A number of people, especially in tech sector, legally stay in US while their GC is being processed. They have kids born in the USA. If such people were to leave USA to seek green card:
- the kids must first get visas to their parent's countries
- once reaching the other country, consular offices now have multi year wait lines for getting an appointment with a office to even hear your case.
- parents may stay in that country but what if kids run out of their visa? A number of countries offer citizenship via parents e.g. Indian parents can obtain Indian citizenship for their kids but it also means letting go of the kids' US citizenship. And what if the parent's country does not have such mechanism?
It's completely illogical that a person must first stay in a country for 5 years to become eligible for a green card and then leave for x years to get a green card to come back !! this is just a tactic to get non-immigrant visa holders out of the country.
> e.g. Indian parents can obtain Indian citizenship for their kids but it also means letting go of the kids' US citizenship
This is not true, India has something called “Overseas Citizenship of India” which is technically not a citizenship even though the name says, but its a life time visa available for US citizens of Indian origin. And you don’t have to give up US citizenship
> This is not true, India has something called “Overseas Citizenship of India” which is technically not a citizenship even though the name says, but its a life time visa available for US citizens of Indian origin. And you don’t have to give up US citizenship
The OCI card is better thought of as a green card that you have to reapply for once at the age of 65.
It provides the ability to live and work, with some minor restrictions, but none of the typical benefits of citizenship that wouldn't come with permanent residency in the US.
> the kids must first get visas to their parent's countries
The bigger issue honestly is that the kids may already have grown up in the American culture and fluent in English and it could massively disrupt their education and well-being to throw them into another system somewhere else, depending on how they were raised and whether they are fluent in the language of the country of their parents. In many cases they are not.
Look, I’m an immigrant. You know the risks you take when you come to the US on a non immigrant visa. We all choose to play the game and nothing is guaranteed. I would’ve considered reckless to have a kid in the US knowing that my status is not stable without having an alternative plan. We need to face the facts and stop acting like we immigrants were victims of some bait and switch and must be protected from any fallout of this process. The rules of the game are transparent.
Condoms are often up to the male partner to use correctly.
Personally I have no problem giving people at a minimum permanent status if they decide to add to our declining population. I like to imagine when I'm old and weak someone there to provide my medical care.
This is a completely different discussion. One can be responsible, if you’re not, there are consequences. It’s not just this. Zone out a bit driving and go too fast? Ticket. Left weed in your jacket by accident and went to the airport to fly internationally? Well…
Everything has consequences, all I’m trying to say is that people know what those are and we shouldn’t be “aw but what if they don’t read the rules?” Uncertainty is clear from the start.
Elon Musk was arguably working here on a student visa.
So it's only ok when rich people need special treatment ?
Immigration laws are racist to an absurd degree, the 7% rule unfairly makes it significantly easier for European nationals to get Greencards for example.
Recently it's been cranked up a notch, only White South African refugees are being approved now.
Honestly the problem is going to solve itself. Without being able to brain drain the rest of the world , America will start to fall behind economically.
Less people will want to come here.
Which brings me a certain sadness, my friends growing up were largely immigrants. The future of America without immigration frankly sucks.
The most important immigration reform that the US ought to do is a constitutional amendment eliminating the birthright citizenship clause of the 14th amendment. The children of people who are not citizens or even permanent residents of the US should not be allowed to become US citizens just because they were born on US soil. Foreigners should not be able to reside in the US for so long that they have kids, and then use those kids as a justification for why the US is obliged to let them become citizens too.
I think that if you went back in time to 1868 and told Senator Jacob M. Howard that a century and a half in the future, the primary consequence of the citizenship clause of the 14th amendment would be that foreigners from all over the world would attempt to immigrate to the US, even on temporary work visas or explicitly contrary to federal immigration law, with the intent of bearing or begetting a child on US soil who would be legally counted as a fellow-citizen who, upon coming of age, would go to the polls and vote with all other citizens; and that further the parents of this child and their political sympathizers would use the very presence of that child as a justification for why it was immoral to restrict the federal government's lawful authority to control immigration to the United States - that he would've spent a bit more time considering the exact wording of the text.
