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

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

#371

Post by strongsilentype »

outworlder wrote: post #243
bane wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you see, that's it. Those are the options. Option #4: treat people who want to immigrate with decency, isn't available. I think it's fair to complain that this option doesn't exist, I'd like it to exist. But it doesn't and options #1-3 are what the author had to work within, yet chose not to pursue any of them. If he still wants to get in, once he's back in New Zealand, he's free to continue pursuing permanent re…

Obviously, you can overcome any legal hurdle with "tenacity". Lottery is out if he intended to stay. I am wondering if you are a troll for even having suggested it. It is meant for people outside the US - with no intent of ever visiting. It signals immigration intent, so even tourist visas can be denied on that alone. It is a lottery, not an application. Very low odds that would actually make it harder for him to sta…

Lottery is fine. I had H1s and then E3 visas for a while until I won the DV lottery. OP, as a NZ citizen, has a relatively high chance of winning (approx 1 in 20 last time I looked).

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

#372

Post by chx »

kafkaesque wrote: post #339
hartator wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waho, that's bad, do you have more details?

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.

To quote https://bccla.org/2015/06/its-official-second-class-citizens...

The new provisions allow officials to take away a person’s citizenship based on criminal convictions that occur outside of Canada, regardless whether the regime or judicial system under which the person was convicted is undemocratic or lacks the rule of law.

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

#373

Post by dang »

makeitsuckless wrote: post #267
kuschku wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The debate the politicians in my state (Schleswig-Holstein, a state in Germany) had about this was really interesting, sadly it’s in German. Essentially, it boils down to two issues: Morally, we all are descendants of immigrants, or at least most. Economically, most immigrants are willing to work hard. Combined with the fact that our society has a birth rate below replacement rate (1.3 vs. 2.1) we need immigrants jus…

How about the third, conveniently ignored issue: that there is a considerable number of immigrants that bring with them an ideology (also referred to as "religion" because it's founded on supernatural believes) that is hellbent on destroying the very fabric of the society they immigrate to?

Religious flamewars are not ok on Hacker News.

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

#374

Post by jpatokal »

toephu2 wrote: post #355

and the reverse? how hard is it to become a citizen of New Zealand?

Easy compared to the US: https://www.newzealandnow.govt.nz/

TL;DR: Get a job offer for a "skill in demand" (like IT), live in NZ for five years on a work visa, and granting citizenship is almost automatic.

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

#375

Post by rburhum »

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…

I was going to reply but then I saw your comment history. Wow...

On the bright side I guess HNs has a very diverse community -that includes racist hackers.

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

#376

Post by rayiner »

School-Cotton wrote: post #328
diego_moita wrote: post #272

Disclaimer: I am a Canadian permanent resident. > I like it here. This is the real problem, you have a severe case of non-reciprocal love. In that case the answer is obvious: move over, find another love, come to Canada or go to Northern Europe. U.S. immigration is an American problem,since they are the ones loosing talent and entrepreneurial people. It is not an immigrant's problem, since they don't have the powers…

Claiming the "love" is unrequited rests on the assumption that policy is at least strongly correlated with the people's will. As far as anyone can tell, this is simply not true. Hence, average American people can like someone without that acceptance being written into policy.

Do Americans strike you as pro immigration?

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

#377

Post by StavrosK »

School-Cotton wrote: post #328
diego_moita wrote: post #272

Disclaimer: I am a Canadian permanent resident. > I like it here. This is the real problem, you have a severe case of non-reciprocal love. In that case the answer is obvious: move over, find another love, come to Canada or go to Northern Europe. U.S. immigration is an American problem,since they are the ones loosing talent and entrepreneurial people. It is not an immigrant's problem, since they don't have the powers…

Claiming the "love" is unrequited rests on the assumption that policy is at least strongly correlated with the people's will. As far as anyone can tell, this is simply not true. Hence, average American people can like someone without that acceptance being written into policy.

I think you have a skewed perspective of who the "average" American (and person, in general), is. They tend to be rather xenophobic.

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

#378

Post by Daishiman »

danielweber wrote: post #362
Daishiman wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason people want to move to the US is the US's culture. No dude, it's the money. I have at least a dozen friends who are on H1Bs working in SV for different large software companies. They're either going there because that's where the best-paying jobs are or they're staying for just a couple of years to save some money.

It's the culture than enables the money. If you were to beam all the Americans into space and them beam all the Mexicans into their place, they wouldn't magically achieve US levels of income just because of their physical location.

The culture doesn't enable the money. Historical reasons going far beyond that explain it very well, among them: the size of the internal American market, the amount and ease of investing capital within the US, leverage of the US government's global projection of power by its industries, ease of immigration (prior to this past decade's immense increase in difficulty for migrating legally for skilled migrants), etc etc.

It's true that just swapping people places right now would not substitute anything. But you can bet that the immense natural resources, available land and influx of immigrants through the 20th century have impacts as much, if not more, important than whatever contemporary cultural trends exist.

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

#379

Post by bane »

diego_moita wrote: post #272

Disclaimer: I am a Canadian permanent resident. > I like it here. This is the real problem, you have a severe case of non-reciprocal love. In that case the answer is obvious: move over, find another love, come to Canada or go to Northern Europe. U.S. immigration is an American problem,since they are the ones loosing talent and entrepreneurial people. It is not an immigrant's problem, since they don't have the powers…

I think this is entirely fair.

The U.S. is not a country that loves anybody -- not in the way that countries like Denmark does. The U.S. works by mostly just getting out of the way and ignoring you at least compared to other advanced countries. You have more room to succeed or fail here than most other countries, but the government really won't do much to help you either way. Most interactions with the government here aren't all that wonderful no matter who you are.

Other countries offer better protections but can be more intrusive in ways that prevent both vast success and failures, with the tradeoff of creating more social stability.

The good news is that it seems like both approaches have managed to create great places to live provided you have some baseline understanding of what the place is like. There are a large number of well developed countries I'd be perfectly happy to live in, Canada included, because they offer great (if different) and reasonable living conditions.

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

#380

Post by littletimmy »

nicolas_t wrote: post #52

I work for customers in the US as a software consultant (paid at New York rates) but because of the hassle and difficulties to get a visa there, I do not live there. This means that I get money from the US but I do not reinject it in the economy, I also do not pay taxes in the US. I'm a net loss for this country all because of the visa policies.

Could I ask what exactly is it that you do and how do you get on this path? I'm trying to explore options where I can work for US companies from somewhere else.
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