Absurd, currently trying to figure out how to sponsor my wife and now this. The wording seems to imply that even those here on valid non-immigrant visas (F1) would need to apply via their home country. It doesn’t help that I130+I485 (AOS) could take over a year to process?
If you have filed I485 and they fail to process it before your current visa expires (D/S ends like F1 OPT). Then what? You just have to leave, abandon AOS and re-apply for CR1?
It’s insane that the simplest immigrant pathway; spousal green card could take 12+ months and may now require temporarily moving and being separated. Guess I actually will be paying $4K for a lawyer (plus the 3-4K just to file the USCIS forms).
I wish they would just have a simple fast lane for the 100% legal, non-complicated case.
By the way, if you move outside the country, you lose Domicile which is required to sponsor the visa. And if you don't spend enough time in their country visiting them, your application can be temporary "denied" (delayed) with a request for evidence (that the relationship is real) they'll spend 3 months deliberating over.
Today's news make this crystal clear: the current admin does not want citizens marrying outside the country, regardless of how quickly the marriage rate among US population is falling.
Happens as well in Germany and it's pure insanity. The US at least does not depend on migration as much as Germany, I believe.
Even the current right wing party CDU doesn't seem to want to make migration harder, but when the extremist party AfD gets voted into office, an already highly damaged balance will break.
Sad how people become so detected from reality that they make their society irrelevant and destroying a lot of wealth in the process.
> The US at least does not depend on migration as much as Germany, I believe.
To me it feels like the US pretends they don’t need immigrants when:
1. The overwhelming majority of current US residents were immigrants themselves at some point in the last 150 years (only natives were there, everyone else immigrated from somewhere)
2. The US wouldn’t function without illegal immigrants
3. Every country is short of workers in one domain or another. Encouraging immigration in these domains (see how Canada does it for instance) would be the smart move. But instead… yeah let’s make it even harder across the board
This is probably for the best in the long term. They've added enough friction, insanity and disdain for foreigners that no sane person will immigrate and we can start to build stronger industries and trade relationships outside the US.
From what I could understand from the 6-page memorandum, (my paraphrase) "the law allows us to be nice and convenient, but doesn't require us to be nice and convenient, so we decided to make things hard and cruel going forward"
The current administration is sending a pretty clear message to immigrants.
It will help would-be immigrants understand that the US does not want them and that it would be a mistake to invest time and energy trying to build a future in a country that hates them and can nuke their lives at the drop of a hat. It will help other countries that are not the US retain their talent and build up their own industries. A greater diversity in distribution of talent and industry across the world is a more resilient system.
It’s not a more resilient system. It creates geographic isolation and friction. It dilutes the talent pool instead of concentrating it which limits cross pollination. It also reduces specialization that drives efficiency and lets each country focus on what it does best and then trade with others.
It could be good for anyone country that's not the US (despite our hubris, we're not actually the center of the universe). But for the US, a country built on immigrants ands immigration, probably not so much. We fucked around, we found out.
Well, we're continuing to find out. We haven't exactly scraped rocked bottom yet.
Isn’t it better for the smart people in India to stay there and make India richer, instead of coming to the U.S. to make billionaires here richer? These countries absolutely suffer from the brain drain.
That's not really how it works. Immigrants also benefit from coming to the US.
Skilled labor immigration is great for everyone involved, and bad only for the countries that suffer the brain drain.
But it's not zero-sum. The damage to those countries from losing talent is smaller than the benefits to the immigrant, their new country, and ultimately all of humanity.
> and bad only for the countries that suffer the brain drain.
That's a pretty big qualifier!
> The damage to those countries from losing talent is smaller than the benefits to the immigrant, their new country, and ultimately all of humanity
Isn't it the opposite? Creating wealth and technology in India helps a billion quite poor people. Creating wealth in the U.S. helps 300 million already rich people.
The innovations immigrants created in the UK during the Industrial Revolution made everyone wealthier. The innovations made by
Immigrants in in Silicon Valley have made the world more wealthy. And it was in part due to the concentrated talent pool that made it possible.
Except you can't create Google in India. Google isn't minted by divine inspiration hitting a couple of smart guys in a garage.
