Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

591–600 of 987 posts

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

#591

Post by GeneralMayhem »

scoofy wrote: post #561
foltik wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> isn't even trying to have a conversation in good faith. What about the sweeping halt of all legal immigrant visa processing?

Right, the point isn't that "Leave to renew" is some kind of horrible policy. Such bad-fucking-faith on display everywhere. The point is maybe signal to people that we will soon be pausing all visa renewals so people who trivially have good jobs and good records know they ought to literally just plan on moving out of their apartment rather than have to deal with paying thousands of dollars to have someone else move t…

> the point isn't that "Leave to renew" is some kind of horrible policy

I mean... "leave to renew" is a horrible policy, it's just one that we've normalized since 9/11. It's incredibly wasteful and disruptive, and serves no purpose. There's no legitimate reason why a long-term residential visa like an H1-B can't be renewed by mail or electronically. I can renew my driver's license by mail, and I'm a hell of a lot more likely to cause serious damage with a car than my foreign coworkers are by continuing to do their jobs well.

The reason the State Department hides behind, by the way, is that domestic offices don't have the ability to take biometric data (fingerprints), which is self-evidently pretextual.

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

#592

Post by GeneralMayhem »

15155 wrote: post #587
GeneralMayhem wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, that's not what this is talking about. "Leave to renew" becoming "leave, and you will not be renewed" on a whim is insane, self-destructive cruelty. But also, it's only been "the policy" since 2004. That's technically "decades", but only just, and it was also introduced for idiotic pretextual reasons. The ostensible reason is that domestic State Department offices don't have the equipment to capture biometric…

> "Leave to renew" becoming "leave, permanently" is insane, self-destructive cruelty. Which visas legally come with renewal guarantees ? Isn't that called permanent residency?

They come with renewal expectations, assuming the situation hasn't changed. Reserving the right to change the rules unilaterally doesn't make you not an asshole if you actually exercise that right. And government only functions if it's predictable - if it's a random-number generator (outside of processes that are explicitly lotteries), what is anyone supposed to do? Why would anyone engage with it?

In most states, employers have broad rights to fire employees at will, including no reason or "he wore the wrong color shirt". That doesn't mean that if you have a dickhead manager who fires you because he doesn't like the color of your shirt isn't a dickhead, and if you defended that manager I would similarly consider you unfit to participate in civil society.

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

#593

Post by hvb2 »

15155 wrote: post #581
hvb2 wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The terms were clear, visas are a privilege and not a right or automatic entitlement. They are. Yet can you tell me why you would need to pause all processing in order to retrain your people? Surely they do training all the time without pausing processing. Your passport is a right too, you wouldn't mind if they paused that request with no indication of when they might resume? And that's including when you're abroad…

> They are. United States Code plainly disagrees with you, as do the laws of basically every developed nation in the world. Visas are not a right, by definition. > Your passport is a right too, I am a citizen, so this isn't a good faith comparison. Citizens naturally have higher priority than visitors, otherwise what's the purpose of citizenship as a concept at all?

I meant that I agreed that visas are a right.

> I am a citizen, so this isn't a good faith comparison.

Oh, you still are. You'll get your passport, we just can't tell you when. That's what's happening here. These people aren't being denied, they're told to wait for an indefinite amount of time.

But basically you're saying that you think this is outrageous if it were you, got it.

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

#594

Post by ElProlactin »

sandmn wrote: post #553
ElProlactin wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what do you do about the people who only want to work in jobs that they're not qualified for, and who have unrealistic expectations about pay, benefits, work demands, etc.? Is every natural-born American entitled to a job that pays what they want, for the hours they want, in the location they want, regardless of their qualifications for the job?

But isn't that how market supposed to work? Company offers to pay x for the job, can't find anyone for x, so it raises salary to x+y. I would understand logic of bringing people from other countries when there is a shortage of workers but with current market it doesn't seem to be the case.

> Company offers to pay x for the job, can't find anyone for x, so it raises salary to x+y.

In the world you're imagining, is x+y potentially infinite?

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

#595

Post by totetsu »

MisterMower wrote: post #500
totetsu wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you propose to restrict the international flow of capital too while you're at it? Until every spare US dollar is invested in the US? or you just want to restrict the market for the 99% of people whose biggest asset is their labor.

Dollars and people are not the same thing. I’m not sure how you can even make the claim that they could be or even should be.

