<a href="https://archive.is/cjW9v" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/cjW9v</a>
So for those that don't know, it's quite common for a visa renewal to be required to leave the country. Depending on the visa, you might have to do this every year.<p>So just imagine, having a normal job in the US and you're asked to leave to renew your visa and this stuff happens.<p>That's no more appointment, not even a new date and you're now very likely unable to work and possibly can't even enter the country to get your belongings if you were to leave.<p>Just 'putting a pause' on people with existing appointments with no answer for when they might resume is.... Inhumane
H1-B and L1 can actually be done in-country, but for some reading going abroad and get consular processing has a lower chance of RFE.
You are talking about change (or extension) of status, not visa.<p>US is unique in that the visa sticker and your right to remain in the country (status) are two different things. The only purpose of the visa sticker is to allow you to travel to a U.S. port of entry, where you apply for admission, and therefore legal status. You can have legal status in the U.S. while the visa sticker has expired, and your status can be changed or extended domestically. However unless you have a valid sticker you cannot leave and return.
Based on my experience 20 years ago you could only renew the H-1B visa in the passport in-country under extraordinary circumstances. In the majority of cases they reject your request and would tell you to travel to a consulate.<p>Prior to the mid 00s you could renew at any consulate but they changed it so you could only renew in your home country.
The pause on visa appointments does not apply to H1-B and L1 as they are nonimmigrant visas. It applies to family based immigration visa, diversity visa, and EB-1/2/3 when you do processing abroad.<p>(You might have known that, but I thought it's worth clarifying).
Not trying to make a political point at all and perhaps a controversial take. But, it’s specifically and maybe implicitly by design. Meaning they made this way precisely so you have to reapply so they can change their mind or block you out later. Nothing about getting a visa is permanent and you’re fully at risk when you move here with that type of status. If you evaluate the situation that’s always been the case.
I have friends who are expats and they’ve done this for years. I had one family member who left every six months to renew their visa.<p>It’s a chore, but very common around the world.
Were they able to come back when they did this?
Were the visas for the US? B1/B2?<p>I know stuff like this happens for digital nomads in southeast asia or Schengen but the US generally doesn't approve of "visa runs".
In the EU you do not need to leave to renew your visa. I don't know how common it is elsewhere.
Sorry, but that is not common around the world. Most countries do not have such a system. I.e. none of the EU/UK/Australia countries have that.
Is it? You’re generally able to renew without leaving. Unless you mean abusing a visitor visa?
Hang on a tick: does that mean we may have been the baddies all along?<p>I say this as someone who just sent their daughter to NYC explaining how we used to try to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to poor immigrants who just assumed this was a land of kind people, WTF? Could we not take a decade off from being prissy about our democracy *and* total cocks about how we actually act?
Or imagine if an employee works for you and this happens to them.
I've had a couple of reports that this applied to. It's incredibly disruptive. "I've got to fly back to India to renew my visa." "Okay, when will you be back?" "I have no idea, it depends when I can get an appointment. It could be next week, it might be in a month." "[State department] We're pausing all visa appointments." "Well fuck."<p>Meanwhile I've got a tech lead who is 12 hours away from the rest of the team. He was at least willing to work US-East hours while in India (basically staying up all night and sleeping during the day), but there was a huge amount of management overhead and inconvenience for the employee involved.
At least the procedure used to be that one would try to get an appointment at the US consulate in one's home country and then arrange the trip around it. Also, at least in my experience (but importantly, not with this administration) was that one was never required to leave the US.<p>The main constraint is re-entry into the US and being able to travel outside the US. If one stayed here, there was no problem switching schools, programs, jobs, adjusting status to permanent residency or naturalization. On the other hand, for re-entry, one needs a valid visa stamped on a passport which necessitated a trip to one's home country. This stamping visit could be unpredictable.<p>Ideally, one would like to travel freely to see family and friends but I see a lot of comments implying that one is forced to leave. It might be true now but a lot of comments here are conflating several issues together.
The first time it happened (2023) it was a non-issue; he did exactly as you said, appointment happened as planned, and then he was back on his scheduled plane trip a week later.<p>Everything post-2025 has been a shit-show. There's no predictability or clear guidance, either from our lawyers or from the state department.<p>Predictability matters <i>a lot</i> in business. If you know what the procedure is and how long it will take, you can plan around it. If the rules change in the middle of the game you're left scrambling to keep up.
Hire Americans?<p>Hundreds of thousands of tech workers have been laid off in the last two years. There are many skilled Americans on the job market. Foreign workers are here for the benefit of the United States—not as charity to the rest of the world, or as a source of cheaper labor for global employers seeking to undercut American wages.
It's clear you are not a hiring manager. There aren't thousands of highly qualified engineers looking for work. I can't tell if this a troll post or not.
Yes, there are thousands of qualified engineers looking for work.
