So for those that don't know, it's quite common for a visa renewal to be required to leave the country. Depending on the visa, you might have to do this every year.
So just imagine, having a normal job in the US and you're asked to leave to renew your visa and this stuff happens.
That's no more appointment, not even a new date and you're now very likely unable to work and possibly can't even enter the country to get your belongings if you were to leave.
Just 'putting a pause' on people with existing appointments with no answer for when they might resume is.... Inhumane
Not trying to make a political point at all and perhaps a controversial take. But, it’s specifically and maybe implicitly by design. Meaning they made this way precisely so you have to reapply so they can change their mind or block you out later. Nothing about getting a visa is permanent and you’re fully at risk when you move here with that type of status. If you evaluate the situation that’s always been the case.
Immigrant visas cannot be renewed - if you use such a visa to enter the country then you become a lawful permanent resident and are not eligible for any visas until you abandon your permanent residency, and even then you will need to apply for a brand new visa.
I think there are a lot of inhumane things happening around the world right now to label this inconvenient, at best. We need better leadership through higher voter participation and an informed electorate to stop these inhumane and inconvenient policies.
> So just imagine, having a normal job in the US and you're asked to leave to renew your visa and this stuff happens.
The only way I can see this happening is if you try to convert from OTP to an H1. I used to do some runs up to Vancouver to help a friend do that.
This just generally sucks for anyone making plans in their life. I remember my wife's greencard interview in Guangzhou, and it would have sucked if they instituted this the day before she did that.
You are talking about change (or extension) of status, not visa.
US is unique in that the visa sticker and your right to remain in the country (status) are two different things. The only purpose of the visa sticker is to allow you to travel to a U.S. port of entry, where you apply for admission, and therefore legal status. You can have legal status in the U.S. while the visa sticker has expired, and your status can be changed or extended domestically. However unless you have a valid sticker you cannot leave and return.
Based on my experience 20 years ago you could only renew the H-1B visa in the passport in-country under extraordinary circumstances. In the majority of cases they reject your request and would tell you to travel to a consulate.
Prior to the mid 00s you could renew at any consulate but they changed it so you could only renew in your home country.
The pause on visa appointments does not apply to H1-B and L1 as they are nonimmigrant visas. It applies to family based immigration visa, diversity visa, and EB-1/2/3 when you do processing abroad.
(You might have known that, but I thought it's worth clarifying).
I've had a couple of reports that this applied to. It's incredibly disruptive. "I've got to fly back to India to renew my visa." "Okay, when will you be back?" "I have no idea, it depends when I can get an appointment. It could be next week, it might be in a month." "[State department] We're pausing all visa appointments." "Well fuck."
Meanwhile I've got a tech lead who is 12 hours away from the rest of the team. He was at least willing to work US-East hours while in India (basically staying up all night and sleeping during the day), but there was a huge amount of management overhead and inconvenience for the employee involved.
Hundreds of thousands of tech workers have been laid off in the last two years. There are many skilled Americans on the job market. Foreign workers are here for the benefit of the United States, not as charity to the rest of the world, or as a source of cheaper labor for global employers seeking to undercut American wages.
Agreed. I live in Midwest and that's the same sentiment I am getting from the people. People voted to oppose illegal migration, not stopping legal migration. This November will be judgment day for this administration's policies.
The term "illegal immigration" got moved to "people who have proper papers and did everything legally but were granted access by someone I don't like" - anyone who was an informed voter could see that "against illegal immigration" was just red meat for the base.
In the mid 2000s, I had to leave the US for renewal while leaving all my hard assets behind. I had a plan in place in case I couldn't go back to the country, which did happen to some people. These people had their interviews, but they got held back outside the US, sometimes for months, waiting for the renewal process to finish. I had an immediate renewal, but was almost held back for some red tape reasons.
The scale is new. Obviously a nightmare or even a tragedy for individual people that it happens at all. But this happening to (tens of?) thousands of people all at once is a whole different thing.
This report is for immigrant visas. H-1B visas are not immigrant visas and are the ones that require the stamp renewal in the home country.
That being said, yes, the way the current administration handles immigrant visas, worker visas, and more is absolutely inhumane and completely asinine. I've been through it with family and friends, and it is painful and can be heartbreaking even.
At least for F1 and H-1B visas, one wasn't required to get a new visa physically stamped (for which one would have to leave) to switch schools (undergrad -> grad) or jobs. Is this forced now? Of course, if one wanted the freedom to be able to travel or visit one's home country, a new stamping was required if the old visa expired.
It's not ideal but a lot of us basically didn't leave for several years (even pre-Trump 1) to avoid the hassle of a new stamping.
In Canada you never have to leave to renew or change status; it's just sometimes faster to do so. It's always the applicant's choice. I went through the whole work permit to PR to citizenship pipeline without ever having to leave the country.
Really? My spouse and I lived in Canada on work permits and were not required to leave in order to achieve PR status; nor to achieve citizenship status.
Hang on a tick: does that mean we may have been the baddies all along?
I say this as someone who just sent their daughter to NYC explaining how we used to try to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to poor immigrants who just assumed this was a land of kind people, WTF? Could we not take a decade off from being prissy about our democracy *and* total cocks about how we actually act?
everything this administration does daily is from one of three boxes
[CHAOS] [CORRUPTION] [CRUELTY]
this is a little from the first box and the last box
imagine what's tomorrow or next week
meanwhile let's all enjoy the billion spent on making statues gold plated in DC and the ballroom and the arch and his drapes and his reflecting pool and 100 foot banners of his face on federal building and his face on gold coins, passports, park passes and the $250 bill
Yeah, this is a pretty big risk. I'm similarly married to an American and we have an American child. Other country seems to have screwed the family, though. Mine (India) offers a fairly indefinite visa called an Overseas Citizen of India. And my wife's other nationality (Taiwan) also permits foreign spouses to live there after some straightforward paperwork. So, in theory, we could live in either of these other places together. I suppose I will only know when push comes to shove.
Didn't we used to fast track citizenship for immigrants who married a US citizen? I mean, the default should be that after the wedding you're now on track to be a citizen within a year or two if the marriage is still in effect by then.
I don't want to minimize your friend's situation. But, a spousal visa is very different from being a permanent resident (maybe I am misunderstanding). If he got it through marrying a US citizen, there's a 3-year wait for naturalization and otherwise it's a 5-year wait.
Naturalization never required leaving the country, at least in my experience but things might have changed.
This doesnt make any sense. If you are married to a us citizen you qualify for a green card. Then you need 3 years for citizenship. You never need to leave the country. Ive been through this process, this is absolutely wrong.
This story can't be true. The green card freeze policy only went into effect in January 2026...earlier this year, and was struck down several months ago.
Also, UCIS has limited discretion to reject a spousal green card applicant; an undisclosed criminal record or immigration violations are basically the only two that would apply if he's been married for years.
The details of this story have glaring mistakes and don't make sense. I know this because I'm a naturalized citizen to the US and I came in on H1B.
> He's been doing the paperwork to finally become a citizen, and as one of the final steps he was required to leave the country
You don't have to leave the country to become a citizen. I recently became a US citizen a few years back and leaving the country is not required.
If you somehow meant Green Card, the timeline still doesn't make sense. Until May 2026, 3 months ago, you could do Adjustment of Status within the country without having to leave. So there's no reason why you friend would need to leave the country to get his Green Card unless he chose Consular Processing.
Getting denied CP is rare, but it means that they lied about something.
