The leaving part is not the issue, as you try to immigrate into a country you're subject to the rules that country sets. You're always free to not immigrate into that country (this is not about asylum).
The issue here is that, if you just left the country to do everything the country asked you, you are now in limbo.
For how long? No one can tell.
Does this mean you lose your job? Maybe.
And when you decide it's no longer worth it, you might even have issues getting back in to get your stuff...
Retraining your people CAN be done without it being so disruptive, they chose not to.
when you treat immigrants like they were not people with lifes, you are just one step away from treating poor people as they were not people and then too treat all common people as they were not people.
also it has been quite convenient explanation for adopting systems such as Flock and allowing all kinds of para-police actions which seems very similar to what happened in germany circla 1930-1934
> when you treat immigrants like they were not people with lifes, you are just one step away from treating poor people as they were not people and then too treat all common people as they were not people.
"The way that a society treats its prisoners is one of the sharpest reflections of its character." - Nelson Mandela
I did not know this but true.
I would point out that when you are talking about criminals there is still a layer of judgment from society given the crimes. When talking about legal immigrants and refugees there is even less space.
The US is an outliner on prison terms and sizes etc. Under the surface it is hard to tell if the public lead the prisons or if the big prison business shapes public opinion but from the outside it seems crazy.
Different societies are at different places on the prison is for punishment to prison is for rehabilitation spectrum, and their reoffending rates reflect that.
> I would point out that when you are talking about criminals there is still a layer of judgment from society given the crimes.
That's exactly what the citation is about: how a society opts to treat its most vulnerable also shows what that society is truly about. Often times we see USians criticize Nordic countries because they lack cruelty in their prison system. How is that not a demonstration of the cruelty imbued in US culture?
Especially when they arbitrarily change the rules so people who did everything by the book are now “illegals”. Especially when they “lose” paperwork somewhere inside of an enormous overworked and hostile bureaucracy.
oh please, everyone knows that its referring to their immigration status or legality of stay in country.
you surely must realize that any rational person just shrugs off listening to what else you might say when you start with such ridiculous interpretations
That term has been in use for at least the half century I’ve been alive. It’s a common word almost every where in the US, shows up in daily conversations, but it’s been deemed not politically correct. That’s why you maybe never heard it in media or from a politician in the past. This presidency is all about breaking political correctness though and it’s on brand. This is why his devotees love him. Simple things like saying the words we were told we couldn’t say really resonates with some people. There’s unfortunately still a lot of deep seated racism in the US. Will take a thousand more years to really get rid of it. Political correctness is a way to force accelerated the process, it backfires when you push it too hard too fast. You’re trying to change culture faster than humans can be expected to change (pesky long lifespans and all). It doesn’t work well and cause a pressure cooker situation. Trump is the steam venting of years of political correctness and rapid progressive movement.
> Simple things like saying the words we were told we couldn’t say really resonates with some people.
Nobody said you couldn't say them, it was that open bigotry is something everyone associates with being a person of low class. When it's used by the upper classes it's as a divide and conquer tactic to keep the lower classes from focusing on the group that's actually exploiting them.
The normalizing of open bigotry is a kind of 'death of despair' for US culture: it indicates that, en masse, people have given up on elevating their class in society and being better people, and have decided to just wallow in it. Blaming the 'other' isn't anything new, it's the basic lazy tribal default and it's the 'easy' button for a culture that simply gives up.
White Americans are almost exclusively their own most sensitive wordsmiths. If you heard how other people refer to themselves and others, it can be much worse and they think nothing of it. It’s just a silly word that describes the immigrant status and a segment of our demographic. It isn’t bigotry. You’re deciding to be offended more than anyone is trying to offend you. This is political correctness gone too far.
Counter theory: maybe you don’t know enough non-white people or don’t know them well. But I mean, your last line gives the game away. It was a lie in the 90s when Rush Limbaugh was selling it and it’s a lie now. It’s always a straight white theoretically Christian dude peddling it which, again, you guys show your cards right at the table because you have never had to play a non-rigged game.
I know plenty non white people and actually am close enough with their entire family that I know what culture their racisms are aimed towards. Why would i even make that comment if I didn’t.
I also know plenty of illegal immigrants and family. I own a construction company in Texas and have lived here my whole life. They find this sort of American strife comical, it’s not based on their reality. If I were to call them an “illegal” or even other common old school phrase, like “wet back” they laugh and call me the words they have for me. Nobody with real problems cares about this stuff. They generally like Trump even since ICE stuff.
Genuinely though, such a lazy response to act like you caught me in something. People like you trying to weaponize political correctness is precisely what puts guys like Trump in the oval.
Like I grew up with them and their parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, did holidays and really know each others families quite well. More than I had a friend from X in 8th grade. It’s not hard to understand unless you have not experienced it yourself.
I grew up in one of the most diverse cities in the US and was pretty poor (not in some white enclave). On my street I think we had families from 16 different countries, all continents represented often multiple nationalities from each, and we frequently had block parties and gatherings out in the street.
I was asking what the other poster meant by “honey you’re telling on yourself.” It seems like some awkward attempt to channel a southern colloquialism but it doesn’t make sense in context.
Oh lol, sorry - that does make sense. I assumed it was a callout how I’m a racist bigot for simply trying to have a conversation on the topic while white.
This is the mindset of an abuser. “I don’t like how you’re acting so I’m going to pursue unrelated avenues to disenfranchise you.” People who voted for Trump put him into office. Nobody else.
Those voters were simply exercising their option and desire to change from the status quo. That’s what Trump represents. No different than why Obama was voted for. Those people vote how they vote for a reason and feel how they feel for a reason. Racism is/was part of it in both cases. But without a wide chasm of policy direction they dislike, they aren’t motivated enough to change the status quo or pick a wildcard candidate. You have to look deeper and ask, why did people vote for Trump?
I refuse to believe there’s enough racism in America to run a winning campaign on. I’m in Texas, know a lot of Trump supporters, and the number one thing is how they support his ideas but not his process and how they still view that as a better option on the ballet.
