China provides many opportunities for its citizens to study abroad and expand their horizons, and the US is happy to take that money and nearly free brain labor. But when the fruits of all that training is ripe to pluck, the scale flips and now it is a fight between those two countries to retain the talents. And the US is losing badly.
Maybe China is playing it dirty and forces these scientists to come back. Or maybe it is simply that the US immigration is so hostile they don't see a future here. One of the main reasons people tried to go here is because of a chance of a better life. But when the naturalization process is so grueling and drawn out, they just don't bother anymore. Especially when China in big cities is providing pretty high standards of living to its citizens. Sure, "freedom" and "human rights" are something but frankly, those concerns are not relevant when we are talking about the upper class Han people. Stereotypes of rich Asian international students exist for a reason and that is because many of them come from rich and influential families. To these people, as long as you don't stir things up politically, they will feel safer and enjoy more rights in China than in the US.
Lots of US citizens do not understand the pain of immigration. It is in every way a demeaning and torturous process. You get treated like second class human beings and are forced to fight and prove you deserve something others were simply born with. There must be an incentive for these people to endure that kind of process. And for many Chinese whose homeland in every way a direct competitor to the US, there aren't enough reasons.
Odd to frame it that we're losing badly because /some/ Chinese scientists are going back to China but tons of them are still staying here, and the reverse is simply not happening at any scale.
If you want to see America in decline, you'll see it everywhere you look.
The US is losing it. If you do not consider a 5-folds increase in the number of Chinese scientists leaving the US an issue worth addressing, then that is just ignoring the problem.
The US had it very good in the past. And that helped it retain its top spot. But it also means once you are at the top, if you don't keep going up at the same rate as others, you are going down. And trends of losing steam can sometimes get swept under the rug because of "we are number one" sentiment.
It could of course also be that the five fold increase is because China itself is becoming more competitive. I'd be a lot more worried if there was a five fold increase of American scientists leaving for China and sending their children there to study. But that does not seem to be happening. American universities are still quite prestigious, also inside China. Depending on the field Chinese universities can be quite prestigious as well, but given the choice of studying in the United States or China many people from other countries would given equal opportunity still choose the United States.
It is true that US immigration is horrible, but that goes for may other countries as well. I don't know what the cause is or whether it is something that you should even want to repair.
Rome wasn't built in a single day. Trends start way before the final line is crossed. You can address them early or let it be and hope it goes away by itself.
If you waited until the day when Americans have to go to China for an education, then the US is longer in a position to deal with the problem as effectively as when it just started losing foreign-born scientists.
The US was built by immigrants. That is the root of its power, a gathering place for talents all over the world. If you still question whether it is of any concern for immigrants, especially high-skilled ones, to feel unwelcomed here, then I afraid I have no arguments that can sway you.
It does start to happen in other countries, not so much in Europe, but students are starting to be sent to China to study. And Chinese universities are competing for international students. Language barriers is what really prevents it from happening at scale.
You get a lot of Koreans, Thai, and Africans of all sorts in Chinese universities. Still not very common, but you will run into them at Chinese universities. It always isn’t language related, my wife knew of Korean art students at the Chinese art university she attended in Beijing.
This discussion is only centered around China, when these scientists are also leaving for other countries (per the article, about half of them don't return to China)
To your point, yes US residents send their kids abroad. From a total of 15k in 2000, up to 34k right before the pandemic.
> And trends of losing steam can sometimes get swept under the rug because of "we are number one" sentiment.
Americans definitely don’t care as much about face as the Chinese do, so it really isn’t that big of a deal. China’s economy was eventually going to stem its emigration, and a lot of rich Chinese send their kids to school the states now with the expectation that they will come back, not as a hedge against the Chinese internal problems.
China could do better with immigration. Like, if you think American immigration is bad, China is worse, permanent residency wasn’t even a thing for non-Chinese until a few years ago, and is still quite rare.
American exceptionalism is a very strong sentiment. It isn't about face. It is about believing one is the best and act with that assumption, e.g. nationalism.
"Face" is a concept about preserving personal honor and appearance regardless of what they actually believe. Slightly different but quite distinct imo.
