'm a crank- I'm used to that, even if very rarely have I heard the folks making those assertions make a plausible and informed case of what did happen to JFK.
But still, even if you ignore me because I am crank, you're not going to get beyond a simple, likely-racist, and probably wrong understanding of US immigration without understanding long-term US foreign policy in South and Central America.
By nxor 2025-11-1816:32 All true but isn't our quality of life built on mines in Africa (car batteries and phone batteries) and sweatshops in China and co (much of our clothes)? To what degree does that reinforce that other countries have lower quality of life? Then again, this isn't specific to just the US.
There is no doubt that the country caps and quotas for immigrants from countries with large populations like India, Mexico, Philippenes and China are a huge problem.
I’m not sure that anyone can really agree on a solution, but there should be some stop loss where these things can’t be delayed beyond a certain fixed length of time and/or they shouldn’t issue the initial visas if the backlog to adjust is so long.
The reason that this and most immigration law hasn’t been fixed is that while most people agree that this is a problem, there is not really a compromise solution that everyone can really agree on.
By dragonwriter 2025-11-190:22 > I’m not sure that anyone can really agree on a solution, but there should be some stop loss where these things can’t be delayed beyond a certain fixed length of time and/or they shouldn’t issue the initial visas if the backlog to adjust is so long.
What initial visas? If you are talking about selectively denying non-immigrant dual-intent H-1B visas to people from countries with long timelines in some or all immigrant visa categories (not that getting an H-1B doesn't imply intent to seek to immigrate, and doesn't require qualification in an immigrant visa category), that's...well, even as someone who thinks the H-1B is a bad idea ab initio, a remarkably non-helpful policy to layer on top.
> The reason that this and most immigration law hasn’t been fixed is that while most people agree that this is a problem, there is not really a compromise solution that everyone can really agree on.
It's not just that people agree it is a problem and don't agree on a solution, people don't even agree on what the problem is though they might agree that, e.g., the long waitlists from certain countries are symptoms of some problem.
Like, when some people favor eliminating all immigration from certain countries, and other people favor eliminating per country caps, that isn't a different solution to the same problem, its a fundamental difference in what is perceived as the problem.
By bill_joy_fanboy 2025-11-1816:288 reply Citizenship in this country is not a right. Why is it important that we allow more people in from these other nations? Why is that a good thing?
It is not a right, for sure. However, there are historical reasons why they are county wide quotas. Before the 1965 INA (Hart-Celler Act, which JFK wanted), they had a national-origins quota system: each country's quota was based on the existing immigrant population of that national origin already in the United States, using data from the 1890 census. Because the U.S. population in 1890 was overwhelmingly from Northern and Western Europe (especially Protestants), this formula strongly favored those groups. Immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe was heavily restricted because most of them are Catholics. Once Catholics got political power, thanks to JFK, this is reformed in favor of what we see country based caps.
The national-origins formula was explicitly designed to maintain the existing ethnic composition of the U.S.--in other words, preserve what policymakers at the time considered the “traditional” American demographic makeup.
By _DeadFred_ 2025-11-1823:553 reply In fact it's the opposite. We used to have a system that promoted western european, and we decided to change that. So we split them up in a way that encourages diversity. People from populous nations think this isn't fare. American's think it is explicitly fair, that our system makes sure people from all over the world come and join us, not just immigration dominated by the highest populous countries.
I understand the diversity is good, and that immigration can create that take. But I don't understand that 'immigration good, policies for diversity bad' take?
> American's think it is explicitly fair, that our system makes sure people from all over the world come and join us, not just immigration dominated by the highest populous countries.
I'm an American, and I don't understand how it is explicitly fair that India and China with areas of very large and populations of very large have the same immigration caps as Belize. Especially when something happens and Sudan becomes Sudan and South Sudan and the same people and the same area now have twice the cap; how is that explicitly fair? If India reorganized as the Union of Indian Republics (which I hope is not an offensive hypothetical name), where each state became a full country with an ISO-2 code and an ITU country code, would it be fair that each of the 36 member states have the same cap as any other country? Also, I'm not sure why the overall caps haven't changed since 1990. It feels like they should be indexed to something.
