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Comment by boglurker | Hacker News Reader

I thought another reason H1Bs are preferred by tech companies is because it limits the opportunities that your high skilled employee have access to, as far as I'm aware it's harder and riskier to switch jobs without getting deported if you're on a H1B visa which means the employees will put up with worse treatment and worse wages compared to native colleagues, though I'm fuzzy on the specifics

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I can't speak for FB, but in my experience, you don't seek H1B holders out. Instead you recruit the best talent, and if the person you want to hire requires an H1B, then you jump through the legal hoops necessary to bring them onboard.

This. My company (Fortune 100) tells me not to discuss immigration status during the interview process. Oftentimes, the first time I discover that I'm hiring a candidate that's on an H-1B is when I find out they're going to be in the onboarding pipeline for longer due to immigration-related paperwork.

It certainly doesn't figure into hiring decisions or compensation.

H1B visas aren't "preferred", it's the only visa available for skilled immigration for most people.

It's harder but very much possible to switch company on an H1B visa - my partner did this recently and while there's a bunch of legal work and waiting around, for tech companies it's all just part of the process.

that's only the case if company intentionally delays application process for green card, which usually takes 1.5 year (unless applicant is form the country that hit the per-country limit, like India). 1.5 year "guaranteed" retention is not that significant to deal with visas/GC. Companies that do intentionally delay the GC process, that's different story, they can stretch the application for many years and have leverage over H1B holder. But that's not FB.

> which usually takes 1.5 year

In my experience it takes WAY longer than that, just on processing times. As in, I've never even heard of anyone getting permanent residency that quickly, at least for employment-based. If you are talking about marriage or family-based, sure.

Any audits or RFEs during the process and you are looking easily at twice the time you quoted. Probably even more - given the recent delays in the H4 extension process, which causes your own application to have to wait until your dependents can join you.

Employment based (EB2) and i know many people who's process took similar ~1.5 year plus/minus couple month. Though that's been about 5 years ago, haven't kept up since going thru it myself. No RFEs/audits, they where not common back then at least.

I'm at almost 3 years for a marriage based petition currently (US citizen no less). The grass isn't that much greener on the other side, the immigration system isn't scaled to the volume of applicants at any step of the process.

The system is used by various players for various means. For places like Amazon, I'd be more inclined to believe those kinds of stories. For FB specifically, as it pertains to this case and lawsuit, I'd be less inclined to believe that they are specifically selecting for abusable people on visa. The WITCH consulting companies absolutely use the visa in terrible ways.

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