And if he did live in the US for decades without having his GC, well, applying for GC under Trump in this climate was a huge mistake, especially leaving the country having been in here for decades illegally. He should have waited 2 years until the Republicans were voted out and maybe he would have some modicum of amnesty where at least ICE would get him.
> His wife and child aren't citizens of his home country either, so it's not like they can move to be with him.
This also doesn't make sense. First off, the country's immigration is even more restrictive than the US?? They can't even visit on a travel visa??
They can definitely move to his home country, since he's a citizen. There's a spousal visas for almost all countries, and the child is most definitely allowed to come in since they can usually get citizenship via the father.
But there's no way he hasn't seen his daughter in over a year since the forced Consular Processing didn't start until this past May, and his spouse and daughter can most definitely travel to see him.
None of this story makes sense, so either you have the details very drastically incorrect or this is completely fake.
Inhumane is every choice made by this country under this regime. The "bothsides" and "no politics" crowds are equally as complicit in this as Trump voters.
Surely you would admit that this Administration’s approach to immigration has been both chaotic and cruel. The workers who were given status in the United States expected a predictable process, not one that changes weekly based on the unserious personal whims of a bored, ill-informed and vindictive man. In any case, the prioritization of citizens’ wellbeing writ large is demonstrably _not_ a feature of this Administration’s agenda.
How, in any way does this help the wellbeing of a citizen? Why bring up that very strange point, which is completely unconnected to the massive harm here.
If anything, these policies harm the citizens of the US in a myriad of ways. There's zero benefit to be had from any of this. Except for the joy tha tthe cruel feel in causing others misery, but that's not citizens, that's just a few sick people.
The mere suggestion that this admin is doing this or anything else for the wellbeing of its citizens is a complete departure from reality.
It's very clear what the motivations are, and just because they don't seem harmful in isolation doesn't mean it's going to have no consequences for everyone else.
And its going so great for our citizens wellbeing. Oodles of programs for the needy smashed to bits. Corruption and self dealing out the wazoo. Protestors shot to death by ICE agents. A legendarily stupid war fucking up international shipping. Illegal tariffs changing daily.
My company has a H-1B guy that travelled home to India a few months ago and since then can't come back because the next date he can get with the US embassy is next year. Seems he may get stuck even longer...
I am to some degree on board with keeping a closer eye on immigration, but the way the current administration does it feels intentionally cruel. The guy at my company has a house, wife, and kids in the US; his visa is perfectly legal, so it seems it would make sense to process these people quickly. But instead, he is now in some limbo. Same for ICE. Clamping down on illegal immigration makes sense, but it doesn't make sense for ICE to behave like some unaccountable secret police that hires the biggest assholes they can find who can then do whatever they want.
This was never about talent. It's about companies hiring foreigners on h1b visas at below market wages where their life in the USA is contingent on their job performance forcing them to work harder and longer than their peers to remain in the country. It's a situation that only benefits companies, while harming US citizens who have to compete with the lower wages of foreigners.
I work in a global company. As an interviewer, I don't even know if the person I interview is a US citizen. I don't even know if they live in the US or another country, and I'm probably not allowed to ask. I just rate their performance. And everybody is paid the same.
I think the situation is quite simple. Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better.
If tomorrow you were to tell (let say) Google they now need to hire only US citizens, would they lower their hiring bar, or would they expand their Shanghai or Zurich offices? Are US citizens entitled to work at Google more than others for the sole reason they have a particular citizenship?
These visa policies have already encouraged large tech companies etc to expand their Indian offices. It erodes the US tax base and means talent stay in their home country, which means more innovation happens outside the US. More start-ups are been founded in these countries because more talent is now there.
Trump first term was make Mexico and Vietnam Great Again as companies moved their manufacturing there.
This term its make India Great Again as companies retain and train their tech talent there.
Who cares where this so called innovation happens? Won't it be cheaper for all of us if the salaries are in much lower cost of living places? Why would a US citizen give a shit?
I used to think things like this as an American. But let's simplify. What if they're just fucking idiots and they realized they could rally a bunch of other fucking idiots to the polls?
So if you were essentially having a spasm about how no one understands how perfect the world was when you had all the advantages, I mean, we don't need a fancy theory at that point. It's literally old people spewing up acid about why their kids don't come to Thanksgiving, only we managed to create such a presence in the world media, it's a damned disaster.
How can you with a straight face equate “fine for 1921-1965” with “best for 2026”?
Even odder: what makes you find it plausible that an understanding of the policies of this period and their effect on the economy were part of the decision-making process of this administration - especially when they have actively voiced opinions that fully explain this action? At some point bending backwards to provide some benefit of the doubt is saying more about the speaker than the topic - I am certainly of the opinion that we are well beyond that rubicon. I cannot fathom the reasoning at this point.
I wonder if this has to do with the current economy and job market. Anecdotally I have found it very tough to find a new job (software engineering), though my previous employer continues to post job listings for green card applications as part of the required labor market test.
I'd say it's on the Trump administration being full of racists and white nationalists and wanting to deport immigrants.
Why do you wonder if it's economic instead of the Trump administration's announced policies of stopping immigration, including unconstitutionally removing birthright citizenship?
Conflating not wanting to compete with foreigners for jobs in your own country with racism is bad faith bullshit. Foreigners of the exact same race are equally unwanted competition.
Birthright citizenship is so weird, because when I think of my son’s birthright, I imagine things he’s entitled to because he’s my son. He’ll inherit from my estate, he’ll enjoy my love and encouragement and support, etc. The location of the hospital where he was born doesn’t really have anything to do with it, but now I have an entirely new fear about foreign countries claiming my child if my wife happens to give birth early while on a vacation. Like, I want to go to Israel, but don’t they have compulsory military service? I wouldn’t want the baby to accidentally become an Israeli citizen and forced to serve for some foreign army. Same with China. I’d love to see the country, but they’ve had some weird and draconian laws like the one child policy. For all I know they take some children to be raised by the state. Whatever their laws are… I don’t think they should apply to my children.
I think many (if not most) countries in the developed world should reduce immigration, and usa in particular should abolish birthright citizenship.
The first because a lower supply of labor is going to create breathing space for an entire working population who will see tremendous job upheaval due to AI automation. A lower aggregate demand on houses, services will also be welcome to take the fuel out of inflation, and maybe we'll regain some of that experience of true affluence, where scarce things (e.g. access to cabin in the woods, a rowhome in a walkable city, ...) are in abundance. There is also the import of an idle, criminal element that has very clearly reduced quality of life and safety in many places.
Birthright citizen should be abolished because birth tourism and illegally crossing the border to have anchor babies are a vector for foreigners to participate politically and claim imho undeserved welfare benefits.
I think largely these are the stated reasons of the administration too.
Attempts to find plausibly deniable rationales for this administration's anti-immigrant policies other than "gutter racism" are ridiculous.
Occam's razor. When somebody shows you who they are, believe them. Nativism is possibly the only stable and coherent political ideology this admin holds. Everything else is negotiable, but not this one.
This is a response to the supreme court ruling on birthright citizenship. They're using the levers they do have, since that was removed. Anyone who agrees with the ruling should really read justice Thomas' dissent.
This one doesn’t mention tourist visas, so I am guessing they will be issued? I don’t get what benefit they see by inconveniencing and potentially harming folks that are already in the country legally to just live their lives. I get that this administration’s goal is to completely shut down all immigration and potentially even remove folks here legally too but there will be a cost to bear for the country because of that. It will be slow to come and so they will be able to blame it on the next administration
This is specifically for immigrant visas. USCIS distinguishes two broad categories of visas: immigrants and non-immigrants. Tourists are part of the latter group.
