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earthdeity | on: U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications
Rules are well and good, but norms are important too. An immigration system governs people making major life choices, and companies making large investments.

Legally, there's very little the state can't do, there could be a bill passed tomorrow revoking all immigrant visas. But businesses, and by proxy the nation, benefit from work done by these workers.

Sudden unilateral moves like this are stupid on a social level (cause damage to businesses and communities), and on a moral level. "First do no harm" is a principle just as suited to government as medicine. Even if there is a broad consensus for reducing or eliminating H1B visas, why punish people who followed the system as it exists and contributed? It's perfectly possible to pass a bill, stop handing out new visas, and sunset renewals after some 1-2 year timeframe.

It's legal to invite a bunch of guests over and kick them all out after you open the wine, but you're going to lose friends. And ultimately it will be businesses and individuals paying the cost for these needlessly volatile course changes. Tourism and high skilled immigration rates will face lasting harm.

rayiner | parent
> Rules are well and good, but norms are important too

Not when the norm is open defiance of the rules for decades.

> An immigration system governs people making major life choices, and companies making large investments.

And it also governs the right of people to decide who they want to invite into their country and, ultimately, with whom they want to share democratic governance of their home. Those are important stakes, not to be minimized. But you neglected to mention them.

earthdeity | root | parent
Defiance of the rules? What rules exactly? The law does make clear that H1-Bs are temporary workers. But it's also permitted to renew, and workers are allowed to pursue immigrant status. In fact, until 1990 there was specific language saying that H1-B's (like all visitor visas) are not supposed to want to stay, they must maintain a foreign residence "which he has no intention of abandoning". This language was struck and the visas became, and still are, the most common defacto "seeking green card" status for workers seeking to move the US.

To be clear, while a person who enters the US on an H1-B is a temporary worker, they are not prohibited from also seeking a permanent status. So it's fully within the rules, which is why it becomes a question of norms. In the present, the H1-B is (was?) the most popular route to permanent immigration to the US besides family sponsorship.

I specifically said that the government (and the citizenry by extension) can decide who it wants to enter and stay, how much immigration, whatever. But changing the rules suddenly, upending peoples lives who have not broken any rules, through a pathway the US state itself freely established, is immoral and short sighted.

It should go without saying that there are experts across many fields in industry that any country would benefit from attracting. The US is harming its capacity to attract and keep that talent with these ridiculous theatrics.

rayiner | root | parent
> This language was struck and the visas became, and still are, the most common defacto "seeking green card" status for workers seeking to move the US.

Incorrect. H1B still requires non-immigrant intent. The only thing that was struck was requiring the government to presume non-immigrant intent automatically upon some filing for permanent residency. That was not intended to change the system into a de facto permanent residency pipeline.