Nationalism is much heavier in the PRC than in the states, you can see it whenever they put on a military parade that you need a special invite to see in person. It has been intertwined with face in china for around 20 years now, or at least ever since the 2008 Olympics.
Just try living in China for a few years and tell me that mainland Chinese aren’t more nationalistic than the USA. Wolf warriors aren’t just a movie meme these days, Nationalism is full on promoted and basically required by the state not everyone is just paying it lip service.
You're back to arguing whether China or the US should receive the nationalistic medal. The discussion should be on why both are so nationalistic in the first place and how to get out of that.
yeah. for a few years, but especially recently, every time I re-enter the USA, I cannot help but think, for a long time, how it feels like such decline is so visible everywhere.
It feels quite dispiriting. I'm not sure I'd go to china as my first choice, especially as I don't speak mandarin or cantonese, but I'd _love_ to leave the USA. There's many great options I'd consider. Maybe in a year or two, I'll be hailing from outside the USA!
Losing badly against the status quo. The trend is in the wrong direction, even though in absolute numbers the US is still winning the talent war. But not if it keeps changing this way.
Immigration is no small feat and when the US govt throws suspicions at immigrants and makes their life difficult, it becomes an easy choice to call it quit, admit defeat and just go back to a known quantity where you'll be treated better.
I bet you if the US attitude was opposite, the vast majority of these folks wouldn't go back.
Hard to say, PRC generating ~5M STEM per year which is multiple times more than US can generate via domestic education and brain drain. That's the skilled human capita gap where US is losing hard, PRC adding conservatively more than 5x more STEM talent per year, set to pass US total STEM workforce of 35M within next few years (PRC STEM @ ~20M as of 2020), and medium term (2050) PRC on trend have 50-100M STEM. It's not so much US decline as PRC ascend and relative gap massively swinging in PRC favour well past 2050s. Now factor in indigenous PRC academic and S&T industries have increasingly more opportunties retaining more and more tier1 PRC talent, the fact that best PRC talent don't flood into west anymore - this isn't the 00s where PRC best was sent abroad as state policy or natural outflow due to lack of domestic opportunities. Even international students are now mostly B tier talents that couldn't hack it in PRC gaokao but had wealthy enough families to send them abroad. TLDR US can't compete on generating talent vs PRC massive population base effect + human capital production via academic reforms coming to fruition, and US brain drain of PRC talent (itself reducing due to geopolitics as mentioned in this article) can no longer meaningfully inhibit PRC talent pipeline.
PRC generates STEM talent, most but not all stays in the PRC. Meanwhile, people come from all over the world to do STEM in the USA. So ya, Tsinghua and PKU are still, in 2023, are providers of STEM talent in America. And even if China decided to close off emigration tomorrow, we still have India and Europe, it isn't going to make it win as much, especially with the its own demographic bomb ticking (they will need to import talent as well in the next 50 years).
Before China's hardcore response the pandemic scared a bunch of people into emigrating, you might have had a point. We will see now that China is opening up again if it goes back to the trend it had in 2019 or not.
Most of PRC talent now stays in the PRC because they generate significantly more than west can brain drain or there is emmigration opportunities. The amount of top C9 candidates flowing to the west is decreasing with each year because indigenous ecosystem has good opportunities for them unlike 10-20 years ago. It's not India/IIT where shit tier domestic enviroment where latest study shows something absurd like 90%/60%/30% of top 10/100/1000 Indian talent leaves country within a few years. Except in certain fields, one would be hard pressed to find same # of Chinese talent who graduated at top of the districts/classes going abroad anymore. Most are staying in PRC, because opportunties abound when you're at top and QoL pretty good. Leaving is harder than ever.
Put some numbers on PRC talent outflow, it's insignificant to what stays even post narrative of covid scaring Chinese to leave. And I know many who left, mostly retiring people whose just looking for places to park their money abroad. But talent that moves PRC up strategic values chains in S&T, very few, and as this article points, established strategic talent are moving back in record numbers where there's more upward mobility without red scare. This is without mentioning PRC students to NA has basically halved post covid. Dumb napkin math for illustration: US taking 4/10 PRC talent from before vs 3/100 now. The former subsantially degrades PRC talent pipeline, the latter barely makes a dent. And If US can only add 20 talent per year, then PRC's net 97 is going to matter over time, as in short/medium term time. Maybe talent import is needed after 50 years, at a point it's to sustain a PRC that has 2-3x more skilled workforce than US. But A) that's really not a competition anymore B) long enough time horizon that it's hard to speculate.
