Comment by hvb2

> The issue here is that, if you just left the country to do everything the country asked you, you are now in limbo.

I feel like I’ve said it a few times but - Yes, exactly. The country wants you to leave and then get’s to decide if you can come back. That’s how it’s designed. On purpose.

You’re approaching it from a perspective where you’re being asked to leave and your reentry is a right. It’s not. They never said, if you leave you can come back. They said, leave and we’ll see. The risk of being blocked out is inherent by anyone residing in a country that has this similar process; there are many.

Look around the thread and notice how little the comments defending these policies have to say about the policies themselves. Instead, what they all have in common is a vague underlying fear of being displaced, or sense that something owed to them is being taken.

I mean, anyone who is still defending this administration isn't even trying to have a conversation in good faith.

I have a Republican friend who appreciates the Supreme Court Justices, and then suddenly has zero clue about any news story involving the administration, and shrugs off the war. This despite meticulously following Benghazi hearings when it was someone he wanted to dislike. He would rather Trump be Romney, but he's not going to do anything about it whatsoever.

I blame myself for teasing my Italian friend in college over Silvio Berlusconi, and now I've found myself in the same position :(

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It’s not “cruelty” to have and enforce rules. The words “temporary” and “nonimmigrant” is plastered all over the laws that govern these visas. People shouldn’t have treated them as permanent immigration visas. And employers shouldn’t have mislead employees into thinking these were permanent immigration visas.

It’s like saying that it’s “cruelty” to remove someone who uses a 2 hour parking spot as their permanent car parking.

Suppose a homeless guy knocks on your door and asks if he can stay in your living room. If you say no, or ask for more information, would it be fair for the homeless guy to say "the cruelty is the point"?

Tradeoffs exist.

So brave

His first wife too.

Hey! She was a genius and deserved it!

/s (poe's)

I’m just laying it out there in a obvious way because if someone said “if you push this button, you could get electrocuted” you wouldn’t call it inhumane when someone pushed the button and got electrocuted. I didn’t want to get into the politics behind this, but I don’t think those affected have any right to complain about it. It’s something they opted into knowing the risks. Especially at this time of political leadership, you should probably always have expected you may not return from a visa renewal trip.

I was recently in Malaysia on a digital nomad visa. When it expired I was required to leave the country and either wait for the renewal to go through or reenter on a tourist visa (and either not work or work illegally). So not distinctively American.

It's definitely not. I know Japan and Korea had a similar process when I was living there, and I was under the impression that most places operate this way. Your visa grants you right to temporarily stay in the country, and if you don't have a visa you have no right to be there. Sometimes there's a bridging visa to cover the gap, but a country isn't under any obligation to provide one.

But my point is it’s a known factor up front, and it’s so they can (have the option of) getting you to leave without allowing you back in. The thinking is that if people had visas that expires or revoked, they just wouldn’t leave and enforcement would be difficult (we have a forceful ICE now, but not always). Having them leave first is by design even if unique.

Is extremely common in europe and asia

It’s fairly common in destinations for migration, less so elsewhere.

Illegal immigration does not create queues or waitlists for legal immigration.

But I'll be honest: between the uncited numbers, the clear-eyed, neutral potted history, the italics, and the all-caps "LEGAL," I'm starting to think it would be foolish not to take your argument seriously.

Maybe if legal immigration were more achievable we wouldn't have so many illegal immigrants.

This "they did bad stuff so we have to do worse stuff" idea strips the people doing the second bad thing of their agency. That's false; they have agency, and can choose to do better.

Visa renewals are processed at a US consulate. You can extend your status (ie you ability to legally be in the US) while staying in the US, but if you want to renew your visa (your ability to leave and re-enter) you need to visit a consulate and those only exist outside of the US.

I think the whole point of making someone leave is the possibility that they may not be allowed back in. If staying was a foregone conclusion then there’d be no point in leaving.

Japan doesn't require you to leave either.

Visa rules are country specific and don’t apply to the EU in general. There are countries that require you to leave.

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It's not unique: Japanese system is exactly as you described.

There actually is a pilot to renew h1-b visa foils while in the US without a consular appointment.

the "only in your home country" change happened very recently, late 2025 or early 2026

Thank you for posting. I'm being sincere.

I think it is helpful to remind folk that these policies are not universally hated. Indeed a majority of voters voted specifically for them, and they were explicitly laid out.

This is democracy in action. The majority (of those who care enough at all) get to rule over the minority (and the apathetic). Obviously not all actions will be universally loved, but no govt action can ever be universally loved.

But will remain anonymous and are okay with the collateral damage. My suspicion is that competition makes you feel insecure. I was born and raised in SF, and I see this not only with immigrants but also from people who feel violated by migrants. There is a spectrum. It’s ugly, short sighted and unhelpful. It’s what it takes to make the valley, but people love pulling up ladders. At least, behind an alias, you’re will to acknowledge your shortcomings.

I've worked at companies where we transfer people to Canada during periods like this in the same time zone. Sometimes they enjoy it so much they don't want to transfer back to the US.

At least the procedure used to be that one would try to get an appointment at the US consulate in one's home country and then arrange the trip around it. Also, at least in my experience (but importantly, not with this administration) was that one was never required to leave the US.

The main constraint is re-entry into the US and being able to travel outside the US. If one stayed here, there was no problem switching schools, programs, jobs, adjusting status to permanent residency or naturalization. On the other hand, for re-entry, one needs a valid visa stamped on a passport which necessitated a trip to one's home country. This stamping visit could be unpredictable.

