[jbarham]

I'm Canadian and a year ago I left the U.S. for Australia (my wife is Australian) primarily because I did not consider it worth it to stay in a lousy job for at least another two years for the possibility of getting a green card. This vote changes nothing about the logic of my decision (in fact it would likely have made my wait longer because I'm not Indian or Chinese).

The primary problem with the U.S. green card system for skilled workers is that you are at the mercy of your employer, and the whole application process restarts if for whatever reason you change employers. This vote does nothing to change that.

Even more ironic, now that I am no longer in the U.S. on a work visa, I have more freedom to start a business targeting U.S. customers.

[jacques_chester]

If I read it correctly, only 140,000 "green cards" are handed out each year. That's less than Australia takes and we have ~15x less population.

[ovi256]

That's also less than what France takes in. But I'm willing to bet there's illegal immigration to the US as well, and it's a sizeable quantity.

[cafard]

There's plenty of illegal immigration here, but the skilled workers among that population are far outnumbered by the laborers.