> 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.
> 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.
That is how it's designed, and that's fine.
But make a decision... They're pausing the decision making for an indefinite amount of time. That's not how it was designed, but it sure does look like that's on purpose.
It's not a mobster way, more like a weasel way. The reason it is a weasel's move is because decisions at the consulate are made by consular officers who are career public workers and won't deny visas for arbitrary reasons. That is bad for the political leadership because they just don't want to issue visas. So they need to invent evasive moves to throttle the pipeline by adding trainings, background checks, and other bogus bureaucratic hurdles.
> The reason it is a weasel's move is because decisions at the consulate are made by consular officers who are career public workers and won't deny visas for arbitrary reasons.
No? Visa can be denied for arbitrary reasons based on what executive branch of US. there have been multiple cases where it has been clear that visas are a privilige not a right. Visa needs a reason to be granted, by default it is denied.
Isn’t that the whole definition of “executive branch”? They are given (by we the people) the power to choose how to execute the laws. And we elect them.
The alternatives I can think of are for laws to be executed at the whim of an algorithm, a king, a more local executive like the governors of each state, or a more distant foreign executive like the UN
No, the executive branch has a responsibility to execute the law. It's not a privilege. We elected them to perform a duty on our behalf. Do you understand the difference?
Article 2, Section 3 of the US Constitution: "[The President] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed"
The judiciary doesn't have discretion as in it has been "granted" discretion. It de facto has a high degree of discretion because the act of judging a case necessarily entails a judgment of the laws.
Judicial review is a functional necessity. It's a necessary downstream consequence of simply having a Constitution as the supreme law.
The analog to the executive is that the executive naturally has finite resources to enforce law, and so as a matter of functional necessity it has some degree of discretion. That is not discretion to say "I disagree with this law and so am choosing not to enforce it," but the discretion to say "there are other priorities that are more important."
I was thinking about it more like if cops didn't have discretion, they would have to arrest for every minor offense and let the courts sort it out. After more reading it seems there are differing interpretations of the "Take Care" clause. Thank you for taking the time to explain.
> Beyond these constraints, the Clause raises several vexing questions. For instance, must the President enforce those laws she believes are unconstitutional? Some scholars argue that Presidents must enforce all congressional laws, without regard to his or her own constitutional opinions. Yet modern Presidents occasionally exercise a power to ignore such enactments on the grounds they are not true “laws” subject to the faithful execution duty. In so doing, they somewhat mimic the arguments and practice of President Thomas Jefferson, who refused to enforce the Sedition Act on the grounds that it was unconstitutional.
The executive only has discretion if the law says they do. If the law says they must or shall do something, they must do that thing. If it says they MAY do something or otherwise explicitly gives them discretion in making a decision, then yeah, they have that discretion
But it's not a given that they can just decide what laws they will or will not enforce or follow
Expanded rights for some at the direct expense of others. That's not the same as simply expanding rights, unless you count other people being 'offended' in the same category as someone being physically assaulted or killed.
> That's not the same as simply expanding rights, unless you count other people being 'offended' in the same category as someone being physically assaulted or killed.
Yes, they are the same category.
In US$10,000 property damage, nobody is physically harmed.
Here’s another example, expanded rights:
Anyone holding a 401k, IRA, or pension can purchase single family homes and apartments inside the account, and pay zero capital gains tax and zero rental income tax.
We expanded rights!
Take a guess what this does to the homeless population.
> Anyone holding a 401k, IRA, or pension can purchase single family homes and apartments inside the account, and pay zero capital gains tax and zero rental income tax.
I am not sure on pensions, but this is not true for a 401k. Only an IRA can be used without paying capital gains taxes for a home purchase. Including first time home buyers. Speaking from experience, I learned the hard way the benefit you are describing applies only to an IRA.
To be clear, you are saying that theft of <10k is not a crime..? If you steal an iPad in an airport, you are charged with theft. I don't know where you got that idea. People are charged with theft for much less than 10k daily.
Honoring it, no doubt, by restricting firearms to duly registered militia personnel as written in the plain text for all to see? What about the 14th Amendment section 3, also written plainly?
