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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

#711

Post by earthdeity »

rayiner wrote: post #642
earthdeity wrote: post #622

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

#712

Post by hvb2 »

NeutralWanted wrote: post #445
testbjjl wrote: post #440

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

#713

Post by whatever1 »

throwaway85825 wrote: post #256
whatever1 wrote: post #250

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

#714

Post by spacechild1 »

roarcher wrote: post #643
alexgoodhart wrote: post #576

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.

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

#715

Post by alphabeta3r56 »

hvb2 wrote: post #609
conductr wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue here is that, if you just left the country to do everything the country asked you, you are now in limbo. I feel like I’ve said it a few times but - Yes, exactly. The country wants you to leave and then get’s to decide if you can come back. That’s how it’s designed. On purpose. You’re approaching it from a perspective where you’re being asked to leave and your reentry is a right. It’s not. They never said,…

> I feel like I’ve said it a few times but - Yes, exactly. The country wants you to leave and then get’s to decide if you can come back. That’s how it’s designed. On purpose. That is how it's designed, and that's fine. But make a decision... They're pausing the decision making for an indefinite amount of time. That's not how it was designed, but it sure does look like that's on purpose.

That's on purpose too. To send a clear signal that we don't want you. It's just a mobster way of doing it.

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

#716

Post by arrrg »

khazhoux wrote: post #692
shostack wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cruelty is the point.

Like most internet meme phrases, this is both trite and inaccurate. The cruelty is not the point. This administration has decided foreigners are the scapegoat, and wants to get rid of as many as they can. It’s heartless, but cruelty is not the objective.

The ultimate goal might be some political aim and in that sense cruelty is not the ultimate point but what is usually meant by this phrase is that the cruelty is not an unintentional oversight, an unintentional side effect. It is intentional (and there to achieve the ultimate political goal).

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

#717

Post by cousin_it »

itake wrote: post #600
Solstafir wrote: post #569

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…

I don't really like the concept of "guests" being applied to people living somewhere for years, working, paying taxes, making families and friends, sending children to school and so on. I think it would be more humane if this concept was minimized, and instead the concept of "no taxation without representation" was applied. Fast track people as much as possible. Maybe one year as a voiceless "guest" is okay for a human being, but not more than that.

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

#718

Post by alphabeta3r56 »

itake wrote: post #487
vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #345

My company has a H-1B guy that travelled home to India a few months ago and since then can't come back because the next date he can get with the US embassy is next year. Seems he may get stuck even longer... I am to some degree on board with keeping a closer eye on immigration, but the way the current administration does it feels intentionally cruel. The guy at my company has a house, wife, and kids in the US; his vi…

I'm an American that lives abroad. I have first-hand experience how other countries treat 'immigrants'. H1B is a temporary non-immigrant visa. I could never imagine myself buying a home in a country where I don't have permanent access to that real estate. I am not opposed to voting to prevent non-PRs from owning real estate in order to keep housing prices lower for residents and prevent non-immigrants from shooting t…

That's by design too because immigrants visas are capped by country of birth. And the quota has nothing to do with reality.

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

#719

Post by eesmith »

somenameforme wrote: post #687
eesmith wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you calling for open border with no controls? That's the only way to get meritocracy. The system is set up so the casino wins. You cannot, with a straight face, argue the odds are in your favor, but there are rules about how the casino works, both formal and informal. When a casino only investigates cases where someone wins $1 million on the slots, to see if there's a fault in the system, while never investigatin…

I think what he's saying is if a corporation has a genuine need of some high specialist in a skill, and no American has that skill - then okay, such is life - bring in a foreign worker. But corporations have abused the system to unnecessarily employ immigrant labor in lieu of American, because immigrant workers not only tend to earn well below market wages (which is supposed to be illegal), but also tend to be far mo…

If true, that interpretation hardly seems relevant given that all immigrant visa applications are paused, with the goal of determining whether immigrants are likely to become dependent on public benefits in the US.

It's not simply a pause on immigration by people applying for a category which requires special expertise.

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

#720

Post by genxy »

pm90 wrote: post #473
refurb wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having the only appointment be a year or more out isn’t new. Anyone I knew wouldn’t take the risk of leaving the US if they didn’t have an appointment secured.

Did you read the article? They postponed all appointments.

The pro maga crowd has learned to take a less obvious, but just as callous approach to commenting over the last 6 months. They are trying to subtly slide the overton window in their direction.
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