To add some context, in Canada, if you lose your job as a work permit holder, you can stay until the expiry date of the permit. In Germany, you can get a six-month jobseeker residence permit in this case. In France, you can stay until the expiry date of your work permit, then renew it for one extra year, and then if you still have remaining entitlement to unemployment benefits, extend it until the end of the benefits. Not every country is like the US, where you have 60 days to uproot and leave.
Japan’s unemployment insurance won’t pay out after the end of a work permit even if there is a remaining entitlement、because your not ‘available to work’, even if you’re on a specific job seeking permit extension.
"An alien admitted or otherwise provided status in E-1, E-2, E-3, H-1B, H-1B1, L-1, O-1 or TN classification and his or her dependents shall not be considered to have failed to maintain nonimmigrant status solely on the basis of a cessation of the employment on which the alien's classification was based, for up to 60 consecutive days or until the end of the authorized validity period, whichever is shorter, once during each authorized validity period. DHS may eliminate or shorten this 60-day period as a matter of discretion. Unless otherwise authorized under 8 CFR 274a.12, the alien may not work during such a period."
This is also what I've been told by my company's lawyers.
I think the wording is "As soon as administratively possible" - But I've also read that to mean within 24 hours of your termination you need to have left the United States, and have always adhered to that rule.
I think the 24hr/"end of the day" thing is for the natural termination - i.e. you knew when your TN term ended, and were expected to leave when it's done and have made plans for it. Even then though I've never heard of people getting sticky for reasonable travel time also, just that you clearly had the plan and intent to leave the country after your work permission expired. But who knows, the whole system is rife with inequal results due to reliance on individual border staff decisions.
If you get fired/company folds/etc. then I think the 60 days things holds.
This was true for H1B as well; the existing 60-day rule is something that USCIS came up with back in 2017. But, since it's an administrative rule rather than a law, it can also be amended or scrapped that much easier, too.
TN visas have some advantages. There are no yearly caps and it can be renewed indefinitely. Also easier to get a new job. One disadvantage is it is not dual intent.
The I-485 would have to be rejected, or, you lose your job after the I-485 is filed. Even then if you maintain yourself for 6 months after the I-485 was filed and your employer doesn't withdraw the approved I-140, you can find a new job under AC21; or get lucky with no interview request or RFE.
The pain point is that you won't be able to travel after I-485 filing until your Advanced Parole turns up and you'll depend on EADs if you want to change jobs under AC21.
You could have your Green Card before you even win the H1-B lottery.
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.
USA is very friendly to immigrants - it is not a homogeneous society, and there is mutual respect of all religions, faiths, and languages. On contrast, I find many populations in EU to be actively hostile towards immigrants (in Germany one will have a difficult time not knowing German, for example).
As a result, it is a demand and supply problem. Compare how many are wanting to immigrate to, say, Germany, Austria or Switzerland, as opposed to US.
> in Germany one will have a difficult time not knowing German, for example
No, that couldn't be farther from the truth. I lived in Germany, and have friends there who still don't know German after 10+ years and never have any problems. If you work in a non-office industry you need German, but in office/tech workplaces nobody knows German.
I’d honestly not want an immigrant in my country who lives there for 10 years without learning the language. What a way to not make any effort to integrate into your chosen society.
In my experience, integration into a society is a gradual process with no well-defined boundaries. Maybe this is where US and many seemingly homogeneous EU countries differ?
Even if it was a “gradual” process it’s 10+ years. How do you talk to the people of that nation without learning any English? What about anything to do with documentation or the government?
Integrating into a society can mean many things but the FIRST step of that should be learning the local language to be able to talk to locals.
By the way, I’m American. Anyone who lives here for that long without learning English is what I’m talking about.
Learning the language may not be a strict requirement if the country and its people are friendly [] to immigrants. In that case the country makes extra effort to be welcoming and offers translation in their Government affairs.
For example, almost all Government locations in the Bay Area make every document available in several languages, including posted signs, forms etc.. And they have staff who can speak multiple languages. Also, many elders of Chinatown in San Francisco do not speak English, have spent almost all of their life here, yet are reasonably integrated into the American society (their kids generally know English).
[] Friendly needs explanation: US is friendly once you immigrate, not while you are immigrating. This is simply the demand-supply forces at play (too many people wanting to immigrate).
I may be mistaken, but I don't think any EU country makes an active and conscious effort to be "immigrant friendly".