That's not accurate. H-1B is a non-immigrant visa. It's not intended for tourists.
From CBP's own website[1], emphasis is mine:
An immigrant visa (IV) is issued to a foreign national wishing to live permanently in the United States.
A nonimmigrant visa (NIV) is issued to a foreign national with permanent residence outside the United States but wishes to be in the United States on a temporary basis for tourism, medical treatment, *business, temporary work, or study*, as examples. Note: There are more than 20 different categories of nonimmigrant visa classifications.
> The State Department has paused all immigrant visa applications while it briefs consular officials around the world on a new policy that aims to keep out people who are considered potential drains on public coffers.
From AP NEWS. Sooo Trump can get deported? Is anyone draining public coffers faster than him?
Slanted take here, but this is exactly what they are doing with the federal government.
They like to complain that "big government inefficient and bad" while actively making it inefficient and bad. They are fulfilling their own prophecies.
Similar to immigration I'm sure. If all immigration is illegal then it's all bad!
Being anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration doesn't mean you want to flood the country with legal immigrants. That's the case in the UK, by the way, where the vast majority of immigrants are legal and it's the reason for the growing anti-immigrant attitude of the natives.
People who are anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration also have requirements like:
- there should be a fixed number of legal immigrants
- they should be well vetted (this may be lacking in the US and UK)
- legal immigration should be points based
- quotas for legal immigrants should be increased contingent
on the number of illegal immigrants which are expelled
- there should be checks to verify that visas are not abused (the way H1Bs are abused in the US with under qualified immigrants)
- asylum should be abolished because it's abused. It can be replaced by paying poorer countries to permanently host asylees.
It most certainly is hypocritical. You can not be simultaneously pro-legal immigration and support banning legal immigration. If you support banning legal immigration, you are by definition anti-legal immigration.
> Being anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration doesn't mean you want to flood the country with legal immigrants.
If only there were something between 0 and unrestricted immigration, some sort of program where people apply for permission and the government issues approvals for individuals to enter its borders after meeting legal criteria.
We all know this whole H1-B situation was to cripple wages and to get an indentured workforce. Glad its being "paused". Would love to it being modified to not being tied to a company, or gottennrid of for good.
Sorry about the people who were using it, but also not sorry.
Maybe we Americans can get some of those jobs the companies were scamming the govt with.
We can also take a more critical look at the definition of what being American is. The 20th century, especially pre-1920, was rife with illegal immigration. Why should the descendants of those who skipped the line, who didn't come in "the right way", be able to now call themselves American and reap the unearned benefits of citizenship? They've taken and continue to take jobs from Americans who need them.
What will be next in Trump's destruction of the American Economy?
So far he has driven away allies, put huge tariff on our most loyal allies. Driven away manufacturing by tariff policies. Driven away immigrants and academics. Pushed a last century oil based economy. Shown us how our exquisite weapon tech will fail (this might actually be good in the long run). Along with crippling our cybersecurity and state departments.
Not just immigration, seems like travel in general is becoming difficult too.
It's a real shame that just when we have the tech and infrastructure to allow people to travel anywhere in the world within a day, for a single person to be able to explore the entirety of this awesome planet for the first time in human history,
that the worst among us have to enforce artificial borders and deny everyone this basic freedom.
Travel should be codified as a human right.
If someone can support themselves and doesn't harm anybody, what ethical justification does anybody have for denying a person from living where they want?
People aren't simply interchangeable units of economic output, and when they live together for long periods of time they develop unique and distinct cultures that are dear to them. Letting the entirety of the world into your country without stops is cultural suicide. If you put any a value in preserving culture you will find it ethical to put some limit on immigration. Assimilation is possible but there is a limit to the rate and amount of foreigners a place can absorb before changing significantly.
> Letting the entirety of the world into your country without stops is cultural suicide.
The natives of the Americas, Australia, and the many nations previously colonized by European countries, know that better than any descendants of the colonizers.
> to enforce artificial borders and deny everyone this basic freedom.
a very postnational view, humanist in a way, lipsius or erasmus would recognize it.
that sort of individuated cosmopolitanism only works for educated men and women with means, who have or have the capacity to self-actualize.
not for the masses. the nation is still a cradle to protect and nurture the commonwealth, and given that they took hundreds to sometimes thousands of years to form, i don't think borders are artificial in the least.
> and given that they took hundreds to sometimes thousands of years to form, i don't think borders are artificial in the least.
"Borders" as they are treated today began barely 200 years ago, and only started being enforced so strictly since WW1 and then even worse after WW2.
For the vast >95% of human history, if you could walk to somewhere and survive there, you could live there.
The real ironic shit is that most of the travel and immigration restrictions of today are instituted by the descendants of people that invaded and occupied the lands of other people :')
This is really frustrating. I'm (native-born US citizen) naviagting the visa process with my future wife. She has no intentions of working (enjoys being NEET) and there's zero risk of her becoming a public charge (our hh gross income is closer to 7 digits than it is to 5 digits), very frustrating that we're getting screwed by this under the justification of labor market competition and public charge risk.
50% of all American unicorns were started by immigrants. This is sheer stupidity to prevent the best of what the world has to offer when they are knocking at your door.
The impact on academics and research has already been felt over the last decade. US used to be the default destination for academics and skilled workers from China ever since the cultural revolution. They engrained themselves in the country, studied/worked at top univerities, taught multiple generations of students, did key research, worked at top tech companies, and overall were major contributors to American technological superiority.
Then starting ~2016 Trump and his DoJ made it borderline impossible for Chinese nationals to get visas, specifically targeting research universities. Since then new Chinese skilled immigration has slowed down to a trickle, and there has been a massive "brain gain" of existing talent in China's favor.
The result - China now has a booming tech industry, Chinese universities have overlapped Amercian ones in research output, China is a very close 2nd in the AI race. And as skilled immigrants continue to be driven out of the US China in particular will enjoy the benefits.
I think what voters want is for highly skilled founders to come and start companies and for normally skilled employment to go to Americans before foreigners.
The world's richest man is an illegal immigrant who started multiple companies.
(Musk started X.com while on a student visa and didn't get around to securing a work visa until many years later. This rule violation technically renders his U.S. citizenship void under Trump-era immigration rules.)
It’s unquestionably bad for the United States, but it will be good for the rest of the world. Time for US dominance to end, and Trump is doing a good job of that.
Right wing oligarchs want infinite immigration because they get a larger labor pool and lower wages. Right wing normies want less immigration because they don't want to compete with the entire world for a job and don't want to become a minority in their own country.
Spend some time on X and you can see the two parts of the right wing attack each other over this issue.
Ultimately, there is some value in each position, and in a corresponding set of positions on the left. Unlike many issues in US politics, in the long run this one is not well left-right aligned, and there is no single correct number for how much immigration is best. It's a bunch of trade-offs, which should be made democratically and end up somewhere around the number that the median person wants, such that roughly half of us are unhappy because too many immigrants come in and roughly half unhappy because too few. Arriving at that number and changing it slowly would be far better than wild swings.
> don't want to become a minority in their own country.
Yet in the next thread over, people are crucifying DHH for saying the same thing, except they are spinning it as "denying their right to exist"... somehow.
The US seems hellbent on destroying its own economy, immigrants have always played a key part in it. Looking forward to Trump yelling about how the radical left has somehow undermined the US economy in a few months.
