Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says

It's just sparkling xenophobia. Forcing a return to one's home country to apply for a Green Card can frequently remove the very qualifiers one has to getting said Green Card.

Just take a look at the categories of Green Cards available on USCIS' website[0], and think about how many of them will be unavailable if you're back in your home country.

* Green Card via Family? 18 months, minimum, for approval.

* Green Card via Employment? Well, self-deporting likely means the loss of said job opportunity, thus your ability to convert to LPR status

* via Special Worker? Here's hoping you're not an Iraq of Afghani national that might be persecuted back in said home country for cooperating with the US Government.

* via Refugee or Asylee Status, or as Victims of Abuse? Are we fucking kidding, here? Forcing refugees/asylum seekers/abuse victims back to their home countries is deliberately cruel, and I'm going to be looking for statistics on changes in approvals pre- and post- this policy change to make sure "special circumstances" are actually recognized as such

It's just a despicably cruel policy change that's so overtly xenophobic, it actually reveals the alignment of those reporting on it when it's not called out as such. It's the antithesis to legal immigration in that it all but destroys the process entirely, promoting more illicit behavior (dangerous and clandestine border crossings, exploitation of migrant workers, human trafficking, etc) in the process.

Fuck this regime.

[0]: https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-eligibility-cate...

It's not a dumb thing to say. The US is built on immigration. Making immigration harder will lead to the next big industries not having a focal point in the US. It's also not as simple as letting college grads get green cards. It's often second or third generation immigrants creating more economic prosperity. Attacking higher education and now immigration is basically destroying the US a decade to a generation from now.

I'd disagree on nuance. Xenophobia is anti-foreigner. This targets people of color. They target people of color who are US citizens, too.

It is gutter racism.

edit: I wish I could be surprised by the downvotes, but it's gutter racism and I'm proud to point this out! I would be never be quiet about a matter of ethics and conscience just because of startup accelerator social media popularity points. This directly influences many of our friends and colleagues in this field. It is vile, evil racism and directly topical for software startups.

edit 2: the list of immigrants and children of immigrants who have founded software companies that are the absolute backbone of US information infrastructure is embarrassing to write down. Anyone can search for the information, but it's harder to list companies not founded by immigrants or children of immigrants.

Do you believe mass immigration has any negative side effects, at all?

Let's say hypothetically the UK increased its population by around 3 million since 2020, including one particular influx designed and implemented by Boris Johnson to suppress wage inflation, which had a direct effect on the lower end of the job market for the native population. You could also easily argue it led to a direct surge in popularity of the far right party Reform.

Purely hypothetical of course...

You'd consider that a good thing?

“Open borders” was pretty much standard across the world prior to World War 1. These tightly controlled immigration policies are, historically speaking, incredibly new.

I think it’s self evident that the U.S. benefited greatly from its mass immigration inflows in the 19th and 20th centuries.