Number of green cards offered to People born in China and India (With Billion+ Population) is same as to people born in Vatican City (Less than 1000 population).
It's not America's fault that China and India have insane birth rates. More than half of them live in poverty and many corrupt officials stole money from the Chinese people and settled in the US, Australia or Canada. Allowing more Chinese immigration would come with corruption.
Of course by definition there is no corruption in western countries ;)
On a serious note, the country limits make sense since it was designed for diversity (both lottery and employment based). It is unfair to give preferential treatment to a particular group. Whether we like to admit it or not diversity is important (I'm an Indian and I'm saying this)
its quite a bit more complicated than that but yes.
On the one hand one could argue that the US is also stealing resources from india because the US has more power.
On the other hand if 100% of india works in the US, you're back to the reason why you left india, in another land. It's a bigger issue than an immigration issue, and honestly I don't think it's solvable (til machines supersede humans of course).
I can only talk about India so here are my 2 cents:
1. Almost all people who are trying to leave India are highly educated.
2. Most of them don't plan to stay outside India for long time.
3. Large percentage of them go back to India when they have a girl child (contrary to popular western rhetoric about 'we are so great they are so bad', women in India are several times safer than in USA).
4. Another large group goes back to India once they have paid house loans, earned enough money, have ailing parents that need help. (India doesn't have a social security system.)
5. A large group of Indians who end up staying 'abroad' are from very specific areas of India (5 out of 29 states of India - Punjab and 4 states of southern India).
6. People from Punjab suffered a cultural shock during partition of India in 1947 and so they see little value in blind nationalism. Most of them are doing business and are not necessarily highly educated (I mean disproportionately). They accept westernization with open hearts.
7. Southern states don't appreciate Hindi being promoted by a Delhi based government - imagine Texas where everyone spoke 4 different languages but not English). So they are prone to moving out for prosperity. They are mostly highly educated. Most of the 'talent companies' like Infosys etc. are being run by them because they generally keep good ties back home. In general no love for westernization. Apu from Simpsons is their caricature.
In short - the degree of success for an Indian in America depends on his support structure. Some communities have built it by being quite and bringing over the family, others have embraced westernization. Both require sheer perseverance. But for large number of Indians, it is simply easier to go back rich and enjoy respect from peers back in India.
Not diversity. US immigration laws have never been designed for diversity. The history of US immigration law is littered with incidents of xenophobic immigration laws targeted at Chinese, Japanese, Irish, as well as East and South Europeans.
Usually the argument for capping or blacklisting immigration from specific nations relates to low observed assimilation rates among immigrants. I suspect that's mostly why most Mexican immigrants to the US use their family contacts in the US to get their immigration requests processed.
I didn't mean designed for diversity historically (say before the civil rights act)
And by the way, there are limits to family based visas that you are alluding to. The wait time for a Mexican national to get a green card is a lot lesser than India or China (employment based)
I think it should be more proportionate, but not solely, we do want to allow people from low pop countries too.
That said, there is a funny thing, some countries consider emigration brain drain, while others consider it a source of income (remittances). I think we, being as selfish as the countries who selfishly rely on remittances, should prefer the highly skilled emigrants who will impact our economy more than emigrants who as immigrants can only offer low skilled labor (currently overrepresented in underemployment figures) this would put price pressure on the lower rungs, increase wages and afford low skills labor livable jobs. The professional class can absorb some wage stagnation whereas low skills blue collar workers have had stagnating wages for too long.
With every passing day I find myself asking "Who are these people still falling for the 'American Dream' scheme?". I mean, it's just so obvious that this country is slowly falling apart, there are so many huge problems that I don't even know with which issue to start. I guess John Oliver's 'Last Week Tonight' is quite honest and does a decent job at scratching the surface. But for myself, following Edward Snowden's work and understanding it in the general economic/political context was the final nail in the coffin.
People are literally dying to leave some other countries and people are literally dying to come here. And I mean literally as in actually not as in figuratively. People are voting with their feet.
Quite a few years ago Ken Hamblin[1] wrote a book titled Pick a Better Country. That same sentiment still applies. What are the alternatives? Do those alternatives allow as much immigration as the USA does?
To riff on the old Winston Churchill quip: America is the worst country there is, except for all the others.
> What are the alternatives? Do those alternatives allow as much immigration as the USA does?
America has ranks #40 on the list of net migration per capita [1]. So to answer your question: Every developed country on the list before #40, like, oh, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland, Sweden, etc. etc. etc.
It sounds good/bad (depending on your perspective) if you put the USA down at country #40. However, data and statistics are tricky things. For example:
1) Many of the first 39 countries don't come anywhere close to the "pick a better country" requirement. E.g. Lebanon at #1, Zimbabwe at #3, Libya at #6.
