I have noticed a lot of misinformation out there about the greencard system so let's clear a few things up. 1. India isn't limited to 7% of the greencards today. Due to spillover (google it) India gets additional visas, and generally much more than it's 17% proportion of the world population. 2. You don't need an h1b to apply for a greencard, you can apply directly from outside the US, or apply while on a different visa such as L, O, E, TN or even F. Lots and lots of people do it via L 3. There are not 144k greencards available to clear the backlog. The backlog is in the EB2 and EB3 preference categories which have 80k visas in today, 40k each. The 144k number included EB1, EB4 and EB5 which are not relevant. 10k of these are actually meant to go to unskilled workers so it really should only be 70,000 unless that set aside is cancelled. 4. The consulting companies actually do dominate the greencard applications from India, not only the h1 system. The overwhelming number of petitions for Indians relate to low paying third party employment, particularly Cognizant, Infosys and Wipro. 5. There are far more applications every year than there are i140 petitions and most petitions request greencards for spouse and children as well. For example, removing the country cap won't change that there are many more than 80k incoming requests for only 80k visas. 6. You don't lose your spot in line by leaving the country, so every Indian who filed an i140 then left the US is still eligible 7. You don't even need to be working for the sponsor at the time you receive the greencard, only after. This is uncommon in tech but in medicine it is very common for the foreign employee to join the sponsor only sorry receiving the greencard.
The mos important point is that more people apply for green cards than there are available green cards. This is a very imp point that congress poorly understood. HR1044 will never clear the backlog .. this is basics of queuing theory. The backlog never gets cleared HR1044 only changes who is in it.
Wouldn't it be first come first serve based on the priority date? So, someone from Bangladesh applying today won't be getting the GC before someone from India/China waiting since 2012
Well, I guess they’re hoping that once the waits become impossibly hard for everybody, then congress will increase the numbers.
#2 Are you sure you can apply on F? Doesn’t one need a visa with immigrant intent to file for a green card?
I don’t think you need a dual intent visa technically to apply, although you could be deported and/or denied re-entry into the US for doing so
Your non-immigration intent under an F visa must be shown while applying for the visa. Once you are here after a period of time, your intent may change and that’s allowed. Otherwise it would be illegal for a F person to marry(without a K visa for instance) or apply for a green card, which is not true. You will never be deported if your change of intent is lawful.
The consulting companies are the problem. The law isn’t broken. The consulting companies breaking the law, and ruining it for everyone.
What laws are they breaking? They're getting people here legally, approved by the USCIS. The law is antiquated and systemically unfair as it discriminates individuals based on their country of birth and not on their merit. Champion for fairness and merit-based immigration rather than blindly blaming the consulting companies.
While they often have broken the law, that's not the fundamental problem. You're right that what they do is technically legal. We should be changing the law to eliminate that loophole, not facilitate it as hr1044 does. If we eliminated third party employment in the greencard system and required an at least median wage for the job category there would be no Indian backlog.
I dont think #7 is correct though. This is work-based/sponsored, so you need to be employed during the process. If this is true, how do people leave the company after they get their green cards? You are free once you get the card but not before.
You do not need to be employed. You need to accept the proffered employment if you get the greencard. You do not need to be in in the United States nor do you need to be employed by the sponsor before that. While it's a common business practice in tech not to sponsor greencards for non employees it's actually a common practice in medicine to sponsor people before they are hired. That's because a nurse or doctor probably isn't board certified to work in the foreign country, the hospital hiring them doesn't have overseas offices, and the applicant doesn't have any status in the US until they get the greencard. In these cases the employee usually signs a commitment to work for the sponsor for 3 to 5 years and enters the US for the first time with their employment greencard. There isn't anything legally different about the situation with tech, it's just uncommon in our industry. Arguably it's a better system and maybe we should just shut the whole h1b system down and have everyone immigrate that way. I posted this thread just because lots of people have these misconceptions. i140 is an OFFER of FUTURE employment.
Acker is right. If this is something you want to do, change you I-140 petition to consular processing instead of AOS. That way you can get the green card abroad before coming back.
Think about why we don’t see many Chinese consulting companies. Why a country of similar population doesn’t have as many GC applicants. Think about what will happen once we open the flood gate of opening up without country quota. Do you think you will get fair chance? No, it will only benefit the few people who applied for GC a long time ago from the country with exceeding limit. Soon the companies from the same country will figure out a way to game the system and there will be much more applicants than now from the country. The queue will increase significantly and no one will get GC in hundreds of years not to mention wages going down and labor practices becoming more like the consulting companies instead of US. If you work at FANG, wouldn’t you keep working there? Imagine consulting companies having much more power. You will get GC but you will be laid off and start working as a consultant with 1/3 of TC.
Because American companies don't want Chinese consulting companies where a majority of the employees cannot communicate in English (no disrespect, but stating what I've seen in my interactions with Chinese offshore employees). It's fair for America to hire employees of any country. After all the companies that you work for don't discriminate based on color, race or orientation. Everyone gets a fair chance at the American dream as a few communities are not marginalized. Don't fall for this troll who stands to benefit from the current discrimination (top Indian graduate waits for 70+ years whereas an average Joe from any other country waits hardly 2 years).
Sometimes we are just not good at some English we never learnt in school. The reason we never learn some English but American English is some country has weak soft power. Finally we value our language though it is not as popular as English but we can make it as English in future. Btw, the real reason is China doesn't need to feed on ICC to make USD. We have a strong internet industry.
Under current conditions, all big companies FAANG will soon open up big offices in India and ship jobs there. I’m really scared of the last part as I myself was a beneficiary of that, when h1b visa numbers were cut. If we’re ok with that then status quo is fine.
I'm ok with that. We already have large offices in India that have large dev teams and or demand for engineers in the US only increased as we expanded in India.
I’m not. Alongside this will be a big drain of money as high earners leaving the country. Also only 25% of the US immigrants have the bachelors degree.
Too much bickering. It’s time to close the doors. MAGA 🇺🇸 🦅 🇺🇸 🦅
Nice
Since it’s an employment based gc can I leave the country and my job and still be eligible? Do I need to be employed when my time comes?
I added this as false thing #7 in the OP, as a lot of people seem to mistakenly believe you need to be working for the sponsor at the time you file You only need to work for the sponsor AFTER getting your greencard. You can be unemployed and outside the US, or employed by somebody else, it's irrelevant.