Hacker News Reader

Comment by dccoolgai | Hacker News Reader

You should probably realize how unfair of a position your friend is in due to how poorly the H1B program is (assuming that's what he's on). Your company can send him back to India - make him leave the country entirely - on nothing but a whim. It hurts you, because you are in the same labor pool as him. Buy him a beer and watch cricket with him. That's about all you can really do. Vote for candidates who want to end this.

View on HN

> Your company can send him back to India - make him leave the country entirely - on nothing but a whim.

That is not true - h1b holders can switch jobs and transfer the visa to the new employer

Assuming the worker can find a new employer willing/able to handle the transfer.

And H1B/Visa Transfer getting approved.

This can be done confidentially. The old employer won't ever know you are trying to transfer jobs. Source: I was H1b in semicon.

If a company lets go of you you're theoretically supposed to leave immediately (the company is actually supposed to buy your ticket) and any additional time you spend beyond the final date is considered illegal.

In the past USCIS offered an unofficial grace period of about a month to find another job, but this is unofficial, and considering the current environment where the SC just approved a government request that allows the government to use the fact that you apply for a green card as a negative during your green card application, people should be extremely worried about the transition time.

Further, the USCIS has been ridiculously slow for the past couple of years in approving stuff, and has been holding up requests for trivial reasons, but now specifically, they will be hitting the March time period when new visas take priority and the odds of a transfer approval happening in a reasonable amount of time is really low.

Sure, but it's incredibly risky to switch (or at least give your old employer notice) before the transfer is approved. And if you aren't looking for a new job, but your current employer decided to fire you for any reason, you have to scramble to get a new job (and get the H1B transferred) nearly immediately, or you're required to leave the country.

Unless they get let go before the worker has an h1b petition with another employer, then they technically need to leave the country immediately.

Edit: it looks like there is now a grace period before having to leave the country.

watch cricket with him? why are you sterotyping

Reply on news.ycombinator.com