[th0ma5]

The next administration's think tank's plan to solve this is to eliminate the program altogether. There was also talk in a video I think from Jamelle Bouie of the NYT talking about these groups going further and declaring anyone that subsequently went on to be naturalized while living here under these and other programs to have their citizenship revoked. The idea being that only applying for citizenship under the slow process while you are in your home country will be seen as legal, and this is a part of the Chevron Deference ruling. I'd love to hear anyone weigh in on that from a legal standpoint, or offer anything specifically refuting it, and of course all of this will be immediately challenged, so, no reason to feel like the fight has been lost before it has begun.

Some stuff about wanting to highly restrict these programs:

https://www.rnlawgroup.com/project-2025-and-work-based-immig...

https://www.murthy.com/2024/07/29/how-project-2025-could-imp...

[29athrowaway]

The plan to make raise the minimum salary for H1B so that it cannot be used to save money.

And to slow down the application process, increase fees and force people to rely on premium processing more.

[jltsiren]

Making the process itself harder can be counterproductive.

Every system will be gamed. The ones gaming the system often stand to gain more than those the system is intended for. A visa program for skilled/talented individuals is supposed to select people who could find good opportunities elsewhere. Getting a job in the US is not a big deal for them. On the other hand, an average person who somehow manages to qualify could improve their life greatly by coming to the US. Especially if they are from a developing country.

If you add bureaucratic requirements to the visa process, make it last longer, and make it less predictable, you are effectively telling the skilled and talented people to go elsewhere. Then you get more people trying to game the system and hoping for a lucky win.

[cudgy]

> you are effectively telling the skilled and talented people to go elsewhere. Then you get more people trying to game the system and hoping for a lucky win.

Isn’t this the false argument that tech companies have been making for decades?

“Imagine all the highly talented people that companies will miss out on if we don’t have this program?“ meanwhile, the vast majority of the people being hired are average developers, many of whom are less qualified and talented than the locals. The only major distinction is the salary and now that the programs been so rampant for so long, enough of the H1B path employees are in the system that they control the hiring.

[jltsiren]

Those two are not mutually exclusive. Every country needs programs that bring in foreign talent. And there are always people who try to abuse such programs. The longer a program exist in the same form, the more successful the abusers become.

The answer is supposed to be simple. When a law no longer fulfills its purpose, you change the law. Then the abusers will have a new system to game, and they will be less successful for a while. But that doesn't happen in the US, because the Congress has long been unable or unwilling to do its job.

H-1B works pretty well for the academia. The government trusts that academic recruitment processes are competitive and reasonably meritocratic. But it has much less trust in the industry. That's why H-1B petitions from the industry are subject to the cap and the lottery, while petitions from the academia are not.

[tivert]

> Then the abusers will have a new system to game, and they will be less successful for a while. But that doesn't happen in the US, because the Congress has long been unable or unwilling to do its job.

The simple solution is to remove the employer lock-in, so once an immigrant gets in, they have 6-7 years to job hop. If an employer truly needs foreign talent that it can't get locally, they'd have to have competitive compensation and working conditions. If they don't, they just wasted the sponsorship fees. I don't think there's a way they could effectively game that (especially if you also ban contracts where the immigrant has to repay the sponsor if they job hop).

The fact that the H1B program hasn't been reformed in this way, tells me its real purpose (at least nowadays) is to provide a source of cheaper labor to undercut American workers.

[dartharva]

You know what'd be better? Put up H1B approvals on auction instead of handing them out in a lottery.

[29athrowaway]

The system is calibrated to get 6 years of productivity from people, with a fraction becoming LPR.

6 years = H1B + 1 renewal

[dartharva]

H1Bs from India today face waitlists going over 132 years for a green card. They have zero scope of getting a citizenship in USA in the first place.

[29athrowaway]

India has over 1 billion people, and millions of engineers, that is not surprising at all because even if a small fraction applies for H-1B they would quickly surpass the quota.

And if the quota is met, that is fine. The program exists primarily to satisfy talent demand.

US employers have much to win delaying the green card process to have more leverage on the employee.

[simoncion]

And yet, I've worked with H1-Bs who get their green card who are much, much younger than 132 years. Something doesn't add up here.

Are you perhaps relying on a number that has been inflated by relatively-recent staffing shortages?

[jltsiren]

Getting an employment-based green card normally takes a few years. That has increased by a year or two due to staffing shortages and backlogs caused by covid-era policies. But the real issue for immigrants from India (and to a lesser extent from China, Mexico, and Philippines) is the 7% country cap. Those who qualify for EB-1 can skip the line and get their green cards in a semi-reasonable time. Those in EB-2 and lower priority categories are out of luck.

[dartharva]

132 years is the waitlist now. And it will only increase, Indians will very likely be looking at a 200-year waitlist by the end of this decade.

The successful green card holders you mention are those who came in early (in the 2000s and 2010s) and got through before the situation became so crazy. Or, in some cases, O1-holders.

