Also while most people around the world can transition to green card from H1B, there is limit of 7% per national origin. Since India and China are large countries, their citizens often have to wait longer than anyone else in the national origin queue.

This has resulted into huge queue for Indian citizens. Any Indian who applies for employment based green card has to wait around 150 years to get his/her green card. Until then they have to keep renewing their H1B and subject to constantly changing laws. It is estimated that there are around 300K-500K Indians stuck in the backlog many of whom are in country for more than 10 years.

A lot of H1B rule changes by current admin are done specifically to target these individuals.

If they have a number or publications as you say, they may be eligible to apply for O-1 visa. I know a couple of people who received it and (in my opinion) got it for less than what you may think of as good technical merit

My understanding is that O-1 visas require very specifically tailored applications to qualify. (I too have heard stories of how moderate achievements are twisted/massaged to be pitched for the O-1 application, and worked.)

I know several brilliant new/junior professors who are nevertheless on the H-1B track. My point is that H-1B is far and beyond the default and most common visa for introducing foreign working talent, and others like O-1 and EB-1 are the rare, rare exceptions.

> My point is that H-1B is far and beyond the default and most common visa for introducing foreign working talent, and others like O-1 and EB-1 are the rare, rare exceptions.

EB-1 is an immigrant visa and, aside from being smaller in number than H-1B, was already halted along with immigration generally on April 22, and this order extends the immigration halt through December as well as adding a few nobimmigrant visa categories to the halt.

EB1 is not a visa, but a category to get green card. It stands for employment based, priority 1. Irrespective of how your green card application will be prioritized, you still need a visa. Typically, people under L1A (intra company managers), O1 visa get to apply for green card under EB1 and rest under EB2 or EB3.

> EB1 is not a visa, but a category to get green card. It stands for employment based, priority 1.

No, it stands for “Employment Based, First Preference”, and you can go tell U.S. Citizenship.and Immigration Services that it's not a visa, because they think it is.

https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/permanent-worker...

Employment-Based Immigration: First Preference EB-1 […] You may be eligible for an employment-based, first-preference visa if you are an alien of extraordinary ability, are an outstanding professor or researcher, or are a certain multinational executive or manager.

Well O 1 visas not dual intent though. In order to actually obtain permanent residency, you would still need to move to a h1b.

There are several valid reasons to seek permanent residency - which I don't want to dive into here or moralize.

Just wanted to call out again that O 1 is a dead end.

You can still apply for an EB-1/2/3 Green Card while on O-1 status and apply for Adjustment of Status. The consequence of it not being dual intent is that you can't travel with the pending I-485 until you obtain an Advance Parole document.

Good point about dual intent. One thing though I think it’s bit easier to renew and you can also keep renewing it without any time limit.

Not true. To my knowledge no visa is dual intent in theory but it never end up mattering in practice.

H1-B and L-1 are dual intent and it matters to travel with a pending Adjustment of Status.

Thanks for the correction. But again it rarely matters in practice.

In practice it means that if you file for a green card while on O-1 status there will be 4-8 months during which you absolutely can't travel.

Ah, maybe I'm missing some subtleties. I was referring to "you're not supposed to have intent to immigrate on a X visa", which never seemed to matter as I personally applied for H1-B and a greencard while on a J1

H-1B is dual intent.

Only ~20,000 O-1 visas were issued in 2019, compared to 190,000 H1B visas.

The reason for this is because the O-1 visa is significantly harder to qualify for. The same people who would expect would be in the running for an O-1 (master's and postdoctoral students) apply for an H1B, in large part because the bar for the O-1 is just that high.

Masters don't apply for EB1. Many PhDs also can't. FAANG hire everyone for S/W engineer. Most of them apply EB2. EB1 have to be exceptional PhD.

It’s less than what you may think it is. It also highly depends on your lawyer, I know a couple of people who you may think may not qualify but their lawyers ended up writing a lot of stuff (not made up obviously, just lawyer like language that drags on) and they ended up getting the visa. Out of those one of them got an rfe but they still pursued on and qualified. EB1 on the other hand is far harder.

