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Earlier this year I interviewed for a research/engineering position at Apple. I was offered the job, took it, and went into the H1B lottery. It took the USCIS f

by inoop 12y ago

Earlier this year I interviewed for a research/engineering position at Apple. I was offered the job, took it, and went into the H1B lottery. It took the USCIS four months to let me know that my application was not selected, even though it was filed under 'premium processing', and the draw had been done using a computer in the first week after submissions closed. Since the job required me to be in Cupertino, the deal simply fell through. Now imagine this, you worked your ass for for a total of nine years to get your masters and PhD, and you spent countless hours honing your skills and finally you get a dream job that merges awesome research, top-level engineering, and working on a product that millions of people use every day. And then it all goes tits up because of a lottery. A. Fucking. Lottery. The problem for people like me is that, if I want to work in the US, I have to go through a lottery that will keep me in uncertainty for months. Then, _maybe_, if I'm lucky enough, I can relocate only to have the same thing looming a few years down the line. I cannot build a life around such uncertainty. I cannot built a future like that. So, I'm staying in Europe. Not having been born in the US means that a lot of jobs are just not open to me, not because it's impossible to get them, but simply because the hassle is just not worth it anymore.

pekk 12y ago
American citizens are not entitled to work in the EU. If an American wants to plan their long-term life around working in the EU, that is far from a sure thing. Even with a masters and PhD. So why should the US be singled out for this?
- blutoot 12y ago
  You don't need to be a jerk. He complained about a lottery - that hardly makes him sound feeling entitled about the job. A lottery, to him and to me, sounds like a joke in the grand scheme of things. To put all your formative years into the grinding regime of grad school only to see the next step taken away by a lottery sounds unfair and he has a right to complain about it.
- fennecfoxen 12y ago
  In the UK they at least aim to give you a decision on your visa in ~3 weeks at least 90% of the time, and there isn't just one window during which you're allowed to apply. https://www.gov.uk/tier-2-general/overview https://www.gov.uk/tier-2-general/overview Germany hopes for 1-3 months: http://www.germany.info/Vertretung/usa/en/05__Legal/02__Directory__Services/01__Visa/__Employment__Visa.html http://www.germany.info/Vertretung/usa/en/05__Legal/02__Dire... (Coincidentally, I'm trying to relocate to the UK -- or an English-language friendly part of the EU, like the Netherlands or maybe Berlin -- so that I can be with a lovely girl. Haven't even gotten to visas yet, but I am really really glad that I'm not trying to go the other way...)
  - bojan 12y ago
    Depending on where exactly you are from, the Dutch process will impose an exam on you and an income requirement for your partner, and can take anywhere from 3 to 6 months. Easier process than in the US, but not exactly an easy one.
    - jadc 12y ago
      Not sure about that. If you are in Tech (or IT as they like to call it here), you can probably qualify for the Knowledge Migrant permit ance chances are the process is a lot faster. Took me about 10 days to get a work permit in the Netherlands but I did have an employer willing to sponsor me. Another friend of mine (also in IT) took him about 1 week also.
      - bojan 12y ago
        True. The parent mentioned a girl so that made me forget about the Knowledge migrant path. It is by far a better solution. However, for people that are 30 or over, the salary requirement is on a high side.
- lingoberry 12y ago
  I don't know if it works like this in all of EU, but if you have a job offer you will get a work permit, no lottery required.
- gorkemyurt 12y ago
  at least there is no lottery?
- disbelief 12y ago
  Countries in the EU (and elsewhere) have more sane immigration systems. As a Canadian having immigrated to both Germany and the US, I can say that the US system is at least two orders of magnitude more difficult, costly, needlessly complicated, and in the end a lot of it comes down to luck (most of it bad). Germany has no lottery system, and renewal is very straightforward. I applied for my visa while in Germany as a tourist, I was issued a "temporary visa" while the final decision was made, and after I was accepted, the renewal processes every couple of years was essentially a formality. There is also a straight-forward path to permanent residency after X years working in the country. Contrast that with how things work in the US (which I don't have time to get into in an HN comment), and you'll see why it deserves to be singled out for this.
  - refurb 12y ago
    One reason why non-American countries have "easier" immigration systems is often demand related. Your example "H1-B lottery" is precisely demand related.
    - Mandatum 12y ago
      To say non-American countries have easier immigration systems on the basis that it is demand related is in my opinion, absurd. Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada and many European countries have massive demand. However you'll find most of these countries have opted to sell residency, albeit through business and job investments. Generally skilled workers have to be sought for locally before they get someone over. Using a "lottery" system just sounds crazy. It's still possible to buy citizenship, yet everyone else has to sit on the side-lines and take a number. Sounds like a weird plan created on a whim..
