Comment by bobjordan

Legal immigration was already hard. Just went through that green card process with my wife from China, glad we already got it done. But, even before Trump admin 2nd term, it's been difficult. Further, even my wife has the green card, my Chinese mother-in-law has been rejected twice for a simple visitors visa, and I'm an American that has been with my wife for 16 years. She was rejected before Trumps latest term while Democrats were in power. She owns like 3 houses in China and has plenty of assets and would not move here permanently even if there were zero friction. We just want her to be able to visit us a few months per year instead of me being forced to fly my entire family of four back to China each year just to visit my wife's mother. These stupid barriers are totally ridiculous. I promise, Grandma from China isn't taking anyone's job and she has plenty of money to spend while she's here to help the economy and then she wants to return home.

All that said, as a data point, when I got my working permit and working visa to legally work in China, I first had to fly back to America and get a "landing" visa issued, then fly back to China, where they then finally issued me the China working visa and China resident permit. So, I think globally, this is pretty common for process.