I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

Regarding the O-1 visa class as a consideration to migrate to the States:

1) What is the threshold for extraordinary? How is extraordinary established?

2) Is there a quota on the number of visas issued per year? Related, is there a quota on the number of visas per country of birth?

Hi Peter, this is awesome. Thanks!

Say a US employer has about 1000 employees who are all residing in the US (so payroll is only set up to handle US taxes and so forth) because it was all commuters until the pandemic. Now there are many remote employees, and that won't change (i.e., no "return to office" unwinding of remote arrangements) so some are starting to move across the country. No problem.

When a remote employee says they're starting the process of moving to Canada and obtaining Canadian citizenship and prefers to keep their current job, how much effort goes into achieving that on the employer's side? Is it typical to convert their role from employee to contractor as a way to minimize the headache until there are many such employees?

How high is the bar to qualify for a O-1B visa (yes, I do mean O-1B), specifically the "evidence demonstrating your extraordinary ability"?

Do you just try to get founders on work visas, or do you go for green cards as well? I know EB2-NIW is a popular path for folks in academia, do you have comments on how easy/difficult each path is?

The answer is complex and nuanced unfortunately. You absolutely cannot get compensated by another source unless that compensation/work has been authorized by USCIS. One option is to obtain a concurrent part-time H-1B through your company. This has its own challenges because of the newness of the company and the founder's ownership in and control of the startup. There are however many things that a founder can do in connection with his or her own startup while in H-1B status with another company without crossing the line.