They would be looking for work with you if you were offering them better pay and conditions than where they're currently working.
> Foreign workers are here for the benefit of the United States<p>But that's the point, isn't it? Some foreign workers who "worked the US for the benefit of the US" are now unable to come back to the US. Isn't that bad for the US too?
The consequence of choosing to not hire a citizen.
Of not violating the law? Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, a company can't use a candidate's citizenship in hiring decisions.
Companies can though use proxies like whether a candidate would require visa sponsorship now or in the future.
There is no obligation to consider any candidate who needs visa sponsorship. Green cards are different. In hiring they must be considered like any citizen candidate.
Most immigration is based on hiring people into jobs for which the skills don't exist locally, based on what I've read.<p>So, yes, they could hire a citizen, but then they probably wouldn't be able to do the job they were hired for.
Many job reqs are scams intended to satisfy the "doesn't exist locally requirement" (superficially) so that exploitable foreigners are importable.<p>Nobody has 20 years of React experience, of course, but that doesn't stop people from listing this as a requirement - or a pre-selected group of people on the other end from asserting this experience.
Most immigration is based on hiring people into jobs for which the skills exist locally but which demand higher wages than immigrants. This is called a labor shortage by employers who prefer not to think of it as a salary shortage.<p>This is based on my experience in working with good immigrant coders who got the job over about equally capable locals, but more cheaply. The immigrants (mostly Indian and Chinese) tended to have weaker English communication skills but stronger work ethics.
This is just false. There are lot of reasons people hire immigrants, very few are truly incredible, singular talents. I lived with a bunch of Indian immigrants when in SF and it was universally guys not as skilled as me hired because there was a pipeline for Brahmin to the US.
A friend of mine is on a spousal visa and has lived in the US for decades. His wife and child are US citizens.<p>He's been doing the paperwork to finally become a citizen, and as one of the final steps he was required to leave the country and go to US embassy in the country where he was born (and hadn't been to in 30 years).<p>It was supposed to be a two week trip. While he was there Trump froze all greencard applicants indefinitely and refused to let him back into the country. He lost his job, his family lost their apartment, and he hasn't seen his little girl in almost a year.<p>His life is in limbo. The US rejected his application with no rationale or next step. His wife and child aren't citizens of his home country either, so it's not like they can move to be with him. Their lives are shattered.
Yeah, this is a pretty big risk. I'm similarly married to an American and we have an American child. Other country seems to have screwed the family, though. Mine (India) offers a fairly indefinite visa called an Overseas Citizen of India. And my wife's other nationality (Taiwan) also permits foreign spouses to live there after some straightforward paperwork. So, in theory, we could live in either of these other places together. I suppose I will only know when push comes to shove.
> And my wife's other nationality (Taiwan) also permits foreign spouses to live there after some straightforward paperwork.<p>Not really.<p>Taiwan doesn’t like India either.<p>There’s a reason out of the 1.1 million immigrants/foreigners in Taiwan, only 6,000 are from India.
Didn't we used to fast track citizenship for immigrants who married a US citizen? I mean, the default should be that after the wedding you're now on track to be a citizen within a year or two if the marriage is still in effect by then.
I don't want to minimize your friend's situation. But, a spousal visa is very different from being a permanent resident (maybe I am misunderstanding). If he got it through marrying a US citizen, there's a 3-year wait for naturalization and otherwise it's a 5-year wait.<p>Naturalization never required leaving the country, at least in my experience but things might have changed.
You're right, I fixed the wording. I don't know all the details, but I do think it's a recent change. They've been married for almost ten years. His wife and child are US born.<p>Trump ended in-country processing and now requires almost all greencard applicants to go to a consulate abroad. My friend and his wife were surprised and nervous when they were told he'd have to leave due to this new requirement (rightfully so, in retrospect).
> His wife and child aren't citizens of his home country either, so it's not like they can move to be with him. Their lives are shattered.<p>What would the steps be for this? Hopefully the other country has easier entry and that would be a possible route?
For now they're just waiting, separately, each living with relatives. There is zero guidance. The US consulate did not provide a reason for rejecting it other than the freeze, so there's nothing to even appeal.<p>Moving his wife and kid to his birth country isn't really an option. He doesn't plan to stay there. He has no job, no house, and no social network there. He barely speaks the language. His wife (US born) has a job and family here, and his kid only speaks English. Asking them to pull their kid out of school and move to another country until the US consulate decides to start processing paperwork again doesn't really seem like a reasonable solution, though with every passing week and month, it may end up being the only way they can be together again.
It's just such mindless cruelty. It's hard to imagine so many people support this.
I think part of the problem is that most Americans have no clue how the immigration system works. They see a large number of immigrants and hear horror stories about "chaos at the border" and "open border" and assume it's easy to immigrate. Even if you know someone who immigrated, you probably only know that route. Even though I'm a nationalized citizen myself, I can only tell you about the exact route that applied to my specific circumstances and beyond that mostly just know that it's extremely complicated and burdensome.
