Hacker News Reader

Comment by 29athrowaway | Hacker News Reader

H-1B1 is not the visa type for the best and brightest. That visa type is EB-1.

H-1B is about skills in high demand not extraordinary ability.

Many personal friends of mine are H-1B and they would not be even considered the best or brightest in their own household.

Of course, you have to be somewhat smart to meet the basic requirements: bachelor's degree or equivalent. But that does not mean you are among the best.

View on HN

I have a friend with an EB-1 visa. She's good ("alien of exceptional ability") at her job I suppose, which is being a porn actress. Somewhat hilariously it was rather easy for her to meet the criteria (international prizes, being highly paid compared to peers, commercial success, being published in media etc.).

Today, in things that never happened...

I very much doubt that she's the only one. Apparently Melania Trump had one, too - I suspect that a good immigration lawyer can be very helpful in this sort of thing if some conceivable way to argue that you meet the requirements exists.

I don't doubt the fact that an EB-1 visa could be awarded with a person with that background. I doubt about their alleged personal relationship with an adult entertainer. That guess is based on the fact that adult entertainers worthy of an EB-1 visa are a tiny, tiny fraction of the general population.

Not going to dox myself to prove it, sorry (actually it would be provable by doing some sleuthing over my posting history here, but I'm not going to point out exactly how either).

Fair enough. It is hard to get the true sentiment of a post. What I said was part skepticism, part humor. If your story is true, good for you.

I recommend you think lightly of posts like these. This is not a debate, and if it was, there's clearly nothing to win.

More anecdata:

I’ve worked with a handful of EB-1 holders. I wouldn’t qualify a single one as “exceptional.” Fine coworkers, sure, but to a one the justification for EB-1 strained credulity.

I have however worked with several H1-B holders of whom I would say the opposite.

The spirit of the visa is for Nobel prizes, Olympic medals and such, but in practice, it is a visa for people with immigration lawyers of exceptional ability.

With all due respect to adult actors, but the “Einstein visa” being given to a porn actress is hilarious.

The H1B is not directly comparable to EB-1. The former is a non-immigrant visa, is easier to qualify for (just need to have a bachelor's degree in a "specialty occupation") except for the lottery part and less costly to obtain (around $5-7k total in fees). The latter an immigrant visa, costs quite a bit more to obtain ($10-20k in total fees) and requires more regimented labor market testing process to prove there are no willing, able and qualified US workers for that position. A better comparison would be between the H1B and O1. Both are non-immigrant visas and the O1's requirements are quite similar to EB-1.

I was replying specifically to the "best and brightest" comment.

>H-1B1 is not the visa type for the best and brightest. That visa type is EB-1. H-1B is about skills in high demand not extraordinary ability.

So Melania Trump was the best and brightest? By what metric?

Presumably modeling. The following two EB-1 via criteria would be sufficient:

Evidence that you command a high salary or other significantly high remuneration in relation to others in the field

Evidence of your commercial successes in the performing arts

She was a working model back then, not a supermodel. There are plenty of questions around how she qualified for it. Trump promised a press conference on it and of course it never happened.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/questions-linger-abo...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com