The "birthright" citizenship clause of the 14th amendment was intended to clarify the citizenship status of the recently freed black slaves. That intent is clear by contemporary written material.
Now, you could absolutely argue that whatever the intent of the amendment was, it still protects the present-day state of Chinese mothers having zero ties to this country popping over for a few months and giving birth to a fully-fledged American citizen, because the law says what it says. That's a much better argument than saying that the Civil War was fought for the right of transient visitors or illegal immigrants to this country to birth citizens, because that's just absurd.
> This is wrong. There is no minimum time in the country for a green card. You are thinking of citizenship. That is different.
You are incorrect. What you said is technically true in that there is no statute that requires it, but in practice, OP is correct.
It varies depending on the country of origin, but in the case of immigrants who hold citizenship from India, which is the country OP mentioned, you can likely expect to have to wait that period or even much longer before becoming eligible, unless you have a way to otherwise jump the queue.
You absolutely have to wait several years, but the point they were making is, there is no requirement to have ever worked IN the US or held any nonimmigrant visa to get a green card. The way the law was originally written, both the employment and family green card categories are standalone. They require work/research accomplishments, but there is zero requirement that that work was ever done in the US or for a US company.
Because it takes so long, in practice the issue is that for anyone to sponsor you, they want you working for them during that time, and so that's why it often looks like someone gets an H1B and then "graduates" to a green card.
While you are correct, that's a minor issue in an otherwise cogent post by the parent, so addressing those other more substantial points first would have made the debate better.
Because while the green card itself has no minimum requirements on time spent in the US, with the exception of the DV program, all of the visas with green card pathways have one. So yes, there is - it's just attached to the visa pathway that determines green card eligibility, not the green card itself.
No? If you're born in the US you have US citizenship, you're American. You don't just magically get citizenship for your parents home country, at least not for most countries.
It’s not automatic, it requires applying and at times can take years of proving in terms of paperwork, that is by definition not automatic.
I have personal experience with the Greek, German, and Italian systems, prepare your self for 1-2 years to gain it even if you have rights to it.
In some countries it is automatic in others it is not.
Say one of your parents is a citizen of some other country.
If they're Canadian, you're a Canadian citizen. Period. The process is to get your documents that prove it. You don't apply for citizenship, you apply for proof.
In many European countries you are not a citizen. The process is to become one by descent. You apply for citizenship.
Fair question, though it assumes citizenships are simple things you “use,” which you either need or don’t. They’re not. People attach all sorts of baggage, duties, and rights to them. Mine are a mix of ancestry, residence, and ones I helped my spouse with. They’re not things I “need,” they’re just where my family and life have been. European family trees often produce this. The original point still stands: even when you’re entitled to a citizenship, actually obtaining the documents takes real time and money.
Also, in some cases, you may automatically lose your original nationality if you seek an additional one (Spain comes to mind; though in their case you'd need to manually request not to lose your nationality to keep it within a certain time period, IIRC).
> You don't just magically get citizenship for your parents home country, at least not for most countries.
Are there any countries where this is not true? I struggle to think of any, especially amoung highly-developed democratic nations. (There might be a couple of weirdo dictatorships that do not allow it.) It seems this would be necessary to prevent statelessness. For example, if your parents are living in the Netherlands as foreigners, children born there are not entitled to automatic Dutch citizenship. As a result, they will obtain citizenship through their parents (in a foreign nation).
Quite a few countries do not allow dual citizenship. So a person who was born in the US and is therefore US citizen at birth will not be allowed to have that country's citizenship until they revoke the US one.
China and Singapore are some of the more prominent examples.
China considers it a "nationality conflict," the child is issued a Travel Document and treated as a citizen domestically, they can still be registered on hukou and get ID card. Apparently they used to unofficially force you to decide as an adult, but stopped a few years ago and now issue the Travel Document for life.
edit to add -- that assumes the parent is not a unconditional green card holder, which is the scenario here.
Singapore allows dual citizenship until 21. Which is not necessarily a good thing, as if you do not do their national service you will effectively get banned from ever going there even if you renounce it later.