No, you are confusing discretion with whims of the executive branch. Consular officers have discretion to adjudicate the applications and they can deny them for reasons prescribed in the INA. Those decisions are not reviewable. They are still supposed to follow their training, the FAM, and the INA in making the decisions. If Rubio sends an email to the consulates that says, "deny all visas", that would be illegal as a matter of policy and will be overturned by the courts under the APA. Note that 212(f) (aka Muslim ban from Trump v. Hawaii) gives discretion to the president to bar entry into the country, not visa adjudications. Visa adjudications require individualized determination by the consular officer.
Does the United States owe immigration to the world, somehow? Does it owe it so much that there must be an avenue to immigration so large that you casually refer to that as a "pipeline"?
Some of us have friends overseas who we think are deserving of residency and citizenship. You used to be able to just show up on a ship and they would make you a citizen if you were healthy. That's how my ancestors got here.
"You used to be able to just show up on a ship and they would make you a citizen if you were healthy."
Unless you were Chinese. Let's not romanticize that period, the Chinese Exclusion Act was enacted precisely over fears of too many people of a different culture and race moving into the US at once. It was only repealed in 1943, as Imperial Japan became the common enemy of both China and the US.
And the Jews who were seeking shelter from Nazi Germany weren't particularly welcome either. There was an entire conference in Evian in 1938, ironically organized by none other than FDR, that sought a solution to increasing Jewish emigration from Germany. The end result was that no one was willing to increase or waive any quotas.
History tends to repeat with some variations. Few political things are totally new under the sun.
>Some of us have friends overseas who we think are deserving of residency and citizenship.
Sure, I have friends. But I'm not about to give my friends 50% of my house's equity just because we're friends. I'll invite them over temporarily, often even. But this doesn't entitle them to owning the property. I don't want to give them voting rights in my household budget.
And it's very bizarre that you can't make the distinction here. I doubt that the thought has crossed your mind that this is equivalent.
>You used to be able to just show up on a ship
True. That was then. But I don't want 2 billion people showing up off a ship and getting automatically put into the formal partnership with the rest of us. We have a right to decide who can come, who can't, and we don't even have to justify why. And there's enough of us deciding they can't now to make things better.
What a weird analogy. That has nothing to do with allowing immigration.
> We have a right to decide who can come, who can't, and we don't even have to justify why.
"We" is a funny concept here. As a US citizen, I am a part of that "we", and I want lots more immigration, and much easier paths to citizenship. Why don't I get what I want here?
At the very least, the current situation is inhumane, and treats non-citizens like an underclass. It's disgusting, and an embarrassment. Even if "we" decide we want fewer people living here or becoming citizens, there are better ways to do that.
What analogy? It's the same exact thing, scaled up from family to nation-state. These things aren't like each other, they are the same thing just smaller/larger. You were mal-educated in public schools.
>and I want lots more immigration
If we were talking about your equity in some startup and that the major holders were diluting that stock, you'd be apoplectic. Would call it cheating. I don't care what you want. One way or another, you must be defeated and never allowed to hold political influence again. Or educational influence, come to that.
>At the very least, the current situation is inhumane,
"Inhumane"? That word means something like "you're needlessly causing physical agony to livestock". So I'm sort of smirking that you would apply a word to people that is reserved for animals... maybe that's how the left really thinks of immigrants. They're just some sort of vote cattle that you can farm for election wins. But it's also bizarre. Seems like something you'd accuse me of, not the other way around.
>and treats non-citizens like an underclass
It does no such thing. It treats them like they should stay home and live there. Which is all anyone's asking for.
>Even if "we" decide we want fewer people living here or becoming citizens, there are better ways to do that.
There were! But those ways are disallowed. You blame people like me for the detention centers... we'd be deporting them the very first day, there wouldn't be time or need for them to be detained. That's the left doing that.
Start implementing those better ways. No one will stop you.
> That is bad for the political leadership because they just don't want to issue visas
America welcomes the most people in by percentage and by numbers in the world. If they don't want to issue visas, and they do it the most by political design, then no one does.
The US has the lowest percentage of it's population being immigrants in the Western Anglosphere. Like it's beaten by all of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and Ireland. Germany and France too, plus a while host of smaller European countries.
There's an argument that the US is the least immigrant friendly large Western nation. Maybe the medium sized ones too.
France’s foreign-born population is roughly 13% to 14%, which puts it about tied with or slightly lower than the U.S., depending on the specific year and census criteria used.