Also, by "immigrant" I mean those who immigrate legally. American media clubs both legal immigrants and illegal aliens into the "immigrant" category, which can be hella confusing.
Because a large percentage of Germans probably speak English so you can still communicate with them without learning German. This is not the same as a single language country.
And yet many don’t - certainly wasn’t the case in my travels in Germany that everyone could speak English and that was coming into it as a tourist. Surely most Germans would prefer to speak their native language among friends as well, implying no such need among those who’ve never been able to learn it.
Clearly you can manage but I stand by my original opinion that I would not approve of hearing such a story from an immigrant.
>And yet many don’t - certainly wasn’t the case in my travels in Germany that everyone could speak English and that was coming into it as a tourist.
I've been a tourist in Germany too. Basically, if the German person you're talking to is university-educated, they speak English, and probably extremely well. If they aren't (like the cashier at the supermarket), they probably don't speak English much at all.
> I’d honestly not want an immigrant in my country who lives there for 10 years without learning the language. What a way to not make any effort to integrate into your chosen society.
Maybe they just there to save some amount of money and go back to their country?
That's not an excuse for not integrating into a culture with the bare minimum amount of effort. It is not hard to learn a language with 10 years of immersion.
French to a B2 certificate level from l’Académie Française without living in a Francophone country. Done in 2 years by self studying and forced media immersion. It is not hard to learn a foreign language in 10 years. Also watched my parents learn English in a year as a child moving to an Anglophone country.
Way to cut out the part where I said “it’s not hard to learn a foreign language” and just drop the time scale. It’s of course a lot of work but it is NOT difficult with such an opportunity to absord and practice.
Every human being can learn to speak any language in 10 years. Poor immigrants do it in their chosen nations of residence all the time. Anyone who doesn’t is not trying, I’m sad to say.
“That's not an excuse for not integrating into a culture with the bare minimum amount of effort. It is not hard to learn a language with 10 years of immersion.”
Is it hard to learn a language in a year? Yes! That is not what I said. I said that not making the modicum of effort required over 10 years of practice and immersion required to achieve functional fluency is not difficult. It simply is not. The passive input alone is absolutely enormous, and it’s the least you can do to a country that’s graciously accepted you into its own borders.
Germany, Austria or Switzerland all have higher net immigration per capita than US. According to 2015-2020 average (estimate) more than twice as many people moved to Germany than to US (relative to population of course).
Interesting statistic. Though all three seem so homogeneous, and hence a bit hostile ("integrate into our culture, else..."). Again, I am not saying they are, just that they seem so. Stark difference to the US, with its melting-pot cities... :-)
The system is easier to qualify for than other countries, provided you can find a sponsoring employer, but it is also slow and requires that you engage an attorney because it's archaic.
I'm not in the US, but as an immigrant myself I can say it's incredibly stressful to be on a working visa during job changes and during a period of unstable economy. Especially if you have family.
To be rational, I work in academia and I shouldn't need to worry too much about job safety and/or visa applications, but I still semi-regularly woke up at night from nightmares of my visa expiring, not being renewed, suddenly being deported, or similar stuff.
I got my permanent residence earlier this year and all of it stopped. It gives you some sense of stability/security. It also makes one feel a bit more accepted in society by not needing to leave it if a work agreement (for whatever reason) ends.
I'm qualified to apply for a permanent residence in 4 months.
The worst thing is that if I get laid off, the 5-year clock resets, and it would waste almost 5 years.
Technically, it takes 45+ days to lay off someone. However, the application requires a letter from the employer to confirm I'm still needed at a job, which means the lay-off just a few days before the application could invalidate the application and has a potential to reset the clock.
It's a slap in the face of legal immigrants. This, along with quotas that restrict permanent residency based on place of birth, are inhumane policies that signal to legal immigrants that they are not wanted here. Apparently, the fact that millions of hispanic illegal immigrants already break the putative purpose of the quota: that no large segment of the population has close ties to any given country, so that they can not disproportionately influence foreign policy toward that country (e.g., Donetsk and Luhansk) is of no consequence: the quota remains in place. Meanwhile, Canada is planning to bring in 500,000 immigrants a year to replace boomers leaving the workforce. A phenomenal opportunity to bring in highly-paid citizens who will integrate very easily into the country and provide economic benefits from day one to the host country.
They shouldn't, just like Russia shouldn't be counted (because it has a very peculiar situation with shared citizenship with the other former Soviet Republics.)
