quote:
Today, legal immigration is suddenly in the spotlight because of the latest visa bans and restrictions on foreign students, but it’s been broken for years. And it’s time Americans heard more about how it operates. Most Americans assume that if you’re well-educated and highly-skilled, it’s just a matter of following the rules. But the truth is, the system isn’t set up for merit-based immigration: you’ll face a nightmare of conflicting rules, decades of waiting, constant uncertainty and a system that seems bent on kicking you out — even if you follow the law.

Here are the basics of legal, employment-based immigration: you first need a job and a visa, then a green card, and only then can you try to get citizenship. There’s no such thing as “applying to be an American” out of the blue: a foreigner can’t just fill out a form.

Getting a visa is difficult because only a limited number are issued each year. But over time, large companies have learned to work the system and they have the budgets to hire the specialised law firms it takes to do this.

If you want to stay in America permanently after that, you need a green card. A green card lets you live and work anywhere in America (you just can’t vote). But you first need to prove to the government that you are qualified for your job, nevermind that your employer thought so already. And nevermind that government bureaucrats aren’t great at understanding the latest demands of a dynamic job market.

After then, if you’re able to apply, there’s often a very long wait: the backlog for highly-skilled applicants now affects over a million individuals. Some groups, like certain categories of educated immigrants from India, face waits of over 80 years. For others, USCIS is currently looking at forms filed back in 1995.

So how do people usually make it to America?

These days, almost 70% of green cards go to people because they’re married or related to an American, or another green card holder. Fewer than 15% of green cards are given to people because of their education, skills, and jobs. That’s because if you’re on a family visa, not a work visa, the green card process is relatively easy, and the wait times are short — sometimes as little as a few months. Through work, it takes decades.

quote:
Conservatives often so fervently believe in the greatness of America that they assume the legal immigration system can’t possibly be as bad as it is.

The difficulty doesn’t lie in the scale of your achievements or your value to America, it’s about how long you’re willing to wait, or random luck.

The legal immigration system for merit-based immigrants has been broken for years. The latest restrictions are the tip of the iceberg.

I am one of the Indians in the green card backlog that the author references above and her estimate of a 80-year wait for employment based green cards for people from India is actually optimistic. Latest studies show the wait is closer to 150 years for us. I am going to die in line waiting for my green card unless current laws change.

A bit more about me:
- I am about to turn 40 years old.
- Came to America for grad school when I was 21 and have been here 19 years - 3 years on a student visa and 16 years on a H1-B visa.
- My employer applied for my green card in 2012, but USCIS is still processing applications from 2005 for my employment category. In the last 5 calendar years, they have processed 3 weeks worth of applications from 2005 for Indian nationals. Now you can see where the 150 year wait comes from.
- Wife and I both have Master's degrees in Engineering and in my case I also have an MBA from a Top 7 school.
- We both work on H1-B visas and I have renewed my H1-B visa 6 times already, with each renewal being a nerve wracking experience with the possibility that the renewal could be denied, which results in you being given 60 days to pack up, sell your assets (home, cars, furniture etc.) and leave the country after spending decades building your life here, and in my case after spending almost half my adult life here. If we do leave without getting our green cards, the decades worth of social security and medicare taxes we have paid will be our parting gift to America as we will never see a penny of it again.

People tend to demonize H1-1B visas and think all H1-B visas go to IT consultants that take jobs from American tech workers (a la Sun Edison or Disney), but don't realize H1-B visa is the only way for foreign workers to work in this country if you are a doctor, engineer, lawyer, wall street banker or most other roles that require typically a high level of skill and education. Frankly it is sad to see all H1-Bs being lumped into a single group of immigrants that many people here have come to hate because they don't understand the immigration laws or the visa types well enough.

Some people ask why do you go through all this shite just to live in America, and the answer everytime is opportunity. No other country comes close to offering what America offers my wife and I in terms of career opportunities, so we have put up with it for so many years...but not sure how much longer we can continue to endure this or when our patience might run out.

This post was edited on 7/16/20 at 1:29 am