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My best friend is full blown concert pianist, who graduated from Yale, finishing her PhD in one of the most prestigious conservatories in US. She performs internationally with orchestras : Japan, Europe, Asia. Has CD recordings, won number of international competitions. Recently, she played Rachmaninoff piano concerto with orchestra in VA/DC area. Guess what ? She is struggling to get any documents to stay here permanently. And here, I'm sitting in Fortune x0 company, filled with unqualified HB-1 software engineers, who produce trashy code and don't care about quality of their work, because in x-Months, they will be out or replaced.

HB-1 was made for people like my friend - a highly qualified PhD and not cheap contractors shipped in packs from overseas. I'm kind of glad that this racket is being closed for good.

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H1-B visa is not intended for performing arts category or for extraordinary artists. It is intended for specialty occupation such as software engineers and data scientists etc. I understand your frustration but the way to reform the system is to give the visas to the "right" candidates within the speciality occupation rather than giving it to an entirely different category in which your friend belongs to.

Your last paragraph implies that if there were fewer H1B visas given out to Indian software engineers then your brilliant musician friend would have a chance. Though this kind of zero-sum fallacy is commonplace, that's not how immigration politics works. For the most part, if a particular USA federal administration is anti-immigrant, then they will hurt all or most immigration applicants, and vice versa, meaning that fewer software H1Bs do not result in better outcomes for your friend, quite the opposite.

Wrong. Read carefully. What I'm saying is that people who should not be on HB-1 are getting visas and people who truly deserve HB-1, aren't getting it.

The market seems to disagree. There isn't a lot of work available for concert pianists.

I guess, H1-B visa is an example of artificial scarcity; the government could just give your deserving friend a visa without taking one away from a software job shop. There's not really a finite supply of them, other than what the government chooses.

If an administration is cracking down on software shops, that doesn't necessarily mean it's because they want to make those visas easier to get for anyone else.

That does not make much sense. H1B visas (you keep saying HB-1 but there is no visa called HB-1 so I am not entirely sure which visa you're talking about) needs to be sponsored by a company, they are not just given to people. If a company is willing to to hire her, maybe she can try applying to any US company. If not, there is no way to say she "deserves" it when it's only in your eyes, i.e apparently she or you are not able to convince a company to hire her.

There are also EB-1 green cards that might qualify her since she has a PHD, but they're usually for the STEM field. I have no idea why this is relevant to H1B visas which serve a different purpose.

Isn’t an O-1 visa designed for situations like your friend?

According to immigration lawyers, it is very hard to get docs through O-1. You literally have to be international star. She is not, but still, she is level above what many musicians achieve in their lifetime.

I've heard of people getting O-1 while being far less than an "international star". Canadian founders getting minor acquihire buyouts have gotten them. You just need to get some letters from influential people. ie, business leaders in the local industry or a politician. Like most things it's as much about who you know and how well you check the right checkboxes as it is about merit. This another perk of VCs and selling to big companies.

It really depends on the immigration lawyer, I know many people who study public health & even computer science use O-1 as alternative. non of them are even close to have international influence

My understanding the same as that of my two sibling comments. You just need to demonstrate excellence in your field in order to get an O-1. For example in Computer Science, that might be X citations in published work, Y reviews you've written as reviewer (counts as service), and letters of support from experts in the subfield of Computer Science. If your pianist friend has won international competitions, CD recordings and performed with orchestras around the world, that surely counts as excellence in her field. She should consult an immigration attorney ASAP. Even if initial consultation costs money (and it often doesn't), it sounds like a worthwhile path forward if she wants to stay. O-1 is not as prestigious or rare as you make it seem.

Your friend seems to have had access to many opportunities which none of the unqualified HB-1 software engineers you mention may ever have, and it seems like she made the best out of it. Congratulations for her.

Despite all her merits, though, life as a musician is financially much harder than that of a software engineer. For visa purposes, unfortunately, you want to make sure people can get by on their own. I hope things work out for her.

I agree with you. If the H1-B program were being used properly it'd be fantastic, but I've had too many friends (three being the "too many" in my case) spend their last six weeks on the job training their half-competent H1-B replacements. It may very well not be the case most of the time, but in my experience H1-B has been used as a prybar when companies have highly-versatile, highly-paid personnel they want to replace with someone who's trained to only do one job and do that job for less money. If I had the option to keep the program exactly as it is now or restrict it to only persons with doctorates, I would choose the latter.

Sounds like a different visa category.

Oh no, it is the correct category. It is what HB-1 was created in the first place.

Stop hating! If you are sitting with incompetent people you're incompetent too! Why doesn't she apply for O1 visa? You know nothing about nothing.

Disclaimer: I'm on H1B too, graduated from Rice CS.

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