Not the GP but a larger total number means you have a higher likelihood of being one of the people to be granted entry. A country of 1000 people may accept 10 people and that be a very large per-capita rate, but odds of you being one of 10 people accepted out of billions of possible immigrants is very low. It's not like it's one visa application for all countries in the world.
Wow 38% of Saudi Arabia's population are immigrants? Never imagined that one. Always seemed like a closed off country which people couldn't even travel to for tourism (unless making a pilgrimage to Mecca as a Muslim) until recently (2019).
Looks like they have 60 days to find a new job... I thought the grace period was shorter when I commented, but still that's not much time compared to other countries I've lived in. I'm from the USA. I think the way the US treats skilled workers is stupid. We want smart skilled people to immigrate, not make it hard on them. Can you imagine living with the threat of being kicked out lingering over you? I would never feel secure or set down real roots in a country that might kick me out in 60 days.
Edit: Depending on the type of visa you're kicked out of the country much sooner than 60 days.
>I think the way the US treats skilled workers is stupid.
It is stupid, but it's apparently how Americans want it.
>We want smart skilled people to immigrate, not make it hard on them.
No, you want that. American voters don't seem to agree with you, or at least, not enough of them to make a change. Meanwhile, in other countries, smart skilled people have a relatively easy time immigrating. I'm in Japan and it couldn't get much easier for skilled professionals than this.
>Can you imagine living with the threat of being kicked out lingering over you? I would never feel secure or set down real roots in a country that might kick me out in 60 days.
Yeah, me neither. I'm not sure why people want to torture themselves by going to such a country. There are other places looking for skilled professionals, and that make the immigration process pretty painless and easy. People need to get over this mythical idea of the US being some great welcoming haven for immigrants; it really isn't these days.
Did you totally miss the Trump election? "Build the wall!"? The American voters (well, almost half of them) spoke loud and clear about their sentiments on immigration.
If tech companies were in charge, the borders would be mostly open, especially (or perhaps only) for skilled professionals. Obviously, this isn't the case, so the corporate lobbyists are not the ones responsible for America's anti-skilled-immigrant policy, the American voters are. It doesn't get "fixed" because it's politically unpopular to do so.
>"Build the wall" wasn't about high-skilled visa-having and tax-paying tech workers. Separate issue.
Wrong. The issue is immigration, period. Trump's voters are too stupid to tell the difference between high- and low-skilled immigrants. They're nativists: they want only "real Americans" (i.e., white Christians) in America, and not more people who don't fit that mold.
>Nobody's really campaigned on "the H1B system should be a byzantine nightmare" but somehow that's what we got.
You got that because the system, just like any long-running software system that gets hacks upon hacks and never gets a proper refactor, turns into a jumbled mess over time. The system was never fixed because there is no political will to do so. Other countries have leaders that aren't always fighting with each other over every single thing, and decided together that they want more high-skilled immigrants to help their economies because they recognize the value such immigrants bring (they can look at America's 20th century history to see this, after all: look how many tech companies were started by immigrants, for instance), so they cleaned up their immigration policies to achieve this goal. That's how it is here in Japan: immigrating as a skilled worker is extremely easy. It wasn't like this 20 years ago at all. Since the leaders wanted it, and the people weren't opposed in any great way, it got done. America can't do that: the leaders are too divided, and the voters will punish anyone who tries. The Dems can try it, but the Reps will oppose it. Any Reps who don't will be voted out by the MAGAts. This is why things are the way they are in America.
You're confusing vacations with immigration. If that "guest" has come to your house on the premise that they're going to live with you, and you kick them out, yes, that is bad.
We even have laws about this, that's why there's a whole eviction process and it applies to people living with you as much as to normal tenants.
They are temporary but not sudden or on-demand. It's ok to say that they can only be here for a finite amount of time but not ok to uproot their lives suddenly.
If you spent a lot of time and money moving to a new country for work then you don't want to do all that again. In the USA, if you aren't a citizen and you have a working TN visa, then you literally have DAYS to find a new job or else you get deported. Thats why its important, because the current laws aren't realistic with finding a new job. They don't take into account the multiple interviews, the slow responses and callbacks. The entire process takes a long time.
Seems a bit non-sequitur. Whether you're mean or not is not a factor of whether you are giving people their rights. Like, if I called you a doofus on this website every time I saw you, I'm probably being mean but not denying you your rights or anything.
What entities a person born in a nation to is resources more so then someone born outside of that nation? You can’t control where you’re born, why would that be then used to determine… well, anything about you?
Why care about my parents or family? They are just people, I don't even like them as much as others. Why can't anyone be part of my family and why can't I jump to another one?