My wife is an immigrant and there were so many times when I’d talk about something related to her not being a citizen and the other person would say, but you’re married, doesn’t she get citizenship from that? They just thought it was automatic. People have <i>no</i> clue.
Or they do have a clue, actually want the cruelty, and assume that somehow, some nebulous "good ones" will be exempt from the cruelty. I was at a gathering and someone's garbage uncle was on one of those MAGA-rants about immigration and how we need to kick foreigners out of the country and how they don't deserve to be here and so on. I chimed in that my wife is an immigrant and you're telling me that my family should be broken up and my kid's mother should be taken away from her. The guy got all red faced and bashful and muttered something about how he's not really talking about my family in particular but all the bad ones out there who really need to go, blah blah blah. The usual MAGA-coward trash.<p>A lot of America has this world view that there's a hierarchy, and the people they know and like are above the people they don't know and don't like. One group gets the benefit of the doubt and the other group gets rules and cruelty.
The number of times I've heard "just wait your turn in line like my grandparents" from people is infuriating. There is no line! We have a series of lotteries, and even these are straight up forbidden for people from a bunch of countries. Failing the lottery one year does not get you any close to immigrating.
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The details of this story have glaring mistakes and don't make sense. I know this because I'm a naturalized citizen to the US and I came in on H1B.<p>> He's been doing the paperwork to finally become a citizen, and as one of the final steps he was required to leave the country<p>You don't have to leave the country to become a citizen. I recently became a US citizen a few years back and leaving the country is not required.<p>If you somehow meant Green Card, the timeline still doesn't make sense. Until May 2026, 3 months ago, you could do Adjustment of Status within the country without having to leave. So there's no reason why you friend would need to leave the country to get his Green Card unless he chose Consular Processing.<p>Getting denied CP is rare, but it means that they lied about something.<p>And if he did live in the US for decades without having his GC, well, applying for GC under Trump in this climate was a huge mistake, especially leaving the country having been in here for decades illegally. He should have waited 2 years until the Republicans were voted out and maybe he would have some modicum of amnesty where at least ICE would get him.<p>> His wife and child aren't citizens of his home country either, so it's not like they can move to be with him.<p>This also doesn't make sense. First off, the country's immigration is even more restrictive than the US?? They can't even visit on a travel visa??<p>They can definitely move to his home country, since he's a citizen. There's a spousal visas for almost all countries, and the child is most definitely allowed to come in since they can usually get citizenship via the father.<p>But there's no way he hasn't seen his daughter in over a year since the forced Consular Processing didn't start until this past May, and his spouse and daughter can most definitely travel to see him.<p>None of this story makes sense, so either you have the details very drastically incorrect or this is completely fake.
In the mid 2000s, I had to leave the US for renewal while leaving all my hard assets behind. I had a plan in place in case I couldn't go back to the country, which did happen to some people. These people had their interviews, but they got held back outside the US, sometimes for months, waiting for the renewal process to finish. I had an immediate renewal, but was <i>almost</i> held back for some red tape reasons.<p>This sucks but it isn't new, unfortunately.
At least for F1 and H-1B visas, one wasn't required to get a new visa physically stamped (for which one would have to leave) to switch schools (undergrad -> grad) or jobs. Is this forced now? Of course, if one wanted the freedom to be able to travel or visit one's home country, a new stamping was required if the old visa expired.<p>It's not ideal but a lot of us basically didn't leave for several years (even pre-Trump 1) to avoid the hassle of a new stamping.
Inhumane is every choice made by this country under this regime. The "bothsides" and "no politics" crowds are equally as complicit in this as Trump voters.
everything this administration does daily is from one of three boxes<p><pre><code> [CHAOS] [CORRUPTION] [CRUELTY]
</code></pre>
this is a little from the first box and the last box<p>imagine what's tomorrow or next week<p>meanwhile let's all enjoy the billion spent on making statues gold plated in DC and the ballroom and the arch and his drapes and his reflecting pool and 100 foot banners of his face on federal building and his face on gold coins, passports, park passes and the $250 bill<p>it's surreal
In Canada I had to leave and re-enter for my permanent resident status to complete. It’s not that uncommon - but it’s a pain.
In Canada you never have to leave to renew or change status; it's just sometimes faster to do so. It's always the applicant's choice. I went through the whole work permit to PR to citizenship pipeline without ever having to leave the country.
I'm not sure if its the same in Canada but when I went through the process for Australia it depended on where you started the process. I started the process while outside the country so to activate my visa I had to leave and come back but if I had filed while in the country I could have stayed.<p>I do remember Canada telling my partner she wouldn't be guaranteed reentry while they were processing her PR visa until it was finalised if we left the country though so we just ended up doing the Australian half first and I never went back.
