U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications • Hacker News Board

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

#961

Post by ura_yukimitsu » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 8:29 AM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #922

ura_yukimitsu wrote: post #880

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how any of this is reasonable. I've heard people say stuff like "I'm not against immigration but they should come through legal means," so how does preventing people from accessing those legal means help anyone? For a country that was built on immigration that seems awfully anti-American. Wouldn't it make more sense to make the legal process shorter and less unnecessarily bureaucratic so that people are l…

// Wouldn't it make more sense to make the legal process shorter and less unnecessarily bureaucratic so that people are less likely to come in the country undocumented? Lowering the bar until the kinds of people who are happy to break the law to come here are now legal is not the goal. Immigration policy changes all the time. H1B was not a thing until the 90s. The country has the right to evaluate what it needs at a…

Why do people "break the law" to come to the US, and how do their coming affect you negatively? And again, H1-B is not an immigrant visa, I don't see why you're talking about it here.

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

#962

Post by rbanffy » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 9:35 AM UTC

giarc wrote: post #848

ciconia wrote: post #605

26 years ago I was a post-graduate student in the US, I arrived a couple months before the 9/11 attacks. The current US government, beyond its idiocy and incompetence, is just so hostile, not only to immigrants but also to its own citizens, so it seems. If I were to go study in another country today, the US would simply not be an option.

Podcaster Scott Galloway puts it best. The US is like a sports team that gets to draft the best players in the world and yet they are doing their best to stop that. Top talent from almost every country wants to come live and work in the US, producing incredible companies and advancing tech. But because most of them are not-white, the US wants to stop that.

> The US is like a sports team that gets to draft the best players in the world

Americans tend to overestimate how attractive it is to live in the US. It's true you can make a lot of money, more than you would in Europe working for the same companies, but you'd also be willing to live in a very different society, with high inequality and almost no worker rights protections. There was a time I wanted to, but not anymore.

I miss visiting the US though - it has wonderful places and people, but I wouldn't want to live and raise kids there.

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

#963

Post by vintermann » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 10:18 AM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #641

raz32dust wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the fundamental problem with h1b is that it is labeled as "non-immigrant" whereas for all practical purposes it is really an immigrant visa. Why would a person who is supposedly having rare skills come to a country and spend their best years here without reasonable guarantee of permanency? People buy homes because it is a reasonable belief that they are going to be living here permanently and it has hi…

There is a very common pattern of people who go to work to some other, richer country for a set period of time with the sole purpose of making enough money to achieve an objective back home (provide for family, buy a house, retire, etc). I don't know how common this is between H-1B applicants, but it's extremely common in the EU for example.

It used to be common in the US too. My great-grandfather, for instance, planned to go to the US and work for five years to afford a farm back home. He had earned enough in three (and also contracted tuberculosis, and also the elderly couple whose farm he had agreed to buy weren't ready to sell yet, so he invested the money in bank shares, but the bank was fraudulent and went under...)

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

#964

Post by mlrtime » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 10:27 AM UTC

aveao wrote: post #713

prepend wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have friends who are expats and they’ve done this for years. I had one family member who left every six months to renew their visa. It’s a chore, but very common around the world.

Common around the world? I'd be curious what other countries require this, pretty much everywhere else I know has you renew your status within the country (incl. US), and they give you some form of proof of residence that takes the place of a visa (excl. US). In many cases I've seen this is either a sticker on your passport (incl. possibly a visa) or a physical card, and does not require traveling abroad for it for "…

Hong Kong and the UK at least when I lived there, had to leave and come back, easy in HK to go to China and come back with a fresh stamp.

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

#965

Post by motbus3 » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 12:02 PM UTC

dcow wrote: post #857

motbus3 wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't dox myself, but you'd be welcome if you needed to. Following World War II, we took in European immigrants who had lost everything. More recently, we have welcomed individuals from countries in the Middle East and South America. Within a few days, you would receive your citizenship and be integrated into the system. I believe there are some initial advantages, but based on what I've heard, the expectation is t…

> the expectation is that you'll need to become self-sufficient very quickly because the financial support diminishes rapidly The US has this same expectation. It’s the long and short of what this reaction of pausing visas is about: bickering over how to make sure the expectation is being met during visa screening. I don’t see anybody anywhere even remotely implying that hard working immigrants shouldn’t be given the…

Hey. I am not judging. I just feel I have more emotions than facts about it and that's not how I like to be.