And in the interim he's positioning his family and cronies to benefit from any rebuilding. Just as he literally sat in the White House and said, verbatim, "My children insider trade all the time".
I often think about how far the Republican party has fallen from Truman with his "The Buck Stops Here" plaque on his desk to Trump's "I don't take any responsibility at all" response to poor Covid testing in 2020.
Looking forward? He never stopped. It's been 10+ years of narcissistic scapegoating, even for times when he was President, even while Republicans controlled congress, and even over trade-deals, policies, and laws that he took-credit for and bragged about. (e.g. USMCA in 2020.)
> Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein had been at work!
The parallels between Emmanuel Goldstein and Trump Derangement Syndrome are impossible to ignore for anyone who's actually read 1984.
To borrow from Baum (The Wizard of Oz): today there's not only a curtain with men behind it, but a man in front of the curtain that everyone is pointing to (a la Goldstein). And if he stops being useful they'll replace him. This has happened several times already while the men behind the curtain and long standing policies he people hate remain unchanged.
And they are. I read somewhere a few days ago that France is vacuuming up academics and advanced students that have been displaced by various recent policy changes that have proven to be hostile towards academia and research.
As noted clearly in the article, this is a temporary pause while personnel are brought up to speed on the protocols. The real question is how just or unjust the refusals will be once it is unpaused. It's bad enough that the process is excruciatingly slow.
Users keep downvoting my comment even though it is the only literal interpretation supported by the evidence, without any evidence to the contrary. I would rethink only if it lasts over three months.
Note also that courts would easily overrule Trump if the pause became unreasonable.
You're obviously wrong, it obviously doesn't make sense to close down instead is implementing the training for the new protocols in parallel. And the current disruption is just as real of a question as the future refusals.
And obviously courts couldn't do it easily.
By the way, you also haven't provided any evidence for your opinion, why would you burden type replies with it?
Also, lol @ "the courts will fix it!" Fat fucking chance. I'm looking into my crystal ball: I see a 6-3 supreme court ruling supporting the administration's executive order to liquidate congressional power and fold it into the executive branch (as the founding fathers intended...)
Consular staff are trained on this as-is. It is hard to imagine a re-training on process that could take any more than two days.
And yet we have an entirely open-ended "We have nooooo idea how long this will take!"
Garbage. This is the same administration that paused all immigration from Africa except for "Caucasian South Africans" who were classified as refugees by default, regardless of their motivation on immigration.
This is just Stephen Miller doing exactly what he said he intended to do, and exactly what Project 2025 said the government should do (meanwhile, Trump, "What's that? Never heard of it").
It's a temporary, presumably short, pause to train the consular staff on the economic viability (or liability) of immigrant visa applicants. Why is it unreasonable?
Because you don't need to pause applications to train staff? Schedule a training meeting for an hour on Wednesday. Reschedule the appointments you would have had then. No pause in application.
They aren't really pausing for training. The training is an excuse for the pause. The pause is to cause pain and difficulty and try to get people not to immigrate. Because they don't like immigrants.
Because if that were the case they should have just kept the existing staff that already had the requisite knowledge instead of letting DOGE fire 400 people from DHS who did this kind of thing. You have no backing for your presumption either. The Iran war was supposed to be short. The Trump admin is full of pathological liars. Stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.
What, were they untrained before? Is there a reason this training would take more than (at most) 16 hours?
It's a bullshit excuse that's barely more palatable than the truth, brought to you by the same people who paused immigration for almost all of Africa except for "Caucasian South Africans".
https://archive.is/cjW9v
So for those that don't know, it's quite common for a visa renewal to be required to leave the country. Depending on the visa, you might have to do this every year.
So just imagine, having a normal job in the US and you're asked to leave to renew your visa and this stuff happens.
That's no more appointment, not even a new date and you're now very likely unable to work and possibly can't even enter the country to get your belongings if you were to leave.
Just 'putting a pause' on people with existing appointments with no answer for when they might resume is.... Inhumane
Not trying to make a political point at all and perhaps a controversial take. But, it’s specifically and maybe implicitly by design. Meaning they made this way precisely so you have to reapply so they can change their mind or block you out later. Nothing about getting a visa is permanent and you’re fully at risk when you move here with that type of status. If you evaluate the situation that’s always been the case.
The cruelty is the point.
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Lots of countries have temporary worker status. The requirement to leave the country to re-up it appears to be a distinctively American thing.
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Unless you use the visa to marry Donald Trump, as his 3rd wife did.
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Thank you captain obvious
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Immigrant visas cannot be renewed - if you use such a visa to enter the country then you become a lawful permanent resident and are not eligible for any visas until you abandon your permanent residency, and even then you will need to apply for a brand new visa.
I think there are a lot of inhumane things happening around the world right now to label this inconvenient, at best. We need better leadership through higher voter participation and an informed electorate to stop these inhumane and inconvenient policies.
Speak for yourself, I voted for exactly these policies.
> So just imagine, having a normal job in the US and you're asked to leave to renew your visa and this stuff happens.
The only way I can see this happening is if you try to convert from OTP to an H1. I used to do some runs up to Vancouver to help a friend do that.
This just generally sucks for anyone making plans in their life. I remember my wife's greencard interview in Guangzhou, and it would have sucked if they instituted this the day before she did that.
H1-B and L1 can actually be done in-country, but for some reading going abroad and get consular processing has a lower chance of RFE.
You are talking about change (or extension) of status, not visa.
US is unique in that the visa sticker and your right to remain in the country (status) are two different things. The only purpose of the visa sticker is to allow you to travel to a U.S. port of entry, where you apply for admission, and therefore legal status. You can have legal status in the U.S. while the visa sticker has expired, and your status can be changed or extended domestically. However unless you have a valid sticker you cannot leave and return.
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Based on my experience 20 years ago you could only renew the H-1B visa in the passport in-country under extraordinary circumstances. In the majority of cases they reject your request and would tell you to travel to a consulate.
Prior to the mid 00s you could renew at any consulate but they changed it so you could only renew in your home country.
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The pause on visa appointments does not apply to H1-B and L1 as they are nonimmigrant visas. It applies to family based immigration visa, diversity visa, and EB-1/2/3 when you do processing abroad.
(You might have known that, but I thought it's worth clarifying).
I have friends who are expats and they’ve done this for years. I had one family member who left every six months to renew their visa.
It’s a chore, but very common around the world.
Were they able to come back when they did this?
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Were the visas for the US? B1/B2?
I know stuff like this happens for digital nomads in southeast asia or Schengen but the US generally doesn't approve of "visa runs".
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In the EU you do not need to leave to renew your visa. I don't know how common it is elsewhere.
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Sorry, but that is not common around the world. Most countries do not have such a system. I.e. none of the EU/UK/Australia countries have that.
Is it? You’re generally able to renew without leaving. Unless you mean abusing a visitor visa?
Isn't this specifically for immigrant Visas? The work and student Visas (H1B / F1) are non-immigrant Visas.
Or imagine if an employee works for you and this happens to them.
I've had a couple of reports that this applied to. It's incredibly disruptive. "I've got to fly back to India to renew my visa." "Okay, when will you be back?" "I have no idea, it depends when I can get an appointment. It could be next week, it might be in a month." "[State department] We're pausing all visa appointments." "Well fuck."
Meanwhile I've got a tech lead who is 12 hours away from the rest of the team. He was at least willing to work US-East hours while in India (basically staying up all night and sleeping during the day), but there was a huge amount of management overhead and inconvenience for the employee involved.
