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I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

vox.com

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Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#251

Post by jahnu »

avz wrote: post #237
eax_ wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but it's part of the Schengen area, which also covers most of the EU countries, so once you got a visa to e.g. France, you're free to work and live in Switzerland as well.

Nope. There are many different types of Schengen visa [1] and it generally does not allow you to work. For this you need a national visa from a specific member state [2]. So, no, if you get a work permit in France, you are not free to live and work in Switzerland. In fact, EU citizens generally need a residency and work permit if they wish to live and work there. [1] http://www.schengenvisainfo.com/schengen-visa-type…

> In fact, EU citizens generally need a residency and work permit if they wish to live and work there.

No, they generally don't.

https://www.ch.ch/en/working-switzerland-eu-efta/

Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#252

Post by drzaiusapelord »

btian wrote: post #238
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He certainly can, but as a citizen I should have preferential right to work instead of my job taken from me and handed to H1B's.

Do you have a law degree? Do Fortune 500 companies trust you to represent them? The job will just remain unfilled when the author leaves the US...

>The job will just remain unfilled when the author leaves the US...

If they pay H1B-esque wages and conditions, yes. Pay competitive salaries and benefits and you'll have qualified people. The idea that we can't fill that position with US talent is completely asinine.

Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#253

Post by DanBC »

biztos wrote: post #247
kuschku wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that’s what makes the huge difference between Schengen and free trade agreements like TTIP. (If one ignores the protection part of TTIP)

Schengen is for citizens only. If you are third-country national who is a permanent resident of a Schengen country, with an unlimited right to work, you have exactly ZERO right to live or work in any other Schengen country. Sure, you can travel by land without having your passport checked, but that's as far as it goes. The European Union is a Union until you need it to behave like one, and then it isn't.

Isn't Schengen only about passportless travel? I thought it didn't have anything to do with right to work?

Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#254

Post by danieltillett »

Jugurtha wrote: post #220
pc86 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it? By definition wouldn't an increase in supply of talent for a given job decrease market wage for that talent unless it was already in a shortage (which we never really know until it's over)?

Sound logic, but it is not an automatically enforced one. Take waste collectors, for example: Very few people want to do it, very few people actually do it. And it is necessary. By our sound logic, their salaries should be soaring, but they're not. On the other hand, take lawyers in the U.S. A huge number of people want to do it. A huge number of people ends up doing it (I think the number of lawyers tripled in 30 ye…

Interestingly waste collectors (garbos in Aussie slang) are well paid and it is quite a desirable job. They are also the hardest working government employees you see as they are given a route and when they have finished they can go home. Amazing how government can work when the structure is right.

Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#255

Post by chetanahuja »

kingmanaz wrote: post #250
shas3 wrote: post #68

The US legal immigration system is perfectly described by the adjective, Kafkaesque. In terms of the arbitrariness of bureaucracy, it has more in common with what I saw in the socialist days of India and what one reads in books by Solzhenitsyn and Kafka. The iniquities have been discussed repeatedly in popular press, with almost no changes wrought in the process. Many years ago (yes, 2011 was 4 years ago) Newsweek ra…

A nation exists to serve the will of /its people/. With rampant illegal and legal immigration, a nation cannot know who /its people/ are. A nation serving no one people is a nation serving no one, it instead arbitrates in favor of whichever group screams the loudest. Diversity leads to division. Division leads to divestment. Divestment leads to dissolution and war. America is more than a place to make money, it is mo…

"it is more than a marketplace, it is a /home/ built by North-Western European ancestors for the benefit of their progeny"

So... straight up racism is your explanation. Got it. Was there really a need to write so many words to couch your racist views?

Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#256

Post by rbreve »

Reading this types of cases and I really don't understand the american immigration system, I am from Honduras and there have been hundred of thousands hondurans migrating illegally to the US since the 90s, and a lot of them became legal due to threaties like the TPS, and most of them don't even have university degrees

Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#257

Post by semigroupoid »

avz wrote: post #237
eax_ wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but it's part of the Schengen area, which also covers most of the EU countries, so once you got a visa to e.g. France, you're free to work and live in Switzerland as well.

Nope. There are many different types of Schengen visa [1] and it generally does not allow you to work. For this you need a national visa from a specific member state [2]. So, no, if you get a work permit in France, you are not free to live and work in Switzerland. In fact, EU citizens generally need a residency and work permit if they wish to live and work there. [1] http://www.schengenvisainfo.com/schengen-visa-type…

EU citizens have the right to move to and work in any country within the EU. See here: http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=457

Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#259

Post by winter_blue »

murbard2 wrote: post #12

I personally consider that opening borders is a moral imperative, but I understand why it is controversial. I understand that the arguments against "letting everyone in" have some merit, though I ultimately disagree with them. What is a real head scratcher to me is the US policy on highly-skilled immigrants. There are certainly some political constituencies in favor of those, but I can't think of anyone against, at l…

> So who's lobbying against this exactly?

If you've ever come across any posts on HN regarding immigrant workers in technology (who are on the same visa, the H1B†, that the author of the Vox article was on), you will see a shockingly offensive amount contempt and hatred for highly-skilled immigrants.

To answer your question more directly, despite high support for skilled immigration reform, there are currently 2 senators who are hell-bent on making life hard for highly-skilled immigrants. One of them is Chuck Grassley, chair of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and the other is Jeff Sessions, chair of the Subcommittee on Immigration. Both senators (esp. Sessions) thoroughly hate immigrants of all kinds, and have avowed to do everything in their power to block immigration reform from passing, and the committee and subcommittee they chair are key to immigration reform passing in the Senate.

Jeff Sessions has even go so far as to write a document full of half-truths and lies, with the goal of convincing other Republicans that even the tiny trickle of high-skilled immigration now permitted is detestable, and must be put to an end. The Cato Institute has an excellent fact-based rebuttal of it: http://www.cato.org/blog/rebuttal-sen-sessions-anti-legal-im...

Opposition to immigration itself is pretty hard to believe in country like the U.S., but the opposition to economically beneficial high-skilled worker immigration, is even more shocking.

† Note: there are really no other alternatives than getting a work visa, if someone wants to immigrate as high-skilled worker. I've read ill-informed people on HN say ridiculous things like, they do not have a problem with people "coming to the US normally", but they hate to their guts anyone on a work visa. Ridiculous.

Re: I spent the last 15 years trying to become an American and failed

#260

Post by legohead »

The article mentions we kick out the brightest, but there's actually a way to specifically immigrate using your educational prowess [1]. Basically, you need a masters of higher.

You got 2 degrees, were here for ~15 years.. surely research was done to find out how to immigrate? If you spent the time to get 2 degrees, I'd figure getting a masters would have been the more obvious choice...

[1]: http://www.workpermit.com/us/employer_eb2.htm

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