I think, at least historically, the crowd here has been heavily based in the bay area and the odds that they've worked in tech alongside other people on visas would be high. So it would lead one to believe that people have at least some understanding of how things work. I say historically because like most social networks, this site has also expanded to become more of an x.com or reddit style global venue, so that in-group assumption isn't true anymore.
Actually, there is. I am a bit tired of correcting these types of misunderstandings that people have. Unreasonable delay, unlawful witholding, arbitrary and capricious are all well defined terms in the law and courts have routinely held and even forced the government to take action (i.e., do their job) when they just pause or suspend things. For a few recent decisions read this:
Tell me how bitter you are without telling me how bitter you are, anonymously.
You’ve let your bitterness infect your happiness and think no one can see you regurgitating your lack of self worth all over your shirt.
Can we agree these are actions of a coward, you’re attempting to label as democracy and that it accomplishes nothing because no one reading this has authority?
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.
Right, stateside renewal was common until 9/11. Disappointingly, Biden tried to bring it back but was presumably thwarted by labor/union or incompetence. Immigration tends to be a bipartisan morass.
You are arguing semantics and peculiar archaic ones at that. It is not prohibited. It is permitted. In fact it is so common that Congress had to pass AC21 to mitigate the damage caused by indefinite backlogs in the H-1B->GC pipeline. A majority of employment based greencards are issued to people in the US through adjustment of status. The purpose of the system is what it does.
Yeah, law is about semantics. And semantics reflects underlying politics. Immigration proponents never had the political capital to enact a law that actually reflects current practice.
>Immigration proponents never had the political capital to enact a law that actually reflects current practice.
Reagan, in 1986, signed a bill that legalized any illegal immigrant who came here before 1982 and 3 million people applied, of which 2.7 million were granted.
This was a bipartisan bill. Democrats and Republicans worked together to do that. This was literally the bill that established the requirement that an employer cannot "knowingly" hire an illegal immigrant. There was zero enforcement from day one. Because the bill was pushed by agriculture groups.
Reagan said, "The legalization provisions in this act will go far to improve the lives of a class of individuals who now must hide in the shadows, without access to many of the benefits of a free and open society. Very soon many of these men and women will be able to step into the sunlight and, ultimately, if they choose, they may become Americans."
Go ahead and tell me recent democrat immigration policy, under "Obama the deporter in Chief, was somehow more lax than that. Than literally legalizing 3 million people with the stroke of a pen and a smile and doing nothing at all to actually implement the disincentives that would prevent future immigration.
Reagan signed a law that made it illegal for hospitals to deny emergency care based on immigration status.
The nation did not have any immigration law at all until after the civil war. Then we banned all chinese laborers for 30 years.
What's funny, is that Reagan's amnesty happened after* Mexican immigration had gotten federal attention as a serious problem and we ran "Operation Wetback". That program is somewhat of an analogue to what Trump and ICE are doing right now, including the part about deporting legal citizens. Operation wetback was pushed for, again, by agricultural interests.
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.
It's not really money. Frankly, no 20 year old thinks that much about money. They do things that they like, whether that is going to school, working at a job, or starting up. And you don't know about the broken immigration system from the outside. The reason this problem is unique to India is due to country caps/DEI which prevents people from India on H-1B from getting a green card.
I disagree that no 20 year old thinks that much about money.
If you're lucky enough to have had rich enough parents to not have to worry about money too much, yes, you'll probably optimize for doing things you enjoy, but people who spend a lot of their younger years with money issues will sometimes obsess about it and really focus their lives around 'getting rich'.
I've noticed have similar phenomena with people who are deprived of certain important needs in their youth - people who are starved of a certain type of parental affection overcompensating by orienting their lives around getting more of it (eg women with daddy issues who are very promiscuous), people who feel disrespected and downtrodden who become obsessed with social status, people who get bullied and get into martial arts...
If you've ever read Gone With The Wind, there's a line where Scarlett O'Hara says "with God as my witness, I'll never go hungry again". I suspect that many people who have similar experiences will react by orienting their lives in a similar manner. "I was deprived of something important, so I will react by over-indexing on that important thing I was deprived of, to avoid the future pain of being again deprived of it".
* If you're lucky enough to have had rich enough parents to not have to worry about money too much, yes, you'll probably optimize for doing things you enjoy, but people who spend a lot of their younger years with money issues will sometimes obsess about it and really focus their lives around 'getting rich'.*
I think you’re in the right ballpark, and I have seen it play out exactly that. However, I think it is even more common for rich kids to obsess about getting richer.
In my experience, as long as their needs are being met, most people get used to whatever lifestyle they are raised in, and stick with it. if they grew up in a family that chases wealth, and equates income with self worth, then they tend to keep doing that.
>So just imagine, having a normal job in the US and you're asked to leave to renew your visa and this stuff happens.
You are confusing some terms. You are never asked to leave to renew the visa. Visa is an entry document. It only serves the purpose of granting you entry. When you are in the US, your stay is covered by your status. If you extend or change your status, you will continue to be in legal status in the US. That is, you are never asked to leave as long as you are in status. If you do leave on your own though, you will need a new visa if your old one has expired. So the TLDR is that if you leave on your own, you will get stranded.
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