I am a DACA recipient, and have not been able to renew my application due to a situation that I will not get to specific with. I am still working at a tech company and been extremely anxious this past few months about what my company might do to me since its been expired for almost a year. I've worked so hard for this and can't the fact that I might get fired due to this. Any suggestions or sources that can help on this? Sorry for being a bit generic but this means a lot to me.
I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
31–40 of 349 posts
Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
#32How popular is Canada becoming as an alternative to the US for both YC companies and employees? For reference, I believe the US takes in approx 2 million immigrants a year whereas Canada's target is at 400k. Additionally, the USA's population is 330 million compared to Canada's 38 million.
Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
#331/ Do you what countries are allowing third country nationals to get an H1B visa stamp? 2/ When will Canada and Mexico allow that? PS: It seems impossible to get an appointment in my home country.
That's the $64,000 question because it changes all the time and so is incredibly challenging and frustrating. That being said, the trend is definitely toward the opening up of consulates in general and to third-country nationals in particular. Many of the US Consulates in Europe, for example, have opened up. We're also seeing a positive change as a result of the lifting of the travel ban on November 8th. Regarding Canada and Mexico, there's been no announcement but I suspect soon - and Mexico is accepting TCN applications but only on an emergency basis.
Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
#34Hey Peter! Thank you tons for your contributions here! I'm an Indian in the US on an H1B visa and working in software. I've also made a product for fun on weekends (which my company knows about and approves of). I was thinking of opening access to it for the world, but as it'll involve substantial costs on (cloud) infrastructure, I'll have to ask people to pay for usage on it. I don't plan to profit from this in any…
Could you open up donations for the project instead?
Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
#35Law firm filed for the wrong category perm and it will be 1 1/2 years before I could get AoS based on new visa. Any way to expedite the process?
Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
#36How popular is Canada becoming as an alternative to the US for both YC companies and employees? For reference, I believe the US takes in approx 2 million immigrants a year whereas Canada's target is at 400k. Additionally, the USA's population is 330 million compared to Canada's 38 million.
Unbelievably popular. Based on my own limited experience, we've seen a lot of entrepreneurs return to Canada and operate their US business from Canada and come to the US as needed or simply decide in the first instance to base their company in Canada rather than the US. This all might change, however, as the pandemic continues to get under control.
Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
#37I'm Europe based at the moment, but I'm curious about how to validate your degrees from an European country to be recognised in the USA as a valid diploma and search for a job. Maybe is not your area of expertise, so I'm sorry for the question if is not.
Not the OP. The validation probably comes in the background check stage (not the hiring stage) and the background check companies should have the expertise to check degrees in Europe.
All in all, this should definitely be manageable.
Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
#38Law firm filed for the wrong category perm and it will be 1 1/2 years before I could get AoS based on new visa. Any way to expedite the process?
It's extremely tough to expedite. Sometimes, if the work is clearly serving an important national interest, the process can be expedited.
Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
#39Not exactly startup related but perhaps you have some insight. My wife is from the Philippines and we are currently in the process of applying for her AOS (I-130 and I-485). We left the Philippines late last year and went to Mexico for around 6 months waiting for things there to normalize after all the covid lockdowns.
The Philippines hadn't fully opened to tourists so in July of this year we entered the USA with the intention of getting married and then applying for a marriage based visa to the Philippines for me so I could return with my wife. After we entered the USA the Philippines went back into stricter covid related lockdown and we found out there was a 9 month wait time for the visa I would need to be able to return.
Given these issues we decided to stay in the USA and go through the AOS process for my wife instead. My wife entered on a normal tourist visa, this was her third visit to the USA since we had visited my family here a few times while we lived in Manila prior to being married.
Based on my understanding we may have issues with immigration since they will assume my wife entered the USA on a non-immigrant visa with immigration intent. Especially since we go married within a month of entering the USA.
Is there anything we can do to mitigate the chance of a denial based on these circumstances?
Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
#40Hey Peter! Thank you tons for your contributions here! I'm an Indian in the US on an H1B visa and working in software. I've also made a product for fun on weekends (which my company knows about and approves of). I was thinking of opening access to it for the world, but as it'll involve substantial costs on (cloud) infrastructure, I'll have to ask people to pay for usage on it. I don't plan to profit from this in any…
Could you open up donations for the project instead?
I still think problematic and would have to be carefully structured from both an immigration and tax perspective.