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Comment by bakies | Hacker News Reader

Isn't that a work visa and not an immigrant visa

Employment based and immigrant are not opposite categories of visa - these are orthogonal axes.

There are employment-based nonimmigrant visas like H1B and L1. Being a nonimmigrant visa means it doesn’t grant you a right to immigrate but some (including H1B and L1) are ‘dual intent’ visas meaning you can apply for an immigrant visa while in the US as a nonimmigrant.

There are employment-based immigrant visas, which have categories like EB1, EB2. Like all immigrant visas these are also known as ‘legal permanent residency’, LPR, or ‘green cards’.

There are also non-employment-based visas that are both nonimmigrant (eg visitor visas, student visas) and immigrant (eg family based green cards)

H-1B / L-1 are non-immigrant visas, immigrant visas are green cards yes. Pausing green card processing in consulates after (on sketchy legal grounds) forcing folks to not do adjustment of status for getting an immigrant visa inside the country is, indeed, how the admin is trying to get around doing their job the way the INA intends them to.

H-1B is dual intent, isn't it?

That only means you won't be denied if you express immigration intent during interview. Besides that it's nothing special. There is no special path to GC/naturalization for H1Bs.

If you mean the memo earlier this year, it was about tourist visas and similar doing aos in country when they are not dual intent visas, which makes it iffy.

They explicitly said that for h1b and l1 aos wouldn’t be affected as they are dual intent visas.

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