Pause is a silly way of saying No for now. You can try again later. But they’re not advising when that may be happening. To me, that tells you everything you need to know. That they don’t know themselves because it’s to be determined, maybe. Until then, no.
Can they? Because one of the questions on these questionnaires is almost always 'have you had a prior request being denied'.
> But they’re not advising when that may be happening. To me, that tells you everything you need to know.
These are life altering decisions for people that might have put decades into doing their best for the US. This is not about what to have for dinner.
This causes a LOT of uncertainty and chaos for no real reason. If they're so convinced it should all be denied, then issue those denials so they can be challenged.
So maybe you have stated a reason a pause is better than an explicit no. No history of a denial is maybe a better thing.
I get the human component but I can separate that from policy. I have my own risk assessment on it and it’s that I couldn’t imagine ever making any material investment financial or community in a place like this. I’ve thought about doing the digital nomad thing in the past, and I don’t think anyone would be surprised if some random South East Asian country did this same thing and nobody would bat an eye. It to be expected that other countries can have wavering policies, it’s when the US does it that people cry about the humanity of it.
I don’t think it would have hurt much to put some advanced warning out there. Let people plan for it. But I also know that probably has some blow back towards the intended outcome of this.
Also, I don’t think you can challenge a blanket policy. I haven’t really dove into this but it doesn’t sound like they’re making any exceptions.
The current administration loves creating chaos and uncertainty. Exactly why this should be less of a surprise to those that know how things work and that they may actually get locked out. Anyone who reads even just the headline of this and is perplexed by it has been living under a rock. To me, it is 100% on brand.
> I don’t think it would have hurt much to put some advanced warning out there. Let people plan for it.
As with a lot of things this administration does, this is where the cruel part comes in. That would be the sensible thing to do, it's just a choice not to.
> I don’t think anyone would be surprised if some random South East Asian country did this same thing and nobody would bat an eye. It to be expected that other countries can have wavering policies, it’s when the US does it that people cry about the humanity of it.
Because those countries would typically do it with a warning period of some sort, the fallout won't be as much.
In general these countries typically don't do this because the legal immigration system is how they pick and choose who to allow in, as the US does. So typically this would be to their advantage.
Also, the US is the country that used to call themselves "leader of the free world and all that". So maybe they should hold themselves to high standards?
> Also, I don’t think you can challenge a blanket policy.
There isn't a policy here that has been changed. It's the executive branch stopping some function it was tasked with. We've seen in the past that they've tried such things many times for the courts to then come in and say that the law says they should do XYZ and so they're forced to resume their work. DOGE stopped a bunch of things that the courts later reinstated, including rehiring the people they fired. Thankfully the executive branch isn't completely unchecked, yet.
> Exactly why this should be less of a surprise to those that know how things work and that they may actually get locked out
So you would suggest that people cancel their lease, pack up their stuff, don't sign their kids up for school and all? Just on the off chance that this hits right when they're abroad? I think that's just arguing around the issue created here.
We’ve said a lot already and obviously have our own perspectives. I understand your side, you don’t seem to understand mine. Or can’t understand it without echoing back the same stuff, I hear you and can understand perspectives I don’t agree with. That seems to be missing on your end, or you just want to argue about things which I don’t.
You quoted me without the “but…” part I already wrote.
I don’t think it’s a given another country would give any notice. Political regime change and general volatility are higher in some other places. Big assumption on your part.
Lack of policy and executive mandate is exactly why there’s really no formal dispute process either. Yes, it means you have to let the courts sort it for you. And that means hoping someone leads the charge.
I have suggested that I never would have created a rooted life, with school aged children, financial obligations, assets, etc based on a visa that inherently has such weak grounding in my existence in a country. Those that have chosen to do so, have chosen the risk. They probably hoped for the best and considered historical precedent but we all know the past isn’t a crystal ball for the future. It’s like joining the armed forces after a long period of peace expecting peace to persist. But armed forces are kept because shit can change. Wars can start. And you’ll be involved if it does. The benefits that come with it are provided because that risk exists. Whether you serve at a time of peace or see active duty is not known (unless you join in wartime of course.)
I don't think you understand anything about an immigration process.
All these cases are meticulously documented. So not making a decision is not at all the same as a 'no'.
A 'no' you can challenge, a pause not so much. They probably cannot and don't want to actually deny all those applications as they'll be in hot water really quick. So this is just the childish, not wanting to really own it, way of trying to achieve the same result.
