What other countries would you say are friendlier and easier to immigrate to than the US? In most places it is not an option unless you have a job offer or significant wealth.
Have you tried to immigrate to the US? Have you tried to immigrate to any country in the EU or the UK? The latter is far easier than the former (I'm English living in the US with a Finnish wife, so have had to look at all these systems since Brexit).
I have. The UK is as hard or possibly even harder now (since the brexit) as US. The rest of EU is not as hard but you need to weigh by pay difference and how many people actually want to immigrate, then it's not even close.
Essentially the UK requires you to speak English and have a job offer over 26k GBP in a skilled role where 'Skilled' expects the skills needed are that of an 18 year old school leaver, or less skill requirements if it's a role with a shortage, or less money if you have an advanced degree. That's pretty open IMO.
My recollection is UK immigration required you to pass some sort of UK version of TOEFL. US only has an official "language test" during naturalization and it's basically just one question that immigration officer asks you. Quite a difference in effort.
Tier 2 general visa is much easier than H1-B. Tier 2 ICT is near instant. You can then switch the latter to the former quite easily. And then it's 5 years flat to having ILR (which is a green card equivalent).
If you're Indian, you're waiting way longer than that in the US.
However, I think if you're not from India/China/Mexico, the constraint is that getting an H-1B is lottery-bound, and then you'll get the GC easily.
While there may be a lot of countries where it may be harder in terms of qualifications, the US is probably singular among western democracies around the capriciousness and randomness of its processes. Particularly for skilled immigrants, and particularly those from India and China.
Which other country goes "skilled immigrants RAH RAH!" but also imposes a random lottery instead of going on the basis of some kind of points/job offer based system? In which other country can you have a "manager" in your job title and then get a fast track to PR (L1-A) regardless of whether you are a Technical Account Manager 2 years out of school vs a Director with 20 years of experience?
Which other country imposes arbitrary moving dates for when you can get permanent residency? My understanding is every western democracy has a well defined path to permanent residency from a work visa. In Canada it is 0-3 years, in the EU it is 2-5 years (based on various factors). But once you tick those boxes you know how much time it will take. In the US, it really depends on USCIS's budget, the phase of the moon, which country you are born in, and how many green cards they decide to "waste" in any given year.
>Which other country goes "skilled immigrants RAH RAH!" but also imposes a random lottery instead of going on the basis of some kind of points/job offer based system?
I think I've posted about this before, but yeah it's pretty ridiculous. My college girlfriend was a foreign exchange student from India, was here all through highschool, had a fullride to college via a (maybe government sponsored?) academic scholarship, graduated with her degree in electrical engineering 2nd in her class, and got a 6 figure job right of out college. She got kicked out about a year later because she didn't "win" the "lottery" and her visa wasn't renewed. What a sheer fucking waste of talent and time and money educating her just to boot her out of the country like that.
A literal week after she was forced to leave, I was talking to my uber driver who told me of her sister's boyfriend who was also an Indian emigrant, in and out of court/jail for petty theft and various levels of assault/battery, that somehow managed to secure his citizenship a couple of months prior. I know it's just one anecdote among literally thousands of possibly millions of cases, but what a fucking crazy world we live in today where that's how things can play out.
Being young and dumb and in love, I briefly floated the idea of marriage to secure her a greencard, but she talked me out of it and we ended up parting as friends when she left. Lost contact after she got married a few years later and moved to Australia with her new partner so she definitely landed okay and I am so extremely happy where I am today in life and with my current partner, but somedays my mind just wanders and I find myself reminiscing and wondering about what could've been.
> instead of going on the basis of some kind of points/job offer based system
Personal opinion: I think the point based systems are unfair.
For example, you get points by merely finishing college. Someone who didn’t have the opportunity to do college is not necessarily a low-skill worker neither are they less intelligent. A fairer thing will be to access people individually on their capabilities.
The US has things like the O1 visa which in my opinion is not random and more fair than most systems. But a random system is also valuable and necessary, so you need both.
I agree they are not entirely fair.
However lottery/random systems have a lot of burden of work that ends up wasted, leading employers to shy away from doing it. If you have do X amount of paperwork per candidate and there is only a 20% chance of getting through to the lottery, why do it?
In the absence of enough funding and employees at USCIS to be able to individually assess people, having some kind of cutoff criteria is better than a lottery. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.
> unless you have a job offer or significant wealth
Isn't that exactly the same for the US ? If anything, because of the lottery, having a job offer is only gives you a 30% chance to actually get the visa. The USA (practically) has no path to permanent residency if you are Indian.
Even just getting to the job offer needs you to be on an F1-OPT which usually implies between $100-200k of college tuition just to apply for a job permit.
In that sense, the US needs both significant wealth & a job offer all while giving no pathway to permanent residency if you're born in the wrong country.
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For tech workers: Canada, the EU (through France, Ireland) and Australia are certainly easier to immigrate to. (wages are another question). Singapore & Dubai/UAE are popular destinations for working, though PRs can be awkward or impossible.
Even supposed harder to immigrate countries look easier, if you think about how every country needs you to be fluent in the local language. That everyone learns English is a testament to the political dominance of the USA & the UK over the last 300 years, and not a foregone conclusion.
There are over a billion people in India. There are probably more people in India who would like to move to the US than there are people currently in the US.
I’m sympathetic, but it’s not really feasible for the US to accommodate everyone in the world and it’s not like the US owes it to anyone to just let anyone live there just because they’d like to.
