Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says

I see lots of comments about the legal minutiae around this -- but as a non-US person I'd like to understand the motivation.

Straight-up nativist discrimination? This kind of technical measure would seem to be hard to sell to the MAGA base, compared to something more blatant? Or is this somehow a favour for their corporate clients?

This swill split entire families, more likely forcing those in the US to follow those who need to leave. Of course this has nothing to do with immigration. They're indeed feeding their racist voters some candy, but the goal is rather to reduce population among the poor to counter the inevitable unrest that is happening soon, when tens millions of families will be left with nothing to put on the table because of recent technological advancements that happened too fast before society could adapt.

On a related topic, the number of H1Bs brought in by big tech has been insane. Have you seen mtn view castro lately?

Looks like a recipe for a brain drain, but out of US for a change.

This is going to worsen healthcare in the United States.

Many critical roles are filled with doctors who are here on visas because there simply aren’t American graduates who want those jobs. I’m talking about jobs being doctors in hospitals and towns and cities that are not the most desirable.

Many of those doctors filling these positions today are immigrants who are on visas. They want to get green cards and stay here. They end up living long term in those communities caring for patients in them over the years.

If this policy goes into effect it will hurt all of that. And actually many of these hospitals and less desirable areas are placed with lots of Trump voters too.

In general if someone has spent years working hard with a visa and is law abiding and contributes to the community I don’t understand the purpose of making immigration harder. And I especially don’t understand why you would make it harder for doctors and engineers and other educated people who are here on visas to get a green card.

Can someone explain the rationale?

> doctrine of consular nonreviewability protects any denial from judicial review, and there is no administrative appeals process.

I personally think this is the big secondary benefit that the administration is going for.

One of my hardest working coworkers at the big box retail store was here on a perpetually extended U visa (reserved for witnesses to crimes of federal interest) after being sold to a sex trafficker at a young age back in the 90's.

Under Trump 1 she was fired because they wouldn't renew it and she lost work authorization. Her kids are citizens and she speaks better English than Spanish, she was educated here and is effectively fully integrated. But she's slightly brown, and Stephen Miller says we can't have that.

The most insane thing to me is that legal (non-asylum) immigration is somehow framed as a “moral” thing that nations do out of charity.

Its not: you get to directly address a shortage in your country without the burden of raising and training the person. Arguably, if you don’t mind morality, the immigrants are also easier to exploit. And all that + you get a free tax payer!

My reading is that Americans (but also other parts of the world) are 1) uneducated on this topic 2) racist and or xenophobic to the point of self sabotage.

Quite literally if county building was a video game where the xenophobia of the masses could be ignored, I would brain drain the shit out of every country, leaving myself stronger and the rest weaker.

Legal immigration was already hard. Just went through that green card process with my wife from China, glad we already got it done. But, even before Trump admin 2nd term, it's been difficult. Further, even my wife has the green card, my Chinese mother-in-law has been rejected twice for a simple visitors visa, and I'm an American that has been with my wife for 16 years. She was rejected before Trumps latest term while Democrats were in power. She owns like 3 houses in China and has plenty of assets and would not move here permanently even if there were zero friction. We just want her to be able to visit us a few months per year instead of me being forced to fly my entire family of four back to China each year just to visit my wife's mother. These stupid barriers are totally ridiculous. I promise, Grandma from China isn't taking anyone's job and she has plenty of money to spend while she's here to help the economy and then she wants to return home.

All that said, as a data point, when I got my working permit and working visa to legally work in China, I first had to fly back to America and get a "landing" visa issued, then fly back to China, where they then finally issued me the China working visa and China resident permit. So, I think globally, this is pretty common for process.

To make sure this opinion is here:

The fact that they get to make this announcement is probably the biggest upside. Their base loves it. It makes people think they are doing something. There is an asymmetry in that if they quietly roll this back or it's blocked in court, it will generate only a tiny fraction of the publicity.

Probably not too controversial here to say that the economy wants these immigrants so good bet they'll keep getting hired.

It's a cruel strategy, but I think it's fair to say that it's far from certain it'll be a consistent one.

Don't let them troll you too much, stay strong.

My colleague organizes workshops for gifted teenagers interested in tech/science in Europe. He often asks them if they want to go study abroad. A few years back, most of them would say they want to go to the US. Now none of them do. This is not hyperbole - he said literally 0 wanted to go to the US.

Maybe that country still has some prestige somewhere else and people still want to apply but definitely not here. We've been watching the country sabotage itself and take a nosedive for a while now. The latest president is just the cherry on top.

I hope the rest of the world learns from this but I doubt it actually will.

