[miscaccount]

many are choosing not to come. The US student visa has been on decline especially from india and china.

What about people who are already here for decades ?

Some don't understand the complexity of the system and think their case will be different

[22SAS]

>What about people who are already here for decades ?

They need to understand that immigration is a privilege and not a right. If it were a right, then could have successfully sued the US government in a court of law and gotten their green cards ages ago. They forget that and start crying when faced with long wait times. The US didn't invite them , they made the decision to come here.

[matthewdgreen]

I am a US citizen and I don't want to live in a country that has a "guest worker force" with reduced rights and no path towards citizenship. I don't want this because I think it's ugly (and societies that engage in too much of this are always ugly), but I also think that it's bad for citizens as well as the people treated this way. A healthy society should not have its employers maintaining a labor force full of employees who can be shipped back overseas whenever the company feels like it: this is a recipe for labor abuse, and such abuse can harm citizens as well as non-citizens. So TL;DR if you're over here working, I want you to have some rights and a path towards citizenship. I don't want a bunch of people slaving away at 2am and being told this is a privilege.

ETA: I am not saying the H1B program is that, just responding to the sentiments up above.

[miscaccount]

I agree with you that immigration is a privilege not a right.

However it's not good for a nation to discriminate people from certain countries worse than they treat people from rest of the world.

No system is perfect, and we go through iterations of refining the laws/solutions.

What most people are calling out is this discrimination in a peaceful manner and asking for a change.

Without people asking for change, nothing would have changed in history. The entire labor rights and freedom from slavery were as a result of people asking for a change and to be treated equally on the same set of standards.

American culture(as i understand) is based on concept that anyone can raise up and become successful based on ones own merit. The current legal immigration system for Indians fails to provide it.

And people are currently pointing out the flaw in the system.

[miscaccount]

> The US didn't invite them

i have to disagree with you on this.

USA did invite them here and provided a dual intent visa(H1b).

Every H1b visa holder did go to embassy and got interviewed by US Visa officer.

so USA very well knew the people who were invited to work in USA can become a US citizen eventually.