Everyone in this thread seems to assume that people will have to front the cash. Wouldn't it be more likely that they'd get a loan?
But yeah, $100k does seem a bit steep. That's almost the price of a college education, and a substantial fraction of the price of a good house. And in this economy, a lot of people are already having trouble paying both of those off; adding $100k on top of that for immigration would put this out of the reach of many people that I think that we do want to encourage to move here.
As a natural born citizen of the US who has many foreign friends, I am appalled at what they have to go through to get citizenship here. Some of them have managed to pull it off; some have given up and moved back home, or to other countries in which it's easier to get a work visa. And these are Ivy-league educated folks with masters degrees and PhDs in business and technical fields. I cannot believe that we are making it so difficult for such people to come to the US.
(From experience:) You need to show where all money came from that you use towards meeting immigration requirements. For most uses you can't use the proceeds of a loan to count towards it.
$100k's pretty cheap for a professional - there's enough of a salary differential between the US and most other places in the world (especially once factoring taxes in - eg. pay is high in Switzerland but so are taxes) that it would not take more than a few years to make back the $100k.
Agree that it's shocking how difficult it is for smart, educated individuals to immigrate at a time when the country needs to be attracting global talent to maintain it's lead.
> Wouldn't it be more likely that they'd get a loan?
I'd love to see the terms on this kind of loan: people coming to US from the abroad do not have any credit history whatsoever. Now, if this will be some government-sponsored loan, I could only imagine the amount of bureaucracy involved and timelines for that.
If one were to look for better way for immigration problem resolution - Canada and Australia have decent processes of getting people they need in.
But yeah, $100k does seem a bit steep. That's almost the price of a college education, and a substantial fraction of the price of a good house. And in this economy, a lot of people are already having trouble paying both of those off; adding $100k on top of that for immigration would put this out of the reach of many people that I think that we do want to encourage to move here.
As a natural born citizen of the US who has many foreign friends, I am appalled at what they have to go through to get citizenship here. Some of them have managed to pull it off; some have given up and moved back home, or to other countries in which it's easier to get a work visa. And these are Ivy-league educated folks with masters degrees and PhDs in business and technical fields. I cannot believe that we are making it so difficult for such people to come to the US.