Of course it’s on purpose. That’s the point: to get temp migrants to leave. There’s nothing inhumane about that, and the government is acting within the scope of its authority.
In the end this is 100% a political issue and who knows why it is on the HN front page.
I imagine it's on the HN front page because it directly affects the technology careers of a large number of the people who are members of this community - or are coworkers of or employees/employers of members of this community.
Yes, obviously. But it was rhetorical - this is not specifically tech related and there’s nothing about it that a ‘hacker’ would find innately interesting. It’s just people bitching about a US executive branch decision they disagree with and everybody’s downvoting the side they disagree with, which is exactly the sort of outcome this site ostensibly tries to avoid.
Only if your definition of "hacker" is limited to "begging for VC money for your b2b SAAS".
Through the entire history of the phrase "hacker", there have been hackers concerned about human rights, political causes, anti-corporate measures, etc.
Personally I consider myself a hacker and will not abide by the narrow definition you set forth. I'm a hacker because I'm pissed off that money controls our lives and I seek out to regain control wherever I can.
Name one country, then. None that I'm aware of require you to leave the country to renew an immigration visa. Switching from a visitor visa to an immigration visa, sure. But if you're already on an immigration visa or residence permit, it's normally expected that you are, well, an immigrant. That your home, domicile, center of vital interests, whatever you want to call it, is in the country. I know of immigration systems that require you to apply from inland instead of from abroad in this case: most European systems work that way, for example, and I believe Canada and Australia too? But why would you require an immigrant to leave the country to extend their residence in that same country, other than to fuck with them?
Yeah, this is the problem. If you're on an immigrant visa, working a real job, then you have a life in the US: an apartment or a house, a pile of belongings, maybe a spouse and kids. If you need to leave the country to renew your immigrant visa, you may not be allowed back in to pack your apartment, sell your house, or help your US spouse and kids prepare to move to a country that will allow your family to stay together. It's a giant neon sign telling you you're not at all welcome here.
Of course, if you have a spouse and kids, this all gets easier once you have permanent resident status. Which used to be comparatively easy to get once you were married and you had offspring running around. I don't know what that process looks like now.
In practice, this kind of arbitrary screwing with people makes the US far too risky for educated, professional immigrants. So the scientists and the engineers and the company founders will just go elsewhere and build that country's economy. Which is fine, in the long run: If the US doesn't want to build the future or create new industries, then the voters have every right to vote for that. We've already decided we have no hope of competing with China in cars. And we'll need to cede more industries over time. As far as I can tell, the US has benefited heavily from poaching other people's scientists and engineers and professionals for decades now. But maybe the voters don't buy my argument, and they believe that chasing away skilled professionals and imposing 100% tariffs will lead to the future they want. It's a difference in beliefs about about what makes a country prosperous, and people have a right to vote based on their beliefs.
Well, not to defend the practice, but I think a reason for demanding application from abroad, is that if you decide to deny renewal, now they don't get back in. Whereas if you can apply from within the country, then people who are denied renewal can refuse to leave, go underground etc.
Even with this pretext though, it's a good example of a rule which punishes the law-obedient. People who intend to stay in the country illegally won't go abroad to reapply in the first place.
The US also does not require you to renew immigration visa. It's actually impossible to renew in the US inside or outside the country. A US immigration visa gives you a resident status on admission and thus makes you ineligible for any US visa.
Ireland? Where'd you get that from? They have a perfectly typical European system where you are expected to apply from inside the country for renewals [1]. You can still do it from abroad, but then you're not eligible for the simpler online procedure:
> You must currently be present in Ireland to be eligible to renew your permission to remain online. Applications submitted from outside Ireland will not be accepted.
Nigeria I'm less sure about. From what I can quickly google, they have a few classes of temporary work visas that aren't extendable (which isn't particularly unusual), although they do list at least some as "renewable upon regularization", and I'm unfortunately not well-versed enough in Nigerian immigration law to know what that means. For actual long-term immigration they have a document called a CERPAC, and the respective website [2] doesn't seem to mention whether you have to leave Nigeria to renew it, only that it's done online. Common sense suggests, however, that if you did have to leave, it would be mentioned somewhere on there, likely in big bold letters.
And lots of expat-friendly countries that are tolerant of working on repeated tourist visas rather than a full immigrant visa, but still require visa runs every month or three.
