Do you foresee Canadians applying for TN/H1-Bs facing more obstacles in the new administration?
Apparently all they need to do is wait for annexation.
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
#282How do you square away your relationship with Y Combinator, which has been by all means positive, with the eager collaboration of its leadership with the most anti-immigrant administration in history?
Who/what are you referring to? Perhaps you know more than I do but that does not sound accurate to me.
Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney, who does work for YC and startups. AMA
#283How do you square away your relationship with Y Combinator, which has been by all means positive, with the eager collaboration of its leadership with the most anti-immigrant administration in history?
Easily? By rejecting your false equivalence between enforcing our country’s immigration laws and being “anti-immigrant?”
Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney, who does work for YC and startups. AMA
#284How do you square away your relationship with Y Combinator, which has been by all means positive, with the eager collaboration of its leadership with the most anti-immigrant administration in history?
Can't speak for the incoming four years, but a look at deportations by year under Trump, Biden and previous to that, Obama show illegal migrant deportations during Trump's first term were lower than they were during every year of Obama's presidency except one, sometimes greatly lower. They were also only moderately higher than they were during the four years of the Biden administration. A shot of hard facts after bei…
The two links are broken for me because of the ... I think. Can you edit and fix the links.
Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney, who does work for YC and startups. AMA
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't speak for the incoming four years, but a look at deportations by year under Trump, Biden and previous to that, Obama show illegal migrant deportations during Trump's first term were lower than they were during every year of Obama's presidency except one, sometimes greatly lower. They were also only moderately higher than they were during the four years of the Biden administration. A shot of hard facts after bei…
The original comment talked about anti-immigrant sentiment of the new administration. Trump said that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country. How many citations of Trump and his aides would it take to make you believe that they're anti-immigrant? https://youtu.be/RKPFjAhd3KQ?si=xiHIFBUfsK6DgQos
> Trump said that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country.
You’re substituting a different word here for the word Trump actually used, in an effort to deceive as to the meaning of what he actually said.
Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney, who does work for YC and startups. AMA
#286Hi Peter
Is the L1B path available for people who contract for US companies from abroad?
Lots of software engineers in the EU work for US companies using a B2B contract as sole entrepreneurs without an official employer/employee relation, but they bill 40h/week so in fact these are full time positions. I'm in a situation like this. Every month I issue an invoice where I state exactly how many hours I worked. Does it make me eligible for a L1B transfer to the US office?
Thank you for your time, cheers.
Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney, who does work for YC and startups. AMA
#287Thanks, Peter. Do you think a state like Oregon can continue to have a state constitution it does with support for immigration as a sanctuary, etc. or is Oregon supposed to be more duty bound by local state constitution? What happens when they are mutually exclusive or the federal government gives orders that are unlawful locally? Does this become a 10th amendment issue?
Good question and I don't know the answer but this is sure to be a battleground in the coming years, states refusing to enforce federal law or to act as agents of the federal government.
It’s well established that the federal government can’t press state officials and employees into the service of enforcing federal law.
The upcoming conflict, however, is going to be about a different issue: state and local governments actually interfering with and hindering the enforcement of federal law. I suspect that is going to get smacked down hard on supremacy clause grounds.
Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney, who does work for YC and startups. AMA
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's in the Constitution (14th Amendment) I would say extremely unlikely.
I agree with other commenters that the meaning is clear. But I think they underestimate how far the Supreme Court is willing to go to torture the meaning of the Constitution. Hopefully I am wrong.
Are you talking about the current Supreme Court, or the folks who think “emanations from penumbras” is valid constitutional law?
Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney, who does work for YC and startups. AMA
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't. The wording of the 14th Amendment is ambiguous and was arguably misinterpreted by the courts. "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, AND (capitalized for emphasis) subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." If they can get the SCOTUS to reconsider United States v. Wong Kim Ark from 1898 it could go either way - the court is…
I am not an immigration lawyer, but I am very interested in immigration law and the effort to overturn this precedent in particular, an interest whch goes back more than 15 years; so I have done a lot of reading on this argument. The whole phrase about 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof' refers to the fact that foreign diplomats (and often, their families) are not subject to the jurisdiction of their countries of r…
The contrary view is based on dicta in the Slaughterhouse Cases, decided less than a decade after the 14th amendment: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/83/36/
> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
> The first observation we have to make on this clause is that it puts at rest both the questions which we stated to have been the subject of differences of opinion. It declares that persons may be citizens of the United States without regard to their citizenship of a particular State, and it overturns the Dred Scott decision by making all persons born within the United States and subject to its jurisdiction citizens of the United States. That its main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the negro can admit of no doubt. The phrase, "subject to its jurisdiction" was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.
Re: I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney, who does work for YC and startups. AMA
#290Hi Peter, Thanks for doing this. I am a Canadian citizen born in India and recently moved to work for a FAANG company on a TN visa from Canada. The company is asking if I want to apply for a H1B visa this year. Are there any obvious advantages of H1B other than eligibility for green card. Given the current political climate, is there any projections on how work visas might change going forward.
I'm not a lawyer, but worked in the US for 6 years as a Canadian TN. The green card eligibility is the big differentiator between TN and H1B. Other than that, there isn't much difference that I could tell. One difference between Mexican and Canadian TNs is that Mexican TNs can switch employers without renewing TN, whereas with a Canadian TN you have to reenter the country when you switch employers.
When I was switching jobs I encountered a handful of companies that would consider H1B holders but would not consider TNs because they simply had no experience hiring TNs. I didn't fit their hiring pipeline.
I had some banks give me a rough time when seeking financing for buying a house, who were not familiar with TNs. Wells Fargo were willing to work with me.
Another issue I experienced (I think, my memory is fuzzy on this one) is because various members of my family had passports that expired on different dates (kids get a 3 year passport only), the TN and TD (dependent) were only granted up until the expiry of the passport, so less than 3 years that a TN could be granted for. To avoid costly plane flights I used to drive down to the Mexican border where the border folks were nice enough to renew my TN/TDs.
The US/Mexico border folks don't get many Canadians entering there so they aren't really set up for it. One time they erroneously gave me a Mexican TN authorization which I didn't learn about until I went back there to renew after switching jobs and the border person basically told me to get lost because I had a valid visa. I had to do some quick talking because even though I had a stamp, the visa was invalid because it is up to me to ensure I have valid work authorization.
The website for Canadians entering the US for TN purposes is clearly geared to Canadians entering from the Canadian side of the US, but doesn't explicitly say Canadians shouldn't enter from the Mexican side. It worked out in the end but no guarantees.
My advice: if the company is offering to switch you over to H1B, take them up on it. My employer originally said they would apply to switch me over to an H1B, but when it came time to actually do it, they no longer had budget to do it. This eventually became important because in Texas it affects the ability of your kids to apply for (state?) student loans (I'm fuzzy on this one). I ended up moving back to Canada to be with my kids while they go through university.