It's created by an entire ecosystem that allows a project like that to be conceived and executed in such a way that has benefited the entire world, including the poor in India.
It's a big qualifier, but like I said, it's not zero-sum.
No economist will argue that limiting skilled labor immigration (or any immigration, really!) is an optimal policy for improving the lives of the poor elsewhere. It just doesn't work that way.
I doubt its better for India to have Indians making Google richer than to have them staying in India to make something even a fraction of the size of Google in India. How is India going to create that ecosystem if all the smart people leave?
In many cases a talented/smart person will bring little to zero value to a country with ossified institutions, but huge value to one with the right systems in place to build value.
The way it works is that the origin country is worse off when people leave, but in general immigrants are much better off for moving, and it's not even close.
A big argument for letting people emigrate is that they owe no real debt to the county where they are born, or the city, or anything like that. They aren't selfs owned by a nobleman. If moving increases their personal lot, why should we stop them?
I don’t know how this will play out for employment based categories. You need to be have a job and be on a valid visa to even apply for a green card. How do you then go outside the country, apply for a green card, all the while maintaining your job and a visa while you wait for the application to be processed? As far as I know not being in the US for extended periods of time, voids your work visa in the first place.
IANAL. My understanding is that you can do consular processing even if you are in the US, it's just that you need to leave to do the interview (and things like biometrics) and get the actual visa.
Now I'm not sure if you are allowed to re-enter after your interview before your case is decided/you get the visa but I would imagine so (if have valid visa), you would just need to exit again to get the visa later.
I believe the issue with what you're describing is that if you're on a temporary visa, like a student visa, applying for a green card shows intent of immigration so you cannot return to the US on a student visa.
If you have an H-1B already you may be able to do what you're describing. If you're a recent grad in the US this basically locks you out of trying to get a green card until you've already secured an H-1B.
>>
admitted into the United States as nonimmigrants to depart rather than
pursue adjustment of status. Such aliens are generally expected to pursue an immigrant visa and
admission from outside the United States if they wish to reside permanently in this country.
H1-B was already a dual intent visa. Are they trying to create a new visa category?
Whatever they are trying to get to this is a big concern for all H1B employees.
The U.S. doesn’t have a real statutory pathway to permanent residency for skilled immigrants. The current H1B to Green Card pipeline is built on a legal fiction papered over a visa program that was the word “non-immigrant intent” written all over the statute.
Gemini gets this correct: “The H-1B visa is a nonimmigrant classification that allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign nationals in ‘specialty occupations’ that require highly specialized knowledge and at least a bachelor's degree.”
You're not actually wrong, but your phrasing makes it sound like that somehow excuses this travesty of justice.
I can only assume that's accidental. You're the 17th most active person on HN, so I'm certain you've seen an overwhelming amount of evidence of how skilled immigrants are immensely beneficial to the US economy.
The H-1B is not the only path to a green card. There are many ways, every case is different, and pretty much all of the paths suck, even if you do everything right.
This decision only makes all of those paths worse.
> evidence of how skilled immigrants are immensely beneficial to the US economy.
That's irrelevant. "Justice" means following the rules. Congress gets to decide the immigration laws. Congress has never created a real system for skilled permanent immigrants. The term "H1B" actually comes from 8 USC 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(B).
Subsection (a)(15) literally defines the term "immigrant" to exclude people in the subsequent subsections, including (H)(i)(b). Subsection (a)(15)(H)(i)(b) then reiterates that the category is for someone "who is coming temporarily to the United States to perform services." Congress didn't hide the ball.
Intent (are you planning to switch immigrant visa later) and status (immigrant/non-immigrant) are two different things. Visas like B1 are non-immigrant and require that you are not intending to abandon your foreign residence. In practice that means that when you enter US you cannot be planning to apply for immigrant visa. H1B is also non-immigrant visa, but it is dual intent visa meaning it doesn't have that requirement and thus it's fine to enter even if you intent to apply for GC. You can even exit and re-enter after submitting your application.
> In practice that means that when you enter US you cannot be planning to apply for immigrant visa.
You are correct about this.