      - refurb 12y ago
        A recent gallup survey says 150M people would move to the US if they could, the UK was a distant second at 45M [1]. As for the lottery, how else could it be done? There is a cap on H1-B visa each year. The USCIS receives more applications than spots the first day you can apply. [1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/153992/150-million-adults-worldwide-migrate.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/153992/150-million-adults-worldwi...
- girvo 12y ago
  Because the USA's system is incredibly byzantine and Kafkaesque compared to the EU's. I mean, a lottery for christ's sake... In my experience, getting visas for most other comparable countries are fairly straightforward.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- davidw 12y ago
  Not job related, but family related: if you're married, here in Italy, you can stay, end of story. Effective immediately. In the US, the process is something like 6 months, although apparently there was/is a backlog, and they were taking something like a year to process applications for spouses. It gives you an idea of how screwed up the system is.
  - wyclif 12y ago
    It doesn't take a year for spouses through USCIS. More like a few months.
    - amberruth 12y ago
      I'm an American have been trying to live in the US with my spouse for over a year so I can go back to school. I'm still waiting and unsure if we can even get in. Kafka-esque and nightmare can hardly describe the feeling.
    - Schweigi 12y ago
      K1/IR1/CR1 processing times are still around 6-8 months. A nightmare if a couple just got married or is going to and need to live apart during this time. Additionally the process is not straight forward and a lot of people will need help from a lawyer which makes it expensive.
    - davidw 12y ago
      This NYTimes article says that, in some cases, it does: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/us/program-benefiting-some-immigrants-extends-visa-wait-for-others.html?hp&_r=3 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/us/program-benefiting-some... They don't seem like edge cases, either, they just hit a slow spot in their processing.
    - pinars 12y ago
      (Semi-related) I'm an L-1A spouse. It took my work application 10 months to get processed, when the USCIS' own regulation stated that the it should have been closed in 90 days. You call them, ask them, plead with them. Nothing. "Your application is in the system and is getting processed." Nine months into it, it turned out that they lost my digital picture taken at a USCIS facility. How in this day and age one loses digital pictures is beyond me.
- CalRobert 12y ago
  I'm an American who works in the EU. Getting my green card was not left to a lottery, and I had my permit in hand after three weeks.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- yxhuvud 12y ago
  Entitled? No, you have to demonstrate you can get a job (to get to work in Sweden. Other countries may have other rules). Either by actually getting a job or by showing you have required skills. There are no limits apart from that.
lingoberry 12y ago
Wow, that really sucks (there's no other word for it). Makes me realise how lucky I was to get an H1B during the recession when no lottery was needed. Since then I've moved back to Europe though, in some small part for the insecurity of the whole situation. I wish you could have had my "spot", seems like you were a lot more deserving.
BrainInAJar 12y ago
I'm Canadian, and I've rejected countless job offers because it'd mean ~6 years of my spouse not being able to work until we get green cards.
- bdamm 12y ago
  It's not so bad if you spend some of that time raising children :)
  - ulfw 12y ago
    Try to raise children on one salary living in a high-cost city like San Francisco/Bay Area when the spouse can't work for six years. Then try to find a job after six years out of work. I have friends whose marriage broke because of similar situations.
    - cldellow 12y ago
      To be fair, that one salary is likely $100-150K/year. The median household income in SF is $72K, so you're probably going to be OK. Plus, the partner who's not working has some very real imputed salary value. In fact, the economic value of a non-working partner is much higher in a high cost of living area than a low cost of living area. If they save you from paying for professional childcare, the expense saved may be $4K/month rather than $500/month. Ditto for other services, especially meals at home. As a Canadian who did three years of immigration horseshit in the US with a non-working spouse, the real issue is that your spouse is making a huge sacrifice of their freedom. Being a kept person can chip away at your sense of self-sufficiency and self-worth. The people I met in my situation all left the country (the majority) or had kids (one couple).
    - bdamm 12y ago
      Well, I'm doing it. It hasn't been all that easy but nobody said immigration would be.
    - induscreep 12y ago
      The spouse is free to find a job that sponsors their H1B...absolutely no restrictions on that.
moogoo 12y ago
Sorry no empathy. I have no degree and could have the same job and do just as well or better. Better luck next time.