> I went through the whole work permit to PR to citizenship pipeline without ever having to leave the country.<p>You're comparing apples to oranges.<p>People going from non-immigrant visa (H1B, F1 etc.) to Green card via i485 "adjustment of status" do not need to leave the country either.<p>Only consular processing (ds 260) are in scope of this pause<p><a href="https://www.ellis.com/resources/immigrant-visa-pause-2026" rel="nofollow">https://www.ellis.com/resources/immigrant-visa-pause-2026</a><p>Has more details than the paywalled article
I had a study permit at first. I renewed my permit, got a work permit, renewed my foreign passport and extended my work permit, got PR and got citizenship, getting visas to match my work and study permits, over a period of 10 years, without ever having to leave Canada. So my experience is that in Canada you never have to leave but in the US you do.<p>My classmates who had gone to the US for PhD programs, even those who were fortunate enough to get multiple entry visas, had visas that allowed re-entry for only the first two years of the PhD program. After that, if they wanted to leave the US, say for a conference or to visit family, they would have had to apply for a visa from abroad and hope to be granted one. In Canada, I could apply for the visa and get it while in Canada. Even comparing like with like, the American system seems bizarre to me, looking at it from a Canadian lens.
Yeah, but they tried to change Adjustment of Status too.<p><a href="https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/us-citizenship-and-immigration-services-will-grant-adjustment-of-status-only-in-extraordinary" rel="nofollow">https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/us-citizenship-...</a><p>I don't think the practice of the change is significant. Reddit has numerous stories of people who are still receiving it, so whatever that release says, things haven't changed. People seem to be receiving AoS based Green Cards the same way I did under the Biden Administration. It does seem to be a bit more uncertain which is always troubling.
I did it 20+ years ago and I had to “land”. They’ve relaxed a lot of immigration rules since then so it might have changed.
Really? My spouse and I lived in Canada on work permits and were not required to leave in order to achieve PR status; nor to achieve citizenship status.
Prior to Covid, my wife had
to exit the country to get photos taken as part of the permanent resident process. We took a trip to Montana for
that purpose.<p>This seems to have changed in the past 3-4 years, but as the GP said, the original process did involve leaving.
OP isn't criticizing the practise of leaving to renew. He's criticizing the this new policy of not letting you back in when you leave.
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Kick out all the foreigners - drawing an arbitrary line at anyone who arrived (or can be linked back to arrivals) after 1492.
> 90% of new jobs since 2020 went to people not born in America. That's a passive-aggressive invasion.<p>Do you have a source for this claim?
I looked it up there are a few articles.<p><a href="https://cis.org/Camarota/New-January-Data-Still-Shows-Most-Job-Growth-Going-Immigrants-88-2020-72-last-year" rel="nofollow">https://cis.org/Camarota/New-January-Data-Still-Shows-Most-J...</a><p><a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/feb/7/immigrants-took-nearly-90-new-jobs-since-2020/" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/feb/7/immigrants-t...</a><p><a href="https://guestworkervisas.com/bls-a7-analysis.html" rel="nofollow">https://guestworkervisas.com/bls-a7-analysis.html</a>
CIS is an anti immigration think tank and Washington times is pretty blatantly conservative outlet. I’d be wary of those sources.
Thank you (and thanks to tzs) - was genuinely curious and wanted to read about it.
The LLM on Google search says that too. It cites this (plus a couple things that cite that):<p><a href="https://cis.org/Camarota/New-January-Data-Still-Shows-Most-Job-Growth-Going-Immigrants-88-2020-72-last-year" rel="nofollow">https://cis.org/Camarota/New-January-Data-Still-Shows-Most-J...</a><p>That cites this:<p><a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm</a><p>They do note that the share of working-age men not in the labor force is near a historic high for this kind of economy.<p>That probably suggests not reading too much into this before figuring out if the reason so many foreign born people have been hired is because so many native born people have dropped out of the labor pool.
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Inhumane maybe, but our government should owe its first allegiance to our citizens wellbeing, not imported workers.
Surely you would admit that this Administration’s approach to immigration has been both chaotic and cruel. The workers who were given status in the United States expected a predictable process, not one that changes weekly based on the unserious personal whims of a bored, ill-informed and vindictive man. In any case, the prioritization of citizens’ wellbeing writ large is demonstrably _not_ a feature of this Administration’s agenda.
How, in any way does this help the wellbeing of a citizen? Why bring up that very strange point, which is completely unconnected to the massive harm here.<p>If anything, these policies harm the citizens of the US in a myriad of ways. There's zero benefit to be had from any of this. Except for the joy tha tthe cruel feel in causing others misery, but that's not citizens, that's just a few sick people.
The government should not be doing inhumane things to people. This should not be a controversial statement.