> H1B is also non-immigrant visa, but it is dual intent visa meaning it doesn't have that requirement
You're incorrect about this. The concept of "dual intent" doesn't exist in the Immigration and Naturalization Act. It was created by executive fiat. H1Bs, like other non-immigrant visas, still requires non-immigrant intent. It's different only that it has two carve-outs:
Subsection (b) excludes H1Bs from the "presumption" of immigrant intent that applies to other categories of aliens. Subsection (h) provides that applying for permanent residency "shall not constitute evidence of an intention to abandon a foreign residence" for H1Bs.
So H1Bs must still have non-immigrant intent. It's just that they are carved out of certain presumptions that would automatically establish immigrant intent, which would lead to denial of their visa. It gives the executive flexibility to essentially look the other way when an H1B applies for a green card. But it doesn't confer any legal rights* onto the H1B. The administration can at any time decide that you actually have immigrant intent and yank your visa.
This is such an insanely unpopular move even among some of trump’s supporters.
I really think this will be this version of the republican party’s suicide note.
Or evidence that they are confident their takeover and transition to single party rule was successful a they are not subject to further accountability.
If something seems irrational it’s usually a sign that you don’t understand the underlying logic. This behavior is totally logical if they aren’t worried about losing power.
> It's an insanely stupid move, but from what I'm seeing on Twitter, it's somehow not that unpopular among the less bright.
Nah. I’m an Indian-American (born in America, never visited India) working at a FANG company here in SF South Bay and I support this policy.
We need fewer immigrants in America for the next 10 years until we can sort out our domestic issues (education, healthcare, taxation, cost of living).
Once the immigrants are gone and birthright tourism / birthright citizenship to non-US citizen parents is also gone (hopefully next week), politicians can no longer blame immigrants for americas problems.
Or we could build more houses, and schools and hospitals. When did we become a country of scarcity instead of builders? Half of downtown down San Francisco is built on the abandoned boats from migrants that were building too fast to bother moving the boats that brought them to the gold rush so they just built a city on top.
We could create special economic zones like china, allow 200 million immigrants into the country with a goal of a billion people to match the population of china and India. Make it a condition of citizenship that they help build ten homes or similar infrastructure. Immigrants could be the solution to all the problems you cite and they certainly aren’t the reason those problems exist.
No, it is not. And if you fall in love and want to get married to someone on a student visa, your fiancée should not need to leave the country for a year or two to wait for paperwork to process. Which is one of the real world impacts of this change.
The green card process can take 9 to 20 months and applying for a green card demonstrates an intent to immigrate so it's highly likely attempts to return on other temporary visas like a student visa will be denied.
So they likely have to wait out the green card process abroad unless they secure a dual-intent visa like an H-1B.
There's also 75 countries that the US has shut down consular processing for so those people may be locked out getting a green card entirely.
Absolutely not. My wife could apply for German permanent residency as well as now German citizenship from within Germany. She has been living in Germany for 10 years now and at no point in the process did she have to go through a German consulate (she is a US citizen).
For many immigration statuses in Sweden, you must leave and apply outside of the country (outside of Schengen for non EU-citizens) to change status. This was even the case before the current right wing government was elected.
Except for the part about requiring you to leave to process your application.
Wait times to process applications depend on your country of origin and visa type. If you are an H1B from India that was already decades approaching never. Same for Brazil and elsewhere.
And that was before Trump. All that was practically halted.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48240323
Absurd, currently trying to figure out how to sponsor my wife and now this. The wording seems to imply that even those here on valid non-immigrant visas (F1) would need to apply via their home country. It doesn’t help that I130+I485 (AOS) could take over a year to process?
If you have filed I485 and they fail to process it before your current visa expires (D/S ends like F1 OPT). Then what? You just have to leave, abandon AOS and re-apply for CR1?
It’s insane that the simplest immigrant pathway; spousal green card could take 12+ months and may now require temporarily moving and being separated. Guess I actually will be paying $4K for a lawyer (plus the 3-4K just to file the USCIS forms).
I wish they would just have a simple fast lane for the 100% legal, non-complicated case.
And don't forget that US consulates in 75 countries, or approximately a third of the globe, have stopped conducting Green Card interviews.
By the way, if you move outside the country, you lose Domicile which is required to sponsor the visa. And if you don't spend enough time in their country visiting them, your application can be temporary "denied" (delayed) with a request for evidence (that the relationship is real) they'll spend 3 months deliberating over.