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Hire Americans?
Hundreds of thousands of tech workers have been laid off in the last two years. There are many skilled Americans on the job market. Foreign workers are here for the benefit of the United States, not as charity to the rest of the world, or as a source of cheaper labor for global employers seeking to undercut American wages.
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Agreed. I live in Midwest and that's the same sentiment I am getting from the people. People voted to oppose illegal migration, not stopping legal migration. This November will be judgment day for this administration's policies.
The term "illegal immigration" got moved to "people who have proper papers and did everything legally but were granted access by someone I don't like" - anyone who was an informed voter could see that "against illegal immigration" was just red meat for the base.
In the mid 2000s, I had to leave the US for renewal while leaving all my hard assets behind. I had a plan in place in case I couldn't go back to the country, which did happen to some people. These people had their interviews, but they got held back outside the US, sometimes for months, waiting for the renewal process to finish. I had an immediate renewal, but was almost held back for some red tape reasons.
This sucks but it isn't new, unfortunately.
The scale is new. Obviously a nightmare or even a tragedy for individual people that it happens at all. But this happening to (tens of?) thousands of people all at once is a whole different thing.
Indeed it is. But that’s the point Miller, etc are trying to make.
We’re so screwed. Good luck to us ever building up goodwill again.
It will take generations -- if we even get the chance.
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This report is for immigrant visas. H-1B visas are not immigrant visas and are the ones that require the stamp renewal in the home country.
That being said, yes, the way the current administration handles immigrant visas, worker visas, and more is absolutely inhumane and completely asinine. I've been through it with family and friends, and it is painful and can be heartbreaking even.
At least for F1 and H-1B visas, one wasn't required to get a new visa physically stamped (for which one would have to leave) to switch schools (undergrad -> grad) or jobs. Is this forced now? Of course, if one wanted the freedom to be able to travel or visit one's home country, a new stamping was required if the old visa expired.
It's not ideal but a lot of us basically didn't leave for several years (even pre-Trump 1) to avoid the hassle of a new stamping.
In Canada I had to leave and re-enter for my permanent resident status to complete. It’s not that uncommon - but it’s a pain.
In Canada you never have to leave to renew or change status; it's just sometimes faster to do so. It's always the applicant's choice. I went through the whole work permit to PR to citizenship pipeline without ever having to leave the country.
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"Flagpoling" was the beautiful euphemism for this.
Really? My spouse and I lived in Canada on work permits and were not required to leave in order to achieve PR status; nor to achieve citizenship status.
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OP isn't criticizing the practise of leaving to renew. He's criticizing the this new policy of not letting you back in when you leave.
Hang on a tick: does that mean we may have been the baddies all along?
I say this as someone who just sent their daughter to NYC explaining how we used to try to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to poor immigrants who just assumed this was a land of kind people, WTF? Could we not take a decade off from being prissy about our democracy *and* total cocks about how we actually act?
everything this administration does daily is from one of three boxes
this is a little from the first box and the last box
imagine what's tomorrow or next week
meanwhile let's all enjoy the billion spent on making statues gold plated in DC and the ballroom and the arch and his drapes and his reflecting pool and 100 foot banners of his face on federal building and his face on gold coins, passports, park passes and the $250 bill
it's surreal
You forgot [INCOMPETENCE]
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Yeah, this is a pretty big risk. I'm similarly married to an American and we have an American child. Other country seems to have screwed the family, though. Mine (India) offers a fairly indefinite visa called an Overseas Citizen of India. And my wife's other nationality (Taiwan) also permits foreign spouses to live there after some straightforward paperwork. So, in theory, we could live in either of these other places together. I suppose I will only know when push comes to shove.
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Didn't we used to fast track citizenship for immigrants who married a US citizen? I mean, the default should be that after the wedding you're now on track to be a citizen within a year or two if the marriage is still in effect by then.
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I don't want to minimize your friend's situation. But, a spousal visa is very different from being a permanent resident (maybe I am misunderstanding). If he got it through marrying a US citizen, there's a 3-year wait for naturalization and otherwise it's a 5-year wait.
Naturalization never required leaving the country, at least in my experience but things might have changed.
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> His wife and child aren't citizens of his home country either, so it's not like they can move to be with him.
Why doesn’t their home country have a welcoming immigration plan allowing his spouse and child to move with him? Which country is this?
> His wife and child aren't citizens of his home country either, so it's not like they can move to be with him. Their lives are shattered.
What would the steps be for this? Hopefully the other country has easier entry and that would be a possible route?
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This doesnt make any sense. If you are married to a us citizen you qualify for a green card. Then you need 3 years for citizenship. You never need to leave the country. Ive been through this process, this is absolutely wrong.
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This story can't be true. The green card freeze policy only went into effect in January 2026...earlier this year, and was struck down several months ago.
Also, UCIS has limited discretion to reject a spousal green card applicant; an undisclosed criminal record or immigration violations are basically the only two that would apply if he's been married for years.
The details of this story have glaring mistakes and don't make sense. I know this because I'm a naturalized citizen to the US and I came in on H1B.
> He's been doing the paperwork to finally become a citizen, and as one of the final steps he was required to leave the country
You don't have to leave the country to become a citizen. I recently became a US citizen a few years back and leaving the country is not required.
If you somehow meant Green Card, the timeline still doesn't make sense. Until May 2026, 3 months ago, you could do Adjustment of Status within the country without having to leave. So there's no reason why you friend would need to leave the country to get his Green Card unless he chose Consular Processing.
Getting denied CP is rare, but it means that they lied about something.
And if he did live in the US for decades without having his GC, well, applying for GC under Trump in this climate was a huge mistake, especially leaving the country having been in here for decades illegally. He should have waited 2 years until the Republicans were voted out and maybe he would have some modicum of amnesty where at least ICE would get him.
> His wife and child aren't citizens of his home country either, so it's not like they can move to be with him.
This also doesn't make sense. First off, the country's immigration is even more restrictive than the US?? They can't even visit on a travel visa??
They can definitely move to his home country, since he's a citizen. There's a spousal visas for almost all countries, and the child is most definitely allowed to come in since they can usually get citizenship via the father.
But there's no way he hasn't seen his daughter in over a year since the forced Consular Processing didn't start until this past May, and his spouse and daughter can most definitely travel to see him.
None of this story makes sense, so either you have the details very drastically incorrect or this is completely fake.
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It's just such mindless cruelty. It's hard to imagine so many people support this.
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Kick out all the foreigners - drawing an arbitrary line at anyone who arrived (or can be linked back to arrivals) after 1492.
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> 90% of new jobs since 2020 went to people not born in America. That's a passive-aggressive invasion.
Do you have a source for this claim?
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Inhumane is every choice made by this country under this regime. The "bothsides" and "no politics" crowds are equally as complicit in this as Trump voters.
Inhumane maybe, but our government should owe its first allegiance to our citizens wellbeing, not imported workers.
Surely you would admit that this Administration’s approach to immigration has been both chaotic and cruel. The workers who were given status in the United States expected a predictable process, not one that changes weekly based on the unserious personal whims of a bored, ill-informed and vindictive man. In any case, the prioritization of citizens’ wellbeing writ large is demonstrably _not_ a feature of this Administration’s agenda.
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The government should not be doing inhumane things to people. This should not be a controversial statement.
How, in any way does this help the wellbeing of a citizen? Why bring up that very strange point, which is completely unconnected to the massive harm here.