Yes US still have access to EU/IN talent, but again politics limit how much they can brain drain / absorb, so net inflow of US talent is no where close to net PRC talent production. Or people from "all over world" is basically ~1B (granted set to grow) English speakers (including non 1st language) or about the pool of Mandarin speakers. Remove PRC talent and US loses a huge chunk of talent access, especially from PRC pipeline with relatively proven ability to generate useful talent. And ultimately this matters because PRC making 50-100M STEM by 2050 while US population only set to expand by 40M is an insurmountable skilled workforce gap. It's not a demographic bomb as unparallel divident. Hence I doubt PRC need to import high end talent 50-100m STEM is stupid amount to make jobs for. Denying US PRC talent isn't about crippling US talent procurement, which US immigration policy does itself. It's about retaining PRC compatible talent - as you say, US can draw from English world, PRC largely rely from drawing from within. US denying itself large segment of talent that only benefits PRC to retain is a relative win. It's like the one area where could US win by default but chooses to cede.
PRC will remain effectively closed to talent, so they have to produce their own and what they lose to emigration they hardly get back. Put it this way: a whole generation of Chinese previous STEM students from top universities are now in upper leadership positions...in the USA. It remains to be seen if similar younger talent now will grow to that under the Chinese 996 system.
> Denying US PRC talent isn't about crippling US talent procurement, which US immigration policy does itself. It's about retaining PRC compatible talent - as you say, US can draw from English world, PRC largely rely from drawing from within. US denying itself large segment of talent that only benefits PRC to retain is a relative win. It's like the one area where could US win by default but chooses to cede.
I don't know how you can say this with a straight face when PRC immigration policies are much much worse. The USA has a system that is hard to get through, sure, but many many people get through it with permanent residency and citizenship at the end. Very very few get through the PRC's immigration system, even of Chinese descent, as you say all China can do is retain talent.
> It's like the one area where could US win by default but chooses to cede.
Again, the fact that the USA grants 740k green cards a year is not small potatoes, and many of those are in tech, high level STEM positions of talent. When I worked in China, I was the only foreigner in my team, maybe a few foreigners in our entire lab. Now, I'm working at Google in the USA, I can count the born-in-America types on one hand, most of my coworkers are immigrants, a long with a lot of young Chinese new grads. It doesn't feel like much as changed on the ground, but ya, Indian immigrants are gaining lots of ground over Chinese immigrants in leadership positions and such, which is something I wouldn't have predicted 20 years ago (look at the top CEO positions).
US needs immigration to fulfill new workforce demands, PRC doesn't. PRC generates more talent than US can bring in via immigration. Hence trend towards large workforce gap.
US does not produce and brain drain enough talent for her needs. Yes US has one of the more permissive immigration systems in the world, but IT'S NO LONGER ENOUGH relative to PRC indigenous talent pipeline. 3/4 million is small potatoes when you're up against 5M+. US isn't competing against PRC on immigration, it's competing on net workforce improvement. US unlikely to have political space to massively ramp up immigration, maybe can close shortage gap, but increasing by 3-4M to stay at parity with PRC isn't politically happening.
>with a straight face
You're overinterpretting, I'm not saying US is ceding absolute immigration advantage, I'm saying it's ceding it's advantage of being able to brain drain PRC talent via generating bad domestic enviroment for ethnically Chinese talent that is pushing many to leave.
>whole generation of Chinese previous STEM students from top universities are now in upper leadership positions...in the USA
Yes, which I acknowledged. But now they're largely staying in PRC for years (precovid) US isn't braindraining PRC best on scale that can degrade PRC indigenous industries anymore. There is a generational difference talent willing to emmigrate. Hence US ceding her all upside advantage of draining/denying PRC access to her best, and now has to redirect to draining more of (likely) India's best. This is arguably triple win for PRC.