People voted for Trump because they are racist and bigoted on such an abstract and distanced level that it doesn’t seem that way, even to themselves. Lee Atwater, who himself pioneered the strategy, framed it best:
“You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nr, nr, nr.' By 1968 you can't say 'nr'—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is—blacks get hurt worse than whites…”
The system has evolved to the point where if people do not verify their political assumptions in relation to a history of racism, they are voting out of ignorance and bigotry that is essentially synonymous to racism. And this isn’t for a lack of trying on everyone else’s part - you can’t say it’s anyone else’s fault but your own when you were warned multiple times, alarms bells ringing like fucking crazy - that this is the history, these are the dog whistles, this is what you’re signing up for.
I get there was, and still is, a status quo that needs upending. But when you look at people’s actual policy beliefs, they align broadly with the aims of the current DSA movement, and yet they vote in droves for the diametric opposite in the form of the GOP. And even in the modern age, it turns out “ban transgender” and “protect free speech” is not valid economic policy. There’s no explanation for it, other than suicidal stupidity and stubbornness manufactured by years of systemic racism.
I’m glad you found an outlet for your fear and hatred. If only there were examples of words that used to be common currency that no longer were that I could show you.
Trump is not about “racism.” He won more racial minorities in 2024 than any republican president in modern history. Trump is about Americanism versus third-worldism. Among immigrants themselves—half of whom voted for Trump in 2024–it’s about whether immigrants should Anglicize and dissolve into the American polity, or whether they should bring their home cultures with them and retain their separate ethnocultural identity.
Fundamentally, it’s a disagreement over what makes countries the way they are. Does a Bangladeshi start thinking and acting like an American the minute they set foot within borders where the 1st, 2nd, etc., amendments apply? Or is culture deeper than the words on paper.
>Trump is not about “racism.” He won more racial minorities
"Of course I'm not racist, I have black friends"
...
I have a family member that is a naturalized citizen. They were in the country illegally for 2 decades before that, and they are the first one to yell "kick those lazy illegals out". So just because someone is the same race/culture as you doesn't mean they aren't racist against that culture.
What's really fucking stupid about this guy is the people he loves to vote for are the ones that would strip his rights and kick him out of the country in a heartbeat for.
Remember when America was a melting pot and not a bunch of redhats goose stepping in line?
It’s weird that you think my point is about the superficial optics of having immigrants in Trump’s coalition, rather than about the motivations of the immigrant voters themselves.
> So just because someone is the same race/culture as you doesn't mean they aren't racist against that culture
You can’t be “racist” against a culture. Racism is wrong because race is superficial—how much sunscreen someone does or does not need is as irrelevant as hair color or eye color. But culture isn’t superficial. Culture has major impacts on the types of societies people create.
Your family member’s viewpoint is totally rational, and frankly, more rational than the opposite. If you come from a country that’s dysfunctional and unsuccessful, why wouldn’t you dislike that place’s culture? It’s like someone who left some failing dinosaur company to go to a high performance startup saying that the culture at the new company is better.
Your article clearly describes that as a concept that as been put forward for debate but hasn’t been generally accepted. And it shouldn’t be accepted. It’s just an attempt to use people’s rightful aversion to prejudice based on skin color to Trojan Horse cultural relativism through the gate. Cultural relativism is not morally required. People’s attitudes, beliefs, customs, habits, and ways of looking at the world substantively impact the societies people create. And we can judge cultures on that basis. In the Star Trek future, people of all ethnicities think and act like Anglo-Americans, not like Bangladeshis.
> In the Star Trek future, people of all ethnicities think and act like Anglo-Americans, not like Bangladeshis.
That's a weird way to cap off an endorsement of cultural racism? A series of fictional stories about the future, by and for Americans, tells a story that Americans would want to hear: QED, monolithic American culture is obviously the future. Let's get this paper submitted for peer review.
That term isn’t an accepted thing, as your own article points out. Your idea is also itself racist by treating race and culture as linked. I guess that in your version of Star Trek the Desi characters would be showing up hours late to dinner. You’d have bridge scenes where face saving communications and excessive deference to seniority impedes information flow and gets everyone killed. I think the actual Star Trek paints a much more optimistic and hopeful vision of a post-racial society where everyone in the Federation adopts Anglo-American culture and values.
> That term isn’t an accepted thing, as your own article points out.
Gravity and the spherical shape of the earth also aren't 'accepted things,' this 'I don't like it so it's not real' argument isn't really a coherent counterpoint.
Articles about gravity don’t say “gravity should be considered a fundamental force,” as in the article you pointed to above. “Racism” as the word is generally accepted refers to skin color. It has nothing to do with culture. You’re playing word games to advance the position that culture should be treated the way society treats immutable characteristics, when those two things are completely different.
Your stance is that cultures are cardinally sortable things, with specific ones being more 'valuable' or 'better,' that you are allowed to be bigoted toward 'degenerate' ones, and imo you're taking it as a sort of consolation prize since you're not allowed to discriminate based on race.
Just be bigoted on race, man. The richest man in the world does it, nothing stopping you from doing it too. You don't have to hide it in this era.
Alternatively you can think harder and understand that the world is a complicated place, cultures can't be assigned numerical values and sorted, there's more variety within cultures than between them and have all sorts of circumstances and history that explain their situations that go beyond 'this culture is 3.75 eugenic units better than that one.'
Again, culture isn’t an immutable characteristic, so the moral framework you’re using doesn’t apply. You should treat culture the same way Silicon Valley startups do. You emulate the successful ones and learn lessons from the unsuccessful ones.
European culture is itself a product of that process. When the Germanic tribes conquered Rome, they didn’t impose their own culture on the Romans. Instead they adopted Romans’ self-evidently more successful culture, law, and institutions.
> You emulate the successful ones and learn lessons from the unsuccessful ones.
Please elaborate on what defines 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' cultures, and while you're at it let me know what the heck 'European culture' is? Or 'Roman culture' for that matter. I'm honestly lost.
> Please elaborate on what defines 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' cultures
Building steam engines, rockets, the Internet, etc.
> and while you're at it let me know what the heck 'European culture' is?
European culture is one of the most well studied subjects in the world. It’s the culture that resulted from Roman colonization, followed by German conquest of Rome and the spread of Roman customs, language, law throughout Europe alongside Christianity. It’s why Slovenia and Spain both have a legal tradition built on Roman civil law. It’s why British law is full of Latin terms.