If anything, these policies harm the citizens of the US in a myriad of ways. There's zero benefit to be had from any of this. Except for the joy tha tthe cruel feel in causing others misery, but that's not citizens, that's just a few sick people.
The first responsibility is to protect the rights of all people in the country. Citizenship is not required for protected rights
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The mere suggestion that this admin is doing this or anything else for the wellbeing of its citizens is a complete departure from reality.
It's very clear what the motivations are, and just because they don't seem harmful in isolation doesn't mean it's going to have no consequences for everyone else.
And its going so great for our citizens wellbeing. Oodles of programs for the needy smashed to bits. Corruption and self dealing out the wazoo. Protestors shot to death by ICE agents. A legendarily stupid war fucking up international shipping. Illegal tariffs changing daily.
My company has a H-1B guy that travelled home to India a few months ago and since then can't come back because the next date he can get with the US embassy is next year. Seems he may get stuck even longer...
I am to some degree on board with keeping a closer eye on immigration, but the way the current administration does it feels intentionally cruel. The guy at my company has a house, wife, and kids in the US; his visa is perfectly legal, so it seems it would make sense to process these people quickly. But instead, he is now in some limbo. Same for ICE. Clamping down on illegal immigration makes sense, but it doesn't make sense for ICE to behave like some unaccountable secret police that hires the biggest assholes they can find who can then do whatever they want.
the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents.
not only are they making it hard & unbearable for families of US citizens & PR holders to be together.
while at the same time - discouraging talent to come to the US at a crucial time when talent is at a premium due to A.I development.
last the backwards energy policy of banning renewable energy.
This was never about talent. It's about companies hiring foreigners on h1b visas at below market wages where their life in the USA is contingent on their job performance forcing them to work harder and longer than their peers to remain in the country. It's a situation that only benefits companies, while harming US citizens who have to compete with the lower wages of foreigners.
I work in a global company. As an interviewer, I don't even know if the person I interview is a US citizen. I don't even know if they live in the US or another country, and I'm probably not allowed to ask. I just rate their performance. And everybody is paid the same.
I think the situation is quite simple. Companies want the best candidates they can get, and the larger the recruitment pool, the better.
If tomorrow you were to tell (let say) Google they now need to hire only US citizens, would they lower their hiring bar, or would they expand their Shanghai or Zurich offices? Are US citizens entitled to work at Google more than others for the sole reason they have a particular citizenship?
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I was a hiring manager. H1B candidates got exactly the same wage as native born. There were no differences.
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How does companies hiring h1b-holders (a non-immigrant visa) relate to a pause on immigrant visa applications?
As a hiring manager no one tells you who is an immigrant and who isn’t when you interview them.
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Isn't that a work visa and not an immigrant visa
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Oh cool, good thing labor isn't fungible and nobody ever outsources.
What a brilliant plan. Lets make sure that we restrict the supply of doctors and medical personell, that's sure to improve care!
Recently[1] Microsoft laid off several thousand domestic employees while simultaneously hiring a couple thousand employer-sponsored-Visa workers.
[1]https://www.newsweek.com/microsoft-layoffs-2026-xbox-h1b-vis...
And yet, they never applied the simple option of ranking the visa applications by salary, and approving in order of demand for the talent.
That would be a market based solution that allows everyone to get the talent they need without driving down American wages.
But the point isn't about helping Americans, it's about being peedormatively against letting in brown people.
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"Superpower Suicide" in the words of historian Timothy Snyder.
Also encompasses the self-destruction of military power, alliances, and beneficial trade.
Do you think China should open their borders for everyone no questions asked? Kick out no one, even overstayed visas?
If not, are you willing to equate the current Chinese regime’s quality to that of your perceived quality of the US?
I see you trying to kick a field goal all the way from the school parking lot, good luck with that.
These visa policies have already encouraged large tech companies etc to expand their Indian offices. It erodes the US tax base and means talent stay in their home country, which means more innovation happens outside the US. More start-ups are been founded in these countries because more talent is now there.
Trump first term was make Mexico and Vietnam Great Again as companies moved their manufacturing there. This term its make India Great Again as companies retain and train their tech talent there.
They will and after a cyberleek incident they'll rethink that plan.
Who cares where this so called innovation happens? Won't it be cheaper for all of us if the salaries are in much lower cost of living places? Why would a US citizen give a shit?
I used to think things like this as an American. But let's simplify. What if they're just fucking idiots and they realized they could rally a bunch of other fucking idiots to the polls?
So if you were essentially having a spasm about how no one understands how perfect the world was when you had all the advantages, I mean, we don't need a fancy theory at that point. It's literally old people spewing up acid about why their kids don't come to Thanksgiving, only we managed to create such a presence in the world media, it's a damned disaster.
Like if your racist grampa got put in charge of US Treasuries, tell me how things would be worse.
> the current admin are working hard to destroy the U.S as if they're foreign agents.
Trump is an Israeli asset:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/adelson-trump-four-more-ye...
Even if this was true how would it be in Israel's interest to weaken the US of all countries?
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How can you with a straight face equate “fine for 1921-1965” with “best for 2026”?
Even odder: what makes you find it plausible that an understanding of the policies of this period and their effect on the economy were part of the decision-making process of this administration - especially when they have actively voiced opinions that fully explain this action? At some point bending backwards to provide some benefit of the doubt is saying more about the speaker than the topic - I am certainly of the opinion that we are well beyond that rubicon. I cannot fathom the reasoning at this point.
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And the U.S. has been doing even better since 1965. So really the question goes back to you.
Either way, your whataboutism isn’t even relevant since those were congressional changes.
This is the executive trying to undermine the law.
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"Worked fine" is a pretty vague description for the year we had a Great Depression, world war, Jim Crow, Japanese internment to name a few.
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Oh god I hope this lie is part of an attempt to get right-wingers on board with a “let’s roll immigration policy back to what we had in 1950!” push.
I hope this because it’d be hilarious if they got what they wanted and realized that meant actual open borders with most or all of the Americas.
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I wonder if this has to do with the current economy and job market. Anecdotally I have found it very tough to find a new job (software engineering), though my previous employer continues to post job listings for green card applications as part of the required labor market test.
They are not connected - this is a pause on immigrant visas, not work visas.
What do you think EB visas are: immigrant visas or work visas? Answer: they are both.
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This is the most missed point in all of the flame throwing in this thread.
They certainly aren’t doing this out of any particular love for American workers.
I'd say it's on the Trump administration being full of racists and white nationalists and wanting to deport immigrants.
Why do you wonder if it's economic instead of the Trump administration's announced policies of stopping immigration, including unconstitutionally removing birthright citizenship?
Conflating not wanting to compete with foreigners for jobs in your own country with racism is bad faith bullshit. Foreigners of the exact same race are equally unwanted competition.
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Birthright citizenship is so weird, because when I think of my son’s birthright, I imagine things he’s entitled to because he’s my son. He’ll inherit from my estate, he’ll enjoy my love and encouragement and support, etc. The location of the hospital where he was born doesn’t really have anything to do with it, but now I have an entirely new fear about foreign countries claiming my child if my wife happens to give birth early while on a vacation. Like, I want to go to Israel, but don’t they have compulsory military service? I wouldn’t want the baby to accidentally become an Israeli citizen and forced to serve for some foreign army. Same with China. I’d love to see the country, but they’ve had some weird and draconian laws like the one child policy. For all I know they take some children to be raised by the state. Whatever their laws are… I don’t think they should apply to my children.