rdtsc 12y ago
Just curious, what would you have done to fix the root issue -- handling a large number of H1B requests? One answer is well why should there be a cap. Well there is a cap and one reason is probably because opening the gates wide open will skew the job market in US. For better or for worse it is hard to say but if you ask those in US they might say for worse. So there is a cap. (And obviously it is being pushed against, there is demand, you wanted to work for Apple, others want to work for other companies and so on). So how to you fix the problem? I can see these things as possible solutions: 1) First come first serve. That would be interesting, each year on a midnight of a particular date. Some server or some office in DC will will swamped with thousands of instantaneous requests. In less than 1 second it will all be over. Those with servers closer to the facility or those that have better synchronized clocks will win. Or put everyone in a long queue maybe and just wait year to year. Watch the queue extend for decades. 2) Make it an auction. So now each spot initially costs some processing fee to handle. Then well do first come first serve but increase the fee according to the demand. Maybe it takes $2k for initial spot. And $200k for last available. > Since the job required me to be in Cupertino, the deal simply fell through. Shouldn't you also blame Apple here too, at least just a bit. Presumably if there is this huge talent pool abroad they would at least consider opening an office in EU or let you work remotely in some capacity. Tech sector is interesting because that becomes possible (and has been done). I don't quite understand their position either. Here is a global company that they found a top person they want to join their team but well, they can't win some stupid lottery. Well fuck it, maybe they can do something more than just drop the deal? Wondering, what are you thoughts on Apple's position?
- allochthon 12y ago
  but if you ask those in US they might say for worse. American here. I definitely wish it was easier for high-skilled people in other countries to obtain documents for working here.
  - seanflyon 12y ago
    I agree, but I think general American sentiment is against it. "They are taking our jobs"
NearAP 12y ago
> It took the USCIS four months to let me know that my application was not selected.... Simply being curious here - didn't Apple provide you with the case ID? Typically, when you submit an Application to USCIS, you get an ID that allows you to check your status online and maybe you would have been able to know immediately that your application was not selected.
- moranlf 12y ago
  It doesn't work that way. Imagine that USCIS receives a huge pile of envelopes. They then run a lottery to decide which envelopes to open. The opened envelopes are then processed and the employer gets an ID for those cases. Only after ALL SELECTED cases were processed (some accpeted, some rejected, some pending more info), the closed envelopes are returned to the employer. This is why it takes months (4 in my case) to inform an applicant that he wasn't selected even though the lottery is the first stage of the process.
projectmayhem 12y ago
I have a friend in a similar situation (eerily similar). Apple moved him to Vancouver to reside until they can get a visa for the US, but in the meantime more & more employees are being 'stationed' in Canada, which opens up the opportunity to simply setup a facility there instead of hustling the US system. Canada has been a regular "holding pattern" location for Europeans trying to get to the US. It's about time Canadian authorities realised they could exploit this for their own economic gain.
- djb_hackernews 12y ago
  Is that really ideal for someone who is at the top of their craft to be put into purgatory in Canada when they really want to immigrate to the US and settle down? If it were me I'd rather be king of the hill in my home country over putting my life on hold like that.
  - untog 12y ago
    when they really want to immigrate to the US and settle down I'm not sure that's actually true. They want to work for Apple/Google/Facebook/Tech Giant Inc. - they must live in the US to do so. If Canada is smart it'll give companies incentives to build permanent bases in the country - then people won't always be waiting to move south.
  - shiven 12y ago
    If it were me I'd rather be king of the hill in my home country over putting my life on hold like that. King of the hillock you mean? Seriously, why do so many people go through the utter shit that is the US system, rather than go/stay back home? There is only one Apple, and it is in California. So say all their products. Comparing it to any other company in the world is like, well, comparing apples to oranges! You may have made your peace with eating oranges, not everyone is willing/can/ready to give up that easily.
  - rbanffy 12y ago
    > purgatory in Canada It's actually a nice place. Many friends of mine are doing the "holding pattern" thing and quite a few decided they'd just stay. > If it were me I'd rather be king of the hill in my home country It all depends on the size of your hill and the company you keep. Also, the hill gets lonely after a time. I like to surround myself with people smarter than myself and that becomes increasingly harder with a fixed size hill.
ulfw 12y ago