Ok so the yardstick for sorting cultures is purely inventions. Got it.
Also: European culture is a discrete thing you can either be in or out of, and it's a combination of legal system and language. In addition, the Romans were a homogenous group of people with the same language and customs, and they were Christian.
It’s not just inventions, but the social structures and civic institutions that enable a society to build something like the Apollo program.
Culture doesn’t need to be “discrete” or “homogenous” in order to exist. “Arab culture” also exists, despite regional variations. Law and language are critical aspects of society that indicate a shared culture despite local variations. Yes, during the relevant period, Romans were Christian. It became the majority religion in the roman empire by 400 AD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_Christia...
European culture is one of the most well studied things in the world. You should read about it.
> It’s not just inventions, but the social structures and civic institutions that enable a society to build something like the Apollo program.
But you’re saying that it’s the inventions that make certain cultures superior, the other stuff is just there to enable the inventions. So for example China is building far more advanced infrastructure and high tech equipment right now, thus their culture is superior to European culture.
What’s your proposal to help European culture the level of advancement that Chinese culture has achieved ?
> “Racism” as the word is generally accepted refers to skin color. It has nothing to do with culture.
No idea how you came to that conclusion. There are many counterexamples to this claim.
It’s not racism when, for example, some Koreans discriminate against each other on the basis of skin tone. It was racism when some Hutu did pogroms against the Tutsi.
I agree with mulling. Give up these language-games and just admit that you can’t be a culture realist without also indulging in a little race science.
Those examples are also about immutable characteristics. E.g. There is no reason to prefer lighter skin to darker skin other than irrational prejudice. It’s completely superficial and irrelevant. That superficiality and irrelevance is the very thing that makes it morally wrong.
Culture, by contrast, is about how parents raise their kids. And that’s a choice. Treating culture as coextensive with race is just racism for leftists: https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/926/d5f/a334baf0d43cd480b3ea.... It’s horseshoe theory. And the implications of that theory are depressing. Your theory would mean that places like Bangladesh can’t fix themselves, because, according to you, their culture is a manifestation of their race and everyone has to accept it. That’s literally the same thing the Groypers say.
He did settle with the DOJ over claims of housing discrimination while president of the company. Whether he approved of the policies or knew about them, I have no idea.
You treat them like they are people without personal agency.
Temporary worker programs are a deal offered on open terms: people can come to work, but they have to leave afterward. The laws are plastered with the word “temporary.” People take advantage of the deal knowing the terms and there is nothing wrong holding people to the deal.
This is not that, these are people seeking to immigrate to the United States legally getting jerked around instead of a process that approves or denies them on a set timeline.
You just described most if not all government functions in the US. Applied for a permit? Better know the right person to call if you ever want it to get approved
> The issue here is that, if you just left the country to do everything the country asked you, you are now in limbo.
I feel like I’ve said it a few times but - Yes, exactly. The country wants you to leave and then get’s to decide if you can come back. That’s how it’s designed. On purpose.
You’re approaching it from a perspective where you’re being asked to leave and your reentry is a right. It’s not. They never said, if you leave you can come back. They said, leave and we’ll see. The risk of being blocked out is inherent by anyone residing in a country that has this similar process; there are many.
> I feel like I’ve said it a few times but - Yes, exactly. The country wants you to leave and then get’s to decide if you can come back. That’s how it’s designed. On purpose.
That is how it's designed, and that's fine.
But make a decision... They're pausing the decision making for an indefinite amount of time. That's not how it was designed, but it sure does look like that's on purpose.
It's not a mobster way, more like a weasel way. The reason it is a weasel's move is because decisions at the consulate are made by consular officers who are career public workers and won't deny visas for arbitrary reasons. That is bad for the political leadership because they just don't want to issue visas. So they need to invent evasive moves to throttle the pipeline by adding trainings, background checks, and other bogus bureaucratic hurdles.
> The reason it is a weasel's move is because decisions at the consulate are made by consular officers who are career public workers and won't deny visas for arbitrary reasons.
No? Visa can be denied for arbitrary reasons based on what executive branch of US. there have been multiple cases where it has been clear that visas are a privilige not a right. Visa needs a reason to be granted, by default it is denied.
Isn’t that the whole definition of “executive branch”? They are given (by we the people) the power to choose how to execute the laws. And we elect them.
The alternatives I can think of are for laws to be executed at the whim of an algorithm, a king, a more local executive like the governors of each state, or a more distant foreign executive like the UN
No, the executive branch has a responsibility to execute the law. It's not a privilege. We elected them to perform a duty on our behalf. Do you understand the difference?
Article 2, Section 3 of the US Constitution: "[The President] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed"
The judiciary doesn't have discretion as in it has been "granted" discretion. It de facto has a high degree of discretion because the act of judging a case necessarily entails a judgment of the laws.
Judicial review is a functional necessity. It's a necessary downstream consequence of simply having a Constitution as the supreme law.
The analog to the executive is that the executive naturally has finite resources to enforce law, and so as a matter of functional necessity it has some degree of discretion. That is not discretion to say "I disagree with this law and so am choosing not to enforce it," but the discretion to say "there are other priorities that are more important."
I was thinking about it more like if cops didn't have discretion, they would have to arrest for every minor offense and let the courts sort it out. After more reading it seems there are differing interpretations of the "Take Care" clause. Thank you for taking the time to explain.
> Beyond these constraints, the Clause raises several vexing questions. For instance, must the President enforce those laws she believes are unconstitutional? Some scholars argue that Presidents must enforce all congressional laws, without regard to his or her own constitutional opinions. Yet modern Presidents occasionally exercise a power to ignore such enactments on the grounds they are not true “laws” subject to the faithful execution duty. In so doing, they somewhat mimic the arguments and practice of President Thomas Jefferson, who refused to enforce the Sedition Act on the grounds that it was unconstitutional.
The executive only has discretion if the law says they do. If the law says they must or shall do something, they must do that thing. If it says they MAY do something or otherwise explicitly gives them discretion in making a decision, then yeah, they have that discretion
But it's not a given that they can just decide what laws they will or will not enforce or follow
Expanded rights for some at the direct expense of others. That's not the same as simply expanding rights, unless you count other people being 'offended' in the same category as someone being physically assaulted or killed.
