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Posted by tlhunter 1 day ago

Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says(www.nytimes.com)
https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/us-citizenship-...

https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/memos/PM-... [pdf]

https://twitter.com/DHSgov/status/2057817233200418837, https://xcancel.com/DHSgov/status/2057817233200418837

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrpz4l1klgo

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2026/05/22/new-ru..., https://archive.is/yi2cX

744 points | 1263 commentspage 12
s03nk3 1 day ago|
TBH I think that is fair.
cloche 1 day ago||
Have you been through an immigration process?
chrinic6391 22 hours ago||
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archagon 1 day ago||
Who are you?
chrinic6391 22 hours ago||
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nine_zeros 17 hours ago||
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cboyardee 7 hours ago||
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GuestFAUniverse 18 hours ago||
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booleandilemma 1 day ago||
[flagged]
vachina 16 hours ago||
[flagged]
leosanchez 16 hours ago|
So people from other countries also have to suffer ?
vachina 16 hours ago||
No

https://infogram.com/figure-3-employment-based-green-card-pe...

jrmg 15 hours ago||
Your curt ‘no’ is ignoring backed by your own source, hundreds of thousands of people a year.
vachina 15 hours ago||
Okay, not as much. Point still stands.
SilverElfin 1 day ago||
So the racists in the Trump administration - my guess is Stephen Miller types - are literally making it so that LEGAL immigrants have to spend thousands of dollars and time to go submit a form in another country, when they can do it here? Or online? Why?

The cruelty is the point. They want the economic benefit of immigrants but also want them to live in uncertainty and without any easy path to settling down. Complete and utterly stupid.

dyauspitr 18 hours ago||
How to destroy the greatest country on earth.
jimmydoe 17 hours ago||
There's no THE greatest country; every country can be great.

US&A has been the escape hatch for oppressive regime in China/Russia/... for many years, young people from there seek freedom in US, instead of fight for freedom in their own.

Individual freedom is great but collectively they made people who can't migrate have less and less freedom. Some expected US&A compensate that with trade, military and twitter, which all turned out to be disasters.

I'm sorry for anyone stuck in those processes, but for long term US&A giving up on Green card / dual citizenship is not necessarily a bad thing for the world.

talon8635 13 hours ago||
> Individual freedom is great but collectively they made people who can't migrate have less and less freedom

Damned if we don’t allow people in and, apparently, damned also if we do allow some in

Your strange argument would actually support this policy: stop letting these people into the USA so that they stay in their own repressive countries and are forced to reform them.

Jare 15 hours ago|||
> the greatest country on earth.

Hundreds of millions of people from abroad shared that belief up until 2 decades ago or so. I don't think they believe it anymore. It's been like watching your awesome high school friend throw away their lives over time.

saltcured 13 hours ago|||
Step 1: tell ourselves we are the greatest on earth?
sleepybrett 16 hours ago|||
... by what metric is/was the us 'the greatest country on earth'?
beej71 13 hours ago||
We just dropped three points to 81% on the Freedom House freedom index, so it's certainly not that.
efitz 17 hours ago|||
[flagged]
grassfedgeek 17 hours ago|||
It will destroy the United States as a leading economy and superpower.

Think about it: China draws mainly on the talents of the best of its billion+ population. But America has had its pick of the best of the world's 8 billion people. Until now.

swingboy 15 hours ago|||
There are a lot of people in the USA that put identity like race and culture above how well the economy is doing.
grassfedgeek 12 hours ago|||
The US is best understood as a land of opportunity: a country with a strong economy and a population that is diverse in race, culture, and background. Wouldn't those people be better off moving back to the country of their immigrant ancestors?
throwawaypath 15 hours ago|||
There are a lot of people in many countries that do that: Palestine, Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Poland, etc.
tialaramex 15 hours ago||||
The US is already a declining power, I'd say since some time late last century so by the end of the Clinton presidency at least.
ericd 16 hours ago||||
Yep, skimming the cream of the world is the engine of US dominance. We generally got some of the most highly motivated people, because it takes a lot of work and determination to uproot your life.

There used to be a bipartisan agreement that a US advanced degree should come with a green card stapled to it. Even Trump: “You graduate from a college, I think you should get, automatically as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country."

ericmay 15 hours ago||||
> China draws mainly on the talents of the best of its billion+ population.

