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U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications

wsj.com

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Re: U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications

#661

Post by hvb2 »

rayiner wrote: post #478
baby_souffle wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The moral issue is the same in both cases: there’s a big sign that says “temporary.” People have chosen to ignore the sign. No. Your analogy works well solely for the concept of temporary authorization. If you're offering up 2h parking as proof that the moral stakes are equivalent...

The moral issue is defined by the nature of the rule, not the stakes for someone who has transgressed. Enforcing the rule doesn’t become less legitimate just because someone has invested more in breaking it.

> Enforcing the rule doesn’t become less legitimate just because someone has invested more in breaking it.

Nobody broke any rules here. These are the people folowwing the rules for the legal immigration system.

You just want to break the law as it stands today and not have an immigration system at all. That's a view you can hold and just as valid as any other. Just stop talking about people breaking rules, that's not what this is about, this has nothing to do with illegal immigration.

Re: U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications

#662

Post by f30e3dfed1c9 »

jmyeet wrote: post #559
hvb2 wrote: post #15

So for those that don't know, it's quite common for a visa renewal to be required to leave the country. Depending on the visa, you might have to do this every year. So just imagine, having a normal job in the US and you're asked to leave to renew your visa and this stuff happens. That's no more appointment, not even a new date and you're now very likely unable to work and possibly can't even enter the country to get…

This administration is clearly on a war against immigration of all sorts but... we need to be accurate here. This is specifically a pause on immigrant visas. That is, green cards. So this is for family-based green cards and investor green cards through consular processing (ie when out of the country). As yet, work visas and other nonimmigrant visas are unaffected.

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

Re: U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications

#663

Post by Terr_ »

unselect5917 wrote: post #465
Terr_ wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Donald Trump: Billionaire in one of the top government roles of one the most powerful countries in the world; puts enormous banners of his own face over buildings; runs a personal distribution network to announce what he hates every day to his followers; regularly "jokes" about being a dictator; triggers perpetual wars with other countries; etc. Emmanuel Goldstein: An exiled academic in hiding with a death-sentence o…

You sound like someone who started paying attention to politics in 2016. Trump isn't even an outlier. Foreign policy has been dictated by AIPAC (as well as a lot of domestic policy) for decades . Do you not remember the two-minutes-hate where they screamed at Emmanuel Goldstein? Apparently not. The point is people rabidly attack Trump when his policies - especially foreign - are indistinguishable from Biden, Obama, a…

> > [Trump has] a personal distribution network to announce what he hates every day to his followers

> Do you not remember the two-minutes-hate where they screamed at Emmanuel Goldstein? Apparently not.

Oh hey, what's that up there, it's that thingy from the book which I just specifically referenced! Except in my comparison, "the hate" is directed in the same way at the book (from the central authority towards ill-defined enemies) rather than your version which contradicts the book for no reason.

Do you know how to bother reading others' comments before making arrogantly incorrect replies to them? Apparently not!

Re: U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications

#664

Post by khriss »

itake wrote: post #574
Solstafir wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't have opinions about them sending their salary back home. Obviously its better for the USA if the money stayed in the USA, but "earning money in one locality and spending it another" is really really really situation, even in the USA. American Police officers are famous for not actually living in the cities they work in. In each country I have lived in, I was a guest. With that knowledge, I carefully designed…

> If you throw a party and a guest refuses to leave

Show me where the govt has actually revoked their visa? Instead, because they cannot cancel the visa legally they are trying to create as much pain as possible for these visa holders hoping that some will give up and leave.

Re: U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications

#665

Post by clove »

An immigrant visa is a privilege a country grants and can withdraw. It's not like two parties signed a contract, and the contract was broken. Applicants bet on a slow, arbitrary system, and now the odds are moving.

I am one such "gambler" in this process, and it's happening to me too. I don't like the turn of events, but I also do not feel robbed.

Playing victim bestows no benefit.

Re: U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications

#667

Post by earthdeity »

rayiner wrote: post #611
earthdeity wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rules are well and good, but norms are important too. An immigration system governs people making major life choices, and companies making large investments. Legally, there's very little the state can't do, there could be a bill passed tomorrow revoking all immigrant visas. But businesses, and by proxy the nation, benefit from work done by these workers. Sudden unilateral moves like this are stupid on a social level…

> Rules are well and good, but norms are important too Not when the norm is open defiance of the rules for decades. > An immigration system governs people making major life choices, and companies making large investments. And it also governs the right of people to decide who they want to invite into their country and, ultimately, with whom they want to share democratic governance of their home. Those are important st…

Defiance of the rules? What rules exactly? The law does make clear that H1-Bs are temporary workers. But it's also permitted to renew, and workers are allowed to pursue immigrant status. In fact, until 1990 there was specific language saying that H1-B's (like all visitor visas) are not supposed to want to stay, they must maintain a foreign residence "which he has no intention of abandoning". This language was struck and the visas became, and still are, the most common defacto "seeking green card" status for workers seeking to move the US.

To be clear, while a person who enters the US on an H1-B is a temporary worker, they are not prohibited from also seeking a permanent status. So it's fully within the rules, which is why it becomes a question of norms. In the present, the H1-B is (was?) the most popular route to permanent immigration to the US besides family sponsorship.

I specifically said that the government (and the citizenry by extension) can decide who it wants to enter and stay, how much immigration, whatever. But changing the rules suddenly, upending peoples lives who have not broken any rules, through a pathway the US state itself freely established, is immoral and short sighted.

It should go without saying that there are experts across many fields in industry that any country would benefit from attracting. The US is harming its capacity to attract and keep that talent with these ridiculous theatrics.

Re: U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications

#668

Post by hvb2 »

NeutralWanted wrote: post #439
testbjjl wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are a lot of inhumane things happening around the world right now to label this inconvenient, at best. We need better leadership through higher voter participation and an informed electorate to stop these inhumane and inconvenient policies.

Speak for yourself, I voted for exactly these policies.

I would genuinely like to understand how you square this with the current president being known to leverage a lot of low/unskilled temporary workers visas.

If these weren't issued he would need to hire Americans?

Sources: https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2026-01-30/the-trump...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2025/06/12/trump-or...

Re: U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications

#669

Post by whatever1 »

throwaway85825 wrote: post #254
whatever1 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money does not fix the supply problem the parent comment pointed out (at least for fields that need multi year training). Let’s say that tomorrow we need 1M nuclear physicists. How can money help? You still need to wait for the talent pipeline to divert.

Fortunately such ridiculous hypotheticals have no correspondence to reality. Most every job can be easily trained or cross trained. Mathematicians make good physicists. Nor is there some foreign pipeline of a million physicists. Such ridiculous argument exist only to perpetuate the lie of a skills shortage and deny the wage shortage.

We don’t need my hypotheticals.

We saw how well the American bootcamps filled the market with completely trash talent when the market demanded a big number of SDEs.

So no, money cannot generate infinite specialized talent overnight as you naively assume.

Re: U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications

#670

Post by spacechild1 »

roarcher wrote: post #612
alexgoodhart wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Feels intentionally cruel”? Where have you been? There is so much evidence of the deliberate cruelty that it beggars belief you’d say that.

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

OP is right. There are too many people here in the comments who act surprised although it has been very clear what the Trump administration is trying to do. The cruelty is the point and they are not even trying to hide it.
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