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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

#191

Post by BeetleB »

jmyeet wrote: post #188
BeetleB wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The job is supposed to be treated as an open position and the recruitment is supposed to be done in good faith. So, if a qualified, willing, able, and available U.S. worker applies for a PERM job, the employer either must hire this person or terminate the PERM process and wait at least 6 months before restarting it. The "or" part in the last sentence is worth noting. At the place I've worked, the employer invokes t…

Generally lawyers need to be involved to make sure any rejections are compliant. There's a whole cottage industry around this. Personally, given the state of unemployment in the tech sector right now, I think it should be virtually impossible to fill a PERM right now because pretty much any position could be filled with a US LPR or citizen and the only reason it isn't is because the whole process is deliberately obfu…

> I also think that doing layoffs in the US should disqualify you from doing any PERM or sponsoring any visa for 2-3 years.

This is a very SW mindset, and makes no sense in other circumstances.

If my company canceled a large SW project, and laid off a lot of SW folks, why should that prevent them from sponsoring someone to work on nanoelectronics?

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

#192

Post by blackhaj7 »

Hi Peter - thanks for another of these.

What travel restrictions are applied to applicants/spouses going through the PERM labor cert green card process? I am on an L1-B (wife is L2) and we are currently at the step before the I-485 submission and travel lots to see family

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

#193

Post by bubblethink »

jmyeet wrote: post #188
BeetleB wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The job is supposed to be treated as an open position and the recruitment is supposed to be done in good faith. So, if a qualified, willing, able, and available U.S. worker applies for a PERM job, the employer either must hire this person or terminate the PERM process and wait at least 6 months before restarting it. The "or" part in the last sentence is worth noting. At the place I've worked, the employer invokes t…

Generally lawyers need to be involved to make sure any rejections are compliant. There's a whole cottage industry around this. Personally, given the state of unemployment in the tech sector right now, I think it should be virtually impossible to fill a PERM right now because pretty much any position could be filled with a US LPR or citizen and the only reason it isn't is because the whole process is deliberately obfu…

Since we are doing wishes and grievances, why have PERM at all?

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

#194

Post by kakadu »

Hi Peter, thank you for your time

I have been living and working Estonia for around 2 years now, I have mostly US clients for a saas that I direct, this saas brings me around steady income of around 200k euros per year, at least 130k come from east coast companies.

Can I apply for the E1 treaty trader visa? Even if my company is not incorporated in Greece?

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

#195

Post by bubblethink »

blackhaj7 wrote: post #192

Hi Peter - thanks for another of these. What travel restrictions are applied to applicants/spouses going through the PERM labor cert green card process? I am on an L1-B (wife is L2) and we are currently at the step before the I-485 submission and travel lots to see family

Not a lawyer. PERM is a DOL process. Travel is governed by visas (or parole in some cases). The two are unrelated.

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

#196

Post by bubblethink »

ZechangHe wrote: post #177

Hi Peter, thanks for doing this AMA. I'm an F-1 CS student starting Post- Completion OPT 07/15/2026 as a solo founder of my CA single-member LLC (disregarded entity), building a real-time AI lecture translation product. A few areas where I've found USCIS guidance / online sources contradictory or silent — would love your take on any of these: 1. STEM OPT + self-employment: I've seen the E-Verify employer requirement,…

Not Peter. All your domestic stuff can probably be resolved by a skilled attorney, but travel definitely has risks. You can't do anything if you are denied entry or if your visa renewal is denied. There is virtually no legal recourse.

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

#197

Post by jmyeet »

bubblethink wrote: post #193
jmyeet wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally lawyers need to be involved to make sure any rejections are compliant. There's a whole cottage industry around this. Personally, given the state of unemployment in the tech sector right now, I think it should be virtually impossible to fill a PERM right now because pretty much any position could be filled with a US LPR or citizen and the only reason it isn't is because the whole process is deliberately obfu…

Since we are doing wishes and grievances, why have PERM at all?

The specificied purpose of PERM is to to fill a position that otherwiswe can't be filled by a US LPR or citizen..

If you need to hide your job postings on an internal physical caulk board in a basement and post them in only physical copies of The Columbus Dispatch then it should be pretty clear you're not following the spirit of the program. If, even after doing that, you then disqualify candidates for pretty fake reasons and you somehow still have qualified candidates so you pull the position and try again in 6-12 months then you should absolutely fail a USCIS audit and you should lose your privileges for hiring foreign workers and sponsoring people for residency, at least for a time.

Legitimate employers and jobs can't get a visa in the H1B lottery because of widespread visa abuse. People from certain countries (particularly India) have to wait 10-15+ years because of abuse of the system. Fake employers with H1B schemes, bodyshops that really pay below prevailing wage and can keep Indian-born people as effectively indentured servants, spamming the system with H1B applications because they don't really care how many they get.

We're in permanent layoff culture now where pretty much every sufficiently-sized employer will probably fire 5-10% of their staff every year while still hiring people. This is to suppress wages and make people do more work for free. There should be a cost to this.

If you're an immigrant, a completely arbitrary layoff can be devastating. You have a short period to find a new job and if you don't, you have to leave the country. Employers who will do that to immigrants shouldn't be alloweed to hire immigrants.

You can be both pro-immigration and anti-immigration abuse.

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

#198

Post by BeetleB »

jmyeet wrote: post #197
bubblethink wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we are doing wishes and grievances, why have PERM at all?

The specificied purpose of PERM is to to fill a position that otherwiswe can't be filled by a US LPR or citizen.. If you need to hide your job postings on an internal physical caulk board in a basement and post them in only physical copies of The Columbus Dispatch then it should be pretty clear you're not following the spirit of the program. If, even after doing that, you then disqualify candidates for pretty fake re…

> People from certain countries (particularly India) have to wait 10-15+ years because of abuse of the system.

Well, the abuse is mostly happening for the benefit of people from India.

But yes, it sucks that the "good" people from India have to wait a long time because of the system being abused to get the "not-so-good" Indians.

Keep in mind, though, that you're conflating H1-B with PERM. There isn't a 10-15 year wait for H1-B.

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

#199

Post by bubblethink »

jmyeet wrote: post #197
bubblethink wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we are doing wishes and grievances, why have PERM at all?

The specificied purpose of PERM is to to fill a position that otherwiswe can't be filled by a US LPR or citizen.. If you need to hide your job postings on an internal physical caulk board in a basement and post them in only physical copies of The Columbus Dispatch then it should be pretty clear you're not following the spirit of the program. If, even after doing that, you then disqualify candidates for pretty fake re…

You are conflating several unrelated issues. In your previous post, you expressed how you wish PERM worked ("I also think that doing layoffs in the US should disqualify you from doing any PERM or sponsoring any visa for 2-3 years."), to which my response was why have PERM at all. You are still talking about how you wish the world worked. There are a lot of shoulds in your reply. PERM, H-1B, etc. all exist as a carefully brokered compromise bw different factions that want different things. It is the correct amount of broken by design. Posting in a Sunday newspaper is a requirement in the regulations. Everyone is in the right amount of compliance to maintain equilibrium. There are any number of things that could be or should be, but aren't.

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

#200

Post by proberts »

kakadu wrote: post #194

Hi Peter, thank you for your time I have been living and working Estonia for around 2 years now, I have mostly US clients for a saas that I direct, this saas brings me around steady income of around 200k euros per year, at least 130k come from east coast companies. Can I apply for the E1 treaty trader visa? Even if my company is not incorporated in Greece?

The place of incorporation doesn't matter. We should talk because assessment of E-1 and E-2 visa options requires careful analysis.
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