[confuseddesi]

These are all non-immigrant visa classes. The understanding is that you are temporarily immigrating to the United States. Why should it be surprising then that it is hard to become a permanent resident/immigrant if you explicitly came on a non-immigrant visa?

[nextaccountic]

All I hear is that there's a subset of people that don't want immigrants at all. And for some godforsaken reason they got hold of the executive, legislative and supreme court

[Jblx2]

>a subset of people that don't want immigrants at all.

Does anyone have data on what this percentage is? Seems like it could be 55%:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/647123/sharply-americans-curb-i...

[tclancy]

“Do you want Johny Stinking Foreigner coming to this country, stealing your job while collecting welfare and raping your daughters or would you like how America used to be when there were no immigrants?”

The problem at this point (and not just the US, throughout the west), I don’t think a pollster even needs to slant their question. So many people have been taught that lens over 100+ years of politics.

It’s why I am happy to be Irish American: we never forget a slight, so I am a living vessel for the stories of every time one of my great-grandparents was treated poorly for being a dirty, non-white papist piece of jetsam.

[debo_]

The chain goes ever on. My Italian-Canadian aunts and uncles never forgot the Irish-Canadians who threw rocks at them on the way to school and called them wops.

[tclancy]

For sure. I grew up in Southern New England, so Irish v Italian was a “steel sharpens steel” sort of thing.

[leptons]

I'd be willing to bet at least 10% of those 55% are married to or in relationships with immigrants and are going to say "Not like that!" when their loved ones are forced to leave the country. FAFO is coming for them.

[kdheiwns]

And then the overwhelming remainder of those 55% very likely love talking about their Italian/Irish/Polish/Cuban/whatever heritage and see no sense of contradiction.

[lovich]

We’re going for round 3 of jingoist isolationist Americans not understanding how the world or their own culture and government works.

Wonder if we’ll get a third world war that we stay out of until halfway through and then pile on at the end.

[abalashov]

That's the only conclusion I can see.

[confuseddesi]

That’s a strawman. There’s wide gulfs between “I want very permissive immigration à la Canada” to “I want the US immigration system as it was under previous administrations” to “I want no immigrants”. For example, I personally want the standards for H1-Bs to be a lot higher, but would willingly grant substantially more immigrant visas to top academics and workers under EB1, EB2 and EB3 visas.

[feelingsonice]

Because coming to the United States on a non-immigrant visa is pretty much the only way that a person can hope to become a US citizen (or green card holder) eventually.

[lovich]

I don’t see a carve out for spousal or family reunification applications.

Those weren’t services for the benefit of the immigrant. Those were a service to the US citizen who sponsored them and had to sign up to be on the hook to take care of their welfare.

The government was very clear to my spouse that she could divorce me the second her application was granted and I was still on the hook for any welfare she may end up needing.

This is just being anti immigrant. The same way they talk about illegal aliens and then you find out they really mean legal asylum seekers because they don’t like the process.

Or when they use the phrase Heritage Americans to discount recent immigrants.

Or when they just straight up say we have too much legal immigration.

The only surprising thing about this change in policy to me is that they are still keeping a veneer of not being racist on it, instead of just being as open as they have in other cases.

[saberience]

This seems like one of the most obtuse or bad faith comments I’ve ever seen.

Practically every country has pathways to permanent residence or citizenship via non immigrant visas, including the US.

Why? Because it makes practical sense. You can be living in the US on a H1 visa for 6 years, and at this point you could have a wife, kids etc, so it makes sense to have a pathway to residency where you don’t have to leave the country at that point.

[05]

H1B and O1 are dual intent..

[skeeter2020]

because the government realize more than 75 years ago that conditions change and "adjustment of status" can be in everyone's best interest. People get married, students graduate and get jobs or start companies, and so on. It was never about rubber-stamping greencards; they're still tough to get. It was about making it more efficient and keeping strong players in the US. If you send 100 students back to their home country after they graduate, more than 50 of them won't come back.

[abalashov]

There isn't really such a thing as an immigrant visa. These non-immigrant visas are the only legal route to come here, by and large, excluding a few obvious exceptions like marriage to an American.

Also, it's quite hard to become a permanent resident/immigrant even without the obstacle of this being categorically prohibited. My family, for instance, overcame some very low odds of success to make this happen (highly educated, both PhDs, for what it's worth).

I have learned that most Americans, probably through no fault of their own, have absolutely no understanding of how their own immigration system works. The options for legal immigration were _extremely_ limited and byzantine, and have been for decades, long before Trump.

