89 comments

  • tshaddox 6 hours ago ago

    It continues to be clear that the administration opposes legal immigration (except perhaps in narrow cases, like white South Africans).

    • nitwit005 6 hours ago ago

      The Republican party is frequently in a contradictory state with immigration, where they speak loudly against it, but then yield in to business demands for immigrant labor.

      It's possible Trump is uniquely different there, but he's talked about being sympathetic to farm and hospitality businesses. It's hard to tell. Everything is up to his whims now.

      • jmyeet 5 hours ago ago

        That's not contradictory at all.

        The comment you are replying to quite intentionally said "legal immigration". Republicans love illegal immigration. Why? because it suppresses wages of both documented and undocumented workers.

        Undocumented workers can be employed below minimum wage. If they get an attitude and start demanding a fairer wage or better working conditions, their employer just calls in an ICE raid to clear them out and then they start with a fresh batch. They pay a token fine and that's that.

        Several sectors are completely dependent on this arrangement, most notably agriculture and food processing (eg chicken farms)

        If they actually cared about this, they would seriously punish the employers for employing undocumented workers. they do not. In fact, when that's been tried it's been a disaster (eg [1])

        And because the system allows this to happen, it suppresses the wages of documented workers as well. That's the point. The entire system of restricting immigration is designed to increase profits. Nothing more.

        What's the alternative? Easy. Document them. We've done this before. When there was a shortage of male workers in WW2 (because a lot of men were in the Army), we had the Bracero program [2] for temporary workers.

        Historically, many such workers came to work then went back to (primarily) Mexico. They only ended up staying permanently when it became too hard to cross the border.

        As for these latest bans, well we had 3 Muslim bans in Trump 1. The 19 then 39 (and now apparently 75) countries are pretty much jus tprimarily Muslim and "shithole" [3] countries.

        All of this stems from the desire to turn the United States into a Christian theocracy but only for white people.

        [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/14/alabama-immigr...

        [2]: https://guides.loc.gov/latinx-civil-rights/bracero-program

        [3]: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-referred-...

        • nitwit005 5 hours ago ago

          You've essentially agreed, despite your opening sentence, by suggesting they are speaking out against illegal immigration, but want it to support businesses (the people who want low wages). That's exactly the contradiction I suggested.

        • boustrophedon 3 hours ago ago

          The contradiction he's pointing out is that they often speak out against so-called "illegals", but as you've documented they enjoy it when business reap the benefits of undocumented labor (i.e. wage suppression).

    • lovich 6 hours ago ago

      That was obvious ever since they claimed asylum seekers that had followed the legal asylum process were “illegal immigrants” and society and the media just went along with that phrasing despite it being factually incorrect.

    • catigula 6 hours ago ago

      That definitely isn't true. Trump has repeatedly been effusive about how important H1B labor is.

      • Maxatar 5 hours ago ago

        How so? In September he added a requirement that any future H1B visas from people abroad will require an unprecedented $100,000 payment.

        • nomel 3 hours ago ago

          I saw that many welcomed this, since it will help stop the visa mills, and push towards importing higher talent, rather than local-offshoring. What's your opinion on these two?

          • SanjayMehta 2 hours ago ago

            It's increasing the offshore-offshoring in the form of GCCs ("Global Capability Centres").

            Interestingly, thanks to Covid practices, real estate demand hasn't gone up as the GCCs are just mandating 2-3 days WFH, especially in chip design.

        • ReflectedImage 5 hours ago ago

          Well either $100,000 per person or an large one time direct donation to Trump to be legally exempted from that charge.

          • plagiarist 3 hours ago ago

            I'm looking forward to the Trump brand visa and pardon combo packs.

      • VierScar 5 hours ago ago

        Is this sarcasm? Not that Trump's word means anything, but Trump has been against it since his first term. Having cancelled it temporarily in that first term, has said that he'll end H1B if he gets reelected, and that US shouldn't have the H1B program.

        It's only since 2025 when Elon was in his good books and told Republicans to not vote for a bill that Trump woke up that day and decided he'd be pro-H1B.

    • burningChrome 5 hours ago ago

      All you had to do was a 10 second google search to find that:

      The racial and ethnic makeup of legal immigrants who have obtained Lawful Permanent Resident (LPR) status or arrived as new immigrants in the past four years (2022–2025) has been primarily driven by arrivals from Latin America and Asia.

      Asian: Approximately 27% to 28% of all immigrants.

      Hispanic/Latino (Ethnicity): Roughly 45% of the total immigrant population identify with Hispanic or Latino ethnic origins.

      White: About 20% to 21%.

      Black/African American: Approximately 9%.

      Multi-racial: About 22% identify as having two or more races.

