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No. It has become significantly easier for Europeans to immigrate since 2005. Labor certification alone now takes less than a year rather than multiple years pr
by bstx 8y ago
No. It has become significantly easier for Europeans to immigrate since 2005. Labor certification alone now takes less than a year rather than multiple years pre-PERM. EB2 and EB3 priority dates are current. Europeans can expect to get a green card within a couple years (even accounting for the new mandatory Adjustment of Staus interviews for employment based applicants). It has become significantly harder for Indians where the green card backlog approaches a century (!) for EB2/EB3. The only thing that has become harder is getting an H-1B visa due to oversubscription.
- jgh 8y agoI was curious about the backlog being a century so I did some googling around and it looks like a user on quora did a bit of reading and math and figured that an Indian person applying today can expect a wait of 100-150 years to get a GC. https://www.quora.com/Why-have-the-final-action-dates-for-the-EB-2-visa-category-green-card-applicants-from-India-bounced-around-so-much-starting-in-FY-2008 https://www.quora.com/Why-have-the-final-action-dates-for-th...
- alextheparrot 8y agoMy understanding from Indian coworkers is that most who did not marry into a favorable immigration situation expect their children to sponsor their green card when they reach adulthood. As somone born and educated in the American system, this is a travesty as we deprive them of basic rights such as voting. Another hypocrisy of modern America, I suppose.
- refurb 8y agoThe reason for this delay in getting citizenship is an effort to promote diversity among immigrants to the US. No single country can get more than 5% of the permanent resident visas in any given year. If this wasn't done, the vast majority of immigrants to the US would be from China and India at the expense of other countries.
- vthallam 8y agoI understand the diversity and the huge numbers India/China have, but shouldn't it be based on merit too? It's similar to hiring, everyone wants a diverse team, yet half the engineers are Asians/Indians. It's because there are more people who go to school from those ethnicities. By displaying the diversity card, you are just keeping people who has high paying jobs worrying about their status all the time, it's not good for them or the economy they are supporting.
- cwperkins 8y agoYou can have both, you can have merit based within a group and promote diversity overall.
- toasterlovin 8y agoDoing what you describe and assuming an even distribution of merit throughout the world, limiting 1/3rd of the world population (India + China) to 10% of immigration slots by definition means lowering the average merit of immigrants.
- refurb 8y agoKeep in mind this was in response to the US basically blocking all non-European immigration for quite a long time. And yes, not basing it on population side means you are screwed if you come from a big country, but at a huge benefit if from a small country.
- toasterlovin 8y agoYeah, but US immigration policy should be constructed for maximum benefit to the US, not to the rest of the world minus China + India. And I would go one step further and say that it is probably in the best long term interest to the US to have a large population of ethnic Chinese, for the same reason that Israel has benefitted so greatly by the US having a large and influential Jewish population.