I wonder if this has to do with the current economy and job market. Anecdotally I have found it very tough to find a new job (software engineering), though my previous employer continues to post job listings for green card applications as part of the required labor market test.
They are not connected - this is a pause on immigrant visas, not work visas.
What do you think EB visas are: immigrant visas or work visas? Answer: they are both.
You're correct. I spoke a little too loosely, there are many different kinds of visas, but something like 95% of all work visas issued each year fall into the category of non-immigrant.
I'll concede that this statistic is cold comfort if you fall into that 5% category, but the point is that work visa almost always means non-immigrant.
This is the most missed point in all of the flame throwing in this thread.
They certainly aren’t doing this out of any particular love for American workers.
Are you... genuinely this naive and ignorant to what's happening in USA?
Attempts to find plausibly deniable rationales for this administration's anti-immigrant policies other than "gutter racism" are ridiculous.
Occam's razor. When somebody shows you who they are, believe them. Nativism is possibly the only stable and coherent political ideology this admin holds. Everything else is negotiable, but not this one.
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When you think the only group we should allow to immigrate is white South Africans, then, yea, it's racism. At least be honest about it.
Do you really believe that there is no racism involved?
Don't forget Nazism! (AKA, anyone who isn't left-wing.)
There's nothing inherently wrong with pausing immigration visas. These commenters act like anything less than fully open borders and unlimited immigration quotas makes you Satan reincarnate.
They intentionally over-dramatize everything he does to spread fear and alarmism cause that's all they can do. It's so tiring and nonsensical.
You're the one dramatizing here
In a vacuum the immigration pause might be innocuous. But put into context the other actions and statements from this administration and it tells a deeper story.
Just think of it as the return of the 19th-century Know Nothings or the 1920s nativists if the Nazi comparison makes you squeamish.
didn't big tech co's layoff thousands of people here and then filed for thousands more h1b ?
If it happened, there should be evidence (an article link). If it isn't supportable, then the implication is disingenuous to make.
“Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?”
But since you asked, here you go: https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/microsoft-...
I'd say it's on the Trump administration being full of racists and white nationalists and wanting to deport immigrants.
Why do you wonder if it's economic instead of the Trump administration's announced policies of stopping immigration, including unconstitutionally removing birthright citizenship?
I think many (if not most) countries in the developed world should reduce immigration, and usa in particular should abolish birthright citizenship.
The first because a lower supply of labor is going to create breathing space for an entire working population who will see tremendous job upheaval due to AI automation. A lower aggregate demand on houses, services will also be welcome to take the fuel out of inflation, and maybe we'll regain some of that experience of true affluence, where scarce things (e.g. access to cabin in the woods, a rowhome in a walkable city, ...) are in abundance. There is also the import of an idle, criminal element that has very clearly reduced quality of life and safety in many places.
Birthright citizen should be abolished because birth tourism and illegally crossing the border to have anchor babies are a vector for foreigners to participate politically and claim imho undeserved welfare benefits.
I think largely these are the stated reasons of the administration too.
Birthright citizenship is a constitutional right in the US same as freedom of speech, religion, the press, and the right to sue the government.
The change would require 2/3 of all states to approve a constitutional amendment. It won't ever pass. Most of us are only citizens because someone up the chain was born under this rule.
My family came here in the early 1700s and fought in the revolution. It would be a disgrace for me to do anything other than support immigrants.
> Most of us are only citizens because someone up the chain was born under this rule.
This understates the situation. All of us who are not naturalized citizens are citizens only because of the birthright clause in the Constitution. The US does not have any other way for a person born here to become a citizen.
If the birthright clause of the Constitution stops being enforced, Congress (or more likely in our current iteration, the President) will have to create a brand-new set of rules determining which of us natural-born citizens get to retain our citizenship and which do not. There is no existing law to guide them, so they can make it up out of whole cloth.
More plainly: if we choose to eliminate birthright citizenship, whoever is running the country at that time gets to determine whether you are still a citizen.
Serious question - would your ancestors from the 1700s agree that you should support the immigrants you are supporting? Or have you been taught that your ancestors were wrong and evil and that you should honor them by doing the opposite of what they believed?
Not the person you're answering to but the way I interpret their statement is
"my ancestors came here as immigrants in search of a better life 300 years ago. I honor that by helping those doing the same today."