Thats the amazing part of a diverse society, there is a variety of opinions and world views that you can come across that that might even be completely outside your current understanding. As by being curious and trying to understand something surprising you might just gain a new and deeper understanding of the world.

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

#596

Post by debatem1 »

rayiner wrote: post #580
debatem1 wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that how the moral issue is defined? Seems to me the moral issue is the stakes, and I have no idea why I would cede that judgement to you. What's your basis for claiming moral authority? If you don't, please show your homework: what strange anticonsequentialism underlies your claims, and why should I agree with it?

Consequentialism in general is a third-world mindset. But in this particular context it leads to the absurd result that someone who breaks the rules more egregiously is rewarded for doing so.

Those sure are words. Can you relate them to the question in some way?

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

#597

Post by [deleted] »

bruce511 wrote: post #457
NeutralWanted wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speak for yourself, I voted for exactly these policies.

Thank you for posting. I'm being sincere. I think it is helpful to remind folk that these policies are not universally hated. Indeed a majority of voters voted specifically for them, and they were explicitly laid out. This is democracy in action. The majority (of those who care enough at all) get to rule over the minority (and the apathetic). Obviously not all actions will be universally loved, but no govt action can…

[deleted]

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

#598

Post by dcow »

scoofy wrote: post #456
shostack wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cruelty is the point.

I mean, anyone who is still defending this administration isn't even trying to have a conversation in good faith. I have a Republican friend who appreciates the Supreme Court Justices, and then suddenly has zero clue about any news story involving the administration, and shrugs off the war. This despite meticulously following Benghazi hearings when it was someone he wanted to dislike. He would rather Trump be Romney,…

I have good friends on an H1B. I've got plenty of amazing coworkers and teammates on it as well. At the same time, the program has been wildly abused. We don't need to go into the details I'll assume if you are trying to have a conversation in good faith here then you are well aware that companies abuse the H1B program to import literal indentured servants (to the point of there being covert rings that traffic H1B workers with fake credentials into the country) that ultimately aren't serving even the most remote interests of working class America and really just allowing companies to lower costs while increasing profits so boomers can get rich. We can have nice things until people abuse the system en masse. This isn't a new failure mode.

So what do we do? I don't want good people disrupted. But I also morally disagree with everything the abuse of the H1B program represents. What's the solution? It doesn't seem that crazy to me that "tax the companies so they can't undercut local labor so easily" is a reasonable first pass. But we know how that went.

I can't help but think if instead of shouting across the isle there were some amount of bipartisan accountability and shared understanding on the topic then the previous attempts by this administration to curtail the problem would have been more effective and we wouldn't be at a point where people have to take the gloves off.

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

#599

Post by assemblyman »

davidlumley wrote: post #173
assemblyman wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were the visas for the US? B1/B2? I know stuff like this happens for digital nomads in southeast asia or Schengen but the US generally doesn't approve of "visa runs".

Visa renewals are processed at a US consulate. You can extend your status (ie you ability to legally be in the US) while staying in the US, but if you want to renew your visa (your ability to leave and re-enter) you need to visit a consulate and those only exist outside of the US.

I was questioning the renewals every six months and asking about US visas which are granted for 6 months (i.e. expire after 6 months). I am aware of renewals requiring leaving the country.

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

#600

Post by itake »

Solstafir wrote: post #569
itake wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an American that lives abroad. I have first-hand experience how other countries treat 'immigrants'. H1B is a temporary non-immigrant visa. I could never imagine myself buying a home in a country where I don't have permanent access to that real estate. I am not opposed to voting to prevent non-PRs from owning real estate in order to keep housing prices lower for residents and prevent non-immigrants from shooting t…

There are arguments from the other side too. Many H1B folks do keep one foot back in the country they are from. But then a lot of backlash on specifically Indian folks for sending most of their salary back home. They know that this is transient state, many of them have rented housing, but still these visas are not like weekly visas, they are for 3 years, people would build somewhat of a life in that time and uprootin…

I don't have opinions about them sending their salary back home. Obviously its better for the USA if the money stayed in the USA, but "earning money in one locality and spending it another" is really really really situation, even in the USA.

American Police officers are famous for not actually living in the cities they work in.

In each country I have lived in, I was a guest. With that knowledge, I carefully designed my life so uprooting would not be a painful inhumane process.

If you throw a party and a guest refuses to leave, you wouldn't declare forcing them to leave your home in-humane.

Post reply on HN