Off topic but: Jury trials are one of the weirdest things about America: If I’m ever on trial for some crime I want my case decided by professional judges not a team of random idiots.
On the other hand, there’s a good argument to be made that if you think the judiciary can be captured for political ends, a trial and verdict by your peers at least gives you the opportunity to get a fair(er) shot. And in many (most?) US jurisdictions you can waive your right to a jury trial and ask for a bench trial instead.
It's always funny how people get this backwards: China being an export economy means that the whole world is dependent on them, not the other way around.
> The alternative is dispensing with the notion that some people are illegal and must be purged, or even that this a legitimate function of government.
That's not an alternative at all. Countries are built by certain groups of people (citizens), based on some underlying principles, culture, values. To preserve that, citizens have the right to decide what kind of people they want to let in. Immigrating to US is a privilege, not a right, as it should be. There's nothing wrong with deporting illegal aliens as long as due process is followed (which I agree is not the case with ICE under Trump, but that's a separate discussion).
> which I agree is not the case with ICE under Trump, but that's a separate discussion
I find it hard to keep these discussions separate. If there is no humane way to deport illegal aliens in the volumes ICE is attempting, surely we must push back and say "stop". This facial recognition app is a farce, designed to give a veneer of correctness to racial profiling, and ICE must be prevented from using it.
> I find it hard to keep these discussions separate.
...because they're not separate discussions at all. There is no example in history of mass deportations being done according to a coherent rule of law. These two things are not of the same impetus; mass deportations are a power-grab, and the rule of law interferes with that.
The only way that a nation gets to a point where mass deportations are plausible (in the sense that there are a sufficient number of people who have entered or stayed without going through a state-prescribed process) is that there is already relative domestic tranquility (otherwise, the "problem" would have been noticed decades earlier).
In our case (in the USA), we have plenty of room, plenty of resources, a wonderful and diverse array of immigrant cultures, and the capacity to defend ourselves against bad actors on an individual and/or community level. There is no need whatsoever for a government thousands of miles away (whose authority is decreasingly recognized anyhow) to tell me who my neighbors can be.
> No amount of crashing results in traffic school, just certain kinds of tickets.
Well, sufficient at-fault crashing will suspended your license, and among other requirements for restoring the license may be traffic school, DUI school, or some other program depending on the reason for suspension, so this is not strictly correct. You can't use optional voluntary traffic school to clear points from a collision from your record BEFORE getting a suspension the way you can with minor moving violations without a collision, but that doesn’t mean collisions won’t force you into traffic school.
Call me old fashioned but I distrust any form of authentication that is tied to a specific device.
I might be getting older but my memory is still good enough to remember a couple of secure passwords (secure, as in: 20+ chars long random strings), one of them being a password to my KeePass database, and the other to the email account where I keep a backup copy of it.
I would hate to be locked out of my accounts only because I lost my phone or Yubikey.
The problem is: if you do that, then you need to create a big government agency that will interview the potential candidates, evaluating their value on the job market, in order to grant them a visa. Right now that job is done by their sponsoring employer, but if you give people ability to change jobs freely then employers lose any incentive to do so.
You can still require people to sustain employment in their field. Maybe companies can attest that a particular role classification requires a type of high-end talent. Auditing or otherwise verifying the attestation addresses the current allegations that H1-Bs are given for some jobs not requiring high-end talent.
Having managed people on H1Bs (and therefore been intimately involved with the process) the problems with switching jobs are not the requirements. You’re only allowed to switch to a similar job or a “better” job in a similar line of work.
The problem is that the mechanics of the switching process is extremely cumbersome. Some of the relevant documents are held by your current employer and not with you. The new employer effectively needs to apply for a new application minus the lottery system. There are significant weeks to months worth of delays for the new employers to get approvals, so most H1B employees that transfer are actually working provisionally on the basis of their new approval still being pending. They are very limited in terms of traveling etc during this period. There are significant risks to changing your job when you’re approaching the end of your current H1B visa expiry. This was particularly bad for Chinese applicants who unlike most other nations’s applicants who got 3 year approvals, usually only got 1 year approvals.
The real problem in switching jobs aren’t the policies but the extreme uncertainty and bureaucracy involved in doing so.
Employers are still incentivized to sponsor people who they want to hire, because they want to hire that person, they want the job done, and they couldn't find anyone else to do the job. They just have to keep the compensation and working conditions competitive enough to retain their worker.
$100k/yr fee could definitely cover the cost of people doing said interviews/research into if the company is complying with Da Rules so to speak. Not to mention posting jobs well below market rates.
OK, but this is just an USCIS guidance to how they are going to interpret the proclamation when approving petitions. Important thing would be to have similar thing from CBP on how they are going to treat H-1B individuals at border crossings.
Yes, I know this memo above says "The proclamation does not impact the ability of any current visa holder to travel to or from the United States", but that means nothing, because it is coming from USCIS which has no authority here (CBP has).
I think you meant to say Eastern Europe. Western countries such as France, Sweden or Germany went through quick enshittification process thanks to uncontrolled immigration.
Nothing in the proclamation [1] says it is "per year". What it says is that every existing petition must be supplemented by $100k check, otherwise the employee won't be able to (re-)enter the US.
So, if you already got your visa issued for 3 years, and you didn't have any plans to travel abroad you are good until the end of your current visa term (which might be 2-3 years in future).
Also, apparently Department of State has started a pilot program that allows one to extend their H-1B visa without going abroad to have their passport stamped, so in that case you can get 3 more years in the US without the fee. The biggest limitation of course being that you're stuck in the US for the whole time, unable to leave.
I guess duty-free stores were a thing decades ago when international trade was actually constrained by duties. Right now free trade is the default (or was, until Trump)
Many countries apply VAT for products bought in their domain, but they also have thresholds for products bought overseas and taken into the country by their residents who were travelling (otherwise I imagine even a bracelet bought at a beach in Bali would have to be declared and taxed, and there'd be long queues at customs). For things like cigarettes and alcohol they have a quantity limit, beyond which taxes do apply.
A Rolex certainly goes beyond the threshold in many countries, but maybe the thought is the buyer might be willing to risk "smuggling" it in.
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