This is an absurd change that will have catastrophic consequences in both academia and the private sector. Even if you're a US citizen who is "America First", you will feel the impact, and it will be net negative.

From the USCIS policy directive.

>> admitted into the United States as nonimmigrants to depart rather than pursue adjustment of status. Such aliens are generally expected to pursue an immigrant visa and admission from outside the United States if they wish to reside permanently in this country.

H1-B was already a dual intent visa. Are they trying to create a new visa category?

Whatever they are trying to get to this is a big concern for all H1B employees.

Is this just for when applying for I-485 that you have to make a quick entry/exit trip,

or is it effective all the way back at I-140 time where people would then need to spend years away from the US?

The performative cruelty is the intent, I guess. At this point, seems like the only practical thing to do is to wait the lunatic out.

However, the big question this will leave for future immigrants is 'What if this current administration is the prototype for future Republican administrations?'

I don't feel scared of or concerned about immigration. That's it. I don't know where that's coming from.

Is this intended to ensure that students and H1-Bs will not have a path to residency unless they disrupt their lives here?

They obviously know how unpopular this is, or else they wouldn't be releasing on a Friday night. This is so unimaginably disruptive, I wonder who inside the administration is suggesting this.

Anecdote time:

My Eastern European wife and I recently faced the decision of how to go about getting her a green card. At the time we lived outside the US.

One option was to enter the US on her B1 visa pretending to have no “immigration intent” and then “change our mind” a respectable number of days later and apply for AOS. The process for this was 1.5 to 2 years. I didn’t want to do it for that reason and because I wasn’t comfortable with what amounts to visa fraud, but our attorney presented it as a pretty standard option.

The other option was consular processing. This wasn’t automatic. Our attorney contacted a few consulates in the region where we lived to see if any would accept our case (due to war the consulate in her home country wasn’t handling routine cases). We got approved for consular processing in Budapest.

I had to go once as the US citizen spouse to submit our application packet and do a pro forma interview. Then a few months later it was my wife’s turn to go to the interview.

The process, like any immigration process, was paperwork heavy and nerve wracking. The final interview was very simple and felt like a formality.

In that case once approved she received a visa that would be stamped upon entry to the US and this would count as a temporary green card pending receipt of the physical card.

All of this happened during the second Trump administration so I was expecting a hostile or at least adversarial process. But it was quite the opposite. Total elapsed time was about six months from initial attorney consult to entry into the US as an LPR. It would have been faster if our attorney was more on the ball getting our final interview appointment.

If I were to find myself in need of a green card for a foreign spouse again I would opt for consular processing if given the choice. Now that it’s required I imagine there will be a longer backlog.

Obviously if you need to do this at one of the consulates that no longer offers consular processing that’s a different story. I was fortunate that the Budapest consulate agreed to take our case.

Curious how the tech lobby will react. You would hope Musk and Huang might take their own personal experience into account.

This seems like it could have some ramifications.

Let's saying you're dating somebody on a work visa, if you wanted to marry and sponsor their residency, would they now need to return to their home country to wait for the embassy?

The embassies reviewing applications put a LOT of weight on time spent in person, BUT they also require the US applicant to have domicile. So effectively, the only way to proceed is a long-distance marriage that could take years to process a visa for (remember: move abroad, and you could lose the domicile required to sponsor the green card).

So with our shrinking birthrates, our regularly documented & growing "will never marry" population, immigration effectively cut off, what does the future of this country even look like anymore?

That’s crazy. If someone is already living and working here, and is legally here (like on a work visa), why shouldn’t they be allowed to apply here? Why require them to lose time and money by traveling somewhere else?

The DHS has made many communications that were openly white supremacist. It's not just an unfair situation with legal technicalities. Their views and plans are more extreme and dangerous than our society is able to accept as reality, so many are in denial. There are obvious historical parallels.

There need to be thorough weekly video walkthroughs of all of the detention centers. Otherwise you can expect actual starvation at some point.

"The Cruelty Is the Point President Trump and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear"

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelt...

All this means is that I485 is no longer allowed and everyone needs to do Consular processing. It doesn't mean that Green Cards are no longer being processed.

I did consular processing when I got my Green Card. It's the FINAL step fo the GC process. You don't need to be outside the US for all the other stages, in fact I think if you leave during some parts, it would be considered abandoning your application. It just means that while you're in the US, you need to schedule an appointment at the US embassy/consulate in your home country, and fly back. Then you go through the appointment and there on the spot you're approved or rejected. It's a big nerve wracking but unless you lied you will be fine. Then you fly back to the US.

For me CP was much much faster, on the order of months.

This is a good thing. Adjustment of status for those within the USA is backlogged- by years for people from certain countries. Going to the home consulate for the final stamp will save years for many people.