      It just amazes me people continue to push these racist narratives that doesn't hold up once you look at the actual data. Its staggering to think we have the unlimited power of the internet and still can't seem to take 10 seconds to confirm or deny something as simple as this? How depressing.

      • jtefera 3 hours ago ago

        The patent comment is mentioning on the recent changes by the current administration where reports from last year indicated that there will be a huge reduction in the number of accepted refugees of which the majority will be white south Africans. What does numbers from 2022 to 2024 have to do with that assertion?

        • reactordev 2 hours ago ago

          I think they are just generalizing the narrative around the current administrations stance on immigration by using those numbers to show it’s a completely mixed bag.

          I find that level of detail succinct enough to allude that the current administration is just being extremely racist and bigoted by singling out colored minorities without lifting a finger for other racial demographics. In which case, relevant.

  • forinti 6 hours ago ago

    Uruguay is on the list. I remember when Uruguayans didn't even need a visa to visit the US.

    • Hnrobert42 5 hours ago ago

      This is about immigrant visas. Visits are non-immigrant visas.

    • laluser 5 hours ago ago

      It's such a small country and an even smaller amount are coming to the U.S. that this would have no material impact. Strange to see them there, but not Argentina (in much worse financial situation).

    • IIAOPSW 6 hours ago ago

      Well then technically the US wasn't processing their visa's back then either.

  • m4rtink 6 hours ago ago

    An interesting way to make make lots of friends in many countries around the world all at the same time.

    • Krasnol 6 hours ago ago

      There is a German saying:

      "Ist der Ruf erst ruiniert lebt es sich ganz ungeniert"

      translates to: “Once your reputation is ruined, you can live completely uninhibited.”

  • beanjuice 7 hours ago ago

    Does anyone have the list?

    • barishnamazov 7 hours ago ago

      NBC has posted the full list here: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/us-sto...

      > A U.S. official confirmed the full list of countries will include Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bosnia, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominica, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Republic of the Congo, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Uruguay, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

      • Grazester 6 hours ago ago

        Grenada is here because the US asked to install radars here for their Venezuelan operation("drug boat interception") and Grenada declined. They also raised the The Level 2 advisory for US citizen.

      • csb6 6 hours ago ago

        Both Armenia and Azerbaijan? At least they aren’t playing favorites.

      • cm2187 5 hours ago ago

        Russia I presume is on the list because of geopolitical tensions.

        I am not familiar with every country in that list but in my experience, what looks like an anomaly is Morocco, which produces a fairly large elite compared to the size of the country (worked with lots of highly educated / highly paid (and therefore net tax contributing) moroccan nationals). I have hardly worked with any other nationality in that list in my professional life (Bangladesh and Tunisia maybe).

      • dexzod 5 hours ago ago

        I think this move could harm US in two ways: It will reduce the immigrant diversity which might make the population skew towards the biggest immigrant population such as from India and Mexico which are not in this list. Second it will remove USA as top destination for talent, which will help stop brain drain from these countries causing their local industry to benefit and thereby reducing the edge of US companies.

      • malpani12 5 hours ago ago

        Why Bhutan is here? It's a peaceful small place.

        It has Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh too - some of them makes sense.

        But overall this list feels too much.

      • JumpCrisscross 7 hours ago ago

        What did Jordan, Azerbaijan, Macedonia or Uruguay do?

        • yesfitz 6 hours ago ago

          The State Department said[1]: "The State Department will pause immigrant visa processing from 75 countries whose migrants take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates."

          Whether or not that's a good/true reason is another discussion.

          1: https://x.com/StateDept/status/2011478657680757214

        • JacoboJacobi 6 hours ago ago

          Jordan has been a key ally of the US. No one will make that mistake again.

          • timeon 6 hours ago ago

            So was Denmark.

        • ifwinterco 6 hours ago ago

          Trump and his whole administration is extremely pro-Israel, even by the standards of US administrations. Jordan is 95% Muslim and around a quarter of the population are Palestinian refugees, so I suspect that has something to do with it

        • 2muchcoffeeman 6 hours ago ago

          What did Fiji do!?

        • barishnamazov 6 hours ago ago

          Not only Azerbaijan, but the whole Caucasia is included (Armenia and Georgia too). Given Trump's recent peace middlemanship between Azerbaijan and Armenia, this is actually somewhat surprising.

        • quotz 6 hours ago ago

          Crazy that Macedonia and Montenegro are there, and Serbia is not. Even Albania and Kosovo are there, despite them being US puppets

          • cue_the_strings 5 hours ago ago

            I think it's strictly for financial reasons. A different profile of people from Serbia comes to the US.

            I'm from Montenegro, but also lived in Serbia for a sizeable portion of my life and have family there.

            Many people from said countries work in the US illegaly. I can speak for Montenegro, but the exact same pattern plays out in Bosnia and Albania.