Society is a sacred part of what makes human beings human, it is why we are such a successful species. It requires cultural indoctrination and nationalism and things that definitely have an ugly side, but are also important to our function.
Your viewpoint basically assumes people have no loyalty, nationalism or responsibility to their society so they can be freely swapped with anybody.
Yea, if someone wants to, they can and should be able to freely swap which society they participate in.
We are successful as a species because we socialize, and there is no reason to limit that only to people who were born in specific geographic areas; that doesn’t make any sense.
It would make a lot more sense to group by shared goals and beliefs, with free movement as your goals and beliefs change.
Blind nationalistic loyalty is in no way a requirement for a successful human society.
You don't think it is easier to socialize with people with similar upbringings and culture to you? You don't think a group of people indoctrinated into a society from birth are more likely to share goals and beliefs than someone born into a different one?
Blind nationalism is bad, but absolutely no responsibility towards the society and the people that raised and support you is a crazy take. You're ideal would only work if we had 0 social programs and people were 100% responsible for providing for themselves and their loved ones, including education.
Of course you have a responsibility towards the society and the people who raised and support you.
That just doesn't involve excluding others from that society. They deserve, just as much as you, to participate (and improve!) in your society as you do.
My country only exists because people came from many other societies and brought the best parts of those societies together to create my country and its culture. I want that for everyone, if they want it for themselves.
I doubt your country was the result of a bunch of people from a bunch of different countries coming together to create a new nation. It was almost certainly a group of like minded people who all came from the same place creating an offshoot that is influenced by the original.
Especially given that the ability for global communication is newer than most existing countries.
I’ll be sure to tell all American history books that Alexander Hamilton and Lafayette (two off the top of my head because I listened to Hamilton recently, there absolutely were many many more) were actually from England and not the Caribbean and France respectively.
Are there any societies that have not exerted, or at least claimed the right to exert, control over who is and is not part of that society? The reasons for exercising that control may vary, but I can't think of or even imagine one that doesn't have this control.
The key is which things you exclude people over. A society can have values, but if those values discriminate based on aspects of a person that are outside of the person's control, that society is not operating ethically.
Western societies all value liberty, and liberty is incompatible with exclusion based on geographic origin.
All countries discriminate based on things you can never change like birth place. All countries. If they didn't they do not exist anymore. That's a poor strategy for western nation or any nation. Even the poorest countries don't allow that.
So? Nearly all countries at one point allowed slavery, refused to let women vote, and a ton of countries were ruled by an authoritarian monarchy, that doesn't mean it was a good idea.
If you let everyone in all at once then the place becomes exactly where they are fleeing from then there is no point in moving. Trying it would be the end of society. We hasn't tried killing every third baby but it is probably not a good idea regardless.
When women couldn't vote most men couldn't either. Just landholders. Slavery was an improvement on killing entire populations and authoritarian monarchy were better than savages like Genghis Khan. Whatever trouble you have with recent history go back.. things were worse.
What would happen if Canada decided to do this. Couldn't China send in 15 million people who vote to join Canada.
“Slavery was an improvement” ok, so honestly I find this insanely offensive and uncomfortably in line with some “white savior” arguments racists make, but I don’t want to be rude to you.
I guess all I can say is that I just don’t see how you can be so cruel to others like this.
Crueller was killing entire populations and removing any trace of their existence. Would you rather your family be slaves with the hope of rebellion or political issues changing or have your family be killed and body part spread all over?
Slavery is not a white/black issue although it might be for your location but the Arab slave trade was so massive and went on for so long it overshadows the trans Atlantic slave in size/scope and present day effects.
Things are not perfect today but they replaced things that were worse. That keeps happening. Why we vote for someone when we could introduce direct voting to me seems like a relic of the past that future generations will look negativity at.
People used to be free to go anywhere in the world, up until states commanded enough force to exclude foreigners.
Funny though how money is still allowed to go anywhere in the world, while people are trapped in their own countries (for better or worse). Those with money can make more money, taking advantage of labor and other resources that can't move, often to the detriment of labor at home and the environment abroad.
> People used to be free to go anywhere in the world...
Except that ~zero prehistoric people had access to the resources / skills / knowledge / etc. to actually travel really long distances.
And if they tried moving, at scale, into an already-inhabited area - well, whether or not the people in the destination qualified as a "state", I suspect that pretty universally resulted in violent push-back.