I think this version of quotas/caps is better than the previous version, but that doesn't make it explicitly fair.
I would be interested in knowing what the priority dates would look like if we adjusted the overall caps every ten years after the census to some percentage of overall US population (the 1990 cap was set at approximately 0.3%) or annually based on estimates works too, and also adjusting up the per country caps a bit too.
By true_religion 2025-11-192:031 reply Basically the idea is that foreign nationals can only have as much leverage as the quota. This is based partly on old fears that European powers would recolonize the US.
Whether or not is necessary or not, I can’t say but if India separated into 500 different counties, then the US would only be catering to 500 micronations, maybe even divided on ethnic lines, and not a single powerful one which could get cultural dominance.
For a historical case, look at the British Empire. If given a large quota, most immigrants would be from the original isles because that’s who have the financial means to cross the ocean, while the billion plus people living in colonies like India wouldn’t have a chance until the Empire breaks.
By _DeadFred_ 2025-11-2018:07 No, this policy is currently kept based on our reason for immigration, to encourage diversity. We would lose that, and make immigration be basically for highly populous countries. That isn't why the USA has immigration. We don't have a system purely to get bodies in the country.
The USA is not the British Empire. The USA did away with preference for western Europeans and replaced it with a system for everyone. It pisses me off we are told we are being racist by... making sure all races get a chance to come here?
By _DeadFred_ 2025-11-2018:04 Refugee programs are separate from the immigration caps already.
If it was free for all, because of the way math works, you would get mainly immigrants from the higher populous countries. We have as our reason for high immigration being diversity, and we would lose that, and replace it with 'immigration is for Chinese/Indians/other populous countries'. That isn't why we have our immigration system, nor why people support it.
By pandaman 2025-11-192:33 Is it fair that Bugatti Chiron has to obey the same speed limit as Geo Metro? The country cap is the limit on the speed of immigration from that country. If we establish such a limit for any reason, why does it have to be proportional to the size of the country? If anything, it should be lower for the bigger countries if we consider this a safety measure against a country gaining too much influence, similar to trucks having lower speed limit than cars on some roads.
By raincom 2025-11-194:44 I have no problem with your notion of diversity. The whole EU population is 450 million, and there are 27 countries within the EU. So, the question: is China/India less diverse than the whole EU? Some say "yes"; others, "no". Both provide good reasons for their answers.
However, one can't deny the original immigration template with a variable. Original value for this variable: "national-origins". That value is replaced with "country wide quotas". The other value is f(diversity): another formula f based on the variable 'diversity'.
American citizens and their politicians have total freedom to replace the template, or change the current value for one of the variables, or replace with another variable.
By amanaplanacanal 2025-11-190:16 Policies encouraging diversity aren't necessarily good or bad on their own. It may be that it is time to readjust those quotas based on the current needs.
By IAmBroom 2025-11-1818:21 Fascinating, and thank you for this history.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
By _DeadFred_ 2025-11-1823:51 America has a pretty generous immigration cap. But we have chosen as a nation that we want diverse immigration. At one time we prioritized western europeans, and we decided that wasn't a great policy. So we switched to one that encourage people from everywhere. This is what American's want, diverse immigration. I don't get how that somehow is bad? I don't get how more populous nations should have greater representation. Again, we had larger groups from certain countries (western europe) and we decided we SPECIFICALLY don't want that, that that isn't fair immigration policy and isn't part of America's diversity. We aren't going back to that.
It's certainly a popular poem, but I don't see any great evidence it has ever reflected American values.
Not even in that only 3% of the US population is Native American, and the rest are therefore descended from or are themselves immigrants?
By happytoexplain 2025-11-1913:56 As time goes on, the rejection of the idea of US-born people being "natives" in the sense that the rest of the world uses the term, simply because we have another term, "Native Americans" (which, as you will notice, is a proper noun), with a different meaning, is getting more and more dishonest. Yes, language is funny. Yes, the origins of nations are tragic if you go back far enough, and future citizens inherit the distributed weight of that guilt (but not the responsibility). But now, we have 300 million living people whose practical reality we would like discuss, and on that topic you are free and encouraged to disagree with anybody.