All of which is to say, yes US immigration is still a US strength, but it's advantage is vastly diminished vs PRC building up indigenous talent pipeline over last few decades. That +2 advantage was insurmountable gap when most of world was at +0, or even -1 (brain drain), but now it's up against PRC's+5. And where US could feasibly degrade PRC +5 into +4, it chose not to, instead pushing that -1 onto India.
Agree with the odd framing. Because some Chinese scientists are going back to China, doesn't mean America has lost the game. There is lots of brain power in the world, not only from China. America gets and can get smart immigrants from many other places.
Agreed, the US immigration system is only just barely decent to you if you're a highly skilled scientist in an in-demand field, but when your home country is quickly catching up on offering good opportunities and can pay more relative to cost of living, it's understandable that they're increasingly choosing not to stay.
Especially if they're of Chinese or Russian origin, it's many years of fighting to prove you deserve to be here with increased scrutiny whenever it's politically favorable for whoever is in charge.
Even with India, immigration is such a grueling process, with just another decade or so of development to create more opportunities and we'll probably be seeing a similar process with Indians. India even has a slightly lower barrier in that compared to Russia and China there's less totalitarianism to make people prefer the US.
US Immigration bad? 3 million Indian H1B's have arrived in the last 20 or so years. How can it be bad? The US accepts more immigrants every year than any other country in the world, how can it be bad?
H1Bs are not citizens, unlike naturalized immigrants. They are effectively "indentured servants" of the company that sponsored them, and have a gruelling 10-20 yr application process to gain full citizenship.
The fact that you don't know this is exactly what the OP was referring to, since most US natural born citizens don't know about it much.
This is not true for all H1B visa holders. I know many who have obtained their permanent residency after a few years. This is not in the IT field though but medical field.
H1B terminates in permanent residency, but if you are from certain countries (India, China, Philippines, Mexico), you have to wait for quota to free up (so you are in limbo having an extension of your visa but no PR yet). Still, to say that only “a lucky few” get green cards from an H1B is disingenuous when the vast majority get them within a few years of their renewal ending (after 6 years). The USA still issues 740k green cards a year, after all.
Somebody applying for PR on jan 1st 2009 (from india, for example), is just now able to receive their green card (in 2023). While the majority (~50%) of the wait is around 5-6 years, there's some 20-25% that have 10-19 years of wait times!
And because the quota system is nationality based, the more populous nations tend to have higher wait times.
It isn’t just the more populated countries. It is any country with a lot of emigration to the USA proportional to their own population. So India, China, Philippines, Mexico. China is at 4 years, Mexico and the Philippines are at 1.25 year, India is at 14 years.
I agree it’s dumb and we shouldn’t do it that way, but India is a huge outlier under the current system.
>>> It is in every way a demeaning and torturous process. You get treated like second class human beings and are forced to fight and prove you deserve something others were simply born with
Did you have a very bad experience with US immigration? I've been dealing with it for a couple of decades, from non immigrant visas to GC and while its definitely a pain in the ass, it hasn't been anything like that^.
There's a lot of waiting, and a lot of uncertainty and anxiety but it was never personal for me or anyone I know.
There was just a few days ago an AMA by a US immigration lawyer filed to the brim with stories of rich tech workers in all sorts of ridiculous scenarios at the hands of absurd US immigration policy and personnel.
Personally I got married due to visa issues and then had to leave the US for a year and a half (spent in London) until we got the greencard. This and all the paperwork and the shitty way they talk to people at the border is nothing compared to the other people I know that either couldn’t work (or their spouse couldn’t work) due to the visa type OR they were slaves of their employers til they got their greencard. Fuck US immigration.
That being said I’ve heard my country (France) isn’t that much better when it comes to handling immigration.
The way that immigration is handled by many countries is just as bad, if not way worse. So when pointing the finger, many need to also look at the immigration policies of their own countries, to get a balanced perspective.
My experience matched yours, and I am not Caucasian, but I completed mine well over a decade ago and it was a normal application.