[simoncion]

I contrast this:

> 132 years is the waitlist now.

with this:

> Getting an employment-based green card normally takes a few years. ... But the real issue for immigrants from India (and to a lesser extent from China, Mexico, and Philippines) is the 7% country cap. Those who qualify for EB-1 can skip the line and get their green cards in a semi-reasonable time. Those in EB-2 and lower priority categories are out of luck.

I'm pretty sure that I've never worked with someone on a work visa who's legitimately an EB-1 [0], so everyone I've seen get permanent citizenship has been either an EB-2 [1] or (more likely) an EB-3 [2].

> The successful green card holders you mention are those who came in early (in the 2000s and 2010s).

It's strange (and borderline manipulative) to call "Getting their green card in 2019" "coming in early".

Anyway. Given that it seems the major cause for the lengthy wait (whether or not it's actually rising to 200 years) is per-country quotas (rather than staffing problems), the wait seems totally reasonable to me. Plus, with many US-based BigCos hiring assloads of Indian nationals situated physically in India, it strikes me that this concern about green cards is less relevant than in decades past.

[0] <https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/permanent...>

[1] <https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/permanent...>

[2] <https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/permanent...>

[nujabe]

Your claims just do not add up with my experience. I know Indians who graduated college in the US in the past 4-5 years that have received their green cards in the past year.

[tivert]

> There was also talk in a video I think from Jamelle Bouie of the NYT talking about these groups going further and declaring anyone that subsequently went on to be naturalized while living here under these and other programs to have their citizenship revoked.

Does he actually have some evidence they're planning on doing that, and have plausible plans to execute it, or is it the typical hyperbolic fear-mongering from Trump's opponents? Retroactively revoking the citizenship of every H1-B who went on to get naturalized (after probably a 10 year process and relying on the law as universally understood at the time), sounds like utter nonsense that probably hasn't been seriously proposed and would go nowhere if it was.

> and this is a part of the Chevron Deference ruling

Do you have any idea what the Chevron Deference ruling was? IIRC, it only says the courts have to make their own interpretation when a regulatory law is ambiguous, rather than always deferring to the interpretation of an executive agency. I don't think it means "all these regs are null and void now, kthxbye."

[soulofmischief]

Here's a fact sheet from the ACLU which covers the USCIS denaturalization unit created by Trump during his last administration. [0]

Biden dismantled the unit, and part of Project 2025 is reimplementing it.

> typical hyperbolic fear-mongering from Trump's opponents

Let me be clear. There is nothing hyperbolic about Project 2025. The Heritage Foundation, a prominent Republican think tank, is spearheading it. Hundreds of high-ranking politicians and corporate executives are on board with it. The entire administration is going to push for it, systematically, and get as far as they can. It behooves you to study Project 2025 [1] and understand just how bad the next 4 years can be.

Obligatory preface, before it derails my message, the Biden/Harris machine is also anti-democratic, but with a particular neoliberal flavor, while Project 2025 is a largely domestic coup, with sweeping support across the GOP, in a time where Republicans have control of the Legislative branch, Judicial branch and soon, Executive branch. And once Trump begins mass-replacing government workers with sympathizers, there will be little any of us can really do about it.

[0] https://immpolicytracking.org/media/documents/ACLU_Fact_Shee...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

[tivert]

> Here's a fact sheet from the ACLU which covers the USCIS denaturalization unit created by Trump during his last administration. [0]

That sounds nothing like "declaring anyone that subsequently went on to be naturalized while living here under these [H1-B] and other programs to have their citizenship revoked." It's more like hyper-strict enforcement of existing law, about making material false statements on a naturalization application.

[th0ma5]

Yes this is exactly it, any remote thing that can disqualify people that is today forgiven, and additionally, where Chevron comes in, that a lot of these norms are rules within departments where such things can be evaluated, but Project 2025 says if it isn't a law or statute then it doesn't matter, and that includes any concept of a person living here but not a full, naturalized citizen.

[tivert]

> Yes this is exactly it, any remote thing that can disqualify people that is today forgiven...

No that's not at all "exactly it." Do you realize you're moving the goalposts?

Looking for flaws in an applications according to existing critera is totally different than somehow retroactively declaring the previous regulations were invalid and screwing everyone who relied on them by revoking their naturalization.

> where Chevron comes in, that a lot of these norms are rules within departments where such things can be evaluated

Chevron says if there's a controversy over those things, a court needs to resolve it without giving total deference to the department. It doesn't say those "norms are rules" must be struck down, it just says a court will decided if they're following the law.

> but Project 2025 says if it isn't a law or statute then it doesn't matter, and that includes any concept of a person living here but not a full, naturalized citizen.

You seem to be saying here that there's no law or statute that allows for any state besides "full, naturalized citizen," and that's just so totally not true that it's bonkers you're claiming it.

[th0ma5]

Well I don't know what to tell ya man. I am too dumb to just invent this. Go dig through Jamelle's videos or ping him when he's on twitch about this. Send me a link if you do.