2) Many of the countries are tiny. E.g. British Virgin Islands has a population under 29,000. So they might look good per capita, but they hardly matter in absolute numbers.
3) There will, of course, be requirements for immigrants. But some might be rather draconian. E.g. will the UAE even allow an immigrant unless he's already a Sunni Muslim?
4) While it sounds impressive that 39 countries are "ahead" of the USA, I totaled up the population of the first 10 on the list and it came to 51,533,343. (I was too lazy to cut/paste the rest out of Wikipedia). The point is that even though the USA per capita is lower than those, we make up a lot by having 321,605,012 "capita" already here.
5) I did a quick search for number of illegal immigrants per year into USA and came up with 500,000. The estimates differ widely, so who knows the real numbers. We probably (wild speculation!) have more illegal immigration than the other developed countries on your list. E.g. it's hard to get into New Zealand by sneaking across the border. Oh and BTW New Zealand is actually #45, not "before" us.
I'd be careful about those statistics. The amount of legal immigration is more or less known, but the US government implicitly turns a blind eye to a rough estimate of 20-30 million illegal immigrants in the last two decades.
Well, the reality is that there are several clusters of different migrants and they're choosing the US for several reasons:
* The very poor choose the US simple because they can; they may have the conctacts from family, they may have an idealized vision, or it's just the closest they can afford. But being able to marry or just keep their head down and avoid deportation is better than what they have, so since legal alternatives are not really a choice to begin with, they'll take what they can and not complain too much.
* The educated middle class will only go to places with exceptionally high standards of living that are comparable to any well-developed place in the world. These people are going to New York or the Bay Area, maybe Chicago or LA at best. They can ignore the US's massive inequalities because they're reaching for the best of their professions and available quality of life, and they know that if things go sour they can go to their homelands with a pile of cash and live like kings back home, which is a seriously good Plan B.
* Truly wealthy people can move around freely throughout the world and can enjoy the best that the US' global cities offer with none of their drawbacks, so long-term issues are mostly irrelevant unless we're talking business, and the laws in the country favor corporations massively.
So yeah, a lot of people in academia go to Europe, a lot of the educated middle classes in developing countries nowadays choose to stay put because they enjoy good benefits from a globalized economy and fewer of the drawbacks of their countries. And the poor who have no choice will try for whatever they can and accept it as an improvement.
There is near zero work on our infrastructure because politicians don't want to spend the dollars. Decades now. Think about that the next time you are driving across a bridge that you figure "oh they wouldn't let us use it if it wasn't safe".
Personally I had to leave the US as my H1-B was not even looked at in time to be able to continue my work, which includes traveling. They had 6 months time to process my application to no avail.
With an expired H1-B visa they don't let you in again. Premier processing fees did nothing. My company is in Texas not California, maybe that's why.
But I'm happy to back in a democracy now (Germany), even if the US pays better. Helping out developing countries is fine, but their state is not working, and this affects business.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 61.4 ms ] threadNumber of green cards offered to People born in China and India (With Billion+ Population) is same as to people born in Vatican City (Less than 1000 population).
On the other hand if 100% of india works in the US, you're back to the reason why you left india, in another land. It's a bigger issue than an immigration issue, and honestly I don't think it's solvable (til machines supersede humans of course).
1. Almost all people who are trying to leave India are highly educated.
2. Most of them don't plan to stay outside India for long time.
3. Large percentage of them go back to India when they have a girl child (contrary to popular western rhetoric about 'we are so great they are so bad', women in India are several times safer than in USA).
4. Another large group goes back to India once they have paid house loans, earned enough money, have ailing parents that need help. (India doesn't have a social security system.)
5. A large group of Indians who end up staying 'abroad' are from very specific areas of India (5 out of 29 states of India - Punjab and 4 states of southern India).
6. People from Punjab suffered a cultural shock during partition of India in 1947 and so they see little value in blind nationalism. Most of them are doing business and are not necessarily highly educated (I mean disproportionately). They accept westernization with open hearts.
7. Southern states don't appreciate Hindi being promoted by a Delhi based government - imagine Texas where everyone spoke 4 different languages but not English). So they are prone to moving out for prosperity. They are mostly highly educated. Most of the 'talent companies' like Infosys etc. are being run by them because they generally keep good ties back home. In general no love for westernization. Apu from Simpsons is their caricature.
In short - the degree of success for an Indian in America depends on his support structure. Some communities have built it by being quite and bringing over the family, others have embraced westernization. Both require sheer perseverance. But for large number of Indians, it is simply easier to go back rich and enjoy respect from peers back in India.