Thinking about it as an immigrant, just the same way as the H1B: why punt on it if it is this variable? And why even depend of this? The entire problem is that immigration isn't working as it is supposed to. If even this can be gamed, what's the point?

Agree with you completely. I don’t understand why it’s so hard to come up with a Canadian or UK like points based system.

Because it is a feature, not a bug.

> If they have a number or publications as you say, they may be eligible to apply for O-1 visa.

This is only if you have a research-based job. If you graduate with a PhD and get a job on the software engineering ladder, you're SOL.

I suppose you're getting downvoted because people don't like the answer. O-1 visas are absolutely attainable. Look at the evidentiary criteria for O-1A visas: "Authorship of scholarly articles in professional journals or other major media," "Published material in professional or major trade publications or major media," "Authorship of scholarly articles in professional journals," and "Original scientific, scholarly, or business-related contributions" are among the qualifiers, and are natural parts of a career in these fields.

In fact, enumerating the criteria here is useless, because almost all of them pertain directly.

O-1 is hard as heck. Not only do you need a very strong publication record but you also need a history of doing things like serving on program committees for conferences.

I think the people that get the jobs as tenure track assistant professor at good research universities can usually qualify. At least the young professors I knew didn't have any issues. Graduate students and post docs are usually already doing those types of services now also.

I’m good friends with an assistant professor at mit who ended up not going the O-1 route.

False. All you need is to prove your “exceptional qualifications” and that you would improve the country by working here. There are a number of ways to do that and conferences is just one possible way

I'm a hiring manager at a FAANG company and exclusively hire PhDs. The very first question that I try to answer when looking at a candidate who can't get OPT is "can this person feasible get an O-1". Then I bring a resume to the lawyers. I have a lot of experience evaluating whether somebody can feasibly get an O-1.

Just having a publication record is not enough. It needs to be a strong record and you need to have strong ties to the academic community through things like program committees. I've sadly had to turn down a lot of people who would easily improve the country by working here because their publication record isn't enough to get an O-1 visa.

I know faculty at MIT who aren't on O-1s.

It's not easy.

I know three people who got it and one of them I wrote reference for. If my recommendation (among other things ofc) is sufficient I assume it’s not impossible =) Also you need good lawyer as with many such things

It is certainly possible. The point is that it isn’t easy. “This person has published novel research in a top conference and has a PhD from an internationally recognized university” is not a guarantee.

Again neither had been accepted at top conferences. I think one had phd in unrelated field

"I know some cases that worked...so all must be easy"

There is no quota limit for H1-Bs applied by non-profits such as MIT, or some state college in Florida.

Note that these are separate class of H1Bs. If Florida state hires you on cap exempt H1B you can probably move to University of California Irvine but not Google Inc.

Also, if I remember correctly not all non profits can do this, but only certain category of nonprofits hiring for specific roles. Otherwise I could start a non-profit software foundation, bring in workers and then write lots of free and open source software.

Yes, you can bring in workers as long as these workers are used for that non-profit. However, you can't act as a staffing company.

Some administrator at Wright state university got cap-exempt H1B visas, then sent them to various for profit clients: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdoh/pr/wright-state-university...

Free software doesn't mean that software engineer time is free (which I know you are aware of but readers may not).

I'm pretty sure they expect to pay for the software engineers who write open source.

What’s the problem with graduating from a state college in Florida? Can they not produce valuable research or innovate for this country?

Comment is just saying that MIT and any Florida state school are all nonprofits.

Here's that projecting your own biases on a random thread again.

> 2. Instead of staying in tech for their career, they work for a year in a tech firm, then go to MIT for CS grad school. They perform excellently, having many publications under their name, doing several industry internships at Microsoft/Google labs. They then get accepted to a tenure track Assistant Professor position at Columbia. What visa do they apply for?

> Still H-1B

Wait, really? I would think EB-1 would be the better route to take via the "Outstanding professors and researchers" qualifications, no?

https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/permanent-worker...