Today's news make this crystal clear: the current admin does not want citizens marrying outside the country, regardless of how quickly the marriage rate among US population is falling.
Happens as well in Germany and it's pure insanity. The US at least does not depend on migration as much as Germany, I believe.
Even the current right wing party CDU doesn't seem to want to make migration harder, but when the extremist party AfD gets voted into office, an already highly damaged balance will break.
Sad how people become so detected from reality that they make their society irrelevant and destroying a lot of wealth in the process.
> The US at least does not depend on migration as much as Germany, I believe.
To me it feels like the US pretends they don’t need immigrants when:
1. The overwhelming majority of current US residents were immigrants themselves at some point in the last 150 years (only natives were there, everyone else immigrated from somewhere)
2. The US wouldn’t function without illegal immigrants
3. Every country is short of workers in one domain or another. Encouraging immigration in these domains (see how Canada does it for instance) would be the smart move. But instead… yeah let’s make it even harder across the board
This is probably for the best in the long term. They've added enough friction, insanity and disdain for foreigners that no sane person will immigrate and we can start to build stronger industries and trade relationships outside the US.
From what I could understand from the 6-page memorandum, (my paraphrase) "the law allows us to be nice and convenient, but doesn't require us to be nice and convenient, so we decided to make things hard and cruel going forward"
The current administration is sending a pretty clear message to immigrants.
How is this good in any way?
How could this ever help to build stronger industries or trade relationships?
If somebody hands you a shit sandwich you don't need to pretend it tastes good.
It will help would-be immigrants understand that the US does not want them and that it would be a mistake to invest time and energy trying to build a future in a country that hates them and can nuke their lives at the drop of a hat. It will help other countries that are not the US retain their talent and build up their own industries. A greater diversity in distribution of talent and industry across the world is a more resilient system.
It’s not a more resilient system. It creates geographic isolation and friction. It dilutes the talent pool instead of concentrating it which limits cross pollination. It also reduces specialization that drives efficiency and lets each country focus on what it does best and then trade with others.
It could be good for anyone country that's not the US (despite our hubris, we're not actually the center of the universe). But for the US, a country built on immigrants ands immigration, probably not so much. We fucked around, we found out.
Well, we're continuing to find out. We haven't exactly scraped rocked bottom yet.
I think the parent is saying it's good because immigrants will go elsewhere and the US will continue to decline. Which will be good for humanity.
I think it's sarcasm
Isn’t it better for the smart people in India to stay there and make India richer, instead of coming to the U.S. to make billionaires here richer? These countries absolutely suffer from the brain drain.
Yes exactly. One country sucking up all the best talent is not good for the world, its a single point of failure.
That's not really how it works. Immigrants also benefit from coming to the US.
Skilled labor immigration is great for everyone involved, and bad only for the countries that suffer the brain drain.
But it's not zero-sum. The damage to those countries from losing talent is smaller than the benefits to the immigrant, their new country, and ultimately all of humanity.
> and bad only for the countries that suffer the brain drain.
That's a pretty big qualifier!
> The damage to those countries from losing talent is smaller than the benefits to the immigrant, their new country, and ultimately all of humanity
Isn't it the opposite? Creating wealth and technology in India helps a billion quite poor people. Creating wealth in the U.S. helps 300 million already rich people.
The innovations immigrants created in the UK during the Industrial Revolution made everyone wealthier. The innovations made by Immigrants in in Silicon Valley have made the world more wealthy. And it was in part due to the concentrated talent pool that made it possible.
Except you can't create Google in India. Google isn't minted by divine inspiration hitting a couple of smart guys in a garage.
It's created by an entire ecosystem that allows a project like that to be conceived and executed in such a way that has benefited the entire world, including the poor in India.
It's a big qualifier, but like I said, it's not zero-sum.
No economist will argue that limiting skilled labor immigration (or any immigration, really!) is an optimal policy for improving the lives of the poor elsewhere. It just doesn't work that way.
I doubt its better for India to have Indians making Google richer than to have them staying in India to make something even a fraction of the size of Google in India. How is India going to create that ecosystem if all the smart people leave?