Do you mean the birth of a girl child is a trigger to go back?
"women in India are several times safer than in USA"
What measure are you referring to?
Not diversity. US immigration laws have never been designed for diversity. The history of US immigration law is littered with incidents of xenophobic immigration laws targeted at Chinese, Japanese, Irish, as well as East and South Europeans.
Usually the argument for capping or blacklisting immigration from specific nations relates to low observed assimilation rates among immigrants. I suspect that's mostly why most Mexican immigrants to the US use their family contacts in the US to get their immigration requests processed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_laws_concerning_imm...
But for educated professionals who are already working here? Doesn't make a lot of sense.
That said, there is a funny thing, some countries consider emigration brain drain, while others consider it a source of income (remittances). I think we, being as selfish as the countries who selfishly rely on remittances, should prefer the highly skilled emigrants who will impact our economy more than emigrants who as immigrants can only offer low skilled labor (currently overrepresented in underemployment figures) this would put price pressure on the lower rungs, increase wages and afford low skills labor livable jobs. The professional class can absorb some wage stagnation whereas low skills blue collar workers have had stagnating wages for too long.
People are literally dying to leave some other countries and people are literally dying to come here. And I mean literally as in actually not as in figuratively. People are voting with their feet.
Quite a few years ago Ken Hamblin[1] wrote a book titled Pick a Better Country. That same sentiment still applies. What are the alternatives? Do those alternatives allow as much immigration as the USA does?
To riff on the old Winston Churchill quip: America is the worst country there is, except for all the others.
there are so many huge problems
It's hard to disagree with that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Hamblin
America has ranks #40 on the list of net migration per capita [1]. So to answer your question: Every developed country on the list before #40, like, oh, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland, Sweden, etc. etc. etc.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migra...
1) Many of the first 39 countries don't come anywhere close to the "pick a better country" requirement. E.g. Lebanon at #1, Zimbabwe at #3, Libya at #6.
2) Many of the countries are tiny. E.g. British Virgin Islands has a population under 29,000. So they might look good per capita, but they hardly matter in absolute numbers.
3) There will, of course, be requirements for immigrants. But some might be rather draconian. E.g. will the UAE even allow an immigrant unless he's already a Sunni Muslim?
4) While it sounds impressive that 39 countries are "ahead" of the USA, I totaled up the population of the first 10 on the list and it came to 51,533,343. (I was too lazy to cut/paste the rest out of Wikipedia). The point is that even though the USA per capita is lower than those, we make up a lot by having 321,605,012 "capita" already here.
5) I did a quick search for number of illegal immigrants per year into USA and came up with 500,000. The estimates differ widely, so who knows the real numbers. We probably (wild speculation!) have more illegal immigration than the other developed countries on your list. E.g. it's hard to get into New Zealand by sneaking across the border. Oh and BTW New Zealand is actually #45, not "before" us.
* The very poor choose the US simple because they can; they may have the conctacts from family, they may have an idealized vision, or it's just the closest they can afford. But being able to marry or just keep their head down and avoid deportation is better than what they have, so since legal alternatives are not really a choice to begin with, they'll take what they can and not complain too much.
* The educated middle class will only go to places with exceptionally high standards of living that are comparable to any well-developed place in the world. These people are going to New York or the Bay Area, maybe Chicago or LA at best. They can ignore the US's massive inequalities because they're reaching for the best of their professions and available quality of life, and they know that if things go sour they can go to their homelands with a pile of cash and live like kings back home, which is a seriously good Plan B.
* Truly wealthy people can move around freely throughout the world and can enjoy the best that the US' global cities offer with none of their drawbacks, so long-term issues are mostly irrelevant unless we're talking business, and the laws in the country favor corporations massively.
So yeah, a lot of people in academia go to Europe, a lot of the educated middle classes in developing countries nowadays choose to stay put because they enjoy good benefits from a globalized economy and fewer of the drawbacks of their countries. And the poor who have no choice will try for whatever they can and accept it as an improvement.
It's often in good company with the better Developing countries.
So I think it's safe to say in many ways it's not a world leader, but it's also very far above undeveloped countries, where billions of people live.
There is near zero work on our infrastructure because politicians don't want to spend the dollars. Decades now. Think about that the next time you are driving across a bridge that you figure "oh they wouldn't let us use it if it wasn't safe".
With an expired H1-B visa they don't let you in again. Premier processing fees did nothing. My company is in Texas not California, maybe that's why.
But I'm happy to back in a democracy now (Germany), even if the US pays better. Helping out developing countries is fine, but their state is not working, and this affects business.