I mean, people aren't asking for infinite slots for Indians. Hell, they aren't even asking for more slots.
They are asking for one or multiple of :
1. Use of lapsed green cards slots from other categories to be used for pending green cards.
2. Removal/Relaxing of the 7% rule, which uniquely inconveniences Indians. (If the idea is diversity, then in almost every way India is more diverse than arbitrarily formed culturally homogeneous tiny nations around the world.)
3. More humane work permit rules for those who have a PR in the waiting. Eg: relaxing the insane 60 day unemployment rule, reducing need to restamp visa incredibly often, allowing secondary sources of income or starting a startup.
4. More stable processing times and predictions on how long PR waiting time actually are. Current estimates vary from 20-100 years. That is simply unacceptable as a range.
With all this stuff, it sounds like the country is telling you that they don't really want you there. Why do you insist on going someplace where you're not wanted? You're not a citizen, so you don't really have a right to complain about the immigration process. Perhaps look for a country that actually welcomes immigrants?
Removal/Relaxing of the 7% rule, which uniquely inconveniences Indians. (If the idea is diversity, then in almost every way India is more diverse than arbitrarily formed culturally homogeneous tiny nations around the world.
Ah I see, so if country A has a million people and country B has a billion people then people from country A have a 1000x higher probability of getting a green card? Now I understand the problem.
USA hands out a million green cards, but only 150k for employment based. For all the talks of immigrants bringing skills, we are really not preferred. They'll hand out 50k "diversity visas" by lottery, but God forbid more than 10k indians come into the country for their skills. And even the skills based visas barely prefer more skilled or in demand immigrants. That's what they call "abuse" by H1B/eb1 but also oppose any wage based or PhD preferring rules. Hypocrites hiding their true racist intentions.
If you are arguing that there are an unsustainable number of employment based green cards being handed out, you could not be more wrong.
USA hands out a million green cards every year. But only 150k are employment based. These are capped at 7% for each country. Only 10k out of a million green cards are assigned per year for Indian immigrants based on their employments.
For all the talk of meritocracy, looking beyond skin color, and valuing high skilled immigrants, USA definitely has policies that discriminate on national origin and actively encourage low skilled immigration (2 million unauthorized border crossings, policies allowing rampant "abuse" in h1b/eb1c visas whenever high skilled immigrants are concerned, constant opposition to making it easier for PhDs to get a green card or say putting wage rules on h1b/eb1,2,3).
The proportion of family member visas to skilled worker visas that US visas are skewed significantly towards the former compared to most other countries.
It is the family pathway which is available only to very small communities whose (mostly) brothers immigrated to the US in the 80-90s. That's because afaik, it also has a 20-ish year waiting. So the convenience store owners are very likely to be folks from this group that are getting green cards for applications they put in when they used to young. There is a reason they all seem to be old men. Most young Indians at these stores are part-time workers on visa studying at universities nearby.
For the last couple of decades, a US university degree -> STEM job is the only way known legal way for an Indian to come to US on their own merit. I specify STEM, because none of the other professions get the STEM-OPT (3 tries at the low-probability h1b lottery vs 1 try for normal students), so most US employers blanket reject candidates in non-STEM professions.
I can say about Germany. There is a working visa for qualified workers called Blue Card which is what most software engineers get. With it you can stay unemployed for three months and can apply for a jobseeker visa after that without having to return. Also if you know German above certain level you can get a permanent residency after less than two years, which is not tied to being employed
I’ve traveled around and looking into residing outside of my native USA. It’s much easier in many places to get residency. You can get a job offer which leads to a work visa pretty easily. You can start a company and hire yourself. You can simply apply for residency if you have foreign sourced income. You can buy a property or invest. There are lots of options, and most of these options are not options in the USA.
From what I've heard from friends, Canada is more straightforward to immigrate to and become a PR. It is often used as a holding office for those with visa issues in the US by big tech companies.
The majority of countries people would actually want to work in. All of the EU, UK, countries like Australia give permanent residence to Global Talents (I've recently got this visa), also accepted by NZ. It's much easier to get a work permit for countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan (no silly several months wait/October-only start date/raffle for H-1B) etc.
I love the US, lived there for a decade and would love to go back to California. But I'd never go on H-1B and I don't see anyone sponsoring me a green card again (returned mine seven years ago). So there's that.
TL;DR: The US is not easy to (legally) immigrate to compared to many other places.
Work visa to permanent residence to citizenship is how most immigrants do that. Family immigration is the only thing that's easier, but, of course, it requires a relative to sponsor - which most potential immigrants do not have.
That is true. USA has rules that prefer low skilled immigration, preferably family based, and forces even the high skilled immigration visas to be broad enough to not really prefer high skilled immigrants. Further, USA discriminates based on national origin.
Canada has policies that prefer high skilled immigrants coming for employment, and does not discriminate on where they come from.
So yeah, USA has more difficult for immigrants from big countries who want to contribute with their skills, while Canada welcomes those.
Japan's system seems like Canada's, and basically the opposite of the US's: high-skill professionals easily get 5-year work visas, and can apply for permanent residence (PR) after 1 or 3 years depending on points. Having family members in the country, however, is worthless unless you marry a Japanese national.
Honestly, I don't see why a country would prefer people to bring in all their distant cousins, rather than a bunch of highly skilled professionals who contribute a lot to the economy.