> That's not the same as simply expanding rights, unless you count other people being 'offended' in the same category as someone being physically assaulted or killed.
Yes, they are the same category.
In US$10,000 property damage, nobody is physically harmed.
Here’s another example, expanded rights:
Anyone holding a 401k, IRA, or pension can purchase single family homes and apartments inside the account, and pay zero capital gains tax and zero rental income tax.
We expanded rights!
Take a guess what this does to the homeless population.
> Anyone holding a 401k, IRA, or pension can purchase single family homes and apartments inside the account, and pay zero capital gains tax and zero rental income tax.
I am not sure on pensions, but this is not true for a 401k. Only an IRA can be used without paying capital gains taxes for a home purchase. Including first time home buyers. Speaking from experience, I learned the hard way the benefit you are describing applies only to an IRA.
To be clear, you are saying that theft of <10k is not a crime..? If you steal an iPad in an airport, you are charged with theft. I don't know where you got that idea. People are charged with theft for much less than 10k daily.
Honoring it, no doubt, by restricting firearms to duly registered militia personnel as written in the plain text for all to see? What about the 14th Amendment section 3, also written plainly?
No, you are confusing discretion with whims of the executive branch. Consular officers have discretion to adjudicate the applications and they can deny them for reasons prescribed in the INA. Those decisions are not reviewable. They are still supposed to follow their training, the FAM, and the INA in making the decisions. If Rubio sends an email to the consulates that says, "deny all visas", that would be illegal as a matter of policy and will be overturned by the courts under the APA. Note that 212(f) (aka Muslim ban from Trump v. Hawaii) gives discretion to the president to bar entry into the country, not visa adjudications. Visa adjudications require individualized determination by the consular officer.
Does the United States owe immigration to the world, somehow? Does it owe it so much that there must be an avenue to immigration so large that you casually refer to that as a "pipeline"?
Some of us have friends overseas who we think are deserving of residency and citizenship. You used to be able to just show up on a ship and they would make you a citizen if you were healthy. That's how my ancestors got here.
"You used to be able to just show up on a ship and they would make you a citizen if you were healthy."
Unless you were Chinese. Let's not romanticize that period, the Chinese Exclusion Act was enacted precisely over fears of too many people of a different culture and race moving into the US at once. It was only repealed in 1943, as Imperial Japan became the common enemy of both China and the US.
And the Jews who were seeking shelter from Nazi Germany weren't particularly welcome either. There was an entire conference in Evian in 1938, ironically organized by none other than FDR, that sought a solution to increasing Jewish emigration from Germany. The end result was that no one was willing to increase or waive any quotas.
History tends to repeat with some variations. Few political things are totally new under the sun.
>Some of us have friends overseas who we think are deserving of residency and citizenship.
Sure, I have friends. But I'm not about to give my friends 50% of my house's equity just because we're friends. I'll invite them over temporarily, often even. But this doesn't entitle them to owning the property. I don't want to give them voting rights in my household budget.
And it's very bizarre that you can't make the distinction here. I doubt that the thought has crossed your mind that this is equivalent.
>You used to be able to just show up on a ship
True. That was then. But I don't want 2 billion people showing up off a ship and getting automatically put into the formal partnership with the rest of us. We have a right to decide who can come, who can't, and we don't even have to justify why. And there's enough of us deciding they can't now to make things better.
What a weird analogy. That has nothing to do with allowing immigration.
> We have a right to decide who can come, who can't, and we don't even have to justify why.
"We" is a funny concept here. As a US citizen, I am a part of that "we", and I want lots more immigration, and much easier paths to citizenship. Why don't I get what I want here?
At the very least, the current situation is inhumane, and treats non-citizens like an underclass. It's disgusting, and an embarrassment. Even if "we" decide we want fewer people living here or becoming citizens, there are better ways to do that.
What analogy? It's the same exact thing, scaled up from family to nation-state. These things aren't like each other, they are the same thing just smaller/larger. You were mal-educated in public schools.
>and I want lots more immigration
If we were talking about your equity in some startup and that the major holders were diluting that stock, you'd be apoplectic. Would call it cheating. I don't care what you want. One way or another, you must be defeated and never allowed to hold political influence again. Or educational influence, come to that.
>At the very least, the current situation is inhumane,
"Inhumane"? That word means something like "you're needlessly causing physical agony to livestock". So I'm sort of smirking that you would apply a word to people that is reserved for animals... maybe that's how the left really thinks of immigrants. They're just some sort of vote cattle that you can farm for election wins. But it's also bizarre. Seems like something you'd accuse me of, not the other way around.
>and treats non-citizens like an underclass
It does no such thing. It treats them like they should stay home and live there. Which is all anyone's asking for.
>Even if "we" decide we want fewer people living here or becoming citizens, there are better ways to do that.
There were! But those ways are disallowed. You blame people like me for the detention centers... we'd be deporting them the very first day, there wouldn't be time or need for them to be detained. That's the left doing that.
Start implementing those better ways. No one will stop you.
> That is bad for the political leadership because they just don't want to issue visas
America welcomes the most people in by percentage and by numbers in the world. If they don't want to issue visas, and they do it the most by political design, then no one does.
The US has the lowest percentage of it's population being immigrants in the Western Anglosphere. Like it's beaten by all of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and Ireland. Germany and France too, plus a while host of smaller European countries.
There's an argument that the US is the least immigrant friendly large Western nation. Maybe the medium sized ones too.
France’s foreign-born population is roughly 13% to 14%, which puts it about tied with or slightly lower than the U.S., depending on the specific year and census criteria used.
Pause is a silly way of saying No for now. You can try again later. But they’re not advising when that may be happening. To me, that tells you everything you need to know. That they don’t know themselves because it’s to be determined, maybe. Until then, no.
Can they? Because one of the questions on these questionnaires is almost always 'have you had a prior request being denied'.
> But they’re not advising when that may be happening. To me, that tells you everything you need to know.
These are life altering decisions for people that might have put decades into doing their best for the US. This is not about what to have for dinner.
This causes a LOT of uncertainty and chaos for no real reason. If they're so convinced it should all be denied, then issue those denials so they can be challenged.
So maybe you have stated a reason a pause is better than an explicit no. No history of a denial is maybe a better thing.