You don't have to go back to pre-history, passports for individuals didn't exist in the 19th century [0]. People were free to go to other countries whenever they wanted, and they did. There were travelers and migrations all over the place. Many cultures have traditions going back millennia of showing travellers generous hospitality.
Merchants activity was often regulated, with passports for commercial activity and other customs controls. But not people. The opposite of today.
I acknowledge that there would be concerns like you mention, like violent push-back from the natives, same as there are today. Some peoples are raised in insular cultures, some are welcoming, sometimes migrations cause understandable problems, etc.
I don't think the way we do things today is optimal. We've changed things so that money is given more freedom than people. And too many people are taught that foreigners are scary.
There's nothing innate to the universe that defines things this way. But they, as a society, have defined things that way. They, as a society, worked together to build up the infrastructure and the resources that are on top of that infrastructure. And then, as a society, decided what the rules are to participate in that society. So no, there's no universal law that says "the people born here have the rights of this society"; but the people of that society have decreed it so.
It's the same way every other right exists. Property rights don't exist as a law of the universe. Rather, "the people" decided they like the stability of having "permanent" control over things so, as a group, decided to enforce those rights.
What entitles you to the resources in your home anymore than someone outside of your home? They can't control that they were born outside of your home, so why should that be used to determine whether they can freely enter your home and make use of your resources or not?
This is not the compelling argument you think it is; in this analogy I:
* didn't buy my house, I inherited it,
* the people I inherited it from stole it from other people who
* also still live in the house somehow but just in the not-as-nice parts, and
* the house is gigantic and can easily fit literally billions more people without even coming close to exhausting the resources of the house, in fact
* bringing more people into the house would in fact substantially increase the house's shared ability to operate and provide for the members of the house.
So yeah, if we want to use this analogy in a meaningful way, nothing at all entitles me to my house!
All very compelling. I guess I wonder when you plan on permanently hosting as many refugees inside of your home as is physically possible (say 18 or if we're being charitable 9), how many would that be and when would you plan to start? After all, comrade, I'm sure we both agree that direct action would be a more material form of achieving justice through solidarity than the ultimately petit bourgeoisie activity of internet comment squabbling.
Of course, one could be motivated to make such impassioned outpourings by a guilt regarding an ultimately comfortable existence, a fear of lacking virtue, and a thrill of proselytizing the nonbelievers, rather than a compulsion to achieve material socioeconomic outcomes for the postcolonial working class of the world. But I'm sure, dear interlocutor, you are motivated by nothing of the sort, and your intentions are of course, impregnable and wholly pure.
I feel like you ignored the part where I absolutely would house as many refugees as I can in my home, were it as bountiful and spacious as the US is.
But it’s not, and I did buy this home with money rather than inherit it through theft, so instead of my home I will continue to vote and donate in ways that return the US to a pre-eugenics immigration policy.
This would give those refugees a much fairer chance at their own American dream, the one I was given because my ancestors oppressed and stole from the people who didn’t look like them.
Firstly no, they didn’t earn anything on their own, and secondly if they did make that choice it was selfish and not theirs to give away in the first place so their “ownership” here is a mistake on their part to believe they had.
You can’t own progress, you can’t own a society, and you definitely can’t own the concept of freedom (can’t believe that isn’t clear).
Yes they earned their society because they worked on it, no it wasn't a selfish choice because the society was and is theirs, and yes you can own progress, a society, and freedom. Which is why half the world is monkeys flinging feces and some would kill to enter the first world.
Uh they didn’t work alone on it, and they left a ton of people out, ripping freedom and progress from their hands without a second thought.
Your ancestors were thieves and oppressors, and took things that didn’t belong to them, which means the resulting better society isn’t yours or theirs to give or take. It’s free for whoever comes and helps grow it.
Honestly I wish we had some mechanism to cast out the entitled and let in the hopeful. People who believe as you do don’t deserve the gift of a progressive society.
Even Chimpanzee tribes have land borders that they protect. When do 'imaginary lines' just become 'lines', when they've been created and destroyed since pre-history?
One would expect that a species that looks at the stars and longs to explore would have found ways to reconcile coexistance of tribes. Alas, we are but hairless Chimpanzees with speech and clothes.
My point is while 'imaginary lines' seem theoretically interesting to point out when we discuss free movement, it's far too ingrained into animals to really change. Maybe in the distant future we will have planets as borders instead of country lines, but the lines will be there!
Also any reason to point out Chimpanzees have wars including patrolling land borders and recon missions :)
USA is really mean [to immigrants].