Being American, especially back in 1776 (250 years ago!), was not about ethnicity, but about an ideal - a group of men on the North American continent decided that " that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." [0], and then literally put their lives on the line to protect that ideal.
America is, and has always been, a nation of immigrants. What unites it are the common values - in theory, the idea that everyone there has the right to live free and pursue their happiness, as opposed to the idea that everyone should serve the king because that is the will of God, which was the dominant idea in Europe in the 1700s.
With that view, I can see that supporting people who come to the US so they can be free as continuing what the original poster's ancestors started 300 years ago.
[0] https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip...
This doesn't stop our politicians from completely ignoring the 2nd amendment so whats the difference
> Birthright citizenship is a constitutional right in the US same as freedom of speech, religion, the press, and the right to sue the government.
And we can amend constitutional rights. It most definitely will happen in our lifetimes.
> Most of us are only citizens because someone up the chain was born under this rule.
And?
You think the world in 2026 is exactly the same as in 1776?
What about slavery? Good idea in 1776 therefore good idea in 2026?
The administration has never justified immigration policy on economic terms, only keeping out criminals.
If it were really part of a coherent anti-inflation, pro-housing strategy, then, well, a lot of other policies would be different... (Including signing the ROAD act, not starting trade wars, or driving up the price of oil)
FWIW the Road ACT became law anyway without his signature, but yeah if he wanted to demonstrate he cared about such things he would have signed it promptly and proudly.
>The first because a lower supply of labor is going to create breathing space for an entire working population who will see tremendous job upheaval due to AI automation. A lower aggregate demand on houses, services will also be welcome to take the fuel out of inflation, and maybe we'll regain some of that experience of true affluence, where scarce things (e.g. access to cabin in the woods, a rowhome in a walkable city, ...) are in abundance.
Many immigrants come to America to work and start businesses. That creates jobs. Even the day-laborers buy food, clothing, tools. If we cracked down on businesses that used illegally immigrated workers, that would be a much more targeted way to fight wage suppression.
How could inflation come from illegal immigration? Are the immigrants bringing in crazy amounts of money? Does the existence of more workers competing for an open position drive up the going wage?
If we want to reduce the price of housing, we need to build more houses. That's the key. The trouble is how to tackle the financial and regulatory hurdles that discourage building houses. Clamping down on immigration from poorer countries hurts the construction industry, which employs a lot of immigrants.
>Birthright citizen should be abolished because birth tourism and illegally crossing the border to have anchor babies are a vector for foreigners to participate politically and claim imho undeserved welfare benefits.
If we cared about people with foreign allegiances participating in our politics, we'd ban dual citizenship. If we cared enough about welfare costs to do unpopular things, we'd ban smoking and high-sugar foods. That would save a lot more in welfare costs, and our citizens would be healthier. On my list of priorities for reducing welfare costs, taking money from poor people who don't actually qualify ranks low. It's a mistake or crime that feeds people and gets money circulating in local economies. Not efficient, but not world-ending and probably not common. If you really want to find people receiving benefits despite not actually qualifying, look for senior citizens hiding their wealth as cash in their house.
>I think largely these are the stated reasons of the administration too.
Trump stated immigrants poison the blood of our nation. I'm going to accept that as his actual belief and reasoning.
Our birthrate has been below replacement for several years now. We need immigrants to mitigate that.
I don't get this argument. We skip over fixing the birthrate and instead rely on immigration. There's a whole bunch of reasons people give for why we can't fix it like costs, jobs, housing, etc. Ok, so then first wouldn't immigrants also have the same problem once they get here or do they have a way of bypassing our low birthrate somehow but then we were told we can't bypass it, it exists because of the costs, jobs. etc.
So the immigrants end up with the same birth rate and then we have to bring in more immigrants. So there would have to be a constant source of excess people somewhere else for this to be sustainable. So it gets to a point where I wonder if this is really the plan.
> We skip over fixing the birthrate
You're assuming the birthrate can be "fixed". Japan has an even worse demographic problem. They've tried "fixing" it and nothing much works. Similar for South Korea. Japan would certainly benefit from opening up to more immigration. Countries that can attract more immigration are going to benefit economically as the birthrates continue to decline globally. Why not be attractive to immigrants instead of wanting to repel them?
It is very much possible to use government force to solve the birthrate problem. Romania did it in the 1960s. Mind you, this would cause a lot of misery and suffering but it has been done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770
You can definitely fix it. You might not like what it takes but others don't like their culture being replaced either.