I get the human component but I can separate that from policy. I have my own risk assessment on it and it’s that I couldn’t imagine ever making any material investment financial or community in a place like this. I’ve thought about doing the digital nomad thing in the past, and I don’t think anyone would be surprised if some random South East Asian country did this same thing and nobody would bat an eye. It to be expected that other countries can have wavering policies, it’s when the US does it that people cry about the humanity of it.
I don’t think it would have hurt much to put some advanced warning out there. Let people plan for it. But I also know that probably has some blow back towards the intended outcome of this.
Also, I don’t think you can challenge a blanket policy. I haven’t really dove into this but it doesn’t sound like they’re making any exceptions.
The current administration loves creating chaos and uncertainty. Exactly why this should be less of a surprise to those that know how things work and that they may actually get locked out. Anyone who reads even just the headline of this and is perplexed by it has been living under a rock. To me, it is 100% on brand.
> I don’t think it would have hurt much to put some advanced warning out there. Let people plan for it.
As with a lot of things this administration does, this is where the cruel part comes in. That would be the sensible thing to do, it's just a choice not to.
> I don’t think anyone would be surprised if some random South East Asian country did this same thing and nobody would bat an eye. It to be expected that other countries can have wavering policies, it’s when the US does it that people cry about the humanity of it.
Because those countries would typically do it with a warning period of some sort, the fallout won't be as much.
In general these countries typically don't do this because the legal immigration system is how they pick and choose who to allow in, as the US does. So typically this would be to their advantage.
Also, the US is the country that used to call themselves "leader of the free world and all that". So maybe they should hold themselves to high standards?
> Also, I don’t think you can challenge a blanket policy.
There isn't a policy here that has been changed. It's the executive branch stopping some function it was tasked with. We've seen in the past that they've tried such things many times for the courts to then come in and say that the law says they should do XYZ and so they're forced to resume their work. DOGE stopped a bunch of things that the courts later reinstated, including rehiring the people they fired. Thankfully the executive branch isn't completely unchecked, yet.
> Exactly why this should be less of a surprise to those that know how things work and that they may actually get locked out
So you would suggest that people cancel their lease, pack up their stuff, don't sign their kids up for school and all? Just on the off chance that this hits right when they're abroad? I think that's just arguing around the issue created here.
We’ve said a lot already and obviously have our own perspectives. I understand your side, you don’t seem to understand mine. Or can’t understand it without echoing back the same stuff, I hear you and can understand perspectives I don’t agree with. That seems to be missing on your end, or you just want to argue about things which I don’t.
You quoted me without the “but…” part I already wrote.
I don’t think it’s a given another country would give any notice. Political regime change and general volatility are higher in some other places. Big assumption on your part.
Lack of policy and executive mandate is exactly why there’s really no formal dispute process either. Yes, it means you have to let the courts sort it for you. And that means hoping someone leads the charge.
I have suggested that I never would have created a rooted life, with school aged children, financial obligations, assets, etc based on a visa that inherently has such weak grounding in my existence in a country. Those that have chosen to do so, have chosen the risk. They probably hoped for the best and considered historical precedent but we all know the past isn’t a crystal ball for the future. It’s like joining the armed forces after a long period of peace expecting peace to persist. But armed forces are kept because shit can change. Wars can start. And you’ll be involved if it does. The benefits that come with it are provided because that risk exists. Whether you serve at a time of peace or see active duty is not known (unless you join in wartime of course.)
I don't think you understand anything about an immigration process.
All these cases are meticulously documented. So not making a decision is not at all the same as a 'no'.
A 'no' you can challenge, a pause not so much. They probably cannot and don't want to actually deny all those applications as they'll be in hot water really quick. So this is just the childish, not wanting to really own it, way of trying to achieve the same result.
Of course it’s on purpose. That’s the point: to get temp migrants to leave. There’s nothing inhumane about that, and the government is acting within the scope of its authority.
In the end this is 100% a political issue and who knows why it is on the HN front page.
I imagine it's on the HN front page because it directly affects the technology careers of a large number of the people who are members of this community - or are coworkers of or employees/employers of members of this community.
Yes, obviously. But it was rhetorical - this is not specifically tech related and there’s nothing about it that a ‘hacker’ would find innately interesting. It’s just people bitching about a US executive branch decision they disagree with and everybody’s downvoting the side they disagree with, which is exactly the sort of outcome this site ostensibly tries to avoid.
Only if your definition of "hacker" is limited to "begging for VC money for your b2b SAAS".
Through the entire history of the phrase "hacker", there have been hackers concerned about human rights, political causes, anti-corporate measures, etc.
Personally I consider myself a hacker and will not abide by the narrow definition you set forth. I'm a hacker because I'm pissed off that money controls our lives and I seek out to regain control wherever I can.
Rather than rights and privileges, think about the economic consequences of this. People will stop coming here for advanced study for advanced research and for advanced industry jobs. And most institutions and companies will accommodate this and try to have such people work from where they are vs fight an onerous government to bring them here. The net result will be damage to the US economy
Name one country, then. None that I'm aware of require you to leave the country to renew an immigration visa. Switching from a visitor visa to an immigration visa, sure. But if you're already on an immigration visa or residence permit, it's normally expected that you are, well, an immigrant. That your home, domicile, center of vital interests, whatever you want to call it, is in the country. I know of immigration systems that require you to apply from inland instead of from abroad in this case: most European systems work that way, for example, and I believe Canada and Australia too? But why would you require an immigrant to leave the country to extend their residence in that same country, other than to fuck with them?
Yeah, this is the problem. If you're on an immigrant visa, working a real job, then you have a life in the US: an apartment or a house, a pile of belongings, maybe a spouse and kids. If you need to leave the country to renew your immigrant visa, you may not be allowed back in to pack your apartment, sell your house, or help your US spouse and kids prepare to move to a country that will allow your family to stay together. It's a giant neon sign telling you you're not at all welcome here.
Of course, if you have a spouse and kids, this all gets easier once you have permanent resident status. Which used to be comparatively easy to get once you were married and you had offspring running around. I don't know what that process looks like now.