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I think many (if not most) countries in the developed world should reduce immigration, and usa in particular should abolish birthright citizenship.
The first because a lower supply of labor is going to create breathing space for an entire working population who will see tremendous job upheaval due to AI automation. A lower aggregate demand on houses, services will also be welcome to take the fuel out of inflation, and maybe we'll regain some of that experience of true affluence, where scarce things (e.g. access to cabin in the woods, a rowhome in a walkable city, ...) are in abundance. There is also the import of an idle, criminal element that has very clearly reduced quality of life and safety in many places.
Birthright citizen should be abolished because birth tourism and illegally crossing the border to have anchor babies are a vector for foreigners to participate politically and claim imho undeserved welfare benefits.
I think largely these are the stated reasons of the administration too.
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Are you... genuinely this naive and ignorant to what's happening in USA?
Attempts to find plausibly deniable rationales for this administration's anti-immigrant policies other than "gutter racism" are ridiculous.
Occam's razor. When somebody shows you who they are, believe them. Nativism is possibly the only stable and coherent political ideology this admin holds. Everything else is negotiable, but not this one.
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didn't big tech co's layoff thousands of people here and then filed for thousands more h1b ?
This is a response to the supreme court ruling on birthright citizenship. They're using the levers they do have, since that was removed. Anyone who agrees with the ruling should really read justice Thomas' dissent.
What is this "lever" you claim already existed and then got "removed", precisely?
This one doesn’t mention tourist visas, so I am guessing they will be issued? I don’t get what benefit they see by inconveniencing and potentially harming folks that are already in the country legally to just live their lives. I get that this administration’s goal is to completely shut down all immigration and potentially even remove folks here legally too but there will be a cost to bear for the country because of that. It will be slow to come and so they will be able to blame it on the next administration
This is specifically for immigrant visas. USCIS distinguishes two broad categories of visas: immigrants and non-immigrants. Tourists are part of the latter group.
That's not accurate. H-1B is a non-immigrant visa. It's not intended for tourists.
From CBP's own website[1], emphasis is mine:
[1]: https://www.help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-1027?language=en_...
Are H1Bs still being processed? They are dual intent visas as far as I know
> The State Department has paused all immigrant visa applications while it briefs consular officials around the world on a new policy that aims to keep out people who are considered potential drains on public coffers.
From AP NEWS. Sooo Trump can get deported? Is anyone draining public coffers faster than him?
"We're not anti-immigration, we're only anti-illegal immigration!"
* indefinitely pauses legal immigration *
Slanted take here, but this is exactly what they are doing with the federal government.
They like to complain that "big government inefficient and bad" while actively making it inefficient and bad. They are fulfilling their own prophecies.
Similar to immigration I'm sure. If all immigration is illegal then it's all bad!
It’s not slanted, it’s accurate.
The right wing doesn’t want to run the government, they want to occupy it so it doesn’t run except to enrich themselves.
Everything they say is a lie.
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The irony: many native Americans believe that all of your own immigrant ancestors should never be allowed to enter the US.
If you really believe what you wrote then I'd suggest to "GetThemOut*" your own immigrant heritage out of the country.
* as your trolling username says
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If you're saying that's hypocritical, it's not.
Being anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration doesn't mean you want to flood the country with legal immigrants. That's the case in the UK, by the way, where the vast majority of immigrants are legal and it's the reason for the growing anti-immigrant attitude of the natives.
People who are anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration also have requirements like:
- there should be a fixed number of legal immigrants
- they should be well vetted (this may be lacking in the US and UK)
- legal immigration should be points based
- quotas for legal immigrants should be increased contingent on the number of illegal immigrants which are expelled
- there should be checks to verify that visas are not abused (the way H1Bs are abused in the US with under qualified immigrants)
- asylum should be abolished because it's abused. It can be replaced by paying poorer countries to permanently host asylees.
It most certainly is hypocritical. You can not be simultaneously pro-legal immigration and support banning legal immigration. If you support banning legal immigration, you are by definition anti-legal immigration.
> Being anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration doesn't mean you want to flood the country with legal immigrants.
If only there were something between 0 and unrestricted immigration, some sort of program where people apply for permission and the government issues approvals for individuals to enter its borders after meeting legal criteria.
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Well, for starters, good.
We all know this whole H1-B situation was to cripple wages and to get an indentured workforce. Glad its being "paused". Would love to it being modified to not being tied to a company, or gottennrid of for good.
Sorry about the people who were using it, but also not sorry.
Maybe we Americans can get some of those jobs the companies were scamming the govt with.
> we Americans
We can also take a more critical look at the definition of what being American is. The 20th century, especially pre-1920, was rife with illegal immigration. Why should the descendants of those who skipped the line, who didn't come in "the right way", be able to now call themselves American and reap the unearned benefits of citizenship? They've taken and continue to take jobs from Americans who need them.
I encourage you to pause and reflect on how confident and wrong you are at the same time.
H1-Bs aren't being paused. This is for immigrant visas.
Pity. Cause that's the system that needs overhauled or killed.
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What will be next in Trump's destruction of the American Economy?
So far he has driven away allies, put huge tariff on our most loyal allies. Driven away manufacturing by tariff policies. Driven away immigrants and academics. Pushed a last century oil based economy. Shown us how our exquisite weapon tech will fail (this might actually be good in the long run). Along with crippling our cybersecurity and state departments.
Well at least you're healt... oh wait.
Is this in retaliation for a federal judge ruling three days ago that Trump's pause on Diversity Visa processing was unlawful?
Or is this in retaliation for a federal judge ruling 6 days ago that Trump's ban on immigration from 75 countries was unlawful?
Yes.
Not just immigration, seems like travel in general is becoming difficult too.
It's a real shame that just when we have the tech and infrastructure to allow people to travel anywhere in the world within a day, for a single person to be able to explore the entirety of this awesome planet for the first time in human history,
that the worst among us have to enforce artificial borders and deny everyone this basic freedom.
Travel should be codified as a human right.
If someone can support themselves and doesn't harm anybody, what ethical justification does anybody have for denying a person from living where they want?
People aren't simply interchangeable units of economic output, and when they live together for long periods of time they develop unique and distinct cultures that are dear to them. Letting the entirety of the world into your country without stops is cultural suicide. If you put any a value in preserving culture you will find it ethical to put some limit on immigration. Assimilation is possible but there is a limit to the rate and amount of foreigners a place can absorb before changing significantly.
There's no real Us culture to preserve.
> Letting the entirety of the world into your country without stops is cultural suicide.
The natives of the Americas, Australia, and the many nations previously colonized by European countries, know that better than any descendants of the colonizers.
Did they get to have any say?
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> to enforce artificial borders and deny everyone this basic freedom.
a very postnational view, humanist in a way, lipsius or erasmus would recognize it.
that sort of individuated cosmopolitanism only works for educated men and women with means, who have or have the capacity to self-actualize.
not for the masses. the nation is still a cradle to protect and nurture the commonwealth, and given that they took hundreds to sometimes thousands of years to form, i don't think borders are artificial in the least.
> that sort of individuated cosmopolitanism only works for educated men and women with means, who have or have the capacity to self-actualize.
So because not everyone can afford to travel freely we shouldn't let anyone do that?
There's no reason why we should worship borders, or the state.
> and given that they took hundreds to sometimes thousands of years to form, i don't think borders are artificial in the least.
"Borders" as they are treated today began barely 200 years ago, and only started being enforced so strictly since WW1 and then even worse after WW2.
For the vast >95% of human history, if you could walk to somewhere and survive there, you could live there.