The first responsibility is to protect the rights of <i>all</i> people in the country. Citizenship is not required for protected rights
And its going <i>so great</i> for our citizens wellbeing. Oodles of programs for the needy smashed to bits. Corruption and self dealing out the wazoo. Protestors shot to death by ICE agents. A legendarily stupid war fucking up international shipping. Illegal tariffs changing daily.
Good. Canadians and Indians in tech only hire their own.<p>Today near Duboce I see a huge Canadian flag flying on the front of a Victorian. Up on Divisidero around the corner, another one. It looks like a damn Canadian colony.<p>If you love your country and your people so much to the point you fly your flag in other countries and only hire people from your own country - why are you not simply back home?<p>Why come to the United States if you hate us and love yourselves? Just stay there and spew your hatred from the place you’re so proud of.
"We're not anti-immigration, we're only anti-illegal immigration!"<p>* indefinitely pauses legal immigration *
Slanted take here, but this is exactly what they are doing with the federal government.<p>They like to complain that "big government inefficient and bad" while actively making it inefficient and bad. They are fulfilling their own prophecies.<p>Similar to immigration I'm sure. If all immigration is illegal then it's all bad!
the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents.<p>not only are they making it hard & unbearable for families of US citizens & PR holders to be together.<p>while at the same time - discouraging talent to come to the US at a crucial time when talent is at a premium due to A.I development.<p>last the backwards energy policy of banning renewable energy.
This was never about talent. It's about companies hiring foreigners on h1b visas at below market wages where their life in the USA is contingent on their job performance forcing them to work harder and longer than their peers to remain in the country. It's a situation that only benefits companies, while harming US citizens who have to compete with the lower wages of foreigners.
I was a hiring manager. H1B candidates got exactly the same wage as native born. There were no differences.
Oh cool, good thing labor isn't fungible and nobody ever outsources.<p>What a brilliant plan. Lets make sure that we restrict the supply of doctors and medical personell, that's sure to improve care!
And yet, they never applied the simple option of ranking the visa applications by salary, and approving in order of demand for the talent.<p>That would be a market based solution that allows everyone to get the talent they need without driving down American wages.<p>But the point isn't about helping Americans, it's about being peedormatively against letting in brown people.
They are doing that now too, however the problem is that h1b is used for roles outside of tech, believe it or not, and if you measure everything by Bay Area tech salaries a bunch of necessary but lower paying jobs will go unfilled
Isn't that a work visa and not an immigrant visa
H-1B / L-1 are non-immigrant visas, immigrant visas are green cards yes. Pausing green card processing in consulates after (on sketchy legal grounds) forcing folks to not do adjustment of status for getting an immigrant visa inside the country is, indeed, how the admin is trying to get around doing their job the way the INA intends them to.
H-1B is dual intent, isn't it?
If you mean the memo earlier this year, it was about tourist visas and similar doing aos in country when they are not dual intent visas, which makes it iffy.<p>They explicitly said that for h1b and l1 aos wouldn’t be affected as they are dual intent visas.
Recently Microsoft laid off several thousand domestic employees while simultaneously hiring a couple thousand employer-sponsored-Visa workers.
"Superpower Suicide" in the words of historian Timothy Snyder.<p>Also encompasses the self-destruction of military power, alliances, and beneficial trade.
I used to think things like this as an American. But let's simplify. What if they're just fucking idiots and they realized they could rally a bunch of other fucking idiots to the polls?<p>So if you were essentially having a spasm about how no one understands how perfect the world was when you had all the advantages, I mean, we don't need a fancy theory at that point. It's literally old people spewing up acid about why their kids don't come to Thanksgiving, only we managed to create such a presence in the world media, it's a damned disaster.
These visa policies have already encouraged large tech companies etc to expand their Indian offices. It erodes the US tax base and means talent stay in their home country, which means more innovation happens outside the US. More start-ups are been founded in these countries because more talent is now there.<p>Trump first term was make Mexico and Vietnam Great Again as companies moved their manufacturing there.
This term its make India Great Again as companies retain and train their tech talent there.
> <i>the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents.</i><p>Trump <i>is</i> an Israeli asset:<p><a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/adelson-trump-four-more-years" rel="nofollow">https://www.commondreams.org/news/adelson-trump-four-more-ye...</a>
> the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents<p>The U.S. had a draconian restrictive immigration policy from 1921-1965. That worked fine. How can you say with a straight face that someone must be a “foreign agent” to think doing the same thing again will have the same result? Surely the burden is on you to prove the opposite, right?
So you admit it’s draconian but nonetheless support it? What a strangely honest take from a modern trump republican.
"Worked fine" is a pretty vague description for the year we had a Great Depression, world war, Jim Crow, Japanese internment to name a few.
