[bastard_op]

Cognizant, Tata, Infosys, the list goes on, the all have been gaming the system for 30 years now to funnel people to the US like Mexican Coyoties. They're not in the game to hire US people, it's all about funneling as many Southeast Asians as possible here.

Talking to many friends over years having been through it to come here, I view it a bit like old (like 18th century old) indentured servitude of Europeans trying to get to the US however possible that they'd sell themselves into contractual slavery as "indentured servitude". It was later stopped, but for a time it was a good deal for everyone involved, wink wink. The slaver/outsourcer got cheap labor showing up to sign away, now a captive workforce, all to get shipped off to the promised land with the hope the poor bastard can pay off the debt working for nothing near what the slaver/outsourcer gets, all while waiting on an immigration list that may never happen.

It's all better than anything they'll get in their home land, so they'll bet big and do anything just to get to the US to drop an anchor kid to force naturalization. Same(ish) game from 200-some years ago, just with a modern progressive spin and abuse of terrible government regimes.

The other scam is they run them through Canada for quicker immigration than US, and then just move to the US as Canadian citizens faster than waiting on a direct list to the US. Anything for that Murican dream and soaking up Murican dollars.

Now with this despotic regime for 2025, we'll see how immigration works out, but all the slavers pay big lobbies, so they'll keep on keeping on for sure.

[wqaatwt]

> it was a good deal for everyone involved

It wasn’t, though. There were no immigration limits and those immigrants could come to the Americas freely. They just couldn’t afford the trip due to the extreme poverty in England.

In the 1740s one way trip to America cost around £8. An entirely unskilled laborer could hope to make at least £10-15 per year in England and about double that in Massachusetts.

The standard contract for indentured servitude was 4-6 years. That is an extremely bad and exploitative deal. About 40% APR especially considering that the maximum legally allowed interest rate on loans was 5% (which might have been a part of the problem; if 20% loans were legal maybe someone would have offered them to immigrants).

However unfortunately with no disposable income and no credit facilities you didn’t really have a choice so in that sense working for food and board for 5 years and possibly getting some land afterwards (though it became somewhat uncommon by the 1700s unless you wanted to move to the frontier) might not have been such a bad deal.

[e40]

You left of the most important part of the quote: wink wink. Your entire comment is just based on the opposite meaning of the gp.

[Saline9515]

It's not limited to the US. Here in Latvia, which is one of the poorest EU country, we have seen an influx of Indian citizens willing to emigrate. Many will work for little more than 1 or 2€ per hour, and come here by bribing emigration officiers or paying fees to local shady schools that act as visa mills.

[arresin]

I saw the same thing in Poland as well.

[monsieurgaufre]

Canada as well.

[margorczynski]

> US to drop an anchor kid to force naturalization

I've always wondered why the US didn't change this law (to right of blood)? The current approach was created when the US was just a colony and needed a quick injection of people. Now it doesn't make much sense and creates a plethora of problems as I understand.

[mschuster91]

> I've always wondered why the US didn't change this law (to right of blood)?

Because that is enshrined in the Constitution [1] and amendments are very very rare to happen [2] even in a time when politicians were actually interested in running the country vs just "owning" the opposing side.

And there's many things that more desperately need constitutional reform than getting rid of "anchor babies" - FPTP, Electoral College, executive orders, or actually enforce the separation between state and religion to name a few.

[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt14-S1-1-1...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_Cons...

[crusty]

Add campaign finance.

[cafard]

The 14th Amendment put birthright citizenship into the Constitution. The concern was not at all with immigration, but with preserving the legal status of the Black population.

[logicchains]

It's in the constitution so it's quite difficult to change, requires more than just a simple majority.

[dartharva]

South Asians, not Southeast Asians. Southeast Asia is Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines etc.

[jkaplowitz]

> drop an anchor kid to force naturalization

This doesn’t work the way many assume. Yes, it’s true, the kid ends up a citizen by birth. But the kid can’t sponsor the parent for permanent residence until the kid is 21 years old, there are financial requirements the kid has to meet as a sponsor, processing the application still takes at least at least a year or two after that, citizenship takes additional years (usually 5 or more), and there are many reasons why either permanent residence or citizenship can be denied.

Everything in the previous sentence assumes the laws on this topic aren’t tightened further in the next couple of decades, which they very well might be.

Maybe the parent simply has a goal to ensure that their kid has the opportunities that come with US citizenship. That part does work. And sure, I say fair enough, especially in the context we’re discussing where the parent is coming and working and paying taxes. But having a kid in the US is in no way a quick, easy, or guaranteed path to naturalization for the parent.

[bastard_op]

Maybe not guaranteed, but still certainly creates a certain problem of deporting the parents when they can't the child, not to mention general sympathy of splitting families and such, and no one wants to be on the news for that.

[jkaplowitz]

> Maybe not guaranteed, but still certainly creates a certain problem of deporting the parents when they can't the child, not to mention general sympathy of splitting families and such, and no one wants to be on the news for that.

Although they can't deport the child, most parents would still bring the child with them if they're being deported in the interest of being able to continue to act as the child's parents, unless the government makes no effort to enable that kind of family unity to be possible during the deportation process, or unless there's a trusted close relative in the US who can give the child a sufficiently better life apart from their parents than whatever mess the parents might be returning to in their country of origin to outweigh the family separation.

I'd love to see stats if you have them regarding cases where a deportation would leave a US citizen kid with no parents who continue to reside in the US and where the government offers to let the parents choose to bring their US citizen kids with them during the deportation at government expense. (Parents in this situation often couldn't afford to reimburse the government for such costs.) Family law generally allows parents to bring their kids with them (below age 18) regardless of the kids' citizenship, at least if no parent is arguing in court for a different outcome.

My expectation is that most parents given that option would choose to keep their kids with them, and that any resulting family separation which wouldn't already exist without a US citizen kid is simply because the government isn't prioritizing family unity in this context.

[gorbachev]

The frustrating thing about all of this is that Cognizant didn't really get in trouble for blatantly abusing the H1B program, but for discriminating against non-Indians.

If they'd just keep their non-Indian workers happy, they could've, in all likelihood, continued abusing the H1B program forever.

[bastard_op]

They can't even keep the Indian workers happy. I've seen them wince when a hand was raised like they were to be slapped again and berated in their own language around others. This doesn't even get into their whole caste discrimination system either.