Time for more companies to do engineering/product overseas then and not just open sales/marketing offices. I can't imagine having 10,000+ engineers sitting in one location/timezone where you often can't get the best talents due to visa issues be more efficient than say have three large offices with say 5,000/2,500/2,500 each in America/Europe/Asia and be done with it. Sorry for your lousy experience with USCIS. I wholeheartedly agree with you that building your life stable is the more sensible thing to do than putting your life in the hands of a lottery!
curiousDog 12y ago
You know why you lost the lottery? Because Indian outsourcing firms like Infosys, Wipro flooded it with applications to bring in cheap labor! There's no talent or extraordinary ability among the people they bring in. IMO, outsourcing companies should be banned from h1-b/greencard, period. Banning them, I doubt the H1-B quota will even fill-up EDIT: In response to the downvoters, Im Indian myself and I know the quality of candidates these bodyshopper/outsourcing companies bring in. They are pretty much the bottom rung if the Indian education system. Most of them barely even speak/write English legibly. They also bring an incredibly bad name to the rest of the Indian developer community.
- untog 12y ago
  I have interviewed a few candidates from companies like this, with Masters in Computer Science/IT/whatever. They were perfectly adept at coding C#, using the Entity Framework, etc... writing SQL? No. A few literally had no idea how it was structured. One of a few reasons I'm glad to not be in the .NET world any more.
- bruceb 12y ago
  All the people I know in Infosys/Wipro speaking English perfectly fine. While for some position they don't get the cream of the crop they are still companies that server a worldwide customer base. You are exaggerating or thinking of other outsourcing firms (there are bad ones for sure with mediocre talent)
- cgh 12y ago
  The quality of Indian programmers tends to vary wildly. I currently work with some guys who are really good, and one guy who is simply incredible, while in the past I've worked with people who literally had never since a command line interface before. This was for a position where we deployed to Linux.
  - nesyt 12y ago
    The quality of programmers tends to vary wildly.
- 12y ago
bitL 12y ago
Get O visa, as a PhD holder you should be fine. E visa is also a possibility, though it costs at least $100k to get in.
- inoop 12y ago
  I tried for O, but was told my resume was not strong enough, even with a PhD from a good European university, and several a-rank publications.
  - induscreep 12y ago
    Have you tried for an EB1-A green card? Contact one of these online lawyers (wegreened/hooyou), and they will evaluate your CV for free. I personally know a few (non-US) people who avoided the H1B problem this way.
    - inoop 12y ago
      Thanks for the advice, I'll look into it.
diogenescynic 12y ago
Blame the offshore firms like Cognizant then. They are the ones scooping up 50%+ of the H-1B quota: >IT service firms use H-1B workers in offshore outsourcing contracts. IT workers affected by offshoring decision will typically train their replacements as a condition of severance. This has been the situation, for instance, at Northeast Utilities in Connecticut, which late last year announced plans to outsource some its IT work to Infosys and TCS and cut around 200 IT workers. >"The offshore outsourcing firms are once again getting the majority of the visas," said Ron Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. "The program continues to promote the offshoring of high-wage American jobs." http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9247241/Offshore_firms_took_50_of_H_1B_visas_in_2013 http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9247241/Offshore_firm...
countrybama24 12y ago
The H-1B system should at least be an auction, not a lottery. The companies that use the system to source cheaper replacements for current workers would get priced out of the market and the individuals who contribute the most to the company (and the economy) would get in. Bonus: more revenue would be raised by the government.
- jonny_eh 12y ago
  An auction based on the salary of the employee. i.e. the money doesn't go to the government, it goes to the person being hired. This also removes the criticism that the H1B is being used to bring in "cheap labour".
- shas3 12y ago
  This could potentially increase the 'cost-to-company' for each employee. Also, it could well be that an employee is worth a lot to Infosys, Cognizant, or other off-shoring companies who make up a bulk of the H1B applications, and they may be willing to spend enough to be the highest bidder.
  - sbierwagen 12y ago
    Yes, that's the point of the H-1B visa? It's supposed to be used for people with rare and unusual skillsets, the kind of people who command very high salaries; not for offshoring. The H-1B is a non-immigrant visa in the United States... [that] allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations. The regulations define a "specialty occupation" as requiring theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge in a field of human endeavor including but not limited to biotechnology, chemistry, architecture, engineering[...]
lttlrck 12y ago
When I went through this I was deeply involved the paperwork and the impression I had was that the whole process is far more nuanced than a computer-generated go/no-go. A minor paperwork error, DHS agent on bad day, or misunderstanding a qualification or another candidate deemed more applicable would do the trick.