Not at the moment, but the result of the current UK system has been huge uncontrolled levels of immigration leading to deep public resentment, so that may change in the future
"huge uncontrolled levels of immigration". Let's put some actual numbers to this. Net immigration in 2025 was about 170k people, over the next 10 years projections are for about 2.2 million net immigration. So that's about 3-4%. However, UK population is shrinking without immigration so net population growth with immigration is about 1.7 million.
Not sure if that matches a definition of huge, but it's important to note that with a shrinking population without immigration the UK would be in serious economic trouble (like every country). This is even more exaberated due to the aging population that the shrinking population implies.
Immigrants like always are the convenient scapegoat that is being used to distract from the increasing gap between the rich and everyone else.
It's a little more than scapegoating, though. It's also absolutely about social dumping. Yes, the UK would be in serious trouble without immigrants, but richer people would be disproportionately in trouble, especially non-working ones (i.e. retirees). Working poorer people, well they wouldn't be better off maybe, but they'd have some compensation in that their labour would be in much higher demand.
‘Uncontrolled’ - surely the control point was the initial application being submitted from abroad?
It was very much ‘controlled’. We lost SO many European workers due to the obsession with EU Freedom of Movement that entire sectors like nursing were about to implode without a source of new workers.
Yes that's kind of what I mean - the powers that be are already quietly moving in the direction of cracking down on immigration, because they can see it's now causing them real political problems.
Not because they care about doing the right thing, but purely for self preservation reasons
Could you explain a bit more? Not sure what is achieved by forcing people to renew their visas from abroad. I appreciate that, philosophically, it is a way of setting requirements higher, but it does not strike me as principled.
From my perspective as an immigrant in the UK, there have got to be so many parameters the UK government can adjust before indulging into performative cruelty. Setting higher requirements for visas, revising what jobs qualify for Skilled Worker visas and such. In fact, my understanding is that this is exactly what they have been doing (rather mildly), and it's been successful.
If the government refuses a visa renewal while the person is in the country and they don’t comply you have to deport them, which is often problematic.
If you make it standard procedure that everyone has to leave the country temporarily to renew their visa, the person is already outside your country when you refuse the renewal.
Instead of having a deportation challenged in court and mired in paperwork, you simply don’t let them back in. That’s what the parent comment was getting at.
Not saying this is right or wrong or it will necessarily happen in the UK, but it’s the kind of change you can make if you want to quietly reduce immigration without fuss about deportations.
And that does seem to be the direction that UK policy is going, albeit currently only with baby steps
This would be true if visa and status were the same thing. In the US, they are not. Whether you are legally present in the US is governed by status. So what happens is that your status is valid and even renewed or extended in the US. But your visa expires. And you need to renew the visa just to bring the date on the visa to the same date as your status. You literally go to the consulate and show them your other status document, and they stamp your passport with the date from the other status document. It's all quite silly. A bit like the movie Brazil.
I find this quite confusing, but then I am far from being an expert on the matter:
* Do we expect a high number of people applying for visa renewals and getting rejected? How come? Otherwise, when it comes to people illegally overstaying their visas, how does this policy idea address intentional non-compliance?
* Don't legal challenges to deportation of criminals have to do with the deportation rather than visas. It would be convenient if hardened criminals complied with the law and removed the need to deport them, but what would motivate them to do so?
The idea seems to be to inconvenience law-abiding visa holders without addressing major concerns, but then I probably misunderstand the concerns. For instance, maybe there is a way of creating legal busy-work when one's visa renewal application gets rejected in a way that is cheap to the individual, but costly for the state, and that this happens on a scale that makes the problem significant. Sounds surprising, and surprising that there'd be no other way to avoid that too!
1a. Illegal immigration has nothing to do with visa based, legal immigration. illegal immigration is the type of immigration people are upset about here in the UK. most people have no problem with legal migration.
1b. anyone claiming the UK’s legal migration is any sort of problem right now, or in the past, should probably not be listened to in any way shape or form for anything they have to say on the matter.
2. a lot of the folks who have illegally entered the country end up asking for asylum, and by law their claims must be processed
3. the dublin convention states something along the lines of “asylum requests must be processed in the first EU country the person entered into”, ie it’s possible to remove people claiming asylum if they initially arrived in a different EU member state country
4. most people get to the uk having traveled through EU member states, because geography.
