High-skilled Immigration 101

Ever since the MAGA civil war on twitter, a lot of people have been saying a lot of things. unfortunately, they are dumb and stupid and aren’t aware of the differences in visa classes and their very specific requirements. So you end up with people talking about dancers on H-1Bs and H-1B country caps

H-1B

It allows US employers to directly hire foreign workers. It is capped at 65k with another 20k visas available for master degree holders. It requires a minimum wage of $60k.

Since the demand for visas regularly exceeds 85k (400k+ annual petitions generally), USCIS holds a lottery to determine who gets the visas.

In order to change jobs on the H-1B, your new employer is required to file a petition again, which is bureaucratic and requires fees. There is no lottery though. Again, Vivek in particular has talked about fixing this.

Also, H-1B workers can work and live indefinitely as long as they have their GC applications approved and ready. In effect this means that they can work for a lot longer than the 6 years allowed, despite not getting their GCs.

While all these restrictions make the H-1B a very flawed visa, it remains one of the best ways to permanently immigrate to the US. All other dual-intent (visas which you can settle on) visas have massive problems. The O-1 visa requires “extraordinary ability” (ie awards and stuff) and the L-1A/B visa requires both “specialized knowledge” and only lasts for 5 years (or 7 if you’re a manager). It can’t be extended even if you have an approved GC application. We will get to this later but the GC waitlists for Indians are a lot longer than 5 or 7 years. [1][2][3]

Other work visas like the TN visa (CA and MX), E3 (AU) and H-1B1 (CL and SG) aren’t dual intent. If you mention your intention to live in the US, your application will almost certainly be denied and you won’t be able to get a GC unless you marry a US citizen. [4]

Green Cards

Now, this is the good stuff. US GC holders (Permanent residents) don’t have to worry about being fired or changing companies. There are both Employment and Family-based GC options available. However, GCs (especially for Indians) are capped in two ways. The first cap means that the total number of Employment-based GCs are capped at 140k. [5]

The second cap is the country cap. This means that nationals born in a particular country can only get upto 7% of the available visas. Keep in mind that Canadian citizens born in India will still be considered Indian. Also, the number of visas that Norwegian or Estonian citizens get is equal to the number of visas that Indian or Chinese nationals get. [6] The second cap is the one Krishnan wanted to get rid of. Vivek also talked about prioritizing merit over country caps and Elon wanted to get rid of GC wait times too.

Of course the H-1B visa has problems and is in need of urgent reform, but getting rid of the program is stupid. We should definitely create a different visa for low-skill infosys and consulting companies (alongside one for high-demand trades like construction) and fix the employer tie problems though.