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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

#361

Post by briandear »

pdutt111 wrote: post #327
briandear wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for Best Buy. Entire teams fired but first had to train the Indian Accenture replacements. Entirely their right to fire us but don’t you dare say there is a “talent shortage.” There is definitely a talent shortage — of talent willing to work for $20/hour. In the jobs I’m seeing now, what used to be $65/hour jobs are now $48/hour. I remember making $90/hour a few years ago — now similar levels one would be ve…

There are 600k H1B holders in total in the USA so they're not taking as many jobs as you think they are. $40 per hour is the minimum requirement by law for H1B ( https://day1cpt.org/news/understanding-h-1b-minimum-salary-r... ) and also the average is $80 for H1B holders ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2023/06/05/immig... ) In FY 2021, 66% of approved H-1B beneficiaries earned a master’s degree or highe…

When Accenture has a huge offshore workforce to augment the H1Bs — they are still part of the problem, visa or not. H1B is tightly related to offshoring. They might have a few H1Bs with a client company, and then 50 or 100 offshore employees who are definitely not making $40 per hour. I personally trained Accenture employees who had a team in India doing the “real” work at far less than $40/hour. Most of Bangalore exists because of this business model.

The big “consulting” body shops are doing the labor equivalent of dumping. Dumping is a WTO violation, but seemingly doesn’t apply to labor.

My post isn’t about Indians. It’s about Indian companies that exploit the H1B system to create a pipeline to offshoring. I saw it with my own eyes.

“Average Indian household income is 152k” — the average Indian in the U.S. isn’t an H1B worker. This isn’t about Indians — this is about Indian “skilled labor” that’s filing a “shortage.” Indians are highly represented in many highly paid careers in the U.S. and the vast majority of Indians in the U.S. aren’t working “$40/hour” tech jobs.

And, a tariff on H1B (and offshore team) wages shouldn’t hurt H1Bs right? If there is actually a shortage, companies would be glad to fill the position. So how would that harm H1Bs? If a tariff on H1Bs results in fewer H1Bs, then clearly the shortage was a myth.

With Best Buy, I was in those meetings. The decision to hire Accenture had zero to do with any “shortage,” but it was to boost the company’s diminishing profits due to the impact of Covid on the retail space. So this argument that we need H1Bs and offshoring because of some “shortage” is a complete lie. If you fire your workers, then that’s the opposite of a shortage. You had a surplus of workers — otherwise why are we firing people?

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

#362

Post by calderwoodra »

beretguy wrote: post #345
calderwoodra wrote: post #308

At what stage should US-based startups start considering hiring folks needing help with immigration?

Why not hire local residents?

Because it's hard, and I'm curious at which stage does the difficulty of hiring local talent outweigh the difficulty of dealing with immigration

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

#363

Post by bastloing »

mikeweiss wrote: post #212
Abrecht wrote: post #187

I have a Greencard and would become eligible to apply for citizenship this month. I wonder what the opinions are here on the pros and cons of that. Generally, regarding most practical aspects of daily life, being permanent resident seems pretty much equivalent to that of an US citizen. Pros: - can vote - can get security clearance, potentially more income - even long periods abroad do not bear the risk of loosing pri…

I think your forgetting one of the most important pros: an inalienable right to re-enter the country after going abroad. Also a pro is that while traveling you have the services of the U.S embassy to you, which could be a life saver depending on what other citizenship you hold and the circumstances.

That exact thing happened to a bunch at our shop. They went back to India for family, then could never come back.

Took us two years to clean up all their coding issues, although we still find some from time to time even now, 5 years later

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

#364

Post by beretguy »

calderwoodra wrote: post #362
beretguy wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not hire local residents?

Because it's hard, and I'm curious at which stage does the difficulty of hiring local talent outweigh the difficulty of dealing with immigration

Hard? I know people around me struggling to find work. Ghost jobs are all over the place, local USA residents are struggling to find jobs. There are local residents ready to hired everywhere.

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

#365

Post by roganartu »

elliotto wrote: post #295
hervature wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my (not Peter's) advice for Canadians/Mexicans for TN, Australians for E-3, and seems to apply for Singaporeans/Chileans for H-1B1: If it is an automated system, just put no. That may be an automatic filter. There will be time to talk to a human and say "all we need is X/Y/Z" where X/Y/Z is something the hiring manager can do without involving a lawyer. If a human is asking you, then just say "Yes. I need a v…

Hi, I'm Australian and have applied a few times for us based tech roles and ticked 'require sponsorship'. I never really got far with my research - are you saying that the e3 is an automated process and I can get away with ticking 'do not need sponsorship'? Thank you!