I believe immigration policy has had a major change around seven years ago for the worse. This is anecdotal, but one of my uni friends is a from an allied country (S Korea) and he had a terrible experience. I don’t remember all the details, but the process seems years longer now and they treated him like he was an enemy spy even though he’s been here for decades prior, has published several papers, and likely has no connections with anything sketchy. Most people would have just said fuck it and went back home. Thankfully, he endured and is now tenured as a CompE prof.
Imo the US is likely no longer reaping the benefits from the brain drain due to the new draconian policies for legal immigration. It is a dumb (or even racist) overreaction when you lump in even people from allied countries in light of the chip war
The only thing I can say is that yes I had bad experiences with them. The kinds of scrutiny and restrictions they put on me made me feel like a criminal even though I have not even a speeding ticket in this country. I am not comfortable saying anything else.
May I ask what is your birth country? From what I know, it depends a lot on where you come from.
the us immigration system is deeply dehumanizing. The presumptions, control, classism, the authoritarian language, the implication that access to some perfect garden is being granted, that the lucky recipient will never want to leave...
it's like some performative piece of propaganda, that you' must participate in, enthusiastically, in order to get the reward. (permission from the state to enter "it's" borders.)
at a prior company, a coworker was a young, single, pakistani male. the company was remote-first, did company meetups twice a year. About 30 or 40 people, maybe.
Anyway, every time he entered the USA, we'd lament together about the litany of indignities he'd suffer at the hands of various authorities. It was sort of like filling out a bingo card.
I did a lot of apologizing, and explaining how xenophobia has been baked deeply into american institutions.
As the US citizen partner to an immigrant who now has their green card from our marriage, it was anything but simple. It is definitely the simplest way, by far, but it is not simple. It was very eye opening to me to see the journey from the inside.
I'm a natural-born US citizen and it has repeatedly been a serious pain for me. One such case... I was managing a team that was hiring someone away from another company. That person was in the US on an H-1B visa. When we put in the application to transfer her visa, the government responded with an RFE (Request For Evidence). They wanted evidence that we truly needed her skills, that we couldn't find a US citizen with the same skills, and that we weren't just a staffing agency (the last one was silly - the company is a household name in the US with a large engineering org and no connection whatsoever to staffing).
Our immigration lawyers' first advice was to rescind the offer as it wasn't worth the work unless the new hire was truly exceptional. This was at a time when RFE success rates where at an all time low (our lawyers told us to expect a 90% chance of failure). We believed she was worth it, so we decided to move forward. The lawyers also told us that we only get one shot - there is no second chance or appeal. So you must provide overwhelming evidence.
It consumed my time for weeks, making all kinds of other things fall behind, all with no guarantee of paying off. And she was riddled with stress throughout the process. The lawyers gave me a laundry list of tasks to do. I ended up producing ~100 pages of documentation about what the team did, what she would do in a typical day, examples of what her work product would be, how it was connected to the company's business, and why it required a graduate degree in mathematics. Some of that was difficult as our lawyers said I couldn't reveal the nature of our proprietary algorithms because these documents are treated as private. On top of demonstrating that it required a graduate degree, we had to demonstrate why a US citizen with nothing more than a high school education could not do the job (and evidence that a PhD in math was needed was not enough according to our lawyers).
Part of it involved me spending two hours being interviewed by a math prof from a top US university. The first hour was convincing him that I knew enough math to know what I was talking about (kind of like my first math final in 30 years). Then explaining enough about the systems the team worked on to convince him that it required an advanced math degree. Luckily he was fascinated by our problems/solutions and every idea he brought up about approaches to try were things we had already incorporated or ruled out. Helping him understand why they did / did not work ended up being pretty convincing.
After we supplied our RFE response, we waited for another month or two. Luckily her transfer was approved. She started a week later and I'm glad we put in the work - she was amazing.
To tie it back to the article, two years later she left to move back to China because she wanted to have kids and she didn't want them exposed to the overt racism that she faced in the US (especially the horrific behavior she faced in the weeks leading up to lockdown). And going back was no easy task. She applied for jobs at ~20 companies there. She received two offers and took one of them in Beijing. When she got there, she learned that they had over 1,000 applicants with PhDs for the single position she filled. It's hard to imagine that level of competition. We wouldn't have had to go through the RFE pain if so much talent were available in the US. But she was happy to face that competition to raise her kids in China.