Japan and Korea both allow it forever from birth in practice, but the latter also has some complexities regarding the military (either renounce before a certain age or you have some restrictions returning until past a certain age).
They are not entirely wrong. The person you replied to said "that country's citizenship":
> So a person who was born in the US and is therefore US citizen at birth will not be allowed to have that country's citizenship
Taking example of China, you said "the child is issued a Travel Document and treated as a citizen domestically"
"Treated as a citizen" is not same as "having Citizenship". OCI card holders are India are pretty much treated as citizens, except few rights such as the right of suffrage/ability to engage in agricultural land use etc, but that doesn't make them citizens of India.
There is a huge political difference between OCI and a Chinese travel document. A CTD explicitly lists the bearers nationality as Chinese.
An OCI card, as you said, is effectively like a PR card for former citizens. It is explicitly not citizenship politically and India fully recognizes their foreign citizenship.
If an OCI holder with a US passport gets arrested, India will notify the US consulate as they are a citizen. The same would not apply for a Chinese travel document holder. That is what I meant as “treated as a citizen domestically.”
As to political rights, I assume in practice that one cannot join the Party without first revoking their other citizenship, if at all. But since it is not a democracy, that was never a right/element of citizenship in the first place.
The whole concept of getting citizenship where you're born is mostly an American concept. Though, if you do get born in a place where you get citizenship based on location alone, your parents will probably need to figure out a lot of paperwork to sort things out.
Most of North America and South America operates under Jus sanguinis -- you get citizenship for being born in country, even if your parents are not citizens.
A lot of countries don’t provide citizenship automatically without condition by blood. China for example, a kid only inherits citizenship if one parent is a chinese citizen and not a PR of any other country (so kids born to Chinese parents with green cards don’t count, which doesn’t really matter in this case).
Also the USA used to have weird rules about young mothers not transferring citizenship automatically (which the whole Obama birther myth relied on).
What happens if two Chinese parents are living and working in the Netherlands with permanent residence. If they have a child, what is the nationality? I don't think it will be Dutch because the Netherlands does not have automatic birth right, unless to prevent statelessness.
The child has Chinese citizenship (and presumably some kind of Dutch PR) from birth in that case.
> Any person born in China whose parents are both Chinese nationals or one of whose parents is a Chinese national shall have Chinese nationality.
> Any person born abroad whose parents are both Chinese nationals or one of whose parents is a Chinese national shall have Chinese nationality.
> But a person whose parents are both Chinese nationals and have both settled abroad, or one of whose parents is a Chinese national and has settled abroad, and who has acquired foreign nationality at birth shall not have Chinese nationality.
- "Settled abroad" means having unrestricted, legal permanent residence. Recently, it was clarified that the two-year conditional US green card does not count, for example.
- Due to an "interpretation," as this law was written pre-handover, the "settled abroad" limitation sentence does not apply where (one of) the Chinese parents is a HK/MO resident.
- A parent from HK/MO pre-handover, or Taiwan, is still a Chinese citizen and will transmit citizenship to their children.
If both/the only Chinese parent is a mainland or Taiwan resident, not settled abroad, the child would get a Travel Document to enter mainland China. They cannot get a visa to do so inside the foreign passport. Foreign passport can still be used for HK/MO/TW.
The child cannot get the ordinary red Chinese passport (unless they "resolve the conflict" by abandoning the other citizenship). They can, IIRC, still get a resident ID card if their parents still have hukou and register them?
In your scenario (not overseas citizen at birth), the child does have a regular red Chinese passport. Because they live overseas, they can get a permit from the Chinese embassy inside the passport to visit HK/MO, and they can also get an entry permit from the Taiwan authorities to visit for two weeks at a time, which is a loose leaf paper.
If one Chinese parent is a permanent resident of HK/MO, the child generally gets both Chinese nationality and HK/MO residence. Thus they are issued a full HK/MO passport. These passports still cannot enter the mainland directly, so they can ALSO get a Travel Document OR first visit HK/MO and then apply for the Home Return Permit using the domestic procedures.