by inoop 12y ago

pekk 12y ago

American citizens are not entitled to work in the EU. If an American wants to plan their long-term life around working in the EU, that is far from a sure thing. Even with a masters and PhD. So why should the US be singled out for this?

blutoot 12y ago
You don't need to be a jerk. He complained about a lottery - that hardly makes him sound feeling entitled about the job. A lottery, to him and to me, sounds like a joke in the grand scheme of things. To put all your formative years into the grinding regime of grad school only to see the next step taken away by a lottery sounds unfair and he has a right to complain about it.
fennecfoxen 12y ago
In the UK they at least aim to give you a decision on your visa in ~3 weeks at least 90% of the time, and there isn't just one window during which you're allowed to apply. https://www.gov.uk/tier-2-general/overview https://www.gov.uk/tier-2-general/overview Germany hopes for 1-3 months: http://www.germany.info/Vertretung/usa/en/05__Legal/02__Directory__Services/01__Visa/__Employment__Visa.html http://www.germany.info/Vertretung/usa/en/05__Legal/02__Dire... (Coincidentally, I'm trying to relocate to the UK -- or an English-language friendly part of the EU, like the Netherlands or maybe Berlin -- so that I can be with a lovely girl. Haven't even gotten to visas yet, but I am really really glad that I'm not trying to go the other way...)
- bojan 12y ago
  Depending on where exactly you are from, the Dutch process will impose an exam on you and an income requirement for your partner, and can take anywhere from 3 to 6 months. Easier process than in the US, but not exactly an easy one.
  - jadc 12y ago
    Not sure about that. If you are in Tech (or IT as they like to call it here), you can probably qualify for the Knowledge Migrant permit ance chances are the process is a lot faster. Took me about 10 days to get a work permit in the Netherlands but I did have an employer willing to sponsor me. Another friend of mine (also in IT) took him about 1 week also.
    - bojan 12y ago
      True. The parent mentioned a girl so that made me forget about the Knowledge migrant path. It is by far a better solution. However, for people that are 30 or over, the salary requirement is on a high side.
lingoberry 12y ago
I don't know if it works like this in all of EU, but if you have a job offer you will get a work permit, no lottery required.
gorkemyurt 12y ago
at least there is no lottery?
disbelief 12y ago
Countries in the EU (and elsewhere) have more sane immigration systems. As a Canadian having immigrated to both Germany and the US, I can say that the US system is at least two orders of magnitude more difficult, costly, needlessly complicated, and in the end a lot of it comes down to luck (most of it bad). Germany has no lottery system, and renewal is very straightforward. I applied for my visa while in Germany as a tourist, I was issued a "temporary visa" while the final decision was made, and after I was accepted, the renewal processes every couple of years was essentially a formality. There is also a straight-forward path to permanent residency after X years working in the country. Contrast that with how things work in the US (which I don't have time to get into in an HN comment), and you'll see why it deserves to be singled out for this.
- refurb 12y ago
  One reason why non-American countries have "easier" immigration systems is often demand related. Your example "H1-B lottery" is precisely demand related.
  - Mandatum 12y ago
    To say non-American countries have easier immigration systems on the basis that it is demand related is in my opinion, absurd. Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada and many European countries have massive demand. However you'll find most of these countries have opted to sell residency, albeit through business and job investments. Generally skilled workers have to be sought for locally before they get someone over. Using a "lottery" system just sounds crazy. It's still possible to buy citizenship, yet everyone else has to sit on the side-lines and take a number. Sounds like a weird plan created on a whim..