            Sure, there are some people who go to the US to study for a bit, and there are short-term seasonal work arrangements for students like "Work and Travel", but those are short.

            I know 20+ people from Montenegro who went to work in the US in the last decade, illegaly or semi-legally. Two things come to mind first: driving trucks and picking marijuana. Usually they go there for a seasonal job or simply as tourists and overstay their visa.

            My schoolmate even has a company that facilitates such schemes and sends people to the US as seasonal workers, who then overstay their visas and do shitty jobs. He's a millionare now, not that you'd know. Of course, it's also the diaspora in the US who actually facilitate this scheme and exploit the workers. I've heard the same thing from Albanians.

            Every person I know who went to work in the US from Serbia (10+ people) is either a (good) dev, or an expert of some other kind, engineer, maybe a doctor (even though that's a tough path), PhD or something similar. All the best serbian devs and PhDs are overwhelmingly in the US.

            There are several reasons for that, main ones being that it seems to be somewhat harder for people from Serbia to go to US to work illegaly, so the US mostly gets the best ones who are a net benefit to the society and pay a surplus of taxes.

            Because it's harder to get to the US from Serbia, fo less qualified workers it's much easier to go to Israel and Saudi Arabia (both hugely popular nowadays) and the Emirates. Western Europe used to be popular, but it barely pays off nowadays, you can go there to live an average life, not to make big bucks and come back to flex on your neighbors.

            Serbia is also quite a desperate place, but still has enough people to produce a sizeable chunk of professionals and academics, who don't want to put up with the kleptocracy and leave.

          • benxh 5 hours ago ago

            Crazy calling sovereign states "US Puppets".

        • lawn 6 hours ago ago

          Not white enough I presume.

          • PyWoody 6 hours ago ago

            It's hard to get more Caucasian than Azerbaijan.

          • tobyjsullivan 6 hours ago ago

            It’s telling that Russia stands out in this list. “One of these is not like the others”

        • unsupp0rted 6 hours ago ago

          Overstay visas more often than South Koreans or Norwegians?

          • AlotOfReading 5 hours ago ago

            I pulled the latest overstay data from the CBP website (2024) and compared it to the list of countries. Some of the countries have high overstay rates (Haiti and Laos >24%), but others don't. Barbados (0.44%) has a lower overstay rate than France (0.48%). Libya (1.59%) has a lower rate than Portugal (1.68%). Some countries with high rates aren't on the list entirely, like Malawi (22.05%). Also, the hypothesis fails a chi square test. It's not that.

      • abcd_f 6 hours ago ago

        > Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan

        They forgor Tajikistan. Or may be it was just too hard to spell.

        • 46493168 5 hours ago ago

          Tajikistan is used by the US for CIA training against Iran. This is why Iran will often deny visas to Americans who have Tajikistan passport stamps.

      • bnjms 6 hours ago ago

        > Afghanistan Iraq

        Comparing to US immigration support following the Vietnam war this is shameful.

      • RobotToaster 6 hours ago ago

        > Saint Kitts and Nevis

        How many immigrants from an island with less than 50k inhabitants are there?

        Also, Cuba surprises me, doesn't the USA usually love to make a big deal about people fleeing big bad evil communists?

        • erikw 5 hours ago ago

          Saint Kitts and Nevis sells passports, so I imagine that is the rationale. I see some other microstates on the list that fit that pattern as well.

          • tenpies 5 hours ago ago

            I suspect that too, and the US is not the only country to be having issues with some of the citizenship by investment countries.

            Norway for example, appears to have de-facto banned 5 countries (all on the list) that have such programs: https://www.imidaily.com/europe/confirmed-norway-quietly-den...

            Their justification is interesting too, because if the threshold is "citizenship must require personal attendance", then Canadian citizenship is almost certainly invalid too if you obtained yours over Zoom, which is how most new Canadians obtain it.

            • erikw 5 hours ago ago

              I'm surprised that you can get non-attendant citizenship in Canada. They don't even give automatic citizenship to children of Canadian parents born outside of Canada (maybe if both parents are Canadian they do, but my experience is with one Canadian and one American). US citizenship for a child born outside of the US to US parents is as simple as bringing their birth certificate to the consulate. And if you marry a Canadian, they won't give you residency unless you physically reside in Canada.

      • 10xDev 6 hours ago ago

        Turkmenistan made it through? lol

        They just want foreigners to be Indians and the remaining Europeans that will actually want to go to the US.

  • nothrowaways 6 hours ago ago

    I'm glad India is not yet included

    • cm2187 5 hours ago ago

      My guess is they view India as producing an elite immigration (i.e. net tax paying) in large numbers. It is stunning how many successful tech or non-tech executives are Indian born. I haven't seen the full list but I doubt any country on that list gets close, even as a % of population.