I have a colleague from China who originally tried to move to the US. He became so disillusioned by the process that he gave up and tried Japan instead, as it provides a similar level of freedom. Within 3 years of just working a regular software job and studying the language, he got permanent residency. A lawyer did all of the heavy lifting. Just an anecdote, but maybe an example of the US losing talent to its insane immigration system.
Japan is a nation whose birthrates are so low its own government speaks of extinction of the japanese people. They aren't exactly in a position to refuse immigrants. The US won't be either if current trends continue.
I think you’re vastly overestimating the degree to which the us government wants to keep them here, and I’d be far from surprised to see caps put in place for Chinese student visas within the next five years.
> Maybe China is playing it dirty and forces these scientists to come back.
Or maybe 'China provides many opportunities for its citizens to study abroad and expand their horizons' and their citizens want to help their own country in turn?
> Sure, "freedom" and "human rights" are something but frankly
Nobody immigrates for 'freedom' and 'human rights'? Everyone immigrates for 'better life' - money. And what freedom and human rights do the chinese lack?
> You get treated like second class human beings and are forced to fight and prove you deserve something others were simply born with.
Good. Why should non-citizens be treated the same as citizens? Every country should treat their citizens better than non-citizens.
> There must be an incentive for these people to endure that kind of process.
'Freedom' and 'human rights'. Funny isn't it? It's sounds so stupid when you say it out loud and yet the dumb masses believe it.
> And for many Chinese whose homeland in every way a direct competitor to the US, there aren't enough reasons.
Good. It means china is advancing and providing opportunities for their own people. These chinese scientists should go home and help create china's harvard, mit, etc. And hopefully india, south america, africa and rest of the world follows china's example. The blueprint is there and if china is able to develop then so can the rest of the world.
>The United States is home to the highest number of immigrants in the world. An estimated 50.6 million people in the United States—a bit more than 15% of the total population of 331.4 million—were born in a foreign country. The number of immigrants in the U.S. has increased by at least 400% since 1965.
By the way, the USA takes more immigrants every year than any other country in the world. I myself went through the process and was treated with complete respect and it wasn't easy but well worth it to become an American and be welcomed into the Land of Milk and Honey.
The US was a lot of things. It still is on some fronts, but others have seen decline.
Your experience was certainly true. It is why so many are trying to come here. But things have changed and the experience is not what it used to be. If you think it was difficult before, think about how it has to be now for people to choose to go back instead of persevering. The trend is clear. Things changed. The US can either fix it and remain competitive by hoarding talents. Or it will continue to deteriorate.
There are always warning signs. Immigration laws has been called antiquated and desperately in need of reform for a long time. Your sentiment of "it was good in my time" is how hegemons like Britain fell.
Maybe they have the highest number of immigrants, but as a percentage of the population other nations are higher and USA is very far down. Canada, Norway, Sweden are all higher... USA isn't even in the top 50 when looking at total % of the population.
This is true, but not exclusive to China and the Chinese people. I've immigrated to the US from Europe about 13 years ago and it was a very legally and financially painful process. I've since acquired a B.S.,M.S.,and a Ph.D. in a highly desirable specialization and haven't been able to find a job in the US. This country has left me poor, in debt and hopeless. My wife and I are packing our bags and moving back to Europe. I don't see any opportunity for myself or my children in this declining, chaotic, money hungry country.
Is it just simply because there were 5 folds more Chinese people study in US from a decade ago?
I don’t like the word “send”. AFAIK China was not paying for their tuitions.
This is surprising to hear, is there any hard data on this? My naive assumption would be that US benefits from brain drain in vast majority of situations.
On the flip side; what exactly does US society provide to Chinese (and to a lesser extent, Indians) ?
They're constantly demonized by the media. They're treated as essentially 'devil-worshipping' orientals ('Communism' for China; 'Hinduism' for Indians). They have to deal with 60s-era racially-motivated immigration laws that limit the same number of Green-Cards for Norway/Sweden (and other tiny 5-million large countries) as that for each of China/India.