Apart from sibling comments’ points, someone from MIT with multiple publications under their name can apply for NIW as well.

The "American century" was largely built on the USA being the recipient of brain drain from the rest of the world. Brain drain from Germany alone, even just before the war, helped propel America to the top of the global game in science and technology. Germany was once the world's great physics powerhouse, and it passed that baton to the USA in part because many of those physicists were Jewish.

Actively trying to keep talent out to appease idiots who believe in the type of ideology all those great physicists were running away from is national suicide.

BTW, the rise of Xi Jinpeng is an incredible opportunity to absorb top talent from China, and we are squandering it by making ourselves inhospitable. Same goes for top talent who doesn't feel like swinging on Vladimir Putin's nuts.

> Same goes for top talent who doesn't feel like swinging on Vladimir Putin's nuts.

Putin's been around for a long time, mon ami. Those that didn't like him and could leave already have. There is a reason there are a lot of very expensive houses (that stay empty) in Vancouver.

Almost everyone I know have been talking about leaving and as time goes on the fraction that actually left is increasing. Changing the constitution would most likely accelerate the process.

3. IBM wants to import 400 java developers from India to lower their wage bill. What visa do they use?

And still need to pay market wage set by DOL for their experience.

In most markets, yes. But, you're actually competing for talent in markets like Bay Area or Seattle. So, if you're worthy enough, you'll have employers fighting for you.

..which is much less than the open market, I bet.

You can get an O1 easily with your tenure track and publications. I know a bunch of people who have obtained an O1 with none of that.

There are more interesting stuff about US visas IMO. With a number of them, and if you come from countries like Poland, after a year in the US you have to stay away for 2 years before coming back to the US. With a number of visa your spouse also can’t work and is reduced to a stay-at home. Internships that want to be converted to FTE needs to try the H1B lottery also.

LOL O1 visa is still not easy. Even after 6 years of PhD.

I know people who have got an O1 from not much :)

> Internships that want to be converted to FTE needs to try the H1B lottery also.

This is not true in general, assuming you're a student (since that's the usual situation for an internship). You can rely on CPT during school (with some bureaucracy), or OPT if you run out of CPT time.

that's if you got a master degree in the US. I was a student who came to the US to do an internship (on a J1) and had to get a H1B after my internship.

> I will repost my quick immigration quiz

If it's an “immigration” quiz, why are all the scenarios about nonimmigrant status?

Apologies for misusing the term "immigration" to refer to the broader topic, but in any case H-1B is a dual-intent visa and is still the primary work-related route on the way to applying for a green card.

I suppose the big picture here is that pretending that the H-1B suspension is the big news for immigration kind of misses the point because:

(1) All actual immigration entry was already suspended since April 22.

(2) The present order adding suspension of some nonimmigrant visas through the end of the year also extended the general immigration halt to the end of the year.

You are mistaken. Only thing suspended for new green card applications. You apply for green card after you are in the country on one of these visas. A lot of immigration happens after people are in the US under H1B or L1 visa, not at the counsulates.

You are actually mistaken yourself. Green cards do not depend on non-immigrant status, being an immigrant visa. Thousands of people (at least 50000 DVs + CP EB and FB) get these visas, arrive to the country for the first time and become LPR without using any non-immigrant visa.

You are right.. I missed the diversity quota completely. It is not available for some and open for others. I had friends from West Indies (Trinidad and Tobago) come with green card.

Not just diversity, most immigrant visas can be obtained through consular processing (CP). You don't need to be in the US for any employment or family based immigrant visa. I am not a lawyer but I imagine only asylees need to actually be in the US for their greencards but they don't need a non-immigrant visa as well.

> Only thing suspended for new green card applications.

You don't apply for a “green card”, you apply for an immigrant visa. If you get and enter on an immigrant visa (including getting one while already present on another type of visa), you are then issued a permanent resident card (a “green card”, though it's not green.)

What was suspended April 22 is essentially all immigrant visas.

Green card has been green again for about a decade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_card