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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

#471

Post by bruceb »

SFjulie1 wrote: post #313
kingmanaz wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Actually YOUR racist nation (that genocides the first nations) is bankrupting other countries: - brain drains is stilling public investment in education from other developed countries - cheap labor force that have kids is a transfer of the capacity to pay retirements in other countries to pay yours ... Actual immigrations are a pure theft that benefits only the wealthiests, local and immigrants alike. Immigration pro…

Our racist nation that has president who the son of an Kenyan, has present and fmr state govs that were born to immigrant parents, the head of one of the largest tech companies is from India.

What other nations have this? very few.

We have some shameful history no doubt but keep it in context to other nations.

With your reasoning it is good the author can't get a visa and may return his brain to New Zealand.

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

#472

Post by funkyy »

refurb wrote: post #447
kafkaesque wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Canadian citizen (but I live in the US), so I think I know what' hes' referring to. With Bill C-24, whether you were born in Canada or were naturalised, if you qualify for another citizenship or hold citizenship from another country, the government can take away your Canadian citizenship if it considers you to be a terrorist or threat to the country. I'm against it.

Why is this shocking? Most countries will do this. Look at all the former Nazi's who had their citizenship revoked in Canada and the US. That's why they ask (at least in the US citizenship application) "Have you ever been a member of a terrorist organization?". If you answer "no" and turn out to be one, they say you lied on your application and your citizenship is revoked.

Actually most western European countries wont do this. They will try to re-socialize terrorists.

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

#473

Post by davegardner »

lancewiggs wrote: post #338
geebee wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any chance you'd be willing to write a bit more about your support for open borders? In particular, I'm interested in knowing whether you think this is a situation where it would be both moral and beneficial, or if you feel that it is simply wrong to limit where people can live and work based on where they were born (or even where their grandparents were born) even if the overall effect on current citizens of some re…

We haver good immigration numbers at the moment, and society is ever-changing for the better as we balance a healthy mix of cultures. The trick is to constrain the rate of immigration so that the infrastructre and society can adapt. As it is out biggest city, Auckland, is experiencing insanely high house prices that folks in the Bay area would grimace at. Aside from that it's a wonderful wonderful place to live, and…

> As it is out biggest city, Auckland, is experiencing insanely high house prices that folks in the Bay area would grimace at.

I was a little surprised by this comment and wondered how true it actually was. According to Numbeo, rental prices in Auckland are 67% lower than SF. Likewise property purchase prices are between 66% and 71% lower on a price per square metre basis. Something worth noting these figures are for SF on average, not just the Bay Area.

http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...

Edit: Formattting

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

#474

Post by cubancigar11 »

bdcravens wrote: post #75
solve wrote: post #2

The slavery-like dynamics of the immigration system is a surprising mismatch, versus the typical American business culture. For comparison, I've spent time in a few countries where a slavery-like relationship with employers is completely expected and even supported by the employees. (Culture shock!) They imagine that it's the only way that businesses can function. This isn't the type of business culture you want to l…

> a slavery-like relationship with employers is completely expected and even supported by the employees Actually, that sounds like America's start-up culture

H1B is basically how big companies remain 'leen' enough to compete with start-up. This is made very clear in Amazon and PayPal India offices afaik, but sounds reasonable enough to be generalized. It is impossible for a large company with thousands of employees to remain competitive without the crunch-culture of startups. So they get H1Bs.

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

#475

Post by winter_blue »

peterayemi wrote: post #228

This strikes too close to home. I am packing my bags and heading out soon too. I have spent 5 years here and have a masters in computer science from a top ranked school. The H1B visa is essentially a lottery which locks out talent from American companies. I failed to get a visa through the lottery process and I have to head back home too.

It saddens me to hear this. I wish you had been able to stay. I know how painful it is to leave a place that you made your home for 5 years. Your situation reminded me of a similar story I read of a while ago: http://app.fwd.us/stories/429

The immigration system here is really broken. I wish people would recognize that more, and fight for change.

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

#476

Post by overgard »

Wow, as an american I find this situation intolerably embarrassing. People like this built this country, and the fact that some useless bureaucratic entity designed by xenophobes and racists is kicking people out is incredibly depressing. I'd rather deport the inventors of these idiotic rules, we'd all be better off for that.

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

#477

Post by cubancigar11 »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #13

Considering U-6 unemployment is about 12% right now, perhaps this is a feature and not a bug. I still don't understand why Disney and others are allowed to do the things they do with abusing H1B's. Or why firms think they need someone with some fraudulent/substandard foreign degree instead of investing in domestic workers. There's a discussion about labor to be had here and it should be focused on domestic labor abus…

"If we started being serious about cutting immigration, there would be more political pressure for these foreign countries to get their shit straight."

Spoken like someone who never had the idea of moving to another country.

Here is the problem - those 12% unemployed will still walk around pretending that USA is the bestest country in the world where people have 'gotten their shit together', than to move to a different country and get a job - something that is unbelievably insanely easy if you are an American citizen.

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

#478

Post by arde »

pekk wrote: post #97
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…

Which country recognizes a universal right to naturalize as a citizen of that country?

Argentina.

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

#479

Post by bruceb »

hudibras wrote: post #331
bdcravens wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Yale degree is still valuable even if the author can't stay in the United States.

Yup. There's quite a bit of white privilege dripping from this article. I'm supposed to feel sorry for a Ivy League lawyer? What if this was written by a 33-year old Haitian who went to Cal State Fullerton? Would it get the same reaction on HN? Or would it even be published by vox?

The author isn't white. Maybe don't have a knee jerk reaction and using white as a near epithet.

Vox has other articles on those from mexico/latin America.

You imply people and organization are racists without even knowing the facts. Maybe check your own bias.

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

#480

Post by dsinsky »

gech wrote: post #437
dsinsky wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be open to hearing your criticism of policies that allow Disney to have [American] workers train their foreign replacements that don't invoke any sort of xenophobia or racism. The whole idea that it would be wrong or humiliating to have to train someone who had the gall to be born in a different (and generally poorer) country is based on the notion that Americans should be treated with more regard than people bor…

Is Disney going to pay the new 200 employees the same wages, and work them the same? Are the new employees going to ask for the same pay, and ask for the same treatment? Do they even have an empowered position to ask for that?

Maybe not, but even if not, why are you so sure that would be bad?

Let's say the foreign workers would have made the equivalent of $20k in their own country but will now make $60k for Disney in the U.S. vs. the American workers who made, say, $80k but will now end up settling for new jobs that only pay $60k (in addition to their unemployment, social security and subsidized health insurance and other social safety net features that the foreigners wouldn't have access to in their home countries). Are you really sure this is a bad thing for the world?

(By the way, the stylized figures above are very generous to your anti-immigration case, since while there is plenty of evidence that immigrants 2-3x their incomes by working in the U.S., there is no reason to believe that American's actually suffer 25% income losses to do competition from immigrants. Most studies show no change or a positive impact to native workers' wages and the few that show a negative impact show at most a ~5% decrease.)

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