On some level the Americans (and Westerners) can't come to terms with their own glaring hypocrisy. They are intense ethno-nationalists but will pretend to be anything but, and claim their own culture is universal and anyone who doesn't subscribe to it is the devil's pawn. (To wit, the LGBTQ flag is now a more obvious fixture in front of US embassies).
Asians are too, but they aren't obsessed with it, nor do they over do it due to not having a 'religion' hang over them culturally (other than ofc. when they're 'saved' by some occidental import; Buddhism etc. are not 'religions').
Indians atleast have to contend with essentially a vestigial-colonial state that is essentially a kleptocracy which just happens to be run by people who're 'liked' by the 'global elite' because they're, very much like zealous RW Xtian nuts, destroying India's historical 'pagan' culture and language (India's constitution for instance denies Hindus religious rights, unlike that for Xtians/Muslims; and imposes English on a large population that barely understands it).
China (like imperial Japan) too was 'liked' when they were destroying their own culture/traditions for 'secular Xtianity'. Not anymore I guess.
I half agree. What pisses me off though is that a lot of Chinese people who immigrate to the US still can’t say anything bad about their own country and just shove any criticism under the idea that western media just hates China. I’d pick US nationalism over Chinese nationalism.
It's not that they can't say anything bad about China. It's just that everything said about China is negative in the US. When was the last time you read something positive about China in the mainstream media?
1.4 billion people and nothing good happens there according to western media. That's just propaganda.
That’s just not true. You can find lots of good things about China. But sure, if you compare this to Chinese media that has nothing bad to say about the country then you’re going to faint lol.
how is it "a demeaning and torturous process", above and beyond dealing with any faceless bureaucracy (i.e. dealing with the DMV, IRS, or even airline lost baggage departments, or your local cable company)?
"you get treated like second class human beings and are forced to fight and prove you deserve something others were simply born with." isn't this effectively the situation with immigrating to any desirable country (and even some undesirable ones)?
Well, for starters, there are many points of the process where your entire future is down to the mood of the immigration officer at the airport. Making it so that the safest way to not have to potentially uproot your entire life in hours is to just keep your head down and be a good little indentured servant until you get lucky in a lottery.
Happened to travel internationally, either to see family for a week or for a conference in the 3 years between finishing your education and getting a chance at an H1B? Maybe they'll let you back in, maybe they won't, no one can say.
Happened to study and work here for over a decade, slaved away for an employer to convince them to sponsor your residency?, Employer screws up your green card application after pushing it off till the H1B limit, you get screwed and have to leave with zero recourse.
It's no wonder illegal immigration is such a big issue here, especially with sanctuary cities, you come and stay illegally and governments will bend over backwards to help you stay, you come here, get an advanced education and work hard to remain in legal status for a significant chunk of your life, supporting yourself financially and giving back to the country and you get kicked out for something that wasn't even your fault.
In comparison DMVs and even the IRS aren't renowned for being in the habit of completely wrecking someone's life's plans over the mood of one random person. There are pretty blatantly wrong things people have to do (and keep doing) for the DMV or IRS to have a similar impact on their lives.
The irony is in how the US claims to be all about equality and opportunity. But then it treats one of the most productive classes of its residents as second class who do not deserve some basic legal protections.
Still, to answer your question, the difference is in the number of dealings an immigrant has to go through and the consequences if any of these goes badly. If you mess up your DMV meeting every 5 years, no big deal. You failed to update your address in your annual license renewal as an immigrant? That is a potential black mark that can get your green card denied and your life ruined.
Maybe it is the case for every country to treat immigrants like that. But when the US is built by immigrants, it should have an incentive to do better than that. Otherwise, why would people immigrate here instead of all the other "desirable" countries, or maybe just come back home? In such situations, sure, the US hasn't done wrong. It simply had done worse than it used to. And that can be a subjective sign of decline depending on how you look at it.
The immigration system has a duty to the citizens, not to the immigrants - except as far as it preserves human rights and serves the citizens.
You’re not entitled to citizenship. We didn’t get it by birth alone, we got it because our lineage dedicated their life to building this country into what it is and passed it on to their children.
That you have this entitlement towards US citizenship means you don’t deserve it at all.