And China is notoriously xenophobic when it comes to immigration policy - they have a clear “best race” as far as the CCP is concerned and are doubling down on it. If you want to hold China up as a model I don’t think it’s the winning argument that you think it is relative to a pro-immigration argument. White nationalists would agree with you and say to only allow whites in and be more homogenous like China is.

Separately you’re also arguing in favor of only high-skilled immigration which seems kind of suspect don’t you think? No more refugees from Haiti or Syria, for example. Otherwise the US can’t be drawing on the pick of the world’s best.

> But America has had its pick of the best of the world's 8 billion people.

You also aren’t accounting for the concept of brain drain which has historically been difficult for origin countries to deal with. It’s a little amusing to see folks positively arguing in favor of what would otherwise be considered a colonialist tactic of resource extraction.

I’m critiquing these two points however and not necessarily suggesting a policy, but I think it would be wise to think a little more deeply about these two points.

I’d also add, we are totally fine and the rhetoric around the US no longer being a leading economy and superpower is false. The strength of the country isn’t solely because of immigration. In fact, that may not even be a major factor. Geography for example plays a much greater role, our system of government and laws, our markets and culture of enterprise are far more important. I’d argue tablet kids and the introduction of technology into classrooms is, for example, a much greater problem for American talent than lower rates of skilled immigration.

Immigration is just another policy choice we make, like our system of laws or others. It doesn’t need this moral component to it. Increase the rate of people immigrating in some years, decrease it in others. No big deal. If you want to suggest it’s worthy of a moral crusade then you are barking up the wrong tree because the United States has and is certainly more friendly toward immigrants both now and historically than probably any other country on the planet. You should aim your outrage at countries such as China which severely restrict this moral good.

throwawaypath 15 hours ago|||
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jfengel 17 hours ago||||
In itself, no, of course not. But it's part of a much larger pattern which together blow apart that whole "great American melting pot" thing that seemed fundamental to the country's prosperity.
matwood 16 hours ago||||
It's not a dumb thing to say. The US is built on immigration. Making immigration harder will lead to the next big industries not having a focal point in the US. It's also not as simple as letting college grads get green cards. It's often second or third generation immigrants creating more economic prosperity. Attacking higher education and now immigration is basically destroying the US a decade to a generation from now.
potatototoo99 17 hours ago|||
Death by a thousand cuts.
sys_64738 17 hours ago||
Petrodollar is gone now. Only ships paying in Yuan can exit the Strait.
stego-tech 16 hours ago||
It's just sparkling xenophobia. Forcing a return to one's home country to apply for a Green Card can frequently remove the very qualifiers one has to getting said Green Card.

Just take a look at the categories of Green Cards available on USCIS' website[0], and think about how many of them will be unavailable if you're back in your home country.

* Green Card via Family? 18 months, minimum, for approval.

* Green Card via Employment? Well, self-deporting likely means the loss of said job opportunity, thus your ability to convert to LPR status

* via Special Worker? Here's hoping you're not an Iraq of Afghani national that might be persecuted back in said home country for cooperating with the US Government.

* via Refugee or Asylee Status, or as Victims of Abuse? Are we fucking kidding, here? Forcing refugees/asylum seekers/abuse victims back to their home countries is deliberately cruel, and I'm going to be looking for statistics on changes in approvals pre- and post- this policy change to make sure "special circumstances" are actually recognized as such

It's just a despicably cruel policy change that's so overtly xenophobic, it actually reveals the alignment of those reporting on it when it's not called out as such. It's the antithesis to legal immigration in that it all but destroys the process entirely, promoting more illicit behavior (dangerous and clandestine border crossings, exploitation of migrant workers, human trafficking, etc) in the process.

Fuck this regime.

[0]: https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-eligibility-cate...

bsimpson 15 hours ago||
My buddy married someone he met in grad school abroad, then got a job in the US when he graduated. She had to move in with her parents in Japan while waiting for the green card. It took at least a year.
throwaway5752 16 hours ago||
I'd disagree on nuance. Xenophobia is anti-foreigner. This targets people of color. They target people of color who are US citizens, too.

