This announcement means anyone who planned on beginning work under an H1B soon after perhaps months of job seeking and waiting for H1B approvals is suddenly shit out of luck. Anyone about to be granted a green card after years on the wait list is shit out of luck. Another HN'ers comment about their sisters Irish boyfriend who now can't move and leaves their family living in different continents is already one example of all the life plans this kind of change disrupts.
They have been making these sorts of life changing policy decisions at the drop of the hat for years now - no notice, no coherent long term plan whatsoever, only a year old tweet from Trump promising reforms. Even if you have spent 5 or 10 years in the country studying, working, paying taxes, building friends & family in the US, you have no more stability or value to the government than a fresh immigrant.
The constant instability of your entire life as an immigrant is not worth putting up with. Might as well go somewhere else - in most places you get points based immigration and a STABLE visa & path to citizenship that won't fall out from under you.
They have been making these sorts of life changing policy decisions at the drop of the hat for years now - no notice, no coherent long term plan whatsoever, only a year old tweet from Trump promising reforms. Even if you have spent 5 or 10 years in the country studying, working, paying taxes, building friends & family in the US, you have no more stability or value to the government than a fresh immigrant.
The constant instability of your entire life as an immigrant is not worth putting up with. Might as well go somewhere else - in most places you get points based immigration and a STABLE visa & path to citizenship that won't fall out from under you.