So tell us what it takes, I'm curious
Make abortion and contraception illegal, and strongly enforce those laws.
It worked with Romania in the 1960s and 1970s. Mind you, it caused a bunch of other problems to crop up, but Romania did solve their low birth rate problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770
Teenage pregnancy, limited rights for unmarried women, heavily surveilled birth-control usage, all that good stuff. So long as the culture is preserved! There are 14 words that basically sum it all up
Yes, the only way to preserve USAs culture of freedom of the individual is to dissuade/force women from making choices that dont benefit the group. Else we will fall to communism!!
There is an entire cohort of misogynists on Twitter/X these days who argue we should repeal the 19th and not let women vote.
https://archive.ph/AEfUQ - https://x.com/Schtal2/status/2069217060803035485
As an aside, the notion that 80% of the women sleep with 20% of the men is a complete fabrication:
https://samboy.github.io/blog/80-20-myth.html
Or, crazy idea, we make life livable for the locals and then we incentivize them to have kids of their own? And before you say it, I'm an immigrant from the 3rd world myself. I'm not anti-immigratiom, but the birth rate talking point is a very poor one.
Not to mention how unsustainable it is anyways, what happens a few years down the line when the immigrants stop having kids? There isn't an infinite ocean of people you can import on a whim, and definitely not forever.
I don't care about US immigration, but remember that people don't want to have more children. There's nothing related with costs or whatever. Norway have a lot of incentives and people still prefer to have less kids than USA. If these "livable conditions" were a true argument, rich countries would not need to incentivize people, because they would have more children willingly. Life is way more livable in a rich country than a poor country
No, you need to encourage your existing population to reproduce instead of treating them as replaceable cogs.
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Just how many people are being born through birth tourism and end up claiming more in welfare than they pay in taxes?
I think birth tourism is an overblown fear, but I suppose their answer is that poor welfare sponges and rich-ish passport collectors are both threats, for different reasons.
Minimal. In the hundreds vs H1b with the tens of thousands.
Estimates vary from 40-80%. Not just birth tourism, but all sorts of government handouts (your tax dollars). Especially under Mayorkas.
40-80% of what?
Of illegal immigrants on some form of welfare.
Why are you talking about illegal immigrants when the question was about birth tourism, which is completely legal?
Many don't bother coming back but the ones the do are almost always very expensive.
How many, how expensive, and how much is this offset by others who come back and pay taxes?
I have seen a lot of freakouts about birth tourism since the recent SCOTUS ruling and I haven’t seen anyone give even the most cursory overview of the actual scale of the supposed problem. It’s purely an emotional reaction.
Usually birth tourism is done by wealthier foreigners but that foreign wealth is not visible to the government so they end up qualifying for welfare.
What kind of welfare? Do you have stats or stories? I'm skeptical someone wealthy would slum it for the peanuts they could get from welfare fraud.
Or if they do, surely there are ways wealthy "real Americans" could hide their money just as easily and defraud welfare, so this isn't really a problem specific to birth tourism.
Hard for Americans to hide their assets in america. Land ownership is usually public.
They can do whatever you presume the rich birth tourist does, like deposit in foreign banks, not own US land, obfuscate land ownership through trusts or straw owners.
That doesn’t answer my questions at all.
straight up lying and doomer boomer mentality, sad and gross.
very consistent correlations between migrants being net positive economic providers, more law abiding then native citizens, and just straight up regurgitating racist myths
mass deportations won’t solve anything economic when it’s the same admin hamstringing prices and rates with tariffs, war, and defacto support of the oligopoly
i really wish basement dwellers like you though of something original now and then
its afraid
Conflating not wanting to compete with foreigners for jobs in your own country with racism is bad faith bullshit. Foreigners of the exact same race are equally unwanted competition.
Even taking you at your word, immigrants also create far more jobs. The economy is not some zero sum thing, with some fixed amount of jobs and fixed amount of work and fixed amount of wealth to be split.
Every economic analysis I have ever seen shows that there's economic surplus from immigrants entering a local economy; more jobs and more wealth is created, per person, than if those people had not come. In particular I'm thinking of some studies of local economy in Miami when there have been bursts of immigration.
>In particular I'm thinking of some studies of local economy in Miami when there have been bursts of immigration.
That was study about Cuban immigrants into Miami, a city with large Cuban population and thus existing infrastructure to absorb. I wouldn't draw that study into anything broader.