      • VWWHFSfQ 5 hours ago ago

        1st gen immigrants from India are almost always well-educated, and oftentimes even entrepreneurial. They are among the lowest-risk (with Chinese) immigrants. That is to say, they typically will not contribute to crime, gangs, or public welfare burden. So it's a pretty big difference between those two countries and all the others on the list.

    • dexzod 5 hours ago ago

      Looking at the list, it appears to be wheather the country or its population is pro-israel or not

    • paxys 6 hours ago ago

      Well yeah Trump's big tech friends need cheap H-1B labor.

      • petcat 6 hours ago ago

        I don't think tech companies need H-1Bs anymore. From my experience they just set up a subsidiary in India and move all their dev teams there.

        • paxys 6 hours ago ago

          Companies have been trying that since the 90s, yet the quality of work done by offshore teams is consistently crap. Better to import the entire team to the US, pay them below average wages, make them work 80 hour weeks under the watchful eye of a manager and threaten to fire them (which means deportation) if they dare to complain.

          • petcat 5 hours ago ago

            > the quality of work done by offshore teams is consistently crap

            This isn't nearly true anymore, and hasn't been for a long time. Especially since everyone is using the same AI tooling as everyone else now.

            What is true (in my experience) is that they do tend to lack a sense of ownership and craft. But I think companies care less and less about that all the time.

            • ReflectedImage 5 hours ago ago

              If you are a good software developer in India then you move abroad. It's not that India doesn't make great software developers, it's just they don't tend to stick around.

  • sp4cec0wb0y 6 hours ago ago

    This is stupid and weakens the U.S. We have benefited so much from the visa program over the history of this country. If the smartest people of Russia and various other countries want to flee and join the U.S., we would be at an advantage.

  • ChrisArchitect 7 hours ago ago
    • barishnamazov 7 hours ago ago

      Huh, actually checked first few pages before posting. I wonder why the thread got flagged.

      • pavon 6 hours ago ago

        While I didn't flag it, I closed that article without reading after the fourth popup. Thank you for submitting a better source.

      • rbanffy 7 hours ago ago

        It’s bound to generate some heated discussion. A lot of people on that discussion asks the same question. There’s a lack of transparency on why some posts get flagged.

        A pause in processing of immigration visas affects the tech industry and is relevant to most of the audience who lives in the US.

        • tracker1 6 hours ago ago

          My biggest issue with work visas is they're treated as an under-class that literally competes at upwards of half the pay or less and used to suppress wages. Especially in the past 5 years.

          I'd like to see a 100% tax on Visa workers combined with salary floors per work classification. A tech worker that needs to be imported from another country shouldn't be paid less than 6 figures IMO, and depending on the position upwards of twice that. The tax itself should specifically be used to fund grants for STEM undergrads and graduates.

          Just my own take on this, and I do have a personal stake and took a 40% pay cut last year just to be able to keep working.

        • SoftTalker 5 hours ago ago

          > A pause in processing of immigration visas affects the tech industry

          Is an immigration visa the same as a work visa? I don't know much about the different types of immigration. The stated reason for the pause in immigration visas is to keep out those who would end up being a "public charge." I interpret this as people who want to come to the US but have no demonstrated means of support once they get here.

          Student visas, I presume, are unaffected? What about work visas? If you're coming to work, you would also be paying taxes and not need public support.

      • schmuckonwheels 5 hours ago ago

        Because like most political threads, it will largely consist of people with a crayon-and-coloring-book understanding of geopolitics posting low-effort snipes and trading insults while contributing basically zero to productive discussion.

        The most disgusting example of this in recent memory was the Scott Adams death thread, where complimentary comments were being aggressively flagged, and toxic vitriol was being upvoted. It made me finally realize how many joyless, seriously broken people lurk here.

      • ofalkaed 6 hours ago ago

        >I wonder why the thread got flagged.

        It is off-topic.

        >On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

        >Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

  • chaostheory 6 hours ago ago

    It looks like we’re trying to beat Japan, China, South Korea, Italy and Germany in who can age and shrink their population the fastest.

    We used to be great shape in regards to the age depopulation bomb.

  • malshe 6 hours ago ago

    The presence of Brazil and Thailand on this list stumped me.

    • MandieD 5 hours ago ago

      The one that I'm at a complete loss for is Uruguay - it is one of the wealthiest countries per capita in South America as well as the least corrupt and most egalitarian... not exactly a huge source of desperate immigrants. Did their government scold ours too harshly for the recent Venezuela shenanigans or something?

      • malshe 5 hours ago ago

        Yeah, Uruguay is also surprising.

    • ReflectedImage 5 hours ago ago

      Well given that the US DHS is posting on social media that it intends to get rid of all 100 million non-white Americans. What exactly did you expect?