i'm surprised no one is mentioning the eb-2 visa. if you have a masters or higher in cs and are not born in the india or china the wait times seem to be reasonable. [1]
the h1b is a dangerous game. it's essentially a do whatever i say, and i "may" sponsor your green card "eventually", with an emphasize on the may. not everyone uses it that way, and i would would be leaning out of the window saying most do, but it's definitely enough to be a common issue.
i was brought into a university with an h1b under the premise that i could work on my own startup. what didn't tell me was that that what they meant was that i should work for them for 5 years before they would consider sponsoring a green card application, and that they expected me to work unpaid overtime whenever they asked me to.
i've heard from a friend running a consulting company in the area, that a lot of companies bring in workers with h1b's and then don't even have the decency to sponsor a green card after keeping them for 6 years.
to my remembrance there was a house voting sometime last september about an immigration reform. one side of the table was asking for better accessibility to visa's for specialized workers(including cali afair), and the other was asking for more audits.
sadly i can't tell you how much good came out of it, maybe someone else can elaborate on that.
edit: there is a reference at the end of the ops post, but it's not really prominent. eb-3 wait times can be years, which is why it's not really a reasonable choice, but eb-2 is different
I have a MS from a good US university. I am one of the principal software engineers at my company, and I lead the technical development on some of the most critical systems. It is medium size company.
But, I don't do any state of the art research, or highly specialized academic work, or anything worth publishing on academic journals.
How hard is to do the Labor Certification for the EB-2 green card?
It depends. Do other people doing a similar role in the company also have similar qualifications to meet the EB2 criteria?
Generally doing the labor certification isn't hard, just time consuming and a lot of paperwork. 1-2 years is not uncommon even with the new PERM system. After that it depends what country you come from.
The main gotcha is you cannot use your experience of doing the position on your H-1B towards your labor certification application if you are currently employed in the position so you'll have go on your previous experience.
As ever consult a lawyer. This goes double for immigration related stuff.
IANAL, but I think in theory you already qualify. The effort is a little on the employers side. They have to post the job offer publicly in a news paper in the area, and then they have to have a good reason for hiring you. In theory I would say it's just a question of having a good lawyer. But then again those things have to be done ANYWAY if you want a green card.
Classifying the effort as 'little' for any EB based green card is nuts. Especially for an Indian citizen. In order to apply for EB-2 or EB-3 you need to first do a prevailing wage determination (about 2 weeks). Then your employer has to recruit for the position they want to offer you (30 days posted + 30 days quiet period). After this your employer gets to apply for a PERM (this is currently taking 8-9 months to be adjudicated by the DOL). If you're unlucky enough to be audited in your application you can tack another year on to this step.
After your PERM is approved, you get to file for I-140, which takes another 4-6 months. Then you get to wait until your priority date becomes current which depends on your category and country of origin. This could be anywhere from immediate to 10+ years.
Once your PD is current, you get to apply for I-485 which takes anywhere from 2-6 months and includes doctors exams, finger printing and possible interviews by USCIS. Of course while they're processing this there is no guarantee they wont retrogress your priority date and put you back into the waiting game.
Of course all of this starts again if you change employers (but you do get to keep your priority date if you had an approved I-140).
This is terrible, a lot of us are waiting and dont even know if we'll get audited, to make things worst the DOL did not process any perm petitions during the government shutdown. Please see this petition to improve the procesing time: https://www.change.org/petitions/department-of-labor-dol-to-...
You don't even have to be an Indian citizen, merely India-born. I might be a Briton, but in the eyes of USCIS my nationality is classified as "Indian" since I was born there.
the h1b is a dangerous game. it's essentially a do whatever i say, and i "may" sponsor your green card "eventually", with an emphasize on the may. not everyone uses it that way, and i would would be leaning out of the window saying most do, but it's definitely enough to be a common issue.
i was brought into a university with an h1b under the premise that i could work on my own startup. what didn't tell me was that that what they meant was that i should work for them for 5 years before they would consider sponsoring a green card application, and that they expected me to work unpaid overtime whenever they asked me to.
i've heard from a friend running a consulting company in the area, that a lot of companies bring in workers with h1b's and then don't even have the decency to sponsor a green card after keeping them for 6 years.
to my remembrance there was a house voting sometime last september about an immigration reform. one side of the table was asking for better accessibility to visa's for specialized workers(including cali afair), and the other was asking for more audits.
sadly i can't tell you how much good came out of it, maybe someone else can elaborate on that.
edit: there is a reference at the end of the ops post, but it's not really prominent. eb-3 wait times can be years, which is why it's not really a reasonable choice, but eb-2 is different
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EB-2_visa