521–530 of 615 posts
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.
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No, it's mostly because those commentors on HN can't code worth their salt, and can't find a job, in an industry with thousands of unfilled positions, and need a scapegoat to pile hatred on. Most of the points stated on those hateful comments are either factually wrong, or overstate something as being the norm, when it probably happens less than 10% of the time. For one, if you are even decently good at software deve…
No, it's mostly because those commentors on HN can't code worth their salt, and can't find a job, in an industry with thousands of unfilled positions, and need a scapegoat to pile hatred on. I don't think that's true, but I don't expect we'll be giving programming tests to each commentor to get hard data Most of the points stated on those hateful comments are either factually wrong, or overstate something as being th…
So what if anyone can come and go. You live in a town or city, right? So the adjacent towns, they let you just waltz in and out of them right? They "don't control who comes through." Is that so terrible? Do you think your town should have a big wall around it and strict security cause you're worried about a potential fugitive slipping in? No, that's stupid. It's just a really inefficient/cumbersome way to deal with the problem of criminals. Instead, you leave society open and free, and when a criminal pops up, you track him down, arrest him, stick him in jail or whatever. You don't wrap everything up with giant walls and security just cause sometimes there are criminals. So if we don't want walls around towns or cities or counties or states, why do we suddenly want them at the country level? What the hell is so special about your country? Does no one commit crimes there? No, of course they commit crimes.
And by the way, you can get smuggled into the US via the Mexican borders for like a couple thousand bucks. There's a whole industry around this. The people who do the smuggling are called 'coyotes". Any serious terrorist is already here, via that border.
Please see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632
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> I get the feeling that Canada is changing its opinion of welcoming immigrants. Well, our government is at any rate. As a Canadian by birth I don't know that I feel we (the citizenry) have had a lot of input into the matter. :/
You're not a democracy that elects its representatives and government?
In Canada we elect representatives to a legislature, and those representatives effectively elect a government.
My representative won his seat with about 48% of the riding's vote, which is actually an extremely decisive victory for a representative, most of whom win on pluralities more in the range of 30-45%.
In total, approximately 39% of the 61% of the electorate that voted (or 23% of all eligible voters), voted in a legislature where the winning party took 53% of the seats and secured themselves virtually absolute power to enact their legislative agenda for up to 5 years.
I won't say we don't live in a democracy, but I do think we live in one that is only barely functional.
But to really specifically answer your question (which is actually two questions): I live in a democracy that elects its representatives. I do not live in a democracy that elects its government.
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Actually most western European countries wont do this. They will try to re-socialize terrorists.
France: "French Court Rules It's Not Wrong To Revoke Citizenship Of A Convicted Binational Jihadist" http://www.ibtimes.com/french-court-rules-its-not-wrong-revo... Britain: Britain Increasingly Invokes Power to Disown Its Citizens http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/10/world/europe/britains-powe... Other countries include: Netherlands, however it looks like many don't as well. http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we…
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Can I go with the three of you? I am from Brazil and want to go anywhere but here (or countries like here...) I even did some interviews for companies in Amsterdan but they didn't went well :(
Can I go with the four of you? I am Venezuelan and let me tell you, this country is the anus of the world and we don't even have toilet paper. Please be compassionate.
Disclaimer: I'm from Amsterdam ;)
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How long did it take to get your green card after first filing?
That's a good question. I had a hard time getting letters from my previous employers, so that part took the better part of a year. If you ignore that, I'd say 3 years? I was EB3 'other'. EB2 or EB1 category applicants from 'other' probably end up taking about a year. If you're unlucky enough to be in the India or China region, you're going to be waiting much, much longer than that though. EB3 India is probably more a…
I realise I was very fortunate in three things: timing, nationality (British) and education (two Master's degrees, so EB2). During this time I was paid market rates, though I did go through a period of minor panic when I realised I basically couldn't leave Google while my green card application was pending and I had no idea how long it would actually take. But articles like this make me extremely sad that others can't be so fortunate, and I wonder what it is we (non-voting residents) can actually do about it...
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Another frequently-cited benefit of opened borders is that -- for the most part -- current citizens own everything in this country, and stand to make a bit of cash if there's an influx of new faces looking to buy houses, used cars, rent rooms, etc etc etc.
I can only follow that argument if we're talking about citizens that already have assets. Increased competition for houses, used cars, and rentals will drive up prices, which is good news only if you own houses, cars, and rental property respectively.
Please see my comment here for more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632
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Another frequently-cited benefit of opened borders is that -- for the most part -- current citizens own everything in this country, and stand to make a bit of cash if there's an influx of new faces looking to buy houses, used cars, rent rooms, etc etc etc.
> Another frequently-cited benefit of opened borders is that -- for the most part -- current citizens own everything in this country This is not true. Very many things in this country are owned by entities that are not citizens -- foreign corporations and/or foreign individuals. > and stand to make a bit of cash if there's an influx of new faces looking to buy houses, used cars, rent rooms, etc etc etc. Sure, some pe…
Please see my comment here for more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632
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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 et…
Culture has a lot to do with it. Brazil had the immigrants (and still does have LatAm immigrants). On the other hand Japan has been very averse to immigration.
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Why does your cost-benefit calculation not include the benefits to those foreign workers who are allowed to compete for jobs in the U.S.? The academic literature* shows much, much larger productivity and income gains to those who migrate to richer countries than any negative effect to native workers. Even if an influx of immigrants depressed some existing Americans' wages by a small amount, that delta would only pale…
Would you willingly train/mentor somebody if you knew the outcome would be that she would compete for your job personally, or that your wage would go down 20%? Frequently calls for equality are made by those who imagine their own situation could not possibly worsen; it's always some anonymous others who will pay.
Do you honestly think there would have been a national uproar against Disney if they'd asked their employees to train other Americans?
Try replacing "foreign H1B worker" with "person of another skin color" and see if your arguments don't sound abhorrent. If you think the later sounds racist, the former is xenophobic.
>> it's always some anonymous others who will pay
Couldn't agree more. In the case of immigration and labor policy, the anonymous others who pay are those that didn't have the good fortune to be born in this country.