In practice, this kind of arbitrary screwing with people makes the US far too risky for educated, professional immigrants. So the scientists and the engineers and the company founders will just go elsewhere and build that country's economy. Which is fine, in the long run: If the US doesn't want to build the future or create new industries, then the voters have every right to vote for that. We've already decided we have no hope of competing with China in cars. And we'll need to cede more industries over time. As far as I can tell, the US has benefited heavily from poaching other people's scientists and engineers and professionals for decades now. But maybe the voters don't buy my argument, and they believe that chasing away skilled professionals and imposing 100% tariffs will lead to the future they want. It's a difference in beliefs about about what makes a country prosperous, and people have a right to vote based on their beliefs.
Well, not to defend the practice, but I think a reason for demanding application from abroad, is that if you decide to deny renewal, now they don't get back in. Whereas if you can apply from within the country, then people who are denied renewal can refuse to leave, go underground etc.
Even with this pretext though, it's a good example of a rule which punishes the law-obedient. People who intend to stay in the country illegally won't go abroad to reapply in the first place.
The US also does not require you to renew immigration visa. It's actually impossible to renew in the US inside or outside the country. A US immigration visa gives you a resident status on admission and thus makes you ineligible for any US visa.
Ireland? Where'd you get that from? They have a perfectly typical European system where you are expected to apply from inside the country for renewals [1]. You can still do it from abroad, but then you're not eligible for the simpler online procedure:
> You must currently be present in Ireland to be eligible to renew your permission to remain online. Applications submitted from outside Ireland will not be accepted.
Nigeria I'm less sure about. From what I can quickly google, they have a few classes of temporary work visas that aren't extendable (which isn't particularly unusual), although they do list at least some as "renewable upon regularization", and I'm unfortunately not well-versed enough in Nigerian immigration law to know what that means. For actual long-term immigration they have a document called a CERPAC, and the respective website [2] doesn't seem to mention whether you have to leave Nigeria to renew it, only that it's done online. Common sense suggests, however, that if you did have to leave, it would be mentioned somewhere on there, likely in big bold letters.
And lots of expat-friendly countries that are tolerant of working on repeated tourist visas rather than a full immigrant visa, but still require visa runs every month or three.
Not at the moment, but the result of the current UK system has been huge uncontrolled levels of immigration leading to deep public resentment, so that may change in the future
"huge uncontrolled levels of immigration". Let's put some actual numbers to this. Net immigration in 2025 was about 170k people, over the next 10 years projections are for about 2.2 million net immigration. So that's about 3-4%. However, UK population is shrinking without immigration so net population growth with immigration is about 1.7 million.
Not sure if that matches a definition of huge, but it's important to note that with a shrinking population without immigration the UK would be in serious economic trouble (like every country). This is even more exaberated due to the aging population that the shrinking population implies.
Immigrants like always are the convenient scapegoat that is being used to distract from the increasing gap between the rich and everyone else.
It's a little more than scapegoating, though. It's also absolutely about social dumping. Yes, the UK would be in serious trouble without immigrants, but richer people would be disproportionately in trouble, especially non-working ones (i.e. retirees). Working poorer people, well they wouldn't be better off maybe, but they'd have some compensation in that their labour would be in much higher demand.
‘Uncontrolled’ - surely the control point was the initial application being submitted from abroad?
It was very much ‘controlled’. We lost SO many European workers due to the obsession with EU Freedom of Movement that entire sectors like nursing were about to implode without a source of new workers.
Yes that's kind of what I mean - the powers that be are already quietly moving in the direction of cracking down on immigration, because they can see it's now causing them real political problems.
Not because they care about doing the right thing, but purely for self preservation reasons
Could you explain a bit more? Not sure what is achieved by forcing people to renew their visas from abroad. I appreciate that, philosophically, it is a way of setting requirements higher, but it does not strike me as principled.
From my perspective as an immigrant in the UK, there have got to be so many parameters the UK government can adjust before indulging into performative cruelty. Setting higher requirements for visas, revising what jobs qualify for Skilled Worker visas and such. In fact, my understanding is that this is exactly what they have been doing (rather mildly), and it's been successful.
If the government refuses a visa renewal while the person is in the country and they don’t comply you have to deport them, which is often problematic.
If you make it standard procedure that everyone has to leave the country temporarily to renew their visa, the person is already outside your country when you refuse the renewal.
Instead of having a deportation challenged in court and mired in paperwork, you simply don’t let them back in. That’s what the parent comment was getting at.
Not saying this is right or wrong or it will necessarily happen in the UK, but it’s the kind of change you can make if you want to quietly reduce immigration without fuss about deportations.
And that does seem to be the direction that UK policy is going, albeit currently only with baby steps
This would be true if visa and status were the same thing. In the US, they are not. Whether you are legally present in the US is governed by status. So what happens is that your status is valid and even renewed or extended in the US. But your visa expires. And you need to renew the visa just to bring the date on the visa to the same date as your status. You literally go to the consulate and show them your other status document, and they stamp your passport with the date from the other status document. It's all quite silly. A bit like the movie Brazil.
I find this quite confusing, but then I am far from being an expert on the matter:
* Do we expect a high number of people applying for visa renewals and getting rejected? How come? Otherwise, when it comes to people illegally overstaying their visas, how does this policy idea address intentional non-compliance?
* Don't legal challenges to deportation of criminals have to do with the deportation rather than visas. It would be convenient if hardened criminals complied with the law and removed the need to deport them, but what would motivate them to do so?
The idea seems to be to inconvenience law-abiding visa holders without addressing major concerns, but then I probably misunderstand the concerns. For instance, maybe there is a way of creating legal busy-work when one's visa renewal application gets rejected in a way that is cheap to the individual, but costly for the state, and that this happens on a scale that makes the problem significant. Sounds surprising, and surprising that there'd be no other way to avoid that too!
1a. Illegal immigration has nothing to do with visa based, legal immigration. illegal immigration is the type of immigration people are upset about here in the UK. most people have no problem with legal migration.
1b. anyone claiming the UK’s legal migration is any sort of problem right now, or in the past, should probably not be listened to in any way shape or form for anything they have to say on the matter.
2. a lot of the folks who have illegally entered the country end up asking for asylum, and by law their claims must be processed
3. the dublin convention states something along the lines of “asylum requests must be processed in the first EU country the person entered into”, ie it’s possible to remove people claiming asylum if they initially arrived in a different EU member state country
4. most people get to the uk having traveled through EU member states, because geography.