By lmz 2025-11-1912:39 All the more reason to avoid the fate of the Native Americans.
By bill_joy_fanboy 2025-11-1816:432 reply This is just a tired old emotional argument. It won't phase anyone who sees the results of modern immigration practices.
By happytoexplain 2025-11-1817:43 It's an argument based on a value. The parent's position is ostensibly that the value does not currently survive contact with concrete reality in the US today.
By happytoexplain 2025-11-1817:422 reply This sneering oversimplification pushes people away from generosity. It's ok to see and have emotions about the very real negative side of immigration. Lumping all those people in with the theoretical "just racist with no other rationale" crowd is harmful.
By scarecrowbob 2025-11-1820:49 "This sneering oversimplification pushes people away from generosity. "
If you don't like "sneering oversimplification" you're really not gonna like it when you find out what smug "I'm the adult in the room" rhetoric does to both how you're perceived by interlocutors and the limitations on your own ability to work out the logic of these situations.
> generosity
we tried being nice, reaching across the aisle, etc. and that got us Orange Man 2.0
By nebula8804 2025-11-194:54 No it didn't. Putting up a candidate that talked about the stars and the moonlight instead of real problems Americans have got you Orange Man 2.0. To think, that they played the same game they did with Hillary and thought they could get away with it should really get you angry with party leadership.
By happytoexplain 2025-11-1913:54 I don't see how this is a counterpoint to my opinion. You can cultivate the generosity of natives to be open to immigration to whatever degree you think is just (e.g. by declining to use mockery/hate as your default position toward anybody who thinks there is any problem with the state of immigration), and you can do that regardless of your generosity level toward a political party that on average is more conservative or more hateful on immigration than the other. But that seems obvious, so I'm not sure what you're saying.
By sudjsbbs 2025-11-1817:03 [dead]
By happytoexplain 2025-11-1817:48 [flagged]
Idk about US, but in Europe we are in dire need of migration. The shortage in for example health care is acute and alarming, at least in Germany.
Our cleaning women is just about to finish her three year training program. However she failed the final exam because of the complicated wording of the test. Her German is good enough but formal German is a different beast. She is allowed to redo the test a single time next week. If she passes, she will have an official German degree but has to leave the country because her visa is based on the training program. She then has to reapply for another visa to be allowed to reenter Germany.
Completely dysfunctional in my opinion. The system should bring people in that will be a net positive for the country while filtering out criminals.
By modo_mario 2025-11-2017:011 reply I think you just don't want to pay those professions adequately. Additionally I believe non eu migration on average hasn't been a net positive in various western european without even taking into account a load of externalities.
Why do you believe that it hasn't been a net positive? Talking about regular migration, not refugees, and it's quite difficult to migrate to Germany, the country makes sure that you are a net positive to at least the economics (everything else can't be measured on an individual basis).
By modo_mario 2025-11-269:22 Because it hasn't been in the places where it was measured adequately with a similar makeup. And typically it's not even close. You can find papers on this from the netherlands (look up borderless welfare state, university of amsterdam), denmark, etc Certain demographic historically brought in to work(morocco, etc) cost on average few hundreds of thousands. This mostly trough abysmal employment statistics (the majority of non eu migrant women here in brussels is neither working nor looking for work, among men it's still >30%) and lower income employment which also costs the country on average. And this is despite a whole hosts of internationals that come in for the higher paying jobs at the international companies, etc.
By maxerickson 2025-11-1818:041 reply In the long run it seems likely enough that it will become mainstream that people don't have the right to enforce borders against others.
Like the real long run, try to use your imagination.
By AnimalMuppet 2025-11-1818:09 > In the long run it seems likely enough...
Does it seem more likely than the alternative? If so, what is your argument that that is more likely?
