
The Virtual March on Washington for Immigration - sethbannon
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324048904578320141944040664.html
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potatolicious
> _"In South Korea, Spain and Switzerland, 80% of permanent visas are used for
> employment. For Britain, Germany and Italy, it's 60%. For the U.S., it's
> only 7%. For a skilled worker, it's actually harder to come to America."_

As a Canadian expat in the US, dear God is this ever true.

The US _doesn't_ have a skilled immigration program. It has a work visa
moonlighting as immigration policy. Any reform of the H-1B program is IMO just
band-aids - what the US needs is an _actual_ immigration track for skilled
people in the same vein as Canada and Australia.

I guess it's a moot point in our industry though. The tech industry in the US
so massively out-pays every other country, and out-performs, that most of us
will jump through an awful lot of hoops to be here. For me going back home
would mean a 60% pay cut and a life writing bad Java code for big banks.

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pm90
If I recall correctly, EB1 and EB2 visas _are_ skill-based immigration visas.
IMO H1-B serves the purpose of allowing skilled workers _temporarily_ in the
US

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justanotheratom
EB1/EB2 are not Visas, they are Green Card filing categories. You typically
file for EB1/EB2 while you are on H1-B.

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pm90
Thanks for pointing that out. But the point that I'm making still holds: there
does exist a program to allow skilled immigrants to enter the US

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sonabinu
The path to permanent residency is however pretty slow. If you are from India
or China and your filing is in the EB3 category, at the rate things are moving
now it could take upto 50 yrs

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jgh
Although this Immigration Innovation act that's going around will apparently
get rid of the per-country limitation, meaning the entire world will get to
enjoy multi-decade wait times and not just China and India.

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sonabinu
the US is where a lot of the interesting innovation happens, latest product
launches and technologies are here. I think that has a lot to do with why
people want to be here

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jlev
What exactly do they mean by a "virtual march"? Thunderclap? Really, that's
what digital activism has devolved into?

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sageikosa
Sort of wondering that as well...clog the "virtual streets" of Washington's
network backbone with a civil disobedience DoS?

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mapt
non-distributed Denial of Service: an activity with the philosophical
significance of street protest, almost zero cultural recognition or visibility
for your message, and a more severe judicial remedy than actually sneaking a
bomb into the server room.

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sonabinu
read more at <http://www.marchforinnovation.com/>

