hereandthere

Oh God you are an annoying little man. A person can cite a demographic fact and he is instantly a racist. People like you are like the old Soviet apparatchiks, only they didn't use advice forums to constantly belittle people and promote their own businesses.

hereandthere

Ok, thanks snowbunny; I was aware of the different usage but I presume many are not. My point, which seems to have been either deliberately misunderstood by some, was that the current immigration system is more beneficial to nations who are already well-represented in the US.

snowbunny

And that is due in part because of the familial presence, but not wholly. As I said - how many highly talented Western European workers would move to the US on an H-1B visa given its restrictions? Diversity IS a good reason to keep the DV lottery around if there's no chance we could move to a points-based system.

snowbunny

I'll take it! I could use some recognition, however dubious!

wordfool

more than perhaps family ties I'd put it down to two other factors. First that a lot of non-West European immigrants seems to be willing to work a hell of a lot harder than I ever would and the US rewards hard work; and second, a lot of non-European immigrants come to study in the US. The European and US higher education systems are considered the best in the world... the US system is just more accessible to most Asians, while most Europeans probably stay put for their subsidized degrees. Studying in the US is the best way to get a foot in the immigration door.

Of course I have no facts to back any of this up... but what fun would it be if I did

cathy22w

Actually, I disagree with a lot of these points.

I don't think the US rewards hard work any more than anywhere else. Less vacation, more working hours, and and expensive healthcare system. I worked hard when there (and I am a Western European) but I didn't find myself much more rewarded than those who didn't work so hard.

I don't agree that the US system is any more accessible to Asians than European systems. It's extremely expensive to study in the US compared to, say, the UK. I wouldn't say the US system is 'more accessible' to anyone in general.

Studying in the US is not the best way to get a foot in the immigration door; from what I know, I don't think you're allowed 'immigrant intent' on a student visa, so it wouldn't make it the best way. Other visas allow you 'immigrant intent'.

Michael

In the Silicon Valley there are a lot of Chinese and Indians working here.

Indians seem to have an advantage because of the large number of Indian outsourcing companies that know how to manipulate the system to get a large number of H1-B visas.

Chinese (both mainland as well as Taiwan) tend to do their post graduate schooling in the US and therefore they can try to obtain employment (on site interviews) once schooling is finished using the H1-B visas allocated for post graduate students (usually easier to get than the normal H1-b visas).

cindyabs

chrisfromusa

DV Lottery really needs to go away and make room for the more talented people, AFTER Americans and PRs have had a shot at getting a job. We're full up of people here (in the context that most immigrants settle in only a handful of states, your state and mine being 2 of them)

fatbrit

You're rejecting US history and tradition, perhaps best represented by the words of Ms. Lazarus. And you're only doing it to get back at Ted, I'll guess.

chrisfromusa

Don't know how Ted is, and I don't say things out of spite

We have huge amounts of unemployed that already live here on a permanent basis, what's so wrong of letting them have first dibs on jobs that are created? They live here, after all. The immigration service exists to let talented people into the country, they we NEED, it's not supposed to be a charity. We have 300 million people and climbing, and again only in a handful of states. California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Florida are already bursting at the seams

fatbrit

Ted's busy pushing up the Daises in case you hadn't heard.

I don't know what it is with the Faux news followers, but they always manage to get their little minds to latch on to some irrelevancy that is neither here nor there in the grand scheme of sorting out messes. In health care, we are convinced that we can cure it all with tort reform, and in immigration it's the DV that's the issue. Both are minuscule parts of gigantic problems.

More reading and less Faux News and Hannity, please! I've said it before and I'll say it again -- they're not helping you to develop as an independent thinker.

snowbunny

Which has caused the biggest job loss for US citizens - offshoring, or immigration? Where are the new jobs being created, here in the US, or in the BRIC countries?

meauxna

OIC. So now you want to document all the undocumenteds so they can go get jobs?
Cool.

tonrob

D'oh!