And the U.S. has been doing even better since 1965. So really the question goes back to you.<p>Either way, your whataboutism isn’t even relevant since those were congressional changes.<p>This is the executive trying to undermine the law.
Oh god I hope this lie is part of an attempt to get right-wingers on board with a “let’s roll immigration policy back to what we had in 1950!” push.<p>I hope this because it’d be hilarious if they got what they wanted and realized that meant <i>actual</i> open borders with most or all of the Americas.
I wonder if this has to do with the current economy and job market. Anecdotally I have found it very tough to find a new job (software engineering), though my previous employer continues to post job listings for green card applications as part of the required labor market test.
They are not connected - this is a pause on <i>immigrant</i> visas, not work visas.
They certainly aren’t doing this out of any particular love for American workers.
I wonder what it would take for some people to give up assuming this administration is acting in good faith. I totally understand believing it during Trump 1.0 and I know that people might be hesitant to accept it early in Trump 2.0, but haven't we seen enough at this point for everyone to understand how this administration operates?
Are you... genuinely this naive and ignorant to what's happening in USA?
Attempts to find plausibly deniable rationales for this administration's anti-immigrant policies other than "gutter racism" are ridiculous.<p>Occam's razor. When somebody shows you who they are, believe them. Nativism is possibly the only stable and coherent political ideology this admin holds. Everything else is negotiable, but not this one.
didn't big tech co's layoff thousands of people here and then filed for thousands more h1b ?
I'd say it's on the Trump administration being full of racists and white nationalists and wanting to deport immigrants.<p>Why do you wonder if it's economic instead of the Trump administration's announced policies of stopping immigration, including unconstitutionally removing birthright citizenship?
Birthright citizenship is so weird, because when I think of my son’s birthright, I imagine things he’s entitled to because he’s my son. He’ll inherit from my estate, he’ll enjoy my love and encouragement and support, etc. The location of the hospital where he was born doesn’t really have anything to do with it, but now I have an entirely new fear about foreign countries claiming my child if my wife happens to give birth early while on a vacation. Like, I want to go to Israel, but don’t they have compulsory military service? I wouldn’t want the baby to accidentally become an Israeli citizen and forced to serve for some foreign army. Same with China. I’d love to see the country, but they’ve had some weird and draconian laws like the one child policy. For all I know they take some children to be raised by the state. Whatever their laws are… I don’t think they should apply to my children.
This is rather weird framing since usually an additional citizenship (especially one in a country like the US) is considered a valuable thing to have for your child. Usually people claiming birthright citizenship are weird are doing it because they also see it as valuable. It’s also woven into the traditions of New World countries.<p>Regarding your concerns, I don’t see why it is unreasonable to simply renounce citizenship later or just simply double check your travel itinerary during the late stages of a pregnancy. This seems like at best an unfounded concern.
I agree that you can "just renounce" although notice that this won't necessarily work (it will for the US assuming you follow the procedure properly)<p>However being a dual citizen isn't necessarily all upside. Citizenship comes with requirements, particularly in some countries military service is mandatory and so if you're a citizen - even though you are a permanent resident of somewhere else, you must either go do your service or maybe pay a fine depending on the country.<p>You also get treated differently if things go wrong. <i>Foreigners</i> are entitled in most cases to diplomatic assistance from the representatives of their country. Your country can't necessarily do much for you, but typically you will get that phone call home to let loved ones know what happened, they can find a lawyer who speaks your language (but you'll need to find a way to pay them), if there's some paperwork snafu they might be able to help (often for a fee). It's at least nice, if you're jailed or in hospital after surprise food poisoning or whatever, to hear somebody who speaks your language.<p>None of this applies to dual citizens. You're "home" from their point of view, so no need to contact your diplomatic representative, maybe you have never been there since the day you were born and can't speak a word of the language but too bad.
You can always relinquish citizenship. No one is forcing your child to be a dual citizen if they are born abroad.
The failure mode is statelessness, and that's a very cruel fate to wish on anybody's baby.
go make your own anarchist nation then<p>you have a kid like billions of other people in the world, nothing special tbh besides it is "your" kid<p>you just want a subscription pass to a country, and i think people like that are useless freeloader people who want none of the stakes and all of the benefits<p>cool you can code and get hired by some company, or maybe you start a company. so what?
Conflating not wanting to compete with foreigners for jobs in your own country with racism is bad faith bullshit. Foreigners of the exact same race are equally unwanted competition.
I think many (if not most) countries in the developed world should reduce immigration, and usa in particular should abolish birthright citizenship.<p>The first because a lower supply of labor is going to create breathing space for an entire working population who will see tremendous job upheaval due to AI automation. A lower aggregate demand on houses, services will also be welcome to take the fuel out of inflation, and maybe we'll regain some of that experience of true affluence, where scarce things (e.g. access to cabin in the woods, a rowhome in a walkable city, ...) are in abundance. There is also the import of an idle, criminal element that has very clearly reduced quality of life and safety in many places.<p>Birthright citizen should be abolished because birth tourism and illegally crossing the border to have anchor babies are a vector for foreigners to participate politically and claim imho undeserved welfare benefits.<p>I think largely these are the stated reasons of the administration too.
