Comment by seshagiric
1 day ago
This is just reckless without any responsibility.
A number of people, especially in tech sector, legally stay in US while their GC is being processed. They have kids born in the USA. If such people were to leave USA to seek green card:
- the kids must first get visas to their parent's countries
- once reaching the other country, consular offices now have multi year wait lines for getting an appointment with a office to even hear your case.
- parents may stay in that country but what if kids run out of their visa? A number of countries offer citizenship via parents e.g. Indian parents can obtain Indian citizenship for their kids but it also means letting go of the kids' US citizenship. And what if the parent's country does not have such mechanism?
It's completely illogical that a person must first stay in a country for 5 years to become eligible for a green card and then leave for x years to get a green card to come back !! this is just a tactic to get non-immigrant visa holders out of the country.
> e.g. Indian parents can obtain Indian citizenship for their kids but it also means letting go of the kids' US citizenship
This is not true, India has something called “Overseas Citizenship of India” which is technically not a citizenship even though the name says, but its a life time visa available for US citizens of Indian origin. And you don’t have to give up US citizenship
It’s a visa that you do need to apply for. And it’s not a guaranteed thing. If it doesn’t work out. Kids stay in the US and parents get kicked out?
I know you are asking rhetorically, but this occurs routinely under the current US immigration regime.
There have been over 100,000 children separated from their parents in the United States due to immigration enforcement since 2025.
The feature story in the linked article is about a now 2 year old whose parents were not there for them beginning to walk or talk.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/us/brookings-institution-...
> This is not true, India has something called “Overseas Citizenship of India” which is technically not a citizenship even though the name says, but its a life time visa available for US citizens of Indian origin. And you don’t have to give up US citizenship
The OCI card is better thought of as a green card that you have to reapply for once at the age of 65.
It provides the ability to live and work, with some minor restrictions, but none of the typical benefits of citizenship that wouldn't come with permanent residency in the US.
Look, I’m an immigrant. You know the risks you take when you come to the US on a non immigrant visa. We all choose to play the game and nothing is guaranteed. I would’ve considered reckless to have a kid in the US knowing that my status is not stable without having an alternative plan. We need to face the facts and stop acting like we immigrants were victims of some bait and switch and must be protected from any fallout of this process. The rules of the game are transparent.
> the kids must first get visas to their parent's countries
The bigger issue honestly is that the kids may already have grown up in the American culture and fluent in English and it could massively disrupt their education and well-being to throw them into another system somewhere else, depending on how they were raised and whether they are fluent in the language of the country of their parents. In many cases they are not.
> it could massively disrupt their education and well-being to throw them into another system
I'm curious: If these changes aren't designed to be harmful in these ways, then what do we imagine is the intention?
A monthly reminder, that they don't want smart people over there.
It's only logical if you are anti-immigration, which is what the US is now.
The population has always been anti immigration. But what the population wants is barely considered.
This makes it seem like roughly an even split:
https://imgur.com/a/4W9Ub2t
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Birthright citizenship is on the chopping block too. It’s only a matter of time.
> It's completely illogical that a person must first stay in a country for 5 years to become eligible
This is wrong. There is no minimum time in the country for a green card. You are thinking of citizenship. That is different.
While you are correct, that's a minor issue in an otherwise cogent post by the parent, so addressing those other more substantial points first would have made the debate better.
> This is wrong. There is no minimum time in the country for a green card. You are thinking of citizenship. That is different.
You are incorrect. What you said is technically true in that there is no statute that requires it, but in practice, OP is correct.
It varies depending on the country of origin, but in the case of immigrants who hold citizenship from India, which is the country OP mentioned, you can likely expect to have to wait that period or even much longer before becoming eligible, unless you have a way to otherwise jump the queue.
You absolutely have to wait several years, but the point they were making is, there is no requirement to have ever worked IN the US or held any nonimmigrant visa to get a green card. The way the law was originally written, both the employment and family green card categories are standalone. They require work/research accomplishments, but there is zero requirement that that work was ever done in the US or for a US company.
