Adrianna Tan
Let me put it this way. If you want to restrict #H1B you are effectively saying the only people who can get green cards and citizenship are: (1) people who win a lottery (diversity lottery) (2) people who are related to citizens (family-based visas) (3) people who are married or engaged to citizens (spousal visas).
There are no other immigrant visas.
You’re saying anyone who came here to study can fuck off back where they came from unless they marry a citizen.
Adrianna Tan
And no company can hire any foreigners, no matter how good / talented they are, because there will be no ‘skilled’ visa type for workers to come on.
Adrianna Tan
If you say ‘no that’s not what I mean’ I want you explain step by step what you mean precisely about having to do something about the H1Bs.
Adrianna Tan
Yes billionaires suck, but can you explain your immigration policy in a way that shows you are not a protectionist isolationist sucker?
maya_b
The UK still has Tier1 visas which, now, are basically buy your way in visas. The retired Tier1-General you could self certify and as long as you made enough money (which increased over the years).
The Tier2 is basically the same as H1B.
Tier1-General was great as it was in between work permit and permanent residency (green card) with no company ties. I got it when req'd income was only 40k.
The UK "hates" immigrants too, and since brexit are now paying for it
Adrianna Tan
@ELS there is a path to that but it assumes everything goes right (company is willing to sponsor green card). the bigger problem (as identified by the asshole Vivek) is the quota system which was created to prevent indians and chinese and mexicans from getting them as quickly as everyone else.
eswillwalker
@skinnylatte There should be a clause in the H1B visa that anyone who works in the US on an H1B visa for five years automatically gets a green card. This would solve the "indentured servitude" problem (which a friend of mine is stuck in because his company pays him poorly and keeps delaying on its promise to help him get a green card).
Adrianna Tan
@coldfish I agree the program needs reform. It doesn’t need more restriction.
Dan Morris
@skinnylatte H1Bs need to be disconnected from employers.
I had a co-worker on a work visa and she had to go back to Brazil every year and wait for my boss to finish the paperwork to let her back in. Each time, she left her BF, her apartment, her cat, everything she owned here in SF and then had to stay at a friend's house in Brazil - where she no longer had any family - in hopes that her asshole boss actually fulfilled his end of the deal.
AND.... I got hired with zero experience, yet made substantially more than her - and she was terrified to ask for a raise.
It's inappropriate for an employer to have that level of power over any human's personal life.
Rich Felker
@skinnylatte Is "every H1B should be converted into permanent resident status automatically, and every new application should that would have been accepted before should still be accepted and grant permanent resident status" an acceptable policy proposal for "restricting" H1B?
Adrianna Tan
@dalias fine ideologically but I don’t see how this would be ever implemented. nobody has any political cojones to do or care about foreign workers in the government. It’ll just end up being immigrants shouldering additional administrative burden.
there is already a h-1b final rule that Biden worked on on his way out, that works on restricting the visas for the outsourcing and most exploitative companies. That’s a good start.
Rich Felker
@skinnylatte Or is it your view that under those conditions few if any employers would sponsor them and the effect would be similar to eliminating them?
Adrianna Tan
@dalias yes. there will be a ‘public charge’ requirement before permanent immigration status is granted which means that only the immigrants who already have lots of money will be accepted.
it’s a test of how likely you are to ever need unemployment or benefits. even well paid H1Bs would never apply for unemployment because it means they’ll never get a green card. It’s a whole thing
Rich Felker
@skinnylatte Ok but I don't see any clear paths people have the votes and political bravery to advance at this time. The viable thing seems to be moving the Overton window and holding ground against fascists making it worse in hope that we can get them back out of power.
Adrianna Tan
@dalias that’s what immigrants have been saying. Nobody cares about us, and nobody will do anything for us. The Overton window has shifted here and elsewhere already. It’s going to suck. And people I thought were allies are not.
Rich Felker
@skinnylatte Yes I'm aware of these things as past and possible future I-864 filer.
Adrianna Tan
@tuban_muzuru many countries have a simplified ‘if you stayed 5 years and paid taxes you become a permanent resident’ situation. That could work.
tuban_muzuru
What do you think of this proposal?
We should know who's in the country. If we reformed work visas, we could have people coming and /going back home/ if that's what they want - and be allowed to come back without all this rigamarole.
What we don't want is a two tier system of "illegal aliens" and everyone else.
Adrianna Tan
@tuban_muzuru that would require getting rid of the country quotas, which is the source of the misery, and probably the hardest (currently people from india / china / mexico / philippines wait extremely long because of the quota system)
Paula
@skinnylatte while H1B dominates, and it’s the only one that is available for most people, there are quite a few other visa types. Some explicitly allow for immigration (L1, O1, TN) while others can be used for immigration despite not being explicitly described that way (E1, E2, E3).
Essentially, all of these visas are designed specifically to bring in people who are already successful in other countries…
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