Pragmatically: if you want to enforce the legality of a state-affirmed migration path, it has to be viable. Without a militarized border (which is impractical based on nation size and undesirable for fiscal and moral reasons) and a militarized interior (do you _like_ what ICE is becoming?), the best mitigation for illegal immigration is viable legal immigration.
Fiscally: immigrants have above-average entrepreneurial tendencies. It doesn't take a lot of enterprise creations and resulting tax payment and job creation to offset a _lot_ of social service consumption. Inbound migration also is what keeps the US from having a net-shrinking population, which until we can get away from late-stage capitalism is a death knell for the economy.
Morally and ethically: this is a nation of immigrants. If you claim to be a native, do you speak Navajo? Ute?
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
By bill_joy_fanboy 2025-11-1816:561 reply [flagged]
It's not a poem that _I_ wrote. That would be silly. You don't have to share _my_ feelings.
It's inscribed on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty and is taught in civics classes as a representation of American values. The idea is that, when you live in a society, you build upon a set of shared values and stories so that you can have something in common with your neighbor and something bigger than yourself to strive for.
All that said, there's a reason that comes last on my list of reasons. If you and I agree on the shared story, the other stuff doesn't matter so much. If we don't, having pragmatic and fiscal reasons to get on the same page lets us at least stay rational in our discourse.
> It's inscribed on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty and is taught in civics classes as a representation of American values
It was created by an activist looking to further Jewish and Georgian causes in the late 19th century. Id argue she wasn’t pushing for American causes and sought to redefine them to include her groups.
> The idea is that, when you live in a society, you build upon a set of shared values and stories so that you can have something in common with your neighbor and something bigger than yourself to strive for.
This is a relatively new idea (the inscription you described above came after the Statue of Liberty). Civic nationalism does not work with the entire world as opposed to immigrants of European descent, as they do not generally share the individualist egalitarian mindset that is unique to the west. There’s ample evidence of this in the US, but the conversation usually devolves into racism accusations at that point.
By Arubis 2025-11-2016:18 I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. We’d probably find a fair amount of disagreement in our points of view, but I appreciate your engaging in good faith.
By nis0s 2025-11-1816:39 It’s not a bad thing per se, but democratic action can produce cultural shift to something that was previously considered outside of the scope of your country’s way of life. What matters is what you want to achieve as a country, a society, a community and so on. This is something groups of people have to decide for themselves, and the worst form of disagreement is violence.
I am of the view that more than 10 countries in the world should be built on enlightenment ideals, have a rule of law, have systems and processes for providing a good quality of life, and have centers of education and productivity.
I don’t think it’s reasonable that we should shift billions of people to live in a handful of nations via immigration. If that’s the overall plan, then nations where those people are immigrating from should just become vassal states.
By sudjsbbs 2025-11-1817:41 It isn’t necessarily, but it’s currently used in the US to allow the wealthy to avoid investing in Americans.
Instead of investing in Americans by lowering costs of necessities (food, housing, education, children) they chase short term profits for the benefits of shareholders (which is by and large the ultra rich). It’s much cheaper to import labor where the above costs were paid for by somebody else.
By _DeadFred_ 2025-11-1823:482 reply The American people have spoken time and again that we want these caps. That we want opportunity spread to more countries than just the most populace. That immigration policy should support diversity over other considerations.
The reason this hasn't been fixed is because most American's support current policy along with promoting family unification and other decisions that are based on our moral positions. America has set a pretty generous amount of immigration slots, and it's not broken that we chose to fill them in a diverse way.
By dragonwriter 2025-11-190:22 > The American people have spoken time and again that we want these caps.
Evidence for this, or even that the majority of the American people understand the system of caps, whether or not they support it?
> That immigration policy should support diversity over other considerations.
The people most supportive of the caps are the people most openly hostile to the concept of diversity having value, generally.
By triceratops 2025-11-191:35 > That we want opportunity spread to more countries than just the most populace. That immigration policy should support diversity over other considerations.
There's an unspoken assumption there that India and China are monocultures, containing no diversity within themselves. Or that diversity is neatly defined by a border on a map.