[confuseddesi]

This is what is broken. The current system is archaic and circuitous. It also performs a legal fiction around non-immigrant visas functionally being a path to permanent immigration.

We should increase the number of immigrant visas and make it straightforward what the process is to get a green card like what one would see in other countries like Canada and Australia.

Meanwhile, non immigrant visas should remain non immigrant and very restricted criteria for changing status (eg. marriage) without reapplying abroad.

[throw-the-towel]

That's interesting. European countries do have immigrant visas, and I think Canada does too. (As in, a visa that's issued for the sole purpose of letting you immigrate.)

[bmelton]

If it seems too interesting it's because it isn't true. There are five functional categories of immigrant visa in America, each with several subcategories: Immediate Relatives (IR), Family Preference (F), Employment Based (EB), Special (S), and Diversity (D). The last one is basically done by lottery.

[bigmadshoe]

How many people become permanent residents of the US through these visas, as opposed to the others?

[chimeracoder]

> How many people become permanent residents of the US through these visas, as opposed to the others?

The majority of permanent residents gain their green card through a status adjustment (ie, from a nonimmigrant visa).

Status adjustments are the norm, not some fringe edge case.

[khuey]

In the first quarter of FY 2025 54% of all new permanent residents adjusted, including 70% of those who got green cards through employment (and 84% of the first preference employment category) and 69% of those who got green cards through marriage to US citizen spouses.

The only large category of immigrants that does not come primarily through adjustment are the "family preference" categories for more distant relative such as adult sons and daughters and siblings.

https://ohss.dhs.gov/system/files/2025-07/2025_0725_ohss_leg...

[bmelton]

That I wouldn't know. I only know the above from the one employee I helped (successfully) immigrate to America

So, at least one

[wang_li]

The US has three classes of immigrant visa. See the bottom of the state department visa resources page.

https://www.state.gov/visas/

[lanakei]

An immigrant visa is basically the same thing as a green card, i.e. permanent legal residency. Once you have an immigrant visa, you can enter the US and receive your green card in the mail a few weeks later with no additional work. After five years, you can apply for citizenship. You have unlimited rights to work and live in the US.

However, ignoring family-sponsored routes, it is extremely difficult to get an immigrant visa in the first place, usually requiring years + $10k+ of fees to work your way up to it. You also need a sponsor to pay the fees (legally, you can't pay it yourself). Therefore, the vast majority of people start on a non-immigrant (temporary, restricted employment) visa and eventually ask their employer to sponsor a green card.

When people say "if you wanted to immigrate, you should just get an immigrant visa", they usually assume any other route is a hack or loophole. But it's actually the most common way to immigrate by far. You can, of course, interview for a job from abroad and ask the employer to directly sponsor an immigrant visa, but they'd have to wait years (best case) until you could actually step foot in their office. Plus they'd be forking over thousands in legal fees for an employee they haven't even seen in person. Nobody would do this, so the commonly accepted way is to bring an employee over as a temporary worker first and then apply for a green card while they're in the country.

By the way, the same checks apply for immigrant visa applications both inside and outside the US. You might think that employers are scamming the government by turning purported temporary immigrants into permanent ones, but the exact same qualifications checks, eligibility requirements, waitlists and quotas apply if you do the process inside vs. outside the US. It's entirely possible, and common, for green card applications to get denied (and the applicant's location doesn't factor in to this).

[abalashov]

I know you believe that, and I know that's what the State Dept calls them, but they're not really how most legal immigrants come here and aren't available to most of the people who apply for greencards today.

As a practical matter, all these immigrant visas pretty much entail a greencard soon thereafter. In other words, to get them is about as easy as getting a greencard in the first place, give or take, more or less.

The discussion here is really about legal workers, students and others on temporary visas who convert to permanent status.

[skeeter2020]

>> excluding a few obvious exceptions like marriage to an American.

this is a good example, because let's say someone is here on a student visa or temp work visa, falls in love and gets married. without the ability to adjust their immigration status they now have to leave the country - probably for years - to apply and hopefully get a greencard. Good luck making that marraige work.

[MagicMoonlight]

There is no immigrant visa by that logic. Unless you count the one that costs a million dollars.

[sjhatfield]

Spousal one? I got it outside the US

[abalashov]

Yeah, that's one notable exception. Doesn't invalidate the generalisation.

[hluska]

I’m pretty sure it did.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Perhaps you're the exception that proves some rule?

[Auracle]

That's a pretty big exception.