This is not true. Green cards are distributed across countries respecting the 7% limit, but the remaining green cards are distributed to those in the backlog.
"Strategic default works in California because this is a "non-recourse" state. Unlike in many states, a mortgage lender in California has only one type of legal recourse in the event that a borrower defaults on a loan: to foreclose on the property. All that the bank can do is repossess your house; they cannot sue you in court to recover payment for the deficiency, which is the difference between the outstanding loan balance and the amount that the bank recovers by selling the home in a foreclosure auction. Strategic default has the advantage that in many cases it allows the homeowner to remain in the property for an extended period because the process of foreclosure often takes a considerable amount of time. During this period, you can save the money you would normally be spending on your mortgage and use it to pay down other debts."
The company becomes equally less valuable after a buyback.
Consider a company with value of $1000, with 100 shares outstanding. Each share is $10. Buying back 10 shares, the company spent $100, so the company is now worth $900 and has 90 shares outstanding. Each share is still $10.
This is the basic model that shows share price should be unaffected by buybacks, but there are other effects. The buyback could signal to investors that the company is unlikely to be inefficient with capital, so investors would value the company at $910 instead of $900.
Alternatively, in a demand/supply model of shares, the buybacks could have exhausted some of the supply of shares, so the valuation for the company settled on by the rest of the market is higher.
There's no clear answer here, but reality is probably somewhere between these models.
Say a company is worth $1000, and has 100 shares outstanding, for a share price of $10.
They can pay a dividend of $100, reducing their value to $900 (share price of $9) and paying out $1 per share to shareholders. In the end, the shareholders still have $10 of value per share, but some was forcibly liquidated!
Alternatively, the company can do a stock buyback of 10% of their shares. They spend $100 destroying 10 shares. The company is now worth $900 and there are 90 shares outstanding - investors still have $10 worth of value, whether they sold their shares or not.
In the end, no value is created in either scenario - capital is just returned to shareholders.
This is still a simplification because:
1. Stock prices often rise on the announcement of new dividends/share repurchases for similar reasons. It's a positive signal to investors that either of these things will happen, and affects their valuation of the firm.
2. Investors like capital-efficient businesses, and either of these methods of returning capital can actually create value for investors.
Funnily enough, the fact that equity grants are "options" to purchase stock at a strike price less than the real share price is much less valuable than the optionality you describe of continuing working to earn the rest of a stock grant after more information is known.
Unfortunately I think it's very hard to pin a value on the optionality to continue working, and I haven't seen anyone mention it when considering joining a startup over a larger company.