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Comment by orochimaaru | Hacker News Reader

It’s hard to believe the title here. Getting an H1B approved is like an act of god these days. Besides, the approval process is so convoluted and there’s only so many approved for the year. So, I don’t think he can just “replace with H1B”. It’s not how the visa works.

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>It’s hard to believe the title here.

Absolutely.

I believed it only after reading the article an following the links. Of course, they can't replace all of them, just 10% of laid of workers (3% of all visas given out). And want's to remove government restrictions.

> It’s hard to believe the title here. Getting an H1B approved is like an act of god these days. Besides, the approval process is so convoluted and there’s only so many approved for the year. So, I don’t think he can just “replace with H1B”. It’s not how the visa works.

Recent updates, for context:

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2024/12/17/dhs-strengthens-h-1b-pro...

It’s random, but big consultancies game the system to get many slots. They will then hire them out. That could be what’s going on here.

I imagine it is easier when you own the president.

No. You can’t change visa numbers. That requires an act of Congress.

Many things require an act of Congress when Congress bothers to act.

I suggest reading the actual report linked in the article. You don't need to change the amount of total visa numbers. Tesla has requested over 3% of the total allocation, around 2000 visas. These are typically decided by lottery but I imagine a friend in high places can make sure that lottery leans more your way then it originally would.

I think that’s a stretch. There’s several companies that participate in a lottery. Several large players. This is like claims that say “illegal immigrants are being given citizenship to vote”.

A Pittsburgh area law firm from the late 2000s (and later contemporaries that followed in their footsteps) would disagree.

Does Musk have preferential access to any branches of US government that could informally help him hire more?

He has the opposite, the executive branch hates him so much that they didn't invite Tesla to a government EV summit where Biden declared GM's CEO as the pioneer of EVs.

Are we talking about the incoming administration? Why did the Trump administration elevate Elon's profile so much and allow the release of news which states that Elon will be head honcho for one of this most high-visible and important initiatives?

GOP reps have also shown a cooperative spirit by giving Elon backchannels to their ongoing negotiations.

A government EV summit on converting from ICE production to EV production. Why would they invite Tesla to that? They don't have any legacy ICE production to convert.

> Why would they invite Tesla to that?

Oh maybe because Tesla knows about how to produce EVs efficiently and what things cost? And he also owns the largest charging network and knows all about that too? I think you know better and you're just playing apologist for Biden now.

Not inviting Elon to an EV conference is like the least significant thing they did against him and his companies for political reasons. The list is so long now that I don't feel like trotting it out, because you're the type that won't appreciate it anyway.

Above comment - changing visa numbers requires an act of Congress. So, no - no one can just give preferential treatment. Remember Trump isn’t president. He will be but Biden is still running the country.

Changing the total requires an act of Congress, but if you're cynical enough, the lottery system used to allocate from that total could be corrupted to accidentally favor Tesla.

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