This is the correct answer. Concentration of talent creates cross pollination and collaborative learning. The innovation is then exported.
> Isn’t it better for the smart people in India to stay there and make India richer, instead of coming to the U.S. to make billionaires here richer?
An Indian’s greatest accomplishment in life is leaving India.
In many cases a talented/smart person will bring little to zero value to a country with ossified institutions, but huge value to one with the right systems in place to build value.
The way it works is that the origin country is worse off when people leave, but in general immigrants are much better off for moving, and it's not even close.
A big argument for letting people emigrate is that they owe no real debt to the county where they are born, or the city, or anything like that. They aren't selfs owned by a nobleman. If moving increases their personal lot, why should we stop them?
I don’t know how this will play out for employment based categories. You need to be have a job and be on a valid visa to even apply for a green card. How do you then go outside the country, apply for a green card, all the while maintaining your job and a visa while you wait for the application to be processed? As far as I know not being in the US for extended periods of time, voids your work visa in the first place.
IANAL. My understanding is that you can do consular processing even if you are in the US, it's just that you need to leave to do the interview (and things like biometrics) and get the actual visa.
Now I'm not sure if you are allowed to re-enter after your interview before your case is decided/you get the visa but I would imagine so (if have valid visa), you would just need to exit again to get the visa later.
Also not a lawyer.
I believe the issue with what you're describing is that if you're on a temporary visa, like a student visa, applying for a green card shows intent of immigration so you cannot return to the US on a student visa.
If you have an H-1B already you may be able to do what you're describing. If you're a recent grad in the US this basically locks you out of trying to get a green card until you've already secured an H-1B.
> You need to be have a job and be on a valid visa to even apply for a green card.
False
You don’t need a job to apply for green card.
Valid visa, yes. But that’s easy.
It’s amazing to see someone do literally all of the opposite things to create a successful business, country, economy and world.
From the USCIS policy directive.
>> admitted into the United States as nonimmigrants to depart rather than pursue adjustment of status. Such aliens are generally expected to pursue an immigrant visa and admission from outside the United States if they wish to reside permanently in this country.
H1-B was already a dual intent visa. Are they trying to create a new visa category?
Whatever they are trying to get to this is a big concern for all H1B employees.
> Whatever they are trying to get to this is a big concern for all H1B employees.
Thankfully H1B is a small visa category.
The U.S. doesn’t have a real statutory pathway to permanent residency for skilled immigrants. The current H1B to Green Card pipeline is built on a legal fiction papered over a visa program that was the word “non-immigrant intent” written all over the statute.
Gemini gets this correct: “The H-1B visa is a nonimmigrant classification that allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign nationals in ‘specialty occupations’ that require highly specialized knowledge and at least a bachelor's degree.”
You're not actually wrong, but your phrasing makes it sound like that somehow excuses this travesty of justice.
I can only assume that's accidental. You're the 17th most active person on HN, so I'm certain you've seen an overwhelming amount of evidence of how skilled immigrants are immensely beneficial to the US economy.
The H-1B is not the only path to a green card. There are many ways, every case is different, and pretty much all of the paths suck, even if you do everything right.
This decision only makes all of those paths worse.
> evidence of how skilled immigrants are immensely beneficial to the US economy.
That's irrelevant. "Justice" means following the rules. Congress gets to decide the immigration laws. Congress has never created a real system for skilled permanent immigrants. The term "H1B" actually comes from 8 USC 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(B).
Subsection (a)(15) literally defines the term "immigrant" to exclude people in the subsequent subsections, including (H)(i)(b). Subsection (a)(15)(H)(i)(b) then reiterates that the category is for someone "who is coming temporarily to the United States to perform services." Congress didn't hide the ball.
It's just an example of how the immigration laws have been a bait-and-switch for decades: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi...
Justice doesn’t mean following the law. It is possible to have an unjust law. Like red lining or slavery. Or civil forfeiture. Etc
Intent (are you planning to switch immigrant visa later) and status (immigrant/non-immigrant) are two different things. Visas like B1 are non-immigrant and require that you are not intending to abandon your foreign residence. In practice that means that when you enter US you cannot be planning to apply for immigrant visa. H1B is also non-immigrant visa, but it is dual intent visa meaning it doesn't have that requirement and thus it's fine to enter even if you intent to apply for GC. You can even exit and re-enter after submitting your application.
