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Comment by gred | Hacker News Reader

You'd probably do it under the table. I once spent a few months working from Spain. Prior to departure, I also wanted to do things by the book, but my tax and visa questions to the Spanish consulate kept getting deflected in that "I'm going to misunderstand your question in a way that makes it clear you should simply use a standard tourist visa instead of making your life harder, but I'm not going to come right out and say that" kind of way. IMO, it becomes a real issue when your travel pattern becomes more "expat" than "digital nomad" (stay abroad much longer, don't move around as much).

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Glad you brought this up, it really shows that working/visas need to be rethought. Most countries should have no problem if I show up on a tourist visa to stay for a few months but continue to work for a foreign company remotely - and defacto, they don't, as your experience demonstrates - but it's technically not allowed (or even legal?).

I'm not entirely sure what kind of loopholes allowing remote work on what would normally be a tourist visa/stay open up, but surely it's preferable for all parties in the "average" case for it to be allowed.

I think the thing with tourist visas is that you can’t work for a local company. (Also you might need to get paid in a non-local bank account.) To work for a local company you need a work visa.

In some ways, a standard tourist is still working for their foreign company, they just are using their allotment of get-paid-for-doing-nothing days. Likewise, a guy who wants to workation for a week still is effectively a tourist. At some point you seem less touristy, which is probably why tourist visas are typically around 90 days.

Some countries (like China as I recall) are strict about getting business visas with a letter of introduction, etc. if you're doing something like attending a conference. But, yes, in general Western countries are mostly fine at least with other Western countries so long as you don't work for a local company.

US does not allow any kind of remote work for any part of the stay with a travel or business visa. You can only work under a work visa.

I have never heard of anyone from Western Europe having to do anything out of the ordinary to attend, say, a team meeting or a conference in the US. And, in the other direction, I have never done anything in the other direction aside from maybe China. No immigration officer has ever cared in the slightest that I was attending a conference or business meetings.

Business meetings and conferences are some of the very few activities allowed. Go read on B1 visa. Just try to tell an immigration officer you will be "working" for a few days and see what happens.

Obviously it would be a bad idea to say that you're here "to work" because the implication is that you're doing local work of some sort. If you're not going to a conference, having business meetings, etc. and were mostly going to be vacationing with a little email or other remote work on the side I assume you would get a tourist visa. There is certainly no indication on the US site that you're not allowed to spend any time working remotely. The idea that someone would be allowed to enter the country for meetings and conferences but isn't allowed to spend a morning doing email simply doesn't make sense.

And US citizens have visa-free travel to Schengen which allows for either tourist or business activities.

While nobody can prevent you from sending some emails, they will have questions about how you're gonna sustain yourself in the US, especially if you stay for longer periods of time and go back repeatedly. As soon as they know you're "making money" from this activity, you'll be rejected.

See real cases on Google https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=b1%20visa%20remote%20w...

Also EU law is separate/different from US immigration law.

In summary, if you can help it, I suggest you don't do any work from the US.

PS: also if you had to deal with USCIS, you'll find there's a lot of things not written on their site, but that are actually important and enforced. Very different for example from Canada, where nearly everything is available online and helping you succeeed in the process. And yes, US immigration many times "doesn't make sense".

This is correct to my understanding, just because working remotely for a foreign company is extremely easy to get away with and not enforced, doesn’t make it legal. I assume this is true for many other countries

It's not just duration though - if you and I both enter a country on a 30 day tourist visa, say, and you work remotely on your laptop from a hotel but I do on-site sales or service visits... are we really doing this same thing?

The difference is mostly plausible deniability. If I'm speaking at an event or meeting with local customers, it's hard to deny that I'm doing business in the country. If I'm just working remotely from my laptop, who knows that I'm not just being a tourist?

> Most countries should have no problem if I show up on a tourist visa to stay for a few months but continue to work for a foreign company remotely

But some do.

Be careful.

Yes this has the ring of truth, I went through a very similar experience spending some time working in France. Totally legit, paid by my company in another country and hosted by a French company for a short placement.

Total bureaucratic fail, the French company just told me the specific visa was not going to happen, so I cut my stay to fit the tourist limits and went on that visa.

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