Ideally, one would like to travel freely to see family and friends but I see a lot of comments implying that one is forced to leave. It might be true now but a lot of comments here are conflating several issues together.

Props to your coworker. In my office, they usually just work normal India hours and we have a 12+ hour delay for all communications.

Honestly, this is kind of the point. Making foreign labor so unbearably difficult to work with will force companies to hire domestically. At least, hire more domestic workers than they would have otherwise.

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> Foreign workers are here for the benefit of the United States

But that's the point, isn't it? Some foreign workers who "worked the US for the benefit of the US" are now unable to come back to the US. Isn't that bad for the US too?

It's clear you are not a hiring manager. There aren't thousands of highly qualified engineers looking for work. I can't tell if this a troll post or not.

Of not violating the law? Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, a company can't use a candidate's citizenship in hiring decisions.

Most immigration is based on hiring people into jobs for which the skills don't exist locally, based on what I've read.

So, yes, they could hire a citizen, but then they probably wouldn't be able to do the job they were hired for.

I'm not sure if its the same in Canada but when I went through the process for Australia it depended on where you started the process. I started the process while outside the country so to activate my visa I had to leave and come back but if I had filed while in the country I could have stayed.

I do remember Canada telling my partner she wouldn't be guaranteed reentry while they were processing her PR visa until it was finalised if we left the country though so we just ended up doing the Australian half first and I never went back.

> I went through the whole work permit to PR to citizenship pipeline without ever having to leave the country.

You're comparing apples to oranges.

People going from non-immigrant visa (H1B, F1 etc.) to Green card via i485 "adjustment of status" do not need to leave the country either.

Only consular processing (ds 260) are in scope of this pause

https://www.ellis.com/resources/immigrant-visa-pause-2026

Has more details than the paywalled article

I did it 20+ years ago and I had to “land”. They’ve relaxed a lot of immigration rules since then so it might have changed.

Prior to Covid, my wife had to exit the country to get photos taken as part of the permanent resident process. We took a trip to Montana for that purpose.

This seems to have changed in the past 3-4 years, but as the GP said, the original process did involve leaving.

That's the foundational box for the actors, not a property of the actions

Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

We'll be fine. It didn't take Germany & Japan that long after they started WWII

> And my wife's other nationality (Taiwan) also permits foreign spouses to live there after some straightforward paperwork.

Not really.

Taiwan doesn’t like India either.

There’s a reason out of the 1.1 million immigrants/foreigners in Taiwan, only 6,000 are from India.

3 years instead of 5 for other LPRs

Confused as well - spousal visa gives them a green card, does it not? What is there to wait for? Are they postponing green card renewal as well?

You're right, I fixed the wording. I don't know all the details, but I do think it's a recent change. They've been married for almost ten years. His wife and child are US born.

Trump ended in-country processing and now requires almost all greencard applicants to go to a consulate abroad. My friend and his wife were surprised and nervous when they were told he'd have to leave due to this new requirement (rightfully so, in retrospect).

For now they're just waiting, separately, each living with relatives. There is zero guidance. The US consulate did not provide a reason for rejecting it other than the freeze, so there's nothing to even appeal.

Moving his wife and kid to his birth country isn't really an option. He doesn't plan to stay there. He has no job, no house, and no social network there. He barely speaks the language. His wife (US born) has a job and family here, and his kid only speaks English. Asking them to pull their kid out of school and move to another country until the US consulate decides to start processing paperwork again doesn't really seem like a reasonable solution, though with every passing week and month, it may end up being the only way they can be together again.

The only way this makes sense is he entered the country without inspection or something is very very wrong with his backgrounds. I personally know many people who overstayed their B1/F1 visas and then do AOS to green card via marriage, none was required to go back to their home countries.

OP either intentionally left out some crucial details or their friend lied.

True, it does smell a bit fishy..

I think part of the problem is that most Americans have no clue how the immigration system works. They see a large number of immigrants and hear horror stories about "chaos at the border" and "open border" and assume it's easy to immigrate. Even if you know someone who immigrated, you probably only know that route. Even though I'm a nationalized citizen myself, I can only tell you about the exact route that applied to my specific circumstances and beyond that mostly just know that it's extremely complicated and burdensome.

We don't even have to imagine. Many in this very comment section support this.

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“America” isn’t the landmass of America. “America” is the society that was built by mostly British immigrants bringing their language, law, and culture. America didn’t exist in 1492.

I looked it up there are a few articles.

https://cis.org/Camarota/New-January-Data-Still-Shows-Most-J...

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/feb/7/immigrants-t...

https://guestworkervisas.com/bls-a7-analysis.html

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The LLM on Google search says that too. It cites this (plus a couple things that cite that):

https://cis.org/Camarota/New-January-Data-Still-Shows-Most-J...

That cites this:

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

They do note that the share of working-age men not in the labor force is near a historic high for this kind of economy.

That probably suggests not reading too much into this before figuring out if the reason so many foreign born people have been hired is because so many native born people have dropped out of the labor pool.

The entire point of a temporary visa is that the host country can refuse to renew and force you to leave the country at their whim. When you apply for such a visa you accept those terms.

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>There's zero benefit to be had from any of this.

From the article:

"Updated guidance and training were being put in place to ensure that visa applicants don’t become a public charge under U.S. law or depend on government benefits intended for Americans in need, a spokesman for the department said Wednesday."

Why be a citizen at all if non-citizens have all the benefits and none of the responsibilities?