The real ironic shit is that most of the travel and immigration restrictions of today are instituted by the descendants of people that invaded and occupied the lands of other people :')
This is really frustrating. I'm (native-born US citizen) naviagting the visa process with my future wife. She has no intentions of working (enjoys being NEET) and there's zero risk of her becoming a public charge (our hh gross income is closer to 7 digits than it is to 5 digits), very frustrating that we're getting screwed by this under the justification of labor market competition and public charge risk.
50% of all American unicorns were started by immigrants. This is sheer stupidity to prevent the best of what the world has to offer when they are knocking at your door.
People think immigrants come to just take. When they can contribute to the economy.
The impact on academics and research has already been felt over the last decade. US used to be the default destination for academics and skilled workers from China ever since the cultural revolution. They engrained themselves in the country, studied/worked at top univerities, taught multiple generations of students, did key research, worked at top tech companies, and overall were major contributors to American technological superiority.
Then starting ~2016 Trump and his DoJ made it borderline impossible for Chinese nationals to get visas, specifically targeting research universities. Since then new Chinese skilled immigration has slowed down to a trickle, and there has been a massive "brain gain" of existing talent in China's favor.
The result - China now has a booming tech industry, Chinese universities have overlapped Amercian ones in research output, China is a very close 2nd in the AI race. And as skilled immigrants continue to be driven out of the US China in particular will enjoy the benefits.
I think what voters want is for highly skilled founders to come and start companies and for normally skilled employment to go to Americans before foreigners.
What is a "normally skilled" job? Working at Home Depot?
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The world's richest man is an illegal immigrant who started multiple companies.
(Musk started X.com while on a student visa and didn't get around to securing a work visa until many years later. This rule violation technically renders his U.S. citizenship void under Trump-era immigration rules.)
It’s unquestionably bad for the United States, but it will be good for the rest of the world. Time for US dominance to end, and Trump is doing a good job of that.
And now they can be more evenly distributed all over the world. I'd call it a net win even if administration did not think it this way.
> closed for training
So like the DMV then?
Same ruling class that goes on a bunch of tangents about birth rates stops immigrant visa processing for US citizens who married abroad.
They stopped it for those who married men as well
This is classic goomba fallacy.
Right wing oligarchs want infinite immigration because they get a larger labor pool and lower wages. Right wing normies want less immigration because they don't want to compete with the entire world for a job and don't want to become a minority in their own country.
Spend some time on X and you can see the two parts of the right wing attack each other over this issue.
Jobs will just move abroad then: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-11-11/trump-s-h...
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Ultimately, there is some value in each position, and in a corresponding set of positions on the left. Unlike many issues in US politics, in the long run this one is not well left-right aligned, and there is no single correct number for how much immigration is best. It's a bunch of trade-offs, which should be made democratically and end up somewhere around the number that the median person wants, such that roughly half of us are unhappy because too many immigrants come in and roughly half unhappy because too few. Arriving at that number and changing it slowly would be far better than wild swings.
> don't want to become a minority in their own country.
Yet in the next thread over, people are crucifying DHH for saying the same thing, except they are spinning it as "denying their right to exist"... somehow.
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The US seems hellbent on destroying its own economy, immigrants have always played a key part in it. Looking forward to Trump yelling about how the radical left has somehow undermined the US economy in a few months.
Most damage will be realized after he's dead
And in the interim he's positioning his family and cronies to benefit from any rebuilding. Just as he literally sat in the White House and said, verbatim, "My children insider trade all the time".
Everything is someone else's fault. The buck never stops with him.
I’d guess Miller is the main driver of this given what we know about that loser (and freak).
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I often think about how far the Republican party has fallen from Truman with his "The Buck Stops Here" plaque on his desk to Trump's "I don't take any responsibility at all" response to poor Covid testing in 2020.
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Looking forward? He never stopped. It's been 10+ years of narcissistic scapegoating, even for times when he was President, even while Republicans controlled congress, and even over trade-deals, policies, and laws that he took-credit for and bragged about. (e.g. USMCA in 2020.)
> Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein had been at work!
-- 1984
The parallels between Emmanuel Goldstein and Trump Derangement Syndrome are impossible to ignore for anyone who's actually read 1984.
To borrow from Baum (The Wizard of Oz): today there's not only a curtain with men behind it, but a man in front of the curtain that everyone is pointing to (a la Goldstein). And if he stops being useful they'll replace him. This has happened several times already while the men behind the curtain and long standing policies he people hate remain unchanged.
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Well, others can bent in other direction and boost their economy by taking in all immigrants that were US bound.
And they are. I read somewhere a few days ago that France is vacuuming up academics and advanced students that have been displaced by various recent policy changes that have proven to be hostile towards academia and research.
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As noted clearly in the article, this is a temporary pause while personnel are brought up to speed on the protocols. The real question is how just or unjust the refusals will be once it is unpaused. It's bad enough that the process is excruciatingly slow.
Users keep downvoting my comment even though it is the only literal interpretation supported by the evidence, without any evidence to the contrary. I would rethink only if it lasts over three months.
Note also that courts would easily overrule Trump if the pause became unreasonable.
You're obviously wrong, it obviously doesn't make sense to close down instead is implementing the training for the new protocols in parallel. And the current disruption is just as real of a question as the future refusals. And obviously courts couldn't do it easily.
By the way, you also haven't provided any evidence for your opinion, why would you burden type replies with it?
The evidence is the title and the content of the article, so read it. I am not the one to jump to conclusions.
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Or as the saying goes: nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution.
Also, lol @ "the courts will fix it!" Fat fucking chance. I'm looking into my crystal ball: I see a 6-3 supreme court ruling supporting the administration's executive order to liquidate congressional power and fold it into the executive branch (as the founding fathers intended...)
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Consular staff are trained on this as-is. It is hard to imagine a re-training on process that could take any more than two days.
And yet we have an entirely open-ended "We have nooooo idea how long this will take!"
Garbage. This is the same administration that paused all immigration from Africa except for "Caucasian South Africans" who were classified as refugees by default, regardless of their motivation on immigration.
This is just Stephen Miller doing exactly what he said he intended to do, and exactly what Project 2025 said the government should do (meanwhile, Trump, "What's that? Never heard of it").
> "We have nooooo idea how long this will take!"
It will take about two weeks. Is that right, two weeks? We'll have it done in about two weeks I'm told by some, very intelligent people.
It's a temporary, presumably short, pause to train the consular staff on the economic viability (or liability) of immigrant visa applicants. Why is it unreasonable?
Because you don't need to pause applications to train staff? Schedule a training meeting for an hour on Wednesday. Reschedule the appointments you would have had then. No pause in application.
They aren't really pausing for training. The training is an excuse for the pause. The pause is to cause pain and difficulty and try to get people not to immigrate. Because they don't like immigrants.
Yes, we should assume good faith, the Trump administration has a clear track record of being reasonable and sticking to their word.
Because if that were the case they should have just kept the existing staff that already had the requisite knowledge instead of letting DOGE fire 400 people from DHS who did this kind of thing. You have no backing for your presumption either. The Iran war was supposed to be short. The Trump admin is full of pathological liars. Stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.
What, were they untrained before? Is there a reason this training would take more than (at most) 16 hours?
It's a bullshit excuse that's barely more palatable than the truth, brought to you by the same people who paused immigration for almost all of Africa except for "Caucasian South Africans".
Afrikaaners are a subgroup of what you refer to as Caucasians in South Africa.
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