Folks need to understand the context in which all this is happening. This isn’t just about what policies we should have for high-skill immigration. It’s the product of decades of administrations ignoring the immigration laws that we have.<p>In other countries, the legislature votes on immigration policies and those policies are implemented. Canada decides to have high-skill immigration through a point-based process and the executive implemented those policies. That’s not what we do in the US. We formulate immigration policy through executive fiat and bureaucratic practice. In the US, the H1 program <i>is not a high-skill immigration program.</i> We don’t have one. The Wikipedia article covers this well: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa</a><p>> An H-1B visa allows an individual to enter the United States to <i>temporarily</i> work at an employer in a specialty occupation.<p><a href="https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b" rel="nofollow">https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b</a><p>> The H-1B program applies to employers seeking to hire <i>nonimmigrant aliens</i> as workers in specialty occupations or as fashion models of distinguished merit and ability<p>The Immigration and Naturalization Act that created the H1-B program was billed to voters as creating a temporary immigration status, not a vector for permanent immigration. It has <i>turned into</i> a de-facto permanent immigration visa not by law, but by executive practice.<p>My family (my parents and I, then later my uncle and aunt and their two adult kids) came here on an H1B visa. I’m a proponent of skilled immigration. But viewing this as just a debate over immigration policy (or worse, just an artifact of Trump racism) is deeply misleading. We’re a country founded on the rule of law. But for decades, we’ve ignored our ordinary legislative processes when it comes to immigration policies. That’s not right, that’s not how Democracy is supposed to work, and it’s hard for me to blame people who are simply demanding that our existing laws be enforced. At the same time, yes, it’s unfair to people who came here on H1-B thinking it was a route to permanent residency. Maybe if proponents of skilled immigration had actually done the work and actually gotten legislation passed creating a permanent immigration program for skilled workers, we wouldn’t in this mess today.