5. we left the EU, we cannot do 3 anymore. so we have a bunch of people stuck in hotels waiting for asylum claims to be processed.
illegal immigration got worse because we left the eu.
People absolutely do have a problem with legal immigration, especially post-Boriswave.
If legal immigration means millions of new people every year and rapid demographic change, of course that will cause a political issue.
It would be very strange (basically unheard of in human history) if it didn't.
People I know who are non-white all report increased racism (mostly not aggressive but noticeable) since Covid, despite having English accents so clearly not being illegal immigrants.
That is caused by reckless immigration policy stoking resentment
It’s no longer more than a million a year (thanks Kier Starmer, I guess) but there are now at least 15 million people in the UK who aren’t White British, it is absurd to pretend that isn’t a big number.
A lot of people ideally want immigration to be negative, so +170k is still going in the wrong direction.
There are potential arguments in favour of that level of immigration but you need to convince people that it’s fine for their country to change beyond all recognition in the space of a single generation.
And unsurprisingly, the people trying to do that are finding it a tough sell
Reform take peoples concerns about the massive increase in population numbers and the knock on effects of housing and infrastructure, and cultural clash since we swapped eu immigration for sub Saharan and South Asian, and point it to the small boats.
I have no problem with refugees. I do have problem with a million people a year arriving through Heathrow. Farage and co want that though as it’s good for business (more workers, higher asset prices) so they blame it on the tiny numbers of small boats.
Brexit meant we swapped immigration of mostly like minded Europeans and temporary workers for permanent immigration from poorer countries with more medieval views.
I’m fairly left on the spectrum, I was door stepping for remain, and for Lib Dems in 2017,2019 and a by-election, I’m very much on the tax wealth not work side, and I have no problem in paying tax despite earning more than 90% of the people in the county, including the old folk who just keep taking and never paying.
But it seems I’m not left enough because I have a problem with the massive amounts of legal immigration under a populist right wing government and I should be sent to a gulag.
In fact I would argue: if someone is truly left wing in the traditional sense (i.e. they believe Marx when he says politics is all about class conflict, they want to live in a society where workers have more power, they support trade unions etc.) then logically... they should oppose mass immigration.
Mass immigration exists because it's in the interests of the capital owning classes. It massively reduces the bargaining power of labour, and the potential power of trade unions.
Yet most supposedly "left wing" people support mass immigration and for some reason they can't understand they're voluntarily acting as willing foot soldiers for people they profess to hate
"anyone claiming the UK’s legal migration is any sort of problem right now, or in the past, should probably not be listened to in any way shape or form for anything they have to say on the matter."
This sort of position is, IMO, disgusting and immoral. I cannot express how appalled I am that someone would state something like this. Anyone who's a citizen of the UK most certainly has a right to express their opinion on legal immigration, either in favor or against.
That "public resentment" mostly was fueled by a rabid, out of control yellow press and a healthy dose of Russian propaganda spread by Russia-financed entities (Brexit, UKIP and Reform UK all have been shown to have very suspicious links to Russian money).
Rather than rights and privileges, think about the economic consequences of this. People will stop coming here for advanced study for advanced research and for advanced industry jobs. And most institutions and companies will accommodate this and try to have such people work from where they are vs fight an onerous government to bring them here. The net result will be damage to the US economy
That's a disfuncional view: "we set the rules, take it or leave it". In Switzerland there are strict requirements, but if you're a law abiding and employed migrant, ie contributing to the country, the services help you fill the paperwork so you can stay.
Even considering the disfuncional way, one thing it's to say "you only stay if we allow". The other is to say "you only leave if you allow": that's a much more authoritarian position.
These policies will work and immigration will lower for sure. Let's see the outcome in a few years.
You're right but I think you're running into the emotional side of the issue for some folks. The "not coming back" angle is a feature not a bug. Saves having to track folks down, potentially detain them, etc.
Well no, you're running into the fact that this administration has shown capricious (and often illegal) determination logic of who gets to come in or not.
People haven't always complained about this feature/bug/whatever because the US has generally not had people in charge who allow in people charged with sex trafficking (like the Tate brothers) but stop and harass even American citizens who are accused of saying mean things about Israel on the Internet.
> 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.
This so much. Ultimately, you are a guest and the host country can kick you out with no notice.
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.