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What has been baffling me for some time is that the US doesn't seem to have a visa for professionals doing short-term work for their clients in the US. For exam
by geoka9 13y ago
What has been baffling me for some time is that the US doesn't seem to have a visa for professionals doing short-term work for their clients in the US. For example, as a freelance programmer I have clients in the US and sometimes they may want me to pay a visit. I have to turn such requests down since I won't be able to bill them for my time while in the US.
There only seem to be 2 kinds of visas: B1 (business) which does not allow you to bill anybody in the US, and H1B which is an overkill for 1-2 days on-site visits (not to mention that this visa usually implies moving to the US to take a full-time position with a company there).
But there must be some kind of provision for consultants doing short-term work in the US; it's such a common practice all over the world. Am I missing something?
- snambi 13y agoYes, this is a very valid point. somehow this is missing.
- pbiggar 13y agoEverybody else is using Bwaivers. You're not doing short-term work for your clients, you're working for your company in your home country, and visiting clients.
- keerthiko 13y agoYou would think, but I have been researching the variety of visas available to folk in the tech industry. Theoretically, the L1 [1] is supposed to fill the role for business trips based on partnerships and relationships between companies. But for whatever weird reason the client-consultant relationship is not valid for an L1, but only parent-child companies, headquarter-branch or affiliates. In fact, in light of me not getting a H1B, yet have a company registered in the US, I am pretty sure I'll just go register a company in my home-country as an affiliate of my company here and come back on an L1 visa. This is all very obsolete and convoluted, and is just making people skip ropes and jump hoops for no good reason. [1] http://www.immihelp.com/l1-visa/l1-visa-h1b-visa-comparison.html http://www.immihelp.com/l1-visa/l1-visa-h1b-visa-comparison....
- gaius 13y agoWhy not just bill them from your home country?