That is false. Check the 14th amendment on jus soli. Your own constitution, written by the founders of your country disagrees with you.
By standards of the US citizenship test. You do not qualify for citizenship.
See how arbitrary it is? Also statistically, per person, immigrants contribute to the US more than its own citizens. Your attempt of using "lineage" is so ridiculous I don't know what to say. If you truly believe that, then we should have kings and queens again because their "lineages" sure are prestigious and contribute a lot to the country.
But of course, the US founders were vehemently against it, as written in the constitution and the declaration of independence. So I guess you again proved you failed the citizenship test.
I know you receive citizenship with birth on US soil, but that wasn’t implemented because the state has some obligation to someone simply due to the dirt above which they were born.
The reason that law was implemented was to recognize the states duty to the offspring of the people of the nation. Do you really think the framers of the 14th amendment would agree with loopholes like “anchor babies”? Of course not, because while they were born here, the intent behind the 14th was to grant immediate citizenship to the offspring of the people who built the country. This is what I mean. Anchor babies were an unforeseen flaw.
It’s not arbitrary. You think it’s arbitrary because you have the impression that the US is just some economic zone with a basket of benefits. ITS NOT. We’re a nation of people. The nation and its people have no obligation to you or any other non member of the people. YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO IT. Why do you think you deserve citizenship? You think so because it would benefit you, not thinking for a second whether you’d benefit the nation or it’s people.
Given that you view the country this way, you don’t deserve it either. We’re not a basket of benefits to be plundered by the whole world.
The duty of the nation is to its people and them alone. Immigrants come only if they are a benefit to the people and the people want them. The state acts on behalf of the people in this mission.
That is a load of bull and you are either uninformed and think your opinion equals facts or you are intentionally trying to spread misinformation.
>Concerning the children born in the United States to parents who are not U.S. citizens (and not foreign diplomats), three senators, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lyman Trumbull, the author of the Civil Rights Act, as well as President Andrew Johnson, agreed, asserting that both the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment would confer citizenship on them at birth, and no senator offered a contrary opinion
> I voted for the proposition to declare that the *children of all parentage, whatever*, born in California, should be regarded and treated as citizens of the United States, entitled to equal Civil Rights with other citizens.
If you actually read the history of the law, you will know that the actual intention for "natural born" is whether a child was born under the US authority or a foreign power. And since US authority supersedes all others on US soil, the law effectively grants citizenship to people born here.
And funny how much assumption you are throwing out about me right now. I am entitled to it and you have zero say about it. I know because people who have more authority than you granted it to me for the benefits I have brought to this country.
You still haven't addressed the fact that immigrants are more productive and contribute more than natives. That fact alone destroyed your stupid arguments and you know it. So you resorted to personal attacks and claims of "entitlement". A pathetic and sad attempt especially on this kind of site where almost any immigrant is much more skilled and employed in a much more prestigious position than the average American. But you want to know what the real American's ideals regarding people and their "benefits"?
> What are the words written on the Statue of Liberty?
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
None of this is about benefits. I am done with this conversation. You reek of being a nationalist and isolationist. The very foundation of the US is built on taking on immigrants and helping others. You aren't American at heart and the only reason you are called one is because you were born here. Ironic isn't it?
Maybe China is playing it dirty and forces these scientists to come back. Or maybe it is simply that the US immigration is so hostile they don't see a future here. One of the main reasons people tried to go here is because of a chance of a better life. But when the naturalization process is so grueling and drawn out, they just don't bother anymore. Especially when China in big cities is providing pretty high standards of living to its citizens. Sure, "freedom" and "human rights" are something but frankly, those concerns are not relevant when we are talking about the upper class Han people. Stereotypes of rich Asian international students exist for a reason and that is because many of them come from rich and influential families. To these people, as long as you don't stir things up politically, they will feel safer and enjoy more rights in China than in the US.
Lots of US citizens do not understand the pain of immigration. It is in every way a demeaning and torturous process. You get treated like second class human beings and are forced to fight and prove you deserve something others were simply born with. There must be an incentive for these people to endure that kind of process. And for many Chinese whose homeland in every way a direct competitor to the US, there aren't enough reasons.