5. we left the EU, we cannot do 3 anymore. so we have a bunch of people stuck in hotels waiting for asylum claims to be processed.
illegal immigration got worse because we left the eu.
People absolutely do have a problem with legal immigration, especially post-Boriswave.
If legal immigration means millions of new people every year and rapid demographic change, of course that will cause a political issue.
It would be very strange (basically unheard of in human history) if it didn't.
People I know who are non-white all report increased racism (mostly not aggressive but noticeable) since Covid, despite having English accents so clearly not being illegal immigrants.
That is caused by reckless immigration policy stoking resentment
It’s no longer more than a million a year (thanks Kier Starmer, I guess) but there are now at least 15 million people in the UK who aren’t White British, it is absurd to pretend that isn’t a big number.
A lot of people ideally want immigration to be negative, so +170k is still going in the wrong direction.
There are potential arguments in favour of that level of immigration but you need to convince people that it’s fine for their country to change beyond all recognition in the space of a single generation.
And unsurprisingly, the people trying to do that are finding it a tough sell
Reform take peoples concerns about the massive increase in population numbers and the knock on effects of housing and infrastructure, and cultural clash since we swapped eu immigration for sub Saharan and South Asian, and point it to the small boats.
I have no problem with refugees. I do have problem with a million people a year arriving through Heathrow. Farage and co want that though as it’s good for business (more workers, higher asset prices) so they blame it on the tiny numbers of small boats.
Brexit meant we swapped immigration of mostly like minded Europeans and temporary workers for permanent immigration from poorer countries with more medieval views.
I’m fairly left on the spectrum, I was door stepping for remain, and for Lib Dems in 2017,2019 and a by-election, I’m very much on the tax wealth not work side, and I have no problem in paying tax despite earning more than 90% of the people in the county, including the old folk who just keep taking and never paying.
But it seems I’m not left enough because I have a problem with the massive amounts of legal immigration under a populist right wing government and I should be sent to a gulag.
In fact I would argue: if someone is truly left wing in the traditional sense (i.e. they believe Marx when he says politics is all about class conflict, they want to live in a society where workers have more power, they support trade unions etc.) then logically... they should oppose mass immigration.
Mass immigration exists because it's in the interests of the capital owning classes. It massively reduces the bargaining power of labour, and the potential power of trade unions.
Yet most supposedly "left wing" people support mass immigration and for some reason they can't understand they're voluntarily acting as willing foot soldiers for people they profess to hate
"anyone claiming the UK’s legal migration is any sort of problem right now, or in the past, should probably not be listened to in any way shape or form for anything they have to say on the matter."
This sort of position is, IMO, disgusting and immoral. I cannot express how appalled I am that someone would state something like this. Anyone who's a citizen of the UK most certainly has a right to express their opinion on legal immigration, either in favor or against.
That "public resentment" mostly was fueled by a rabid, out of control yellow press and a healthy dose of Russian propaganda spread by Russia-financed entities (Brexit, UKIP and Reform UK all have been shown to have very suspicious links to Russian money).
That's a disfuncional view: "we set the rules, take it or leave it". In Switzerland there are strict requirements, but if you're a law abiding and employed migrant, ie contributing to the country, the services help you fill the paperwork so you can stay.
Even considering the disfuncional way, one thing it's to say "you only stay if we allow". The other is to say "you only leave if you allow": that's a much more authoritarian position.
These policies will work and immigration will lower for sure. Let's see the outcome in a few years.
You're right but I think you're running into the emotional side of the issue for some folks. The "not coming back" angle is a feature not a bug. Saves having to track folks down, potentially detain them, etc.
Well no, you're running into the fact that this administration has shown capricious (and often illegal) determination logic of who gets to come in or not.
People haven't always complained about this feature/bug/whatever because the US has generally not had people in charge who allow in people charged with sex trafficking (like the Tate brothers) but stop and harass even American citizens who are accused of saying mean things about Israel on the Internet.
> You’re approaching it from a perspective where you’re being asked to leave and your reentry is a right. It’s not. They never said, if you leave you can come back. They said, leave and we’ll see.
This so much. Ultimately, you are a guest and the host country can kick you out with no notice.
> as you try to immigrate into a country you're subject to the rules that country sets
Always written and followed up with “but…”
If only the millions and millions of people that NGOs were shuffling in over the Biden years could have had some obvious and expected pushback… I don’t remember anyone here saying “geez, this could effect more than a response to illegal border crossings down the road!”
> The leaving part is not the issue, as you try to immigrate into a country you're subject to the rules that country sets.
The ultimate uncertainty is that regardless of who you are and what you do, a country always has the right to kick you out when you are there on a visa regardless of what the rights and rules of that visa. Nothing is guaranteed ultimately.
>The ultimate uncertainty is that regardless of who you are and what you do, a country always has the right to kick you out...Nothing is guaranteed ultimately.
Which is what makes the actions of the government so disturbing. What made the USA so attractive (the rules, the decorum, the civility) is gone.
While there were a great many injustices, in general, it trended toward getting better over the years, until recently.
The craziest part is with globally declining total fertility rates, a country would be fortunate to have productive, younger people be banging on their door to be let in.
> > The ultimate uncertainty is that regardless of who you are and what you do, a country always has the right to kick you out...Nothing is guaranteed ultimately.
Depends on whether you think international law still exists and is followed - statelessness isn't allowed under that.
There's no single set of "international law" in the sense of national laws, state laws or local laws. There are only agreements and treaties between nations that are applied within those nations. As such, what "international law" applies depends on which nation you're in or from or if some nation's law enforcement have jurisdictional reach.
More to the point, nothing about this decision implies statelessness. Every visa applicant is a citizen of another foreign, non-American, nation. Being booted out doesn't make them stateless. They couldn't have applied for a visa if were stateless.
Note, I do agree that this suspension is unfair and a bad idea. But tossing out random accusations that imply that international law is being violated or causing people to become stateless doesn't help our case.
> whether you think international law still exists
Well that’s an easy one. It doesn’t. There are specific agreements, and I guess you could consider war crimes the primary example of an international court. But there is no and should be no international courts for immigration.