> In practice that means that when you enter US you cannot be planning to apply for immigrant visa.
You are correct about this.
> H1B is also non-immigrant visa, but it is dual intent visa meaning it doesn't have that requirement
You're incorrect about this. The concept of "dual intent" doesn't exist in the Immigration and Naturalization Act. It was created by executive fiat. H1Bs, like other non-immigrant visas, still requires non-immigrant intent. It's different only that it has two carve-outs:
Subsection (b) excludes H1Bs from the "presumption" of immigrant intent that applies to other categories of aliens. Subsection (h) provides that applying for permanent residency "shall not constitute evidence of an intention to abandon a foreign residence" for H1Bs.
So H1Bs must still have non-immigrant intent. It's just that they are carved out of certain presumptions that would automatically establish immigrant intent, which would lead to denial of their visa. It gives the executive flexibility to essentially look the other way when an H1B applies for a green card. But it doesn't confer any legal rights* onto the H1B. The administration can at any time decide that you actually have immigrant intent and yank your visa.
No paywall link: https://archive.is/yi2cX
This is such an insanely unpopular move even among some of trump’s supporters. I really think this will be this version of the republican party’s suicide note.
Or evidence that they are confident their takeover and transition to single party rule was successful a they are not subject to further accountability.
If something seems irrational it’s usually a sign that you don’t understand the underlying logic. This behavior is totally logical if they aren’t worried about losing power.
It's an insanely stupid move, but from what I'm seeing on Twitter, it's somehow not that unpopular among the less bright.
> It's an insanely stupid move, but from what I'm seeing on Twitter, it's somehow not that unpopular among the less bright.
Nah. I’m an Indian-American (born in America, never visited India) working at a FANG company here in SF South Bay and I support this policy.
We need fewer immigrants in America for the next 10 years until we can sort out our domestic issues (education, healthcare, taxation, cost of living).
Once the immigrants are gone and birthright tourism / birthright citizenship to non-US citizen parents is also gone (hopefully next week), politicians can no longer blame immigrants for americas problems.
Or we could build more houses, and schools and hospitals. When did we become a country of scarcity instead of builders? Half of downtown down San Francisco is built on the abandoned boats from migrants that were building too fast to bother moving the boats that brought them to the gold rush so they just built a city on top.
We could create special economic zones like china, allow 200 million immigrants into the country with a goal of a billion people to match the population of china and India. Make it a condition of citizenship that they help build ten homes or similar infrastructure. Immigrants could be the solution to all the problems you cite and they certainly aren’t the reason those problems exist.
I was under the impression that this is roughly how it works (assume equivalency) in most European countries is it not?
No, it is not. And if you fall in love and want to get married to someone on a student visa, your fiancée should not need to leave the country for a year or two to wait for paperwork to process. Which is one of the real world impacts of this change.
Why wouldn’t your spouse just stay on the student visa? From what I gather it’s purely the processing that is overseas.
Stay on whatever visa you’re on -> apply for consular processing -> travel for interview -> enter on green card
The green card process can take 9 to 20 months and applying for a green card demonstrates an intent to immigrate so it's highly likely attempts to return on other temporary visas like a student visa will be denied.
So they likely have to wait out the green card process abroad unless they secure a dual-intent visa like an H-1B.
There's also 75 countries that the US has shut down consular processing for so those people may be locked out getting a green card entirely.
Absolutely not. My wife could apply for German permanent residency as well as now German citizenship from within Germany. She has been living in Germany for 10 years now and at no point in the process did she have to go through a German consulate (she is a US citizen).
For many immigration statuses in Sweden, you must leave and apply outside of the country (outside of Schengen for non EU-citizens) to change status. This was even the case before the current right wing government was elected.
Except for the part about requiring you to leave to process your application.
Wait times to process applications depend on your country of origin and visa type. If you are an H1B from India that was already decades approaching never. Same for Brazil and elsewhere.
And that was before Trump. All that was practically halted.
This news made my day.
Where's that asshole immigration lawyer that likes to post here? I wonder how he feels about it.