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How can I protect my H-1B and green card if I am laid off?

alcorn.law

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Re: How can I protect my H-1B and green card if I am laid off?

#21

Post by nrmitchi »

yardie wrote: post #17

The short, unpopular, possibly illegal answer: Get fucking married (to a US permanent resident or citizen)! This is more common than you think. It was more common than I thought! USCIS is dumpster fire purgatory and any competent, results driven lawyer will tell you so.

I'm not going to disagree that this definitely happens a lot, but it's definitely not an option for many people who have been stuck in a backlog for 10 years and are already married/have children with a spouse that immigrated with them.

Re: How can I protect my H-1B and green card if I am laid off?

#23

Post by aix1 »

foobarian wrote: post #7

Who has a H-1B and a green card? The title is not very good. Rest of the article seems on point though.

I agree that the title is not very clear. However, giving the author the benefit of the doubt, I guess what they're trying to say is "protect my H-1B and [my eventual eligibility for a] green card [that stems from my having an H-1B visa]".

In other words, lose the H-1B, lose the chance to get a green card.

Re: How can I protect my H-1B and green card if I am laid off?

#24

Post by nathanaldensr »

zb1plus wrote: post #10

Citizenship should be performance based as opposed to based upon place of birth or being rich or lucky enough to obtain a piece of paper from some governmental body. It honestly shocks and disturbs me that this isn't a commonsense principle in 2022.

Sorry, the world doesn't work this way. Countries are sovereign and executive authorities have direct control over who they allow in and out of said countries. Putting "right" in scare quotes doesn't make it magically not a right of government to do these things.

Re: How can I protect my H-1B and green card if I am laid off?

#25

Post by programmertote »

throwaway44111 wrote: post #9
causi wrote: post #2

This can pose a big problem for people who have made their homes in the U.S. for decades, diligently working, paying taxes, buying houses, and raising their children. It's perverse there is any visa that lets someone stay in the country for decades without offering them a path to permanent residency and citizenship.

H1-B is dual intent. After six years in the US as an H1B worker, you can become eligible to apply for a US Green Card, which will allow you to remain in the USA indefinitely. However due to the backlogs in priority dates for some categories, you could potentially be in H-1B status for 10-20 years while waiting for your priority date to become current. But you can keep renewing using AC21 provisions in the meantime.

One doesn't need to wait 6 years with H1B to apply for green card. S/he needs to get his/her employer to agree on sponsoring the green card and the process can start whenever. My employer agreed to apply for green card in the second year of my H1B. I fortunately am not from one of those countries (China and India) with long wait for green card, so I got mine in a little less than 4 years (in fact, my case took a bit longer than usual, but COVID-related delay was a factor and the lawfirm, Fragomen, messing up a step in my application process was another factor in such a delay).

Re: How can I protect my H-1B and green card if I am laid off?

#26

Post by cousin_it »

causi wrote: post #2

This can pose a big problem for people who have made their homes in the U.S. for decades, diligently working, paying taxes, buying houses, and raising their children. It's perverse there is any visa that lets someone stay in the country for decades without offering them a path to permanent residency and citizenship.

I'd go even further. If a country benefits from someone's work and taxes, it should give them a say in how these taxes are spent (i.e. let them vote) after a quite short term, for example one year.

Re: How can I protect my H-1B and green card if I am laid off?

#27

Post by User23 »

wobbly_bush wrote: post #20
yardie wrote: post #17

The short, unpopular, possibly illegal answer: Get fucking married (to a US permanent resident or citizen)! This is more common than you think. It was more common than I thought! USCIS is dumpster fire purgatory and any competent, results driven lawyer will tell you so.

There is nothing illegal or unpopular about this answer. It doesn't happen as commonly due to large cultural differences, and there is more to life than just a visa (as important as that might be).

It's illegal to fraudulently marry for the purpose of gaining permanent residency. Obviously there's some gray area there and I'm not giving legal advice, but at least sometimes using marriage to get residency or citizenship is a crime.

Re: How can I protect my H-1B and green card if I am laid off?

#28

Post by hayst4ck »

throwaway44111 wrote: post #9
causi wrote: post #2

This can pose a big problem for people who have made their homes in the U.S. for decades, diligently working, paying taxes, buying houses, and raising their children. It's perverse there is any visa that lets someone stay in the country for decades without offering them a path to permanent residency and citizenship.

H1-B is dual intent. After six years in the US as an H1B worker, you can become eligible to apply for a US Green Card, which will allow you to remain in the USA indefinitely. However due to the backlogs in priority dates for some categories, you could potentially be in H-1B status for 10-20 years while waiting for your priority date to become current. But you can keep renewing using AC21 provisions in the meantime.

My (potentially wrong) understanding is that backlogs are often determined by country in order to prevent any particular foreign ethnic group (like China or India) from becoming residents in such quantities that assimilation to American culture is unlikely.

Pragmatically you can already see the effects of anti foreign ethnicity backlash in national politics, so it does seem like something that needs some level of management.

Re: How can I protect my H-1B and green card if I am laid off?

#29

Post by whack »

IMO, the solution offered in the article is not realistic. If you're getting a job offer from Coinbase that's 30% higher than Google's (tweet referenced by the article), neither company will agree to you working both jobs concurrently. Even if they astonishingly did, they would likely require at least 30 hours each, which is extremely bad for your mental health.

Here are a couple more realistic options to consider:

1) If you're not born in India or China, prioritize landing a job at a stable employee-friendly company that is willing to start your green card petition asap. Stay there till you get your green card. If things go smoothly, it should only take ~2 years

2) If you're born in India or China, live extremely frugally throughout your 20s and save up as much money as you possibly can. Worst case scenario: use your savings and supplement with personal loans to apply for a EB5 visa (costs about $800k)

3) Apply for permanent residency in places like Canada/Australia/NZ. If you're a FANG caliber developer, you'll be welcomed with open arms in most countries besides USA. You'll most likely take a big hit to your compensation, and being forced to move countries is never fun, but at least your life would be somewhat similar to living in USA

Re: How can I protect my H-1B and green card if I am laid off?

#30

Post by ryandrake »

trustingtrust wrote: post #16

What is the exact reason for such a big backlog ? My theory is that the backlog is mostly a double edged sword. If the backlog turned to zero today, the Universities would flood with applications from around the world and the number of I140s would increase exponentially in the next 10 years. The backlog hence keeps expectations in check. I know plenty of friends on I140s who may not get a green card for the next deca…

> What is the exact reason for such a big backlog ?

I would love to see a GANTT chart for all kinds government bureaucracy, not just visa approval. Everything from building permits to environmental impact studies, to issuances of drivers licenses... we just seem to accept that it vaguely takes a long time, but why? What physical actions all add up to 10 years? What actual activity does person A do, how long does it take, then what actual activity does person B then do if it's blocked on person A's work, how long between person A completes their task and person B picks up the work, and so on. Maybe I am just ignorant of the amount of time that these things actually take to approve, but I suspect the vast, vast amount of time is spent with people actually doing nothing: they're waiting for the previous step, sitting in meetings, picking their nose, doing other things besides the actual processing.

How does a building permit take 6 months? It should take 30 minutes to read the application, apply some criteria and stamp the paper. Does it really just sit in a queue for 5 months, 29 days, 23 hours, 30 minutes out of those 6 months?

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