A country gets to set its own laws, end of story. The current happenings in the US are a direct pendulum swing from the previous administration. If people can’t accept that, it just shows how biased they are. Or how one-sided their information sources have been.
They sure do. US law presupposes that a tourist is secretly planning to stay in the US, and must demonstrate otherwise to the satisfaction of the assessor. There are a number of factors assessed, including things like ties to the applicant's home country - an existing job, ownership of property, family demands; basically, clearly having a life in that country that the applicant wants and needs to get back to.
Someone applying for a tourist visa, who recently had an immigration renewal denied, who has no life to get back to in their country of origin (because they built a life in the US) but clearly has a life in the US (owns property in the US, has family in the US, has work ties -maybe even still has a job in the US); that applicant is an enhanced overstayer risk and this increases the chances of being denied a tourist visa.
oh yea, let me just uproot myself because immigration took too long and my company didn't want to wait.
I'll just cancel my rental agreement, move my furniture across continents, cancel my other subscriptions, oh wait that's got a few month notice period so I'll have to pay up for months I don't need anymore, let alone all the friendships and social connections I made that I never got to say a proper goodbye to.
This is extremely unappealing to skilled workers, and the loss of trust will extend past this current administration, if all it takes is one idiot in office to upend your life, you can't trust that country and its people anymore.
That’s the point. The current people in power don’t want immigrants because the vast majority of immigrants are non white.
The tall blond nordics they really want have no real motivation to deal with this bizarre BS as they usually already have a great standard of living in say Norway.
So you end up with a ton of folks from places where running water is still a luxury. A lot of these people are even excellent church attending Christians.
Not white though.
I really do think this country is ran by idiots. No one will be there to pick the crops, prisoners make poor farm hands.
The price of food will skyrocket, and if the rest of the world wants to punish us they could just suspend food imports to the US.
This was all predictable, and while the Democrats are far from perfect, at least you don’t have chaos.
I find the idea the only immigrants can do low skill labor kinda… obtuse. Maybe Americans should pick their own crops instead of living in a delusion that certain labor is beneath them. Boomer era “all my kids are going to get white collar jobs” type thinking isn’t sustainable.
It's not beneath them per se. It's just that this trade only makes sense for a certain slice of the population at a certain time in their life. The immigrant is willing to work in that job because what is offered is not just the salary but something more (chance to immigrate, stability, arbitrage, etc.). It's similar to research assistants or grad students in universities. They are doing cutting edge research for peanuts because what they are getting is something more (degree, skills, future earning potential). It's hard to replace this dynamic. Or in other words, the dollar value of the intangibles is so high that if you were to put a price on it, it would make your business unviable.
> research assistants or grad students in universities
These are not fully trained scientists, but rather trainees. As such, they don't get paid the same as a fully trained scientist. Like how a journeyman is paid more than an apprentice electrician.
Of course, they are also underpaid, too. Ask any grad student union.
> It's hard to replace this dynamic. Or in other words, the dollar value of the intangibles is so high that if you were to put a price on it, it would make your business unviable.
Yes, it's very hard to pay your workers a liveable wage if everyone else is exploiting their workers by underpaying them.
All you're saying is that we've built exploiting labor (foreigners, interns, trainees) into our economy.
You should ask them if they feel if they're being exploited. Or ask startup employees if they are exploited for working at below market pay for equity. As someone who has been in each of these positions at different times, I can tell you that I never felt exploited.
I’d only say change the system to provide a pathway to residency. If you’re willing to work 12 hour days to ensure my fat American born self keeps eating , you deserve a spot here.
One of my former partners was making around 200k. Her grandparents cleaned homes.
The idea is that you come here and your life is crappy low paid work, but your kids and their kids have amazing careers.
While I understand that you think this is romantic and ethical, it also guarantees a status quo where the economy and indeed everyone's quality of life is kept afloat by a permanent imported labor underclass. As we are finding out, we end up with colossal amounts of undertrained, entitled citizens and artificially deflated prices for critical civilizational services.
I’d just prefer to grant every worker the dignity of permanent residency.
The bizarre dystopian system we have now lets your employer get you deported. Not just farm workers, a lot of food processing plants are manned by undocumented workers.
If everyone without status up and left tomorrow we’d all starve in 2 months.
The problem with granting every worker permanent residency is that they would then lose the impetus to perform the work they're so critical for at the low wage they currently take, and the prices of goods and services will rise just like it would if the immigrants were not granted permanent residency and the labor force was scrutinized and protected property. I would rather simply just stop using immigrant labor and go after exploitative companies. I realize this is politically infeasible under the current status quo, but to really solve the problem we should be jailing owners who use illegal labor, perform wage theft, etc.
We also need to end the practice of holding workers to few enough hours that they require supplemental government welfare to thrive, for example the fraction of Walmart workers on food stamps, or who want full-time for benefits but can't get it.
I agree with the spirit of your comment. But what often gets overlooked is that we do have a pathway to permanent residency and naturalization. It involves demonstrating that you are willing and able to be a citizen, not just do labor. The fact that a large number of actual citizens probably aren’t equipped to perform their civic duties doesn’t excuse it. We can change the laws on what it takes to be a citizen but if it were easy to redefine citizenship I’d imagine we’d have already done it.
Don't worry, supply is there. Because the US is actually increasing visa caps for some of these workers. Might also be because they work at the properties of a certain person.
Need to keep those wages down, it would be terrible for profitability if he had to hire Americans you know!
Immigrants aren’t the only ones who can do low skill labor, machines can do it too.
But doing any kind of labor that a machine can do, is beneath your capacity as a human, so you shouldn’t do that job, you should do other jobs that require human effort or where the quality of human output is valued.
Even if machines could do it, it doesn’t mean they could do it at or below the equivalent cost.
I also disagree with the automation point regarding what humans should do. As we see with current AI, many creative tasks can be automated but it doesn’t make them unfulfilling human endeavors.
The issue here is that, if you just left the country to do everything the country asked you, you are now in limbo.
For how long? No one can tell.
Does this mean you lose your job? Maybe.
And when you decide it's no longer worth it, you might even have issues getting back in to get your stuff...
Retraining your people CAN be done without it being so disruptive, they chose not to.