It is gutter racism.

edit: I wish I could be surprised by the downvotes, but it's gutter racism and I'm proud to point this out! I would be never be quiet about a matter of ethics and conscience just because of startup accelerator social media popularity points. This directly influences many of our friends and colleagues in this field. It is vile, evil racism and directly topical for software startups.

edit 2: the list of immigrants and children of immigrants who have founded software companies that are the absolute backbone of US information infrastructure is embarrassing to write down. Anyone can search for the information, but it's harder to list companies not founded by immigrants or children of immigrants.

amazingamazing 11 hours ago|||
What a strange comment. Foreigners are not inherently people of color…
throwaway5752 7 hours ago|||
More than 80% of people applying for US Green Cards are not white.
lokar 16 hours ago||||
We will take all of the white South Africans
elzbardico 7 hours ago||||
Argentina is orders of magnitude more white than the US and yet, argentinians face the same issues as morocans in the US migration system.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 15 hours ago||||
Why not both?
joquarky 12 hours ago|||
Just FYI, some of us down vote for complaining about down votes.
grahamgooch 1 day ago|
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.

ceejayoz 1 day ago||
Why is it "nearly immediately" at a consulate but "backlogged" in the US? Why can't that be fixed?
throwaway_62022 1 day ago|||
This is not true. It is not nearly immediate at US consulate and backlogged in US. The parent doesn't know what they are talking about.
grahamgooch 1 day ago||
I went thru CP myself. It saved me 3 years
airstrike 1 day ago||
"Didn't happen to me so therefore it won't happen to anyone."
grahamgooch 1 day ago||||
Because America only has a few processing centers in within the US where is that literally hundreds and hundreds of consulates that can now take on this activity they have always been doing this activity but the vast majority of the backlog is caused by the slow processing of the US processing centers.
ceejayoz 1 day ago||
So why not… expand the processing centers?
lostmsu 1 day ago||
Maybe consulates are idling
freediddy 1 day ago|||
USCIS serializes it and they have a limited number of workers. CP shards it based on country so it will be much faster for many people.
ceejayoz 1 day ago|||
That's a what, not a why.

Why can't USCIS shard it based on country within the US in a similar fashion?

arrowleaf 1 day ago|||
The whole immigration system could easily be reformed and modernized if efficiency and speeding up the legal route to citizenship were the goal.
grahamgooch 1 day ago||
Each country can only get 8500 gc’s per year. My numbers are probably incorrect, but some countries have literally hundreds and thousands of people in the pipeline while some other countries only have perhaps thousand. The ones with long waiting periods will clearly benefit. Edit. Via OpenAI

2025, the cap was about 26,323 per country because the total visa pool was larger.

Important details:

1. The cap applies to: * Employment-based green cards * Family preference green cards 2. The cap does NOT apply to: * Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens * spouses * parents * unmarried children under 21 Those categories are uncapped. 3. The cap is based on: * Country of birth (“chargeability”) * Not citizenship. 4. In practice, countries like: * India * China * Mexico * Philippines hit the cap constantly, causing very large backlogs.

Simple example:

If 500,000 Indians qualify for employment-based green cards, but only ~25k–30k can be allocated annually under the cap system, the remainder wait in line. That is why Indian EB-2 and EB-3 wait times can stretch into decades.

grahamgooch 1 day ago|||
Because it’s literally not better than the DmV
sunshowers 10 hours ago|||
The Oakland CA DMV, which is the one I live closest to, is quite nice. I've never had a bad time there.
ceejayoz 1 day ago||||
My county's DMV is fast and helpful.

Demand better from your government.

(And this still raises the question of why the consulates supposedly don't have this issue.)

truncate 1 day ago|||
DMV (at-least in Bay Area) is exponentially better and straighforward than any of processes around immigration / visa renewals.
grahamgooch 1 day ago|||
Exactly. An extra points for using HN lingo.:)
arrowleaf 1 day ago|||
From what I've gathered, the consular route is nowhere near immediate, especially if they are from one of the countries typically backlogged (e.g. India). You're saying that someone who gets married while on F1 + OPT/STEM should leave with their partner, potentially for months if not years, while pursuing the consular route.
grahamgooch 1 day ago||
No. All it leans that you go to the consulate on your appt and get your immigrant visa stamped - you get an appointment date and that’s it’s. It was a 3 hour process for me. I flew into Frankfurt and flew out the same evening.
kylehotchkiss 1 day ago||
Consulates are not nearly immediately. You have to wait months-years for appointments at some.