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

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

#281
Hi Peter, What is the best way to contact your firm as a prospective client?

I've been looking for an immigration attorney who specializes in EB1A for an early engineer in the startup founding team in robotics with significant patent commercialization and a small number of citations (2 granted patents of >$2 million value, NIW is unfortunately not a good option due to the country backlog.

Looking at the positive comments from your current/former clients here, we'd love to get in touch!

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

#282

Hi Peter, What is the best way to contact your firm as a prospective client? I've been looking for an immigration attorney who specializes in EB1A for an early engineer in the startup founding team in robotics with significant patent commercialization and a small number of citations (2 granted patents of >$2 million value, NIW is unfortunately not a good option due to the country backlog. Looking at the positive comm…

http://www.robertsimmigration.com/index.html

Email at the end of the page.

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

#283
Quick testimonial from a YC startup that had Peter's assistance for us to go to the batch earlier this year: Peter is great. He gave us great advice and helped us out with how to fill out an urgent application for a visa for my co-founder. Would highly recommend him.

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

#284
post #137

[deleted]

Tourist/business visas for short period is relatively easy.

Have to prove you have enough funds while you’re there and will definitely come back - show you have house/apartment/family and return ticket.

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

#285
post #137

[deleted]

Disclaimer up front: I am neither Peter nor a lawyer. Listen to Peter if he disagrees with what I write here about the US option. If you do hire a lawyer for help on any Canadian immigration matter, make sure they are licensed in Canada, which Peter may or may nor be. Certain other authorized representatives like a Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant (RCIC) can help you as well, but anyone who is taking your money for help on this may be breaking Canadian law if they aren't in one of these authorized categories:

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...

All of the links in this comment are to official Government of Canada webpages.

Doing it legally in the US is difficult, since you'd probably be breaking the law by working remotely in the US, even for a Canadian company, whether or not you're legally an employee or a contractor, without a work authorization that's infeasible to get in this context. If your activities stay within the allowed boundaries of US business visitors then it might be okay on a B-1 or B-1/B-2 visa. For example, meeting with colleagues at a company event, but not if your activities while present go beyond the definition of meetings into the US immigration law definition of work. If they do consider it as unauthorized work, you'll get refused entry (or refused the visa) and have lots of annoying consequences for future visa or travel plans.

But it is probably possible to do this in Canada with full legitimacy.

The first step of analyzing this is to decide whether these activities meet the Canadian immigration law definition of work:

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/co...

If you are paid directly by the Canadian company, it's very possible that your activities during the trip would indeed be considered work. If you need an expert to apply the law to your specific facts, you or your employer should hire a lawyer or other authorized representative (as above).

If your activities do count as work under Canadian immigration law, the next step is to see if you would be exempt from needing a work permit for this work. Here is the info on those exemptions:

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/co...

If I am interpreting things correctly, you probably don't qualify for the business visitor exemption if you are paid directly by the Canadian company, but you might if you are paid by a foreign company, even if they are a subsidiary or parent company of the Canadian company.

But most likely you would qualify for the short-term high-skilled work public policy, linked near the bottom of that page. You'll have to make sure that your job duties qualify, but as a web developer they probably do. And you'll also need to limit your trip to within the required 15- or 30-day period - probably a maximum of 30 days if you've never done this in the last year.

Assuming you are exempt from a work permit, step one is to make sure you have a passport from Morocco. Then, most likely you need to apply for a Canadian visitor visa:

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...

There is a exception which allows Moroccans to use the easier eTA pre-approval process in narrow circumstances, but if you have never had a visa from Canada and don't currently have a visa from the US, that exception doesn't apply.

If your visitor visa is denied, unfortunately you'll have to pick somewhere else to meet. Being young and unmarried and with skills relevant to the Canadian tech industry and merely renting rather than owning a property back in Morocco is somewhat of a risk in the eyes of the visa officials, since they know it would be easy for you to overstay illegally if you were so inclined. However, they also want Canadian companies to be able to meet with their staff, of course, and nothing you're proposing is illegal. They make a judgment about what they think is likely to happen, and they could say yes.

If you do finally get a Canadian visitor visa in your Moroccan passport, plan your flights to Canada. There are no direct flights from Morocco to Canada, so you will have to connect through one or more other countries.

Some countries will require that you get either a visitor visa or a transit visa for that country in order to connect through that country, even if you don't plan to leave the airport there. Notably, the US has a requirement like this, so don't connect through the US unless you first get a US visitor or transit visa (harder than for Canada).

Happily, although the Schengen Area of Europe normally requires a Schengen visa for Moroccans to enter, they don't require a visa for Moroccans who are just flying into a Schengen airport and then flying to a non-Schengen destination like Canada without crossing the Schengen passport control boundary. Even for nationalities where they do require a visa for that case, they allow an exception if you have a Canadian visa.

So, your best bet in terms of flight routing is to have two international flights in each direction, one between Morocco and almost any European country and a second flight between that same European airport and Canada. If you need further flights within Canada, those can be booked together with the two international flights.

That's most of it. Then lodging, currency, etc but this comment is long enough already.

Good luck!

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

#288
How long does H1B stay active if it hasn’t been activated by entering the US. For e.g if my H1B is selected in lottery and I have also got visa stamp but due to hiring freeze in US, I’m allowed to work in Canada for same company. Can I enter US after 1 year if the position opens up in the US for the same company with same valid H1B?

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

#290

What countries in South America are the most easy to immigrate to for someone from Norway?

a norwegian citizen should have no problems immigrating to most places in south america. I can think of 3 countries that will give you a passport very quickly with a simple marriage ceremony, after 1-2 years, no questions asked.

I have girlfriend from a European country, so I am not looking to marry anyone else.

It has to be some country where I can immigrate without too much hassle and without too much expenses, and without having to marry anyone from the country.

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