I’m Australian and have been living in the US for the last 7 years, working for the same employer the whole time. I was originally on an E3 which was renewed twice, before transferring to a H1b and finally a greencard.

The E3 is not “automated” in the sense that some interactions with CBP are. You have to attend an interview at a consulate outside the US (my first was in Sydney, renewals were all in London) and while it’s not really stressful or has a high rejection rate it’s not something I’d personally risk without a lawyer having prepared the paperwork.

As for how I communicated this when applying for jobs, I always selected that I needed sponsorship and then the first sentence in my cover letter explained that I’m eligible for an E3. I interviewed with probably 100 companies back then and only one of them that I got to a first phone screen with cared about the visa thing and it was because they wanted to fill the headcount asap. Once companies get to a certain size they are either ok with sponsorship for all roles or not ok for any, and it’s just something that gets handed off to legal after a hiring decision is made. I wouldn’t worry about the companies that automatically cull your application based on needing sponsorship.

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

#366

Post by xpl »

maskerinze wrote: post #116
proberts wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you write is incorrect. Even worse, arguably, is that applications by Russian citizens sometimes just end up in a black hole and never get reviewed. Unfortunately, while applying for an O-1 visa can be a solution, this isn't always the case and O-1 visa applications also can end up in a black hole. In other words, there are no easy solutions for Russian citizens unless they are seeking to travel to the U.S. on g…

My B1/B2 visa application has been in administrative processing (221g) for over 8 months. I assume the security checks are in place. Russian citizen, multiple US visits in 15 years. Last time it took 2 months to issue visa. If I seek to travel to the U.S. to create jobs (I own a US company), what visa option should I pursue to maximize my chances of getting approved?

BTW here's a Russian chat about administrative processing, check it out:

https://t.me/usadminvisaprocessing

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

#367

Post by calderwoodra »

beretguy wrote: post #364
calderwoodra wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's hard, and I'm curious at which stage does the difficulty of hiring local talent outweigh the difficulty of dealing with immigration

Hard? I know people around me struggling to find work. Ghost jobs are all over the place, local USA residents are struggling to find jobs. There are local residents ready to hired everywhere.

I appreciate your perspective, thanks for sharing. Mine is that great engineers are extremely hard to find, given there are many more jobs available to them than there are folks searching right now. For nearly every other role, the opposite is true, and hiring local talent is very possible.

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

#368

Post by robertlagrant »

greenthrow wrote: post #354
robertlagrant wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you say "Republicans don't just hate illegal immigrants" it's pretty isomorphic to "All Republicans don't just hate illegal immigrants". Maybe that's English 102.

"Teachers use chalk daily." - definitely a true statement. Some amount of teachers do. "All teachers use chalk daily." - definitely a false statement. Certainly some teachers don't. Again, English 101.

No, "Teachers use chalk daily" is nowhere near true. It would've been mostly true 30 years ago, before whiteboards, and now it's definitely not the case. The hair you're splitting only works when the approximation that omits the "all" is close to 100%.

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

#369

Post by pnw »

kccqzy wrote: post #253
pnw wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US residency and citizenship is in extremely high demand, so whatever immigration system is put in place will ultimately be gamed. Creating a visa category that is solely based on salary would be attractive to some cohort of people who want to live in the US regardless of the costs. We saw similar things with previous "investor visas" where there was no intention to start a business and the USCIS had to stop issuing…

A salary-based requirement is a lot less easy to game. After all salaries are reported to the IRS on W-2s. Any fraud in the amount of salary can be easily detected without sophisticated investigation. The only difficulty I see is that salary isn't necessarily proportional to a person's usefulness to the economy or the country. A person can start a company and pay himself a million dollars a year while the person and…

Salary based requirements are the easiest to game. Create shell company, inject enough cash to cover salaries, hire people who want to live in the US and charge them a margin on the cash they gave you. Lots of people will happily pay the IRS taxes on a phony salary for the option to live in the US. Far easier than gaming an H1B or even an E3 which requires an LCA.

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

#370

Post by tjs8rj »

trogdor wrote: post #325
dcreater wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfectly said. It's so insane that most people don't understand how poorly designed the system is and how much unintended negative consequences it engenders. But ironically it's also the only thing that prevents the number of international students from truly exploding. It's already a travesty that many big name public universities have more people from Shanghai or Mumbai than the next town over. Universities are be…

> It's already a travesty that many big name public universities have more people from Shanghai or Mumbai than the next town over. Why is that a travesty?

Because universities have a duty first and foremost to their community. That is the citizens of their country and increasing duty to those local to them in their country.

The United States is not an economic zone that belongs to the world in short.

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