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You can change companies, but your ~7 year wait for US permanent residence will reset. So you basically can't change companies if you intend to immigrate.
by raquo 10y ago
You can change companies, but your ~7 year wait for US permanent residence will reset. So you basically can't change companies if you intend to immigrate.
- klipt 10y agoIn fact even just changing locations within the same company will reset the green card process.
- TheOsiris 10y agogetting promoted would also reset the process. (unless they've fixed that)
- galo2099 10y agoWhat 7 year wait? I got mine in 10 months.
- khuey 10y agoYou must not be from China or India then.
- keerthiko 10y agoOr Mexico or the Philippines or Vietnam or Pakistan or a host of other countries on 6+ year immigrant queues.
- 0xcafecafe 10y agoOnly India have China have significant employment based immigrant queues. Some of the other countries you mentioned are severely backlogged in the family based categories.
- refurb 10y agoHmmm... the only countries that have a major backlog in employment-based green cards are China and India. Philippines has a backlog for family-based green cards.
- keerthiko 10y agoUnless they have an advanced degree (I believe a PhD, or at the very least a Masters), foreign workers, even highly paid silicon valley software engineers fall under the EB-3 category, which has a further backlog than that. I have friends with Filipino passports working at Google/MS/etc for 4+ years and still waiting on movement on their green card applications.
- refurb 10y agoI stand corrected! Wow! I used to check the State Department's visa bulletin all the time when I was waiting for my green card. Back then China and India were the only countries with backlogs. Looking at the current bulletin.[1] It now looks like China, India, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and the Philippines all have some backlog for EB-3. Yikes! However, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras only have a ~4 month backlog. [1]https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/bulletin/2017/visa-bulletin-for-february-2017.html https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/bul...
- samspenc 10y agoJust to clarify the item of confusion. EB2 green card visa wait times: only China and India (for now) EB3 green card wait times: Mexico, Phillipines and other countries I think most folks may not realized that there are a variety of green card paths, even within the employment category, and the requirements for EB1, EB2 and EB3 are completely different.
- hkmurakami 10y ago10 months from H1B not L1A?
- briandear 10y agoHowever an H1 is a non-immigrant visa. So if the intent is to immigrate, that's the wrong visa and thus permanent residency eligibility ought to be irrelevant. H1s being used as back door immigrant visas is a misuse of the program and violates the intent.
- int_19h 10y agoH1 is a dual-intent visa. Meaning that it's deliberately set up so that you can file for a green card on it, and not get kicked out of the country immediately (as is the case for e.g. tourist visas). So, no, it doesn't violate its intent. And, pragmatically speaking, it's the only viable track to green card and, ultimately, citizenship for the majority of skilled immigrants into the USA. Yes, it is still a silly setup, and most other countries have an explicit skilled immigration track that covers the same niche. Most of US immigration law and regulations is so ad-hoc and randomly slapped together (due to widely differing polices and a lot of knee jerking), that it is like that in general, though.
- btbuilder 10y agoPretty sure you retain your priority date across job changes if you already have an approved I-140 from your old employer.
- raquo 10y agoHm indeed, that seems to be the case now. They must have updated the rules since the last time I looked.