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Comment by discardorama | Hacker News Reader

If I'm reading the situation correctly, the foreign workers are NOT on H1-B, but on internal "company transfer" visas. The way it works (and someone can correct me if I'm wrong) is that the company, say TCS, brings in workers from India in the B1 (?) visa category, which is unlimited and for internal company transfers. It then sends these workers (who are still working for TCS) to the client's site. This way, they avoid the H1-B mess altogether.

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It doesn't have a hard limit, but it has much stricter requirements. It is not enough for the company to simply want to transfer you, you must possess skills that can't be found anywhere else (mostly, proprietary knowledge). You need a very strong case.

That's L1-B. L1-A (manager) has different requirements. But in any case you need to be high up in the org chart. "Project manager" won't cut it.

It gets harder the more you hire. Say you are the only one who knows about technology X (i.e., you created it). It is easy to make your case. It won't be as easy when you are employee #100.

Also, after a certain percentage of workers are on that visa, the fees get much higher.

I don't think it has minimum wage requirements, but good luck getting a low salary approved. You are supposed to have a unique skill set and proprietary knowledge, after all.

Disclaimar: I'm on L1B.

L1 is the internal company transfer. It's actually a quite nice visa, spouses can work on that visa.

I think it doesn't have a market wage requirement though. I'm not sure.

It does not, however as of 2012 it is quite hard to prove that the worker skills are essential to the company in a way that only transfer will fill the skill gap. Also L1s are not allowed to change employers so de facto it's an indentured servitude.

" Immigration Innovation Act of 2015 or the I-Squared Act of 2015

Amends the Immigration and Nationality Act to establish an annual cap on H-1B nonimmigrant visas (specialty occupations) at between 115,000 and 195,000 visas depending upon market conditions and existing demand. (The current annual H-1B cap is 65,000.) "

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/153

Seems unambiguous.

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