Because it takes so long, in practice the issue is that for anyone to sponsor you, they want you working for them during that time, and so that's why it often looks like someone gets an H1B and then "graduates" to a green card.
Wow. Downvotes for stating an obviously verifiable fact.
HN is now filled with agenda pushers peddling obvious fake information about the US.
Because while the green card itself has no minimum requirements on time spent in the US, with the exception of the DV program, all of the visas with green card pathways have one. So yes, there is - it's just attached to the visa pathway that determines green card eligibility, not the green card itself.
Can you think of any other reasons why you might have been downvoted? It seems a little conspiracy-minded to jump to “agenda pushing” I think.
> the kids must first get visas to their parent's countries
In this situation, wouldn't the kids already have citizenship of their parents countries?
No? If you're born in the US you have US citizenship, you're American. You don't just magically get citizenship for your parents home country, at least not for most countries.
You can automatically be a citizen through descent of most countries in Europe and Asia, and everywhere in North America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_sanguinis#Jus_sanguinis_st...
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Also, in some cases, you may automatically lose your original nationality if you seek an additional one (Spain comes to mind; though in their case you'd need to manually request not to lose your nationality to keep it within a certain time period, IIRC).
Are there any countries where this is not true? I struggle to think of any, especially amoung highly-developed democratic nations. (There might be a couple of weirdo dictatorships that do not allow it.) It seems this would be necessary to prevent statelessness. For example, if your parents are living in the Netherlands as foreigners, children born there are not entitled to automatic Dutch citizenship. As a result, they will obtain citizenship through their parents (in a foreign nation).
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Most countries determine citizenship eligibility primarily by parentage, not place of birth.
The whole concept of getting citizenship where you're born is mostly an American concept. Though, if you do get born in a place where you get citizenship based on location alone, your parents will probably need to figure out a lot of paperwork to sort things out.
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A lot of countries don’t provide citizenship automatically without condition by blood. China for example, a kid only inherits citizenship if one parent is a chinese citizen and not a PR of any other country (so kids born to Chinese parents with green cards don’t count, which doesn’t really matter in this case).
Also the USA used to have weird rules about young mothers not transferring citizenship automatically (which the whole Obama birther myth relied on).
What happens if two Chinese parents are living and working in the Netherlands with permanent residence. If they have a child, what is the nationality? I don't think it will be Dutch because the Netherlands does not have automatic birth right, unless to prevent statelessness.
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Sometimes. In many/most countries, it requires at minimum that both parents be citizens of the same country. In a few countries, dual citizenship is banned completely, so if the kid is a US citizen they cannot be the country's citizen.
cruelty is the point in case it wasn’t obvious
Yes and one step further: it is attention, ultimately to extract wealth.
Trump is a distractor and can make a whole country forget about <insert recent insanity>. Passing a judge is a minor detail here.
Of course it is stupid to talent-leak your country but he just needs you to forget about $LATEST_SCANDAL. That's the value for him. Trump doesn't care about the future of US.
And distracting does not take skill. It only takes a mind poisoned to the core. He will throw anything in his chaos machine to extract wealth. And US has an endless supply of those juicy valuables and values that you can sacrifice and shed.
Let's see what next week has in store!
How is it logical that their kids get birth right citizenship when their parents don't have it?
This is over a hundred year old rule and common in "the new world". You can guess why it is common if you think about the phrase I put in quotes. All these countries are composed of immigrants...
Here's a short and incomplete list: USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile.
The logic is that the culture is what makes you part of the country, not the blood in your veins.
The other side of that logic is that you're not guaranteed citizenship to the country of your parents. It certainly isn't automatic.
It’s clearly split old world vs new world.
But new world is getting pretty old now too.
Birthright citizenship is an astonishingly rare policy. Nonexistent in Europe and the developed world.
Canada has it since the 1950s only.
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Children integrate into the country so much more easily.