Can you tell me more about this Somali thing? I confess I googled and I saw a couple of cases, but maybe because I don't understand the benefits system i am not quite getting it.

Do you mean that they send people to live on benefit claims? Do they do that remotely? Are the benefits that good that they can live from it and still sustain a criminal organization? Are not the benefits not conditioned getting a job or something?

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

#966

Post by JaceLightning » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 1:06 PM UTC

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #312

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…

> doesn't make sense for ICE to behave like some unaccountable secret police that hires the biggest assholes they can find who can then do whatever they want

ICE is run by the same people today as it was under Obama. No one had a problem with Deporter-in-Chief Obama. Any notion that ICE is "some unaccountable secret police" is unsubstantiated nonsense.

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

#967

Post by yodsanklai » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 1:12 PM UTC

ct0 wrote: post #946

yodsanklai wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in a global company. As an interviewer, I don't even know if the person I interview is a US citizen. I don't even know if they live in the US or another country, and I'm probably not allowed to ask. I just rate their performance. And everybody is paid the same. I think the situation is quite simple. Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better. If tomorrow yo…

I find this hard to believe. Recruiters would not allow an applicant not eligible to work in the US pass to the next stage of the hiring process. Your role must not have the visibility that recruiters have.

What I'm saying is that I don't know if they are US citizens or not. From the look of it, most are not though. As for eligibility to work there, I suppose that's validated before with the recruiter.

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

#968

Post by goolz » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

cute_boi wrote: post #858

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intentional cruelty must be visible because they're doing it to gain support from those who want to see immigrants mistreated. They're not trying to change the rate of immigration, they're just looking to score political points.

This is the issue with low trust society. Consulting companies and H1B have abused things so much, people don't show any empathy even for genuine candidate.

A really good point and it echoes exactly how I feel. I want people to feel stable, have visas, etc. I understand there are truly irreplaceable workers out there and I want to have empathy for their situation.

Yet, I feel my apathy growing. I know logically it is not the person seeking a better life’s fault. But the system is broken and the only winners seem to be Fortune 500 companies.

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

#969

Post by burnerRhodov3 » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

doug_durham wrote: post #200

sinecure wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was never about talent. It's about companies hiring foreigners on h1b visas at below market wages where their life in the USA is contingent on their job performance forcing them to work harder and longer than their peers to remain in the country. It's a situation that only benefits companies, while harming US citizens who have to compete with the lower wages of foreigners.

I was a hiring manager. H1B candidates got exactly the same wage as native born. There were no differences.

I've never heard of a company giving a standard wage for a team. All the companies i've worked for (Tesla, Apple, Applied materials) give me a specific offer... Not a single person on any of my team's got paid the same. Some negotiate the base offer, some come with a higher base offer based on experience.. etc. So, based on the fact that no single US worker gets paid the same, it's very hard to imagine what you are saying is true.

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

#970

Post by yodsanklai » Fri, Aug 28, 2026, 1:22 PM UTC

dudul wrote: post #940

yodsanklai wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in a global company. As an interviewer, I don't even know if the person I interview is a US citizen. I don't even know if they live in the US or another country, and I'm probably not allowed to ask. I just rate their performance. And everybody is paid the same. I think the situation is quite simple. Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better. If tomorrow yo…

> Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better. Did you write this with a straight face? Companies want candidates that are good enough for the lowest possible price. Yes, US citizens are more entitled to be employed for US based jobs than importing someone from a different country to do the job. If Google wants an office in Zurich then Swiss candidates there should…

Big tech companies aren't patriotic, they work for their shareholders. They don't care about US or Swiss citizens. They'll open offices wherever there's a high density of talents, and where they can import qualified foreign workers. I'm pretty sure there aren't many SWEs from Switzerland at Google Zurich offices. If the US wants to restrict visas, automatically a portion of these jobs will be moved abroad.