As someone in Local Politics, the issue generally is, immigration, esp of unskilled kind decimates local budgets since they are generally directly tied to number of people. Here is CBO report on it. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61464
Now, type of immigration that mostly impacts this study is not type of immigration that is impacted by visa application processing halting but acting like "Yea, this current system is working GREAT!" is false. This is what so annoying about this issue, it's in clear need of change but Congress refuses to do it and Trump doesn't have leadership to get it done.
>The economy is not some zero sum thing
No it's a negative sum thing. Especially when they come in at such insane rates as they did under Biden. Notice you car insurance rates going up? Housing costs skyrocketing? Hospital waits taking forever? That's the cost of mass immigration. And that's not even accounting for the millions of illegal immigrants.
>Every economic analysis
Since there apparently so many, surely you wouldn't mind citing a handful.
They say it out loud. The people writing these policies are vocally proud of being white nationalists. Defending them with "well maybe they have a good reason!" is evidence that you're either on board with their actual agenda (i.e., evil) or incomprehensibly naive (i.e., stupid).
There's nothing wrong with being White nationalist. I dont want my country to become India, Africa, China or the Middle East.
Its only racism when you then go and invite white south africans in. And make statements like "Why cant we have more people come in from countries like Norway"
Birthright citizenship is so weird, because when I think of my son’s birthright, I imagine things he’s entitled to because he’s my son. He’ll inherit from my estate, he’ll enjoy my love and encouragement and support, etc. The location of the hospital where he was born doesn’t really have anything to do with it, but now I have an entirely new fear about foreign countries claiming my child if my wife happens to give birth early while on a vacation. Like, I want to go to Israel, but don’t they have compulsory military service? I wouldn’t want the baby to accidentally become an Israeli citizen and forced to serve for some foreign army. Same with China. I’d love to see the country, but they’ve had some weird and draconian laws like the one child policy. For all I know they take some children to be raised by the state. Whatever their laws are… I don’t think they should apply to my children.
This is rather weird framing since usually an additional citizenship (especially one in a country like the US) is considered a valuable thing to have for your child. Usually people claiming birthright citizenship are weird are doing it because they also see it as valuable. It’s also woven into the traditions of New World countries.
Regarding your concerns, I don’t see why it is unreasonable to simply renounce citizenship later or just simply double check your travel itinerary during the late stages of a pregnancy. This seems like at best an unfounded concern.
I agree that you can "just renounce" although notice that this won't necessarily work (it will for the US assuming you follow the procedure properly)
However being a dual citizen isn't necessarily all upside. Citizenship comes with requirements, particularly in some countries military service is mandatory and so if you're a citizen - even though you are a permanent resident of somewhere else, you must either go do your service or maybe pay a fine depending on the country.
You also get treated differently if things go wrong. Foreigners are entitled in most cases to diplomatic assistance from the representatives of their country. Your country can't necessarily do much for you, but typically you will get that phone call home to let loved ones know what happened, they can find a lawyer who speaks your language (but you'll need to find a way to pay them), if there's some paperwork snafu they might be able to help (often for a fee). It's at least nice, if you're jailed or in hospital after surprise food poisoning or whatever, to hear somebody who speaks your language.
None of this applies to dual citizens. You're "home" from their point of view, so no need to contact your diplomatic representative, maybe you have never been there since the day you were born and can't speak a word of the language but too bad.
> You also get treated differently if things go wrong.
Not treated differently. Treated the same.
You are required by law to enter your country of citizenship using that country's passport (this is true for every country). Not doing so can result in fines or jail time. This is precisely to stop idiots from playing the "foreigner" card to try to, for example get out of paying a speeding ticket or parking fines.
You are spreading false information. I routinely enter my other country with a combination of US passport and national ID card. I haven't renewed my passport for that country in almost 20 years, more than half of which I was living there for.
You can always relinquish citizenship. No one is forcing your child to be a dual citizen if they are born abroad.
Lol, no you can't. Most people these days can't.
Costs $2500 AND payment of all student debts.
This place (USA) is literally a fucking company town.
The failure mode is statelessness, and that's a very cruel fate to wish on anybody's baby.
go make your own anarchist nation then
you have a kid like billions of other people in the world, nothing special tbh besides it is "your" kid
you just want a subscription pass to a country, and i think people like that are useless freeloader people who want none of the stakes and all of the benefits
cool you can code and get hired by some company, or maybe you start a company. so what?