By thatfrenchguy 2025-11-190:231 reply Those four countries have very different quota problems though: folks from Mexico and Philippines face a long wait in family immigration, mostly to bring their kids & siblings to the US ( https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v... ), whereas Indian nationals also face long waits for employment based green-cards.
Noting that you can always use your country of birth or your spouse's country of birth (cross-chargeability) for an employment-based green-card, my understanding has always been that Indians have large preference (or face large pressure) to marry other highly-educated folks that they often meet in the US but are also born in India that other immigrants just don't face as much.
By dragonwriter 2025-11-190:36 > Those four countries have very different quota problems though: folks from Mexico and Philippines face a long wait in family immigration, mostly to bring their kids & siblings to the US
Mexico faces long wait times in all of the quota-limited family-based immigrant visa categories.
The Phillipines faces a few months longer wait time in one severelly globally backlogged family based category (F4; where there is a 17 year backlog for most countries and its 3 months longer for the Phillipines), but not otherwise.
India and China have long backlogs in most employment-based immigrant visa categories (but generally much less than Mexico has in family-based categories), India also has an longer-than-usual backlog (more than Phillipines, less than Mexico) in the F4 family based category.
By spprashant 2025-11-1816:331 reply I think they could at least offer some sort of reprieve for people waiting in line. Their status is tied to employer whims. If someone has lived in the country for 5 years and in line for citizenship perhaps give them some protection in case their employment gets taken away. Some grace period, perhaps access to healthcare.
By thatfrenchguy 2025-11-190:11 They are not "in line for citizenship", they're in line for a green-card, that's very different
By packetlost 2025-11-1816:301 reply Fully, fully disagree. The process should be better, but caps are not one of the problems that needs significant rework.
By rootusrootus 2025-11-1816:451 reply I suspect that the amount of background legwork for each application is fairly limited. It should be possible to triage the vast majority of applications in a matter of days at most, at least the denials. It's wild that it takes years to do this.
I assume it's intentional. And/or profitable.
By packetlost 2025-11-1816:483 reply You've clearly never seen someone go for citizenship. It's a relatively involved process that involves multiple interviews, character reference letters, lots of paperwork, etc.
Getting a greencard (or equivalent) is an entirely different thing and is even _more_ broken.
By rootusrootus 2025-11-1817:071 reply I've known several people who've done it. I wasn't trying to argue that there isn't a lot of manual labor going on. But I'm doubting how much of that labor extends beyond interfacing with the applicant.
Are they interviewing references outside the country? Doing deep background checks that are not basically instant electronically? That's what I'm talking about. The denial process can probably be made extremely fast, and then the tedious interview part can be focused only on the ones we are planning to accept otherwise.
By packetlost 2025-11-1818:24 You're probably right that the background checks aren't that intensive, but every other part of that process is. If needing 2+ interviewers for 15-30 minutes per candidate isn't labor intensive, I don't know what your definition is.
By nirav72 2025-11-1916:47 >It's a relatively involved process
No its not. It's a 3-step process with only one in person interview involved. I've helped 2 people go through that process in the last 2 years.
1) Submit an application and fee. Along with additional documentation (if any). Then wait for biometrics appointment notification.
2) Go to appointed date for biometrics. (Finger printing, photos). Takes about 30 minutes. No different than appointment for TSA Pre-check or Global entry.
3) Go for naturalization interview. If accepted, then usually interviewer will let the person know that they've been approved for naturalization. They'll receive an email/letter indicating date , time and location of the naturalization ceremony/oath.
Of course, depending on the area of the country you live in , the time between the above 3 steps varies. From 90 days to upwards of a year or more. Also, the above is for most people. But there could be some complicated cases where a person has to make multiple in-person visits. But regarding interview, there is only one.
By thatfrenchguy 2025-11-190:13 Going for citizenship is pretty easy once you have a green-card, and you can do it without a lawyer. It's a bunch of easy paperwork and an interview.
Getting the green card though...
By amanaplanacanal 2025-11-190:12 There was bipartisan immigration legislation working its way through Congress, until the president killed it because it went against his "immigration bad" narrative.