Birthright citizenship is a constitutional right in the US same as freedom of speech, religion, the press, and the right to sue the government.<p>The change would require 2/3 of all states to approve a constitutional amendment. It won't ever pass. Most of us are only citizens because someone up the chain was born under this rule.<p>My family came here in the early 1700s and fought in the revolution. It would be a disgrace for me to do anything other than support immigrants.
Our birthrate has been below replacement for several years now. We need immigrants to mitigate that.
Or, crazy idea, we make life livable for the locals and then we incentivize them to have kids of their own? And before you say it, I'm an immigrant from the 3rd world myself. I'm not anti-immigratiom, but the birth rate talking point is a very poor one.<p>Not to mention how unsustainable it is anyways, what happens a few years down the line when the immigrants stop having kids? There isn't an infinite ocean of people you can import on a whim, and definitely not forever.
straight up lying and doomer boomer mentality, sad and gross.<p>very consistent correlations between migrants being net positive economic providers, more law abiding then native citizens, and just straight up regurgitating racist myths<p>mass deportations won’t solve anything economic when it’s the same admin hamstringing prices and rates with tariffs, war, and defacto support of the oligopoly<p>i really wish basement dwellers like you though of something original now and then
The administration has never justified immigration policy on economic terms, only keeping out criminals.<p>If it were really part of a coherent anti-inflation, pro-housing strategy, then, well, a lot of other policies would be different... (Including signing the ROAD act, not starting trade wars, or driving up the price of oil)
Just how many people are being born through birth tourism and end up claiming more in welfare than they pay in taxes?
This one doesn’t mention tourist visas, so I am guessing they will be issued? I don’t get what benefit they see by inconveniencing and potentially harming folks that are already in the country legally to just live their lives. I get that this administration’s goal is to completely shut down all immigration and potentially even remove folks here legally too but there will be a cost to bear for the country because of that. It will be slow to come and so they will be able to blame it on the next administration
Not just immigration, seems like travel in general is becoming difficult too.<p>It's a real shame that just when we have the tech and infrastructure to allow people to travel anywhere in the world within a day, for a single person to be able to explore the entirety of this awesome planet for the first time in human history,<p>that the worst among us have to enforce artificial borders and deny everyone this basic freedom.<p>Travel should be codified as a human right.<p>If someone can support themselves and doesn't harm anybody, what ethical justification does anybody have for denying a person from living where they want?
> to enforce artificial borders and deny everyone this basic freedom.<p>a very postnational view, humanist in a way, lipsius or erasmus would recognize it.<p>that sort of individuated cosmopolitanism only works for educated men and women with means, who have or have the capacity to self-actualize.<p>not for the masses. the nation is still a cradle to protect and nurture the commonwealth, and given that they took hundreds to sometimes thousands of years to form, i don't think borders are artificial in the least.
> that sort of individuated cosmopolitanism only works for educated men and women with means, who have or have the capacity to self-actualize.<p>So because not everyone can afford to travel freely we shouldn't let anyone do that?
There's no reason why we should worship borders, or the state.
This is really frustrating. I'm (native-born US citizen) naviagting the visa process with my future wife. She has no intentions of working (enjoys being NEET) and there's zero risk of her becoming a public charge (our hh gross income is closer to 7 digits than it is to 5 digits), very frustrating that we're getting screwed by this under the justification of labor market competition and public charge risk.
What will be next in Trump's destruction of the American Economy?<p>So far he has driven away allies, put huge tariff on our most loyal allies. Driven away manufacturing by tariff policies. Driven away immigrants and academics. Pushed a last century oil based economy. Shown us how our exquisite weapon tech will fail (this might actually be good in the long run). Along with crippling our cybersecurity and state departments.
Is this in retaliation for a federal judge ruling three days ago that Trump's pause on Diversity Visa processing was unlawful?<p>Or is this in retaliation for a federal judge ruling 6 days ago that Trump's ban on immigration from 75 countries was unlawful?
50% of all American unicorns were started by immigrants. This is sheer stupidity to prevent the best of what the world has to offer when they are knocking at your door.
People think immigrants come to just take. When they can contribute to the economy.
It’s unquestionably bad for the United States, but it will be good for the rest of the world. Time for US dominance to end, and Trump is doing a good job of that.
And now they can be more evenly distributed all over the world. I'd call it a net win even if administration did not think it this way.
> closed for training<p>So like the DMV then?
Same ruling class that goes on a bunch of tangents about birth rates stops immigrant visa processing for US citizens who married abroad.
