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rayiner | on: U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications
American immigration laws are designed to have a small stream of permanent immigration, both to protect american jobs and to protect american culture from foreign influence. That’s what people voted for over decades. The New York Times did a good podcast on the issue. https://youtu.be/xgDdTV7A57w. If you want to define “xenophobic” to encompass that then that’s your choice. I don't think that's a sensible or useful definition. The concept of "xenophobia" only applies to individuals. It's wrong to assume that somebody will be a certain way because of their nationality. That obviously doesn't translate to immigration, which involves the mass movement of people who do have a distinct culture in the aggregate, and do transplant their culture into the U.S.: https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran...
lanstin | parent
I know a lot of people that support these cruel and chaotic changes to our immigration laws and they are mostly xenophobic - they don’t like people speaking languages other than English at the store, they don’t like religions different than their own, they don’t like family traditions different than their own.
rayiner | root | parent | next
Xenophobia is about assuming that people are different because of their national origin. It's not "xenophobia" if there are actual differences, especially if there are actual changes to someone's society. Treating all cultural differences as equally desirable is cultural relativism. Not everyone who rejects cultural relativism is xenophobic. You're allowed to prefer your own culture and to live in a society that reflects your culture. The countries that most immigrants come from treat that principle as axiomatic.
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assemblyman | root | parent
This might seem like an academic point but the support of all xenophobic people for these changes doesn't imply that some non-xenophobes don't support these changes (or ones in the same spirit) as well. I don't know what the relative numbers are, but the support of a negative group for a cause doesn't invalidate the cause.

US immigration can be very slow and bureaucratic (even pre-Trump). I hesitate to say but generally, it's not as arbitrary as people think. If things are clearly above board, it works out.

The US still is a destination in very high-demand. There are a huge number of qualified and unqualified people, who would come here in a heartbeat (and it goes without saying, there are a huge number of people who have no interest in moving here).There are clearly agents like the H-1B body shops who have exploited the system. Similarly, masters programs were launched effectively to trade full tuition for an opportunity to enter the US labor market (e.g. all the masters in financial math programs). This doesn't mean we don't get amazing people on H-1Bs or in masters programs but these pathways have been exploited.

Many people desire a sane immigration policy and experience. One that allows promising candidates into the country. The exact definition of a "promising candidate" was outsourced to universities and companies sponsoring these visas. A lot of people have lost trust in those institutions. I don't know what a good solution is but the rise of these policies is a symptom that the current system is not working.

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