I am not trying to describe the happy path in any way. I have gone through a 4 year L1A green card which my colleagues got it in 10 months and I have been witho

I am not trying to describe the happy path in any way. I have gone through a 4 year L1A green card which my colleagues got it in 10 months and I have been without advanced parole for 13 months which implied if I left the country due to any reason, I could not come back. And my experience too was in a different decade, no need for me to cover up the warts. It is quite an experience each interaction with the then INS taking over 3 months when the entire last stage should have completed in 3-4 months. What I am describing about H1 is standard (majority) operating procedure. Yes extending H1 visa outside of the country is a pain, but extending H1 while being in US is not such a big pain, and most of my colleagues do that. Of course there does come a need for people to visit to their origin country once in a while, and yes that's when it becomes a lottery.