The US seems hellbent on destroying its own economy, immigrants have always played a key part in it. Looking forward to Trump yelling about how the radical left has somehow undermined the US economy in a few months.
Most damage will be realized after he's dead
And in the interim he's positioning his family and cronies to benefit from any rebuilding. Just as he literally sat in the White House and said, verbatim, "My children insider trade all the time".
Everything is someone else's fault. The buck never stops with him.
I’d guess Miller is the main
driver of this given what we know about that loser (and freak).
I often think about how far the Republican party has fallen from Truman with his "The Buck Stops Here" plaque on his desk to Trump's "I don't take any responsibility at all" response to poor Covid testing in 2020.
Truman was a Democrat.
Plus he outright stole government money, not even the pretense of some kind of pass-through contracting entity or something, just brazenly stole cash. And later went on a PR tour lying about being destitute to get Congress to give him a big pension (presidents didn’t get one before that; and he was doing quite alright financially without it).<p>Whatever the party affiliation, he was an actual thief and scam-artist at the public’s expense, so wouldn’t be a <i>great</i> example of some high water mark for public service.
Meanwhile, just this week, he's taking credit for Biden's legislative efforts on cost reductions for pharmaceuticals that <i>every single Republican</i> voted against, and Trump campaigned against.
Looking forward? He never stopped. It's been 10+ years of narcissistic scapegoating, even for times when he was President, even while Republicans controlled congress, and even over trade-deals, policies, and laws that he <i>took-credit for and bragged about</i>. (e.g. USMCA in 2020.)<p>> Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! <i>The agents of Goldstein had been at work!</i><p>-- <i>1984</i>
The parallels between Emmanuel Goldstein and Trump Derangement Syndrome are impossible to ignore for anyone who's actually read 1984.<p>To borrow from Baum (The Wizard of Oz): today there's not only a curtain with men behind it, but a man in front of the curtain that everyone is pointing to (a la Goldstein). And if he stops being useful they'll replace him. This has happened several times already while the men behind the curtain and long standing policies he people hate remain unchanged.
Well, others can bent in other direction and boost their economy by taking in all immigrants that were US bound.
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As noted clearly in the article, this is a temporary pause while personnel are brought up to speed on the protocols. The real question is how just or unjust the refusals will be once it is unpaused. It's bad enough that the process is excruciatingly slow.<p>Users keep downvoting my comment even though it is the only literal interpretation supported by the evidence, without any evidence to the contrary. I would rethink only if it lasts over three months.<p>Note also that courts would easily overrule Trump if the pause became unreasonable.
You're obviously wrong, it obviously doesn't make sense to close down instead is implementing the training for the new protocols in parallel. And the current disruption is just as real of a question as the future refusals.
And obviously courts couldn't do it easily.<p>By the way, you also haven't provided any evidence for your opinion, why would you burden type replies with it?
Or as the saying goes: nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution.
Also, lol @ "the courts will fix it!" Fat fucking chance. I'm looking into my crystal ball: I see a 6-3 supreme court ruling supporting the administration's executive order to liquidate congressional power and fold it into the executive branch (as the founding fathers intended...)
Consular staff are trained on this as-is. It is hard to imagine a re-training on process that could take any more than two days.<p>And yet we have an entirely open-ended "We have nooooo idea how long this will take!"<p>Garbage. This is the same administration that paused all immigration from Africa except for "Caucasian South Africans" who were classified as refugees by default, regardless of their motivation on immigration.<p>This is just Stephen Miller doing exactly what he said he intended to do, and exactly what Project 2025 said the government should do (meanwhile, Trump, "What's that? Never heard of it").
> "We have nooooo idea how long this will take!"<p>It will take about two weeks. Is that right, two weeks? We'll have it done in about two weeks I'm told by some, very intelligent people.
It's a temporary, presumably short, pause to train the consular staff on the economic viability (or liability) of immigrant visa applicants. Why is it unreasonable?
Because you don't need to pause applications to train staff? Schedule a training meeting for an hour on Wednesday. Reschedule the appointments you would have had then. No pause in application.<p>They aren't really pausing for training. The training is an excuse for the pause. The pause is to cause pain and difficulty and try to get people not to immigrate. Because they don't like immigrants.
Yes, we should assume good faith, the Trump administration has a clear track record of being reasonable and sticking to their word.
Because if that were the case they should have just kept the existing staff that already had the requisite knowledge instead of letting DOGE fire 400 people from DHS who did this kind of thing. You have no backing for your presumption either. The Iran war was supposed to be short. The Trump admin is full of pathological liars. Stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.
What, were they untrained before? Is there a reason this training would take more than (at most) 16 hours?<p>It's a bullshit excuse that's barely more palatable than the truth, brought to you by the same people who paused immigration for almost all of Africa except for "Caucasian South Africans".