Ask HN: Will a early stage startup sponsor a H1B visa? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Will a early stage startup sponsor a H1B visa?

8 pointsh1throwaway7 comments

I am currently based out of India and want to join a early stage silicon valley based startup. I consider myself to be a jack of all trades instead of specializing in one particular area. Started my career with data mining, did social and web for sometime and recently doing mobile development on iphone, android, bada etc. I only have bachelors and close to 4 years of experience. Started working for startups part-time while in college college and haven't stopped since. Have started one of my own which didn't work out.

So my question is will early stage be willing to sponsor a H1B visa? And whats the probability of the visa actually getting approved even if I find a sponsor?

p.s. (i) using a throw away account. (ii) In case anybody wants to contact to tell about his personal experience: h1bthrowaway@gmail.com

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I'm not an expert, but I have spent the last 5 years trying to help a friend get an H1B. He was able to get a student visa and earn his undergrand and master's engineering degrees in the U.S. But he graduated as the economy fell and couldn't get a job for the life of him. From what he's told me, it's near impossible unless you have an inside connection with someone at a very big company such as Intel. The cost is roughly 30-40k to get an H1B and the competition is so tough, you better have your PhD and a 4.0 GPA to be competitive.

One caveat is that a company has to show that they couldn't simply hire someone from the U.S. and that in order to get the skillset they need from someone, they needed to get it overseas. This is tough, especially for a startup.

Again, I'm not expert, but from close experience with a good friend (who is now stuck back in Venezula btw) it's tough as hell :(

can you elaborate the 30-40k little bit. From what i know fees including premium processing are less than 3k and if you include 2k for attorney thats 5k.

I wish I could, but from what I've been told the company usually pays around that to get an H1B... :/

Um, no they don't. I am in the Bay Area with a startup on an H1B, and the fee for filing my application with the USCIS was close to $500. Expedited processing costs another $1000.

With lawyer fees and immigration fees, the application itself would come to about 5K. Your salary would need to be equal to or greater than what the Department Of Labor says is the average for your job title in your workplace location.

The bigger issue for a startup will be showing proof of revenue via tax returns, etc, and answering questions about viable US candidates. I am not sure if seed funding will be acceptable as proof of revenue - those type of questions are best answered by an immigration lawyer.

Whether or not a startup will sponsor depends on a case by case basis. In some cases, even if the company wants to, they might not have the resources to sponsor a visa. On the other hand, if they have the right amount of money in the bank (to pay the visa fees and show that they can afford your salary) and can get a hold of a good lawyer, it's not an impossible process.

As @bdclimber noted, there's a lot of work required to hire someone on an H1B. Startups are generally short on time and are already busy enough - why go through the extra hassle? Many startups prefer to work with freelancers or corporations abroad rather than trying to go through the H1B lottery.

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