F1 and h1 are non-immigrant visa.

American law only allows a person to reside in the country with one Visa type.

The green card is an immigrant visa - and the new visa is issued through an adjustment of status for those inside the USA (backlogged) or by consulates (nearly immediately).

So this is a good thing. It’s easy to get alarmed.

I support this. The United States is too crowded. I don't want to compete with all these new people for housing. American citizens really need to begin advocating for themselves. For their material interests.

This administration has made it clear in no uncertain words or actions. They don’t want immigrants. And if you think this is bad policy, please stop voting for them. Please vote for the alternative candidates. This is the easiest way to fix this nonsense.

This is common practice in many countries, although I don't quite understand why

it is way easier to immigrate to China, no kidding.

Hong Kong introduced new self-sponsored visas, Mainland introduced new high-tech visas couple months ago

This thread has a lot of comments that seem to associate labor regulations and concern for the poor underclass, and immigrants themselves, with racism. Effective, but not in the intended way.

your life in your home country must be really terrible to decide to come to the USA to jump through all of these hoops now.

What the Trump administration has done, and is doing, to people wildly obscene — and I think evil.

Let's not mince words. My heart goes out to everyone impacted by all this.

The president isn't a king. If Congress weren't cowards this would be trivially preventable.

Forget the French, the new meme for cowards who retreat at the first opportunity should be the American Congress.

Does the American Dream myth still exist?

We live on a prison planet. The borders are the cell walls. Some of us have more privileges and freedom to travel, but we're all restricted. This doesn't help anyone other than the few parasitic slave masters.

Companies don’t want their H1s getting a green card and the freedom that comes with it.

My wife already has her green card through our marriage - but it expired under the Biden admin and we were given a 4 year “non-renewal extension” because USCIS was unable to process its renewal in time due to the post-COVID backlog. We’ve got about a year left on that extension and are absolutely terrified we are going to be forced to uproot our entire life by this evil administration and its pointlessly cruel policies.

When I renewed my H1B visa (I think after three years), I had to leave the US to do it. I couldn't renew it from inside. The permission to work got renewed just fine - I could just keep on working for another three years - but if I left after the first visa expired, and wanted to come back, I would need a new _visa_ (thing stuck into my passport) to come back, and I could only apply for that while outside the country.

I read that it used to not be like this, that it used to be possible to renew the _visa_ itself from inside the US, but that got changed before my time. I can only imagine that the reason for that was that non-citizens inside the US are entitled to due process, but non-citizens outside the US are not. And denying a visa to somebody outside the US is therefore a lot easier than denying it to somebody inside the US, and essentially cannot be appealed.

When I applied for AOS form H1B to Green Card, I didn't have to leave the US. With this change, I would have had to. The only reason I can think for this change is that denials of AOS would now become unappealable. I hate this.

Silicon Valley bigwigs supported this administration vocally. I am starting to doubt that their interests and morality align with mine.

This is them working their way up through "purges" of undesireables. Remember it first started with illegal immigrants. Now it's expanding the classes of who counts as illegal. First forcing green card holders to become illegal. Next they'll make it illegal to speak out against the government, be a union organizer, trans person, non-Christian, anyone who gets or helps someone get an abortion (actually that's already illegal), socialists/social democrats, anyone who supports Palestine.

By 2029 the gloves will come off. The internment camps of today will be dwarfed by what comes next. If you think I'm crazy, look at what they've already said in the past. They are not kidding anymore.

Objectively terrible policy for ethics, public safety, and, selfishly, the American economy. Immigrants contribute to economic growth and are less likely to commit crimes are well established facts. It’s the 21st century, we have the internet and education is accessible, but instead of recognizing and championing the vital role of immigrants in America’s rise to power, here the nation moves to hurt itself for some misguided anti immigrant ideology.

The number of people commenting who are grossly misinformed yet feel very confident is very very high.

Many comments are calling legitimate facts as “wrong”.

People don’t event know the difference between a visa and a permanent resident status and yet feel compelled to talk about foreign born people coming to America, “non- western” or “non-European” immigrants.

Do better HN audience. This is very disappointing.

I have never regretted abandoning my Green card and giving up US PR. Honestly every day I feel I lucked out by not being stuck there. Especially now in the NewUSA

I am under the impression this does not apply to for example o-1 visas. Possibly not for h1-b. Is everyone clear about what they are commenting on here? Is the news coverage clear?

Makes sense and this is how we do it in Australia.

That's how it works for legal immigrants, yes.

This must be rolled back this is so hella disruptive. But it’s very much in line with this administration. One part stupid another part callous and 3 parts bad for the economy.

next headline: trump closes consulates in nonwhite countries