You don't have to leave the country to renew your H-1B status. As long as you stay in the US and have a legitimate reason, you can keep renewing the status. Some have done that for 20+ years while waiting for their green card priority date.
But if you leave the country for any reason and your entry visa has expired, you have to apply for a new visa to be allowed to return. And you often have to return to your home country to do that. Which can be inconvenient, as it can turn a short vacation or conference trip to a month-long stay in another country. And for citizens of some countries, there is a high risk of denial. Visiting your family can then leave you stranded in a country that's no longer your home, while being locked out of your actual home and life in the US.
This is a peculiar feature of the US system. In most countries, when you renew your temporary work permit (whatever it's called), you also renew you entry permit.
Another complication - H1Bs are valid for 6 years. However, the physical paper stamp given on passports is only valid for 3 years at a time. So if I chose to stay in the US (and not travel internationally) I'd be fine to continue working without renewing my physical visa paper stamp. But to get a new physical stamp, I have to re-enter the country every 3 years. How does that make sense?
> But to get a new physical stamp, I have to re-enter the country every 3 years. How does that make sense?
Why do you need a new physical stamp at all if you are not re-entering? I think your argument is backwards here. What I think you’re asking is “why can I stay in the country without taking this step, but I have to take this step to re-enter.”
Well, because when you leave the country you are subject to certain laws. Even a permanent resident cannot just leave and expect to come back whenever without consequence. Even a person eligible to apply for citizenship must meet a minimum threshold of presence.
Now, your question becomes “why are the laws the way they are” and/or “why doesn’t the law make sense”. I conjecture that these situations are particularly fringe for our legislators so they don’t get a ton of attention, and they make just enough sense to remain as is.
Visa is valid for 6y, entry visa for 3. You decide to visit Europe in year 4, you have to travel to southeast Asia or South America to renew your entry visa before you can get back to work? Sounds stupid.
Another incredibly stupid thing of the American system is the fact that your spouse cannot work while you're subject to it.
When I was in the US with visas for my four-person family, we FedExed our passports to Finland where my parents put them in a different envelope and mailed them to the US embassy. Ten days later the embassy mailed back the passports with the new visas attached, and my parents FedExed them back to us in New York.
Yeah, seems like this re-approval concept makes a ton of sense. FedEx at least got some business.
This doesn’t sound remotely legal, but I’m not a lawyer. How were you expecting to comply with reasonable requests for your family’s passports and visas by the US while they were in transit? What if they were lost in transit or stolen? If your intent was to circumvent the process, that could constitute mail fraud and other violations that could result in loss of residency or in extreme cases loss of citizenship. Why would you or anyone ever do this?
What reasonable requests? There isn’t (yet) a task force that goes door to door in Manhattan knocking on doors and checking immigrants’ papers.
We are Finnish citizens and if the passports really had been lost, we could always get new ones at the Finnish consulate in New York to return home.
I’ve held several types of visas, L-1 and O-1, and I also applied for a PERM whatever that I eventually abandoned because I didn’t want to stay in the country and with that employer. The American immigration system is incredibly poorly designed and frustrating for all parties. It drives honest legal immigrants like us to an “I don’t give a shit” mindset where we just did the minimum to get the paperwork while waiting to leave the country.
Now I still get paid by an American company at the same rates as before, but I pay taxes to Finland instead. The immigrant-hostile system isn’t the success you imagine.
I’m crying about that in my beer tonight, getting paid a Silicon Valley salary by an American company while living in my home country.
You have made it so complicated and unattractive to stay in the country that you don’t care about losing people who wanted to stay and pay taxes, and instead are enabling these jobs to be exported.
The static “papers please” mindset killed the Soviet Union and many other empires before it. Americans somehow managed to avoid it for over two centuries. I know you don’t want my opinion, but you probably shouldn’t give up on that achievement so easily. It’s not just about immigrants — the mindset infects the entire society. This was the fundamental edge you had over Europe and you’re throwing it away.
Please don’t interpret my disagreement with you about the immigration process as a desire to not know you and interact with you as a person. I appreciate your insights into the process as you experienced it and your contributions to HN community.
Thank you for the gracious reply, it’s very much appreciated.
The reason I have strong feelings about this topic is that I want America to continue succeeding, and I wanted to be part of it but it didn’t make practical sense for me.
When I was a child in the 1980s living next door to the Soviet Union, the USA was a beacon of hope to us. It sounds corny but it’s true. (Reagan and Clinton were politicians who seemed to intuitively understand this global mood and were able to leverage it. I disagree with them on many specifics, but they excelled at this.)
I know Americans always feel like there’s too much going on at home to care about the rest of the world. But often in history the solutions at home have appeared by opening up, not closing in.
Your earnest desire to be part of America is admirable, and the pitfalls of the system are that much more tragic in light of this. The system failed you, and your attempts to lessen the burden imposed on you and your family are not my own to second-guess, though I would have preferred a better solution for you all that would have allowed you to remain in the country legally without requiring leaving only to return. It would be supremely unfair if you would be denied residency or citizenship due to your actions, as I don’t believe you had any intent to deceive or violate the law, and you very well may not have done either, and I will not besmirch your honor by implying you did. I understand that your first responsibility is to yourself and your family, and I hope you are able to enjoy the holidays with you and yours.
> The reason you have to leave the country is because it is not a “renewal” it is a “re-approval” and if you are denied they don’t have to deport you if you’re already out.
No. You only have to leave the country to have the visa stamp on your passport. That has no bearing on you being authorized to stay or work in the country.
That’s the simple truth. They do that for all types of visas. My mother had to do it, until she finally (reluctantly) became a US citizen, and she lived here, most of her life.
I think she had long-term visas, though. I only remember her doing it a couple of times. I think I went with her, on one of the trips.
This is more complicated than that. H1B is a visa and a status.
As long as you have a valid H1b status, you can stay in the US indefinitely. Having a physical visa in your passport is optional, you only need it when you want to cross back into the US.