Dual nationality for kids in China is a PITA and we were careful to avoid it for our son. I had a coworker who had a mess in figuring it out, with Beijing (where they had residence) demanding documents from Shanghai (where the mom had hukou) that Shanghai didn’t issue anymore.
Sometimes. In many/most countries, it requires at minimum that both parents be citizens of the same country. In a few countries, dual citizenship is banned completely, so if the kid is a US citizen they cannot be the country's citizen.
Yes and one step further: it is attention, ultimately to extract wealth.
Trump is a distractor and can make a whole country forget about <insert recent insanity>. Passing a judge is a minor detail here.
Of course it is stupid to talent-leak your country but he just needs you to forget about $LATEST_SCANDAL. That's the value for him. Trump doesn't care about the future of US.
And distracting does not take skill. It only takes a mind poisoned to the core. He will throw anything in his chaos machine to extract wealth. And US has an endless supply of those juicy valuables and values that you can sacrifice and shed.
This is over a hundred year old rule and common in "the new world". You can guess why it is common if you think about the phrase I put in quotes. All these countries are composed of immigrants...
Here's a short and incomplete list: USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile.
The logic is that the culture is what makes you part of the country, not the blood in your veins.
The other side of that logic is that you're not guaranteed citizenship to the country of your parents. It certainly isn't automatic.
200-300 years isn't that old. There are plenty of buildings older than that all across Europe. There are businesses older than that. There are businesses and buildings that were older than that before the US even became a country. The *FALL* of the Roman empire was in ~500AD. It was a true empire even before 0AD, spanning across coastal Europe and northern Africa. It's height being ~100AD.
I'm sorry, the new world still has a few hundred years to go before we can even consider it old. It's not even a pre-teen by the standards. I mean we only discussed Europe. But the pyramids were older to the Romans than the Romans are to us.
Let me repeat for you part of the *FIRST SENTENCE* in my comment
>> common in "the new world"
So
> Nonexistent in Europe
Last I checked, Europe was not "the new world".
> the developed world
Considering that the US and Canada are developed countries, you'll need to rephrase. If you want to make jokes about the US not being a developed world then we'll be forced to make jokes about your lack of literacy and inability to use Google.
Please, for the love of god, just read the comments you're replying to. It's like the absolute bare minimum requirement.
I used to collect these matchbox covers as a kid. Just like stamps. A bit later in time than the ones shown in the website, but definitely as fancy. There were no large "match box" corporations and each region had their own designs. Once our parents took us on a tour to North India and matchbox covers from those cities were the highlight of my collection.
It's a tradeoff, too early to say if it's a dumb move.
Side A: Tesla can grow FSD subscription revenue by making FSD + Autopilot completely based on subscription. Lot more people use Autopilot than FSD. In the happy path such users will pay the subscription and that revenue will increase.
Side B: Autopilot (aka lane keeping) is fast becoming default option across manufacturers. Tesla will take a dip in sales if such 'basic' option is no longer available.
The issue is not that “FSD” is $99/mo. The issue is that a feature of $22k cars (lane keeping) is behind the $99/mo paywall.
Basically not enough people were buying the subscription for Elon to get his payout. But someone who just wants auto steering isn’t going to decide they’ll pay $99/mo for that. So this is just going to make people who like that feature not buy a new Tesla when the time comes.
One can only think if all the customer complaints really went to Bill Gates, how much different Microsoft would be today. They still operate in a world where they think once they build something, people would just use it. CoPilot is the latest example.
A number of people, especially in tech sector, legally stay in US while their GC is being processed. They have kids born in the USA. If such people were to leave USA to seek green card:
- the kids must first get visas to their parent's countries
- once reaching the other country, consular offices now have multi year wait lines for getting an appointment with a office to even hear your case.
- parents may stay in that country but what if kids run out of their visa? A number of countries offer citizenship via parents e.g. Indian parents can obtain Indian citizenship for their kids but it also means letting go of the kids' US citizenship. And what if the parent's country does not have such mechanism?
It's completely illogical that a person must first stay in a country for 5 years to become eligible for a green card and then leave for x years to get a green card to come back !! this is just a tactic to get non-immigrant visa holders out of the country.
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