    - refurb 12y ago
      A recent gallup survey says 150M people would move to the US if they could, the UK was a distant second at 45M [1]. As for the lottery, how else could it be done? There is a cap on H1-B visa each year. The USCIS receives more applications than spots the first day you can apply. [1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/153992/150-million-adults-worldwide-migrate.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/153992/150-million-adults-worldwi...
girvo 12y ago
Because the USA's system is incredibly byzantine and Kafkaesque compared to the EU's. I mean, a lottery for christ's sake... In my experience, getting visas for most other comparable countries are fairly straightforward.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
davidw 12y ago
Not job related, but family related: if you're married, here in Italy, you can stay, end of story. Effective immediately. In the US, the process is something like 6 months, although apparently there was/is a backlog, and they were taking something like a year to process applications for spouses. It gives you an idea of how screwed up the system is.
- wyclif 12y ago
  It doesn't take a year for spouses through USCIS. More like a few months.
  - amberruth 12y ago
    I'm an American have been trying to live in the US with my spouse for over a year so I can go back to school. I'm still waiting and unsure if we can even get in. Kafka-esque and nightmare can hardly describe the feeling.
  - Schweigi 12y ago
    K1/IR1/CR1 processing times are still around 6-8 months. A nightmare if a couple just got married or is going to and need to live apart during this time. Additionally the process is not straight forward and a lot of people will need help from a lawyer which makes it expensive.
  - davidw 12y ago
    This NYTimes article says that, in some cases, it does: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/us/program-benefiting-some-immigrants-extends-visa-wait-for-others.html?hp&_r=3 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/us/program-benefiting-some... They don't seem like edge cases, either, they just hit a slow spot in their processing.
  - pinars 12y ago
    (Semi-related) I'm an L-1A spouse. It took my work application 10 months to get processed, when the USCIS' own regulation stated that the it should have been closed in 90 days. You call them, ask them, plead with them. Nothing. "Your application is in the system and is getting processed." Nine months into it, it turned out that they lost my digital picture taken at a USCIS facility. How in this day and age one loses digital pictures is beyond me.
CalRobert 12y ago
I'm an American who works in the EU. Getting my green card was not left to a lottery, and I had my permit in hand after three weeks.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
yxhuvud 12y ago
Entitled? No, you have to demonstrate you can get a job (to get to work in Sweden. Other countries may have other rules). Either by actually getting a job or by showing you have required skills. There are no limits apart from that.

lingoberry 12y ago

Wow, that really sucks (there's no other word for it). Makes me realise how lucky I was to get an H1B during the recession when no lottery was needed. Since then I've moved back to Europe though, in some small part for the insecurity of the whole situation. I wish you could have had my "spot", seems like you were a lot more deserving.

BrainInAJar 12y ago

I'm Canadian, and I've rejected countless job offers because it'd mean ~6 years of my spouse not being able to work until we get green cards.

bdamm 12y ago
It's not so bad if you spend some of that time raising children :)
- ulfw 12y ago
  Try to raise children on one salary living in a high-cost city like San Francisco/Bay Area when the spouse can't work for six years. Then try to find a job after six years out of work. I have friends whose marriage broke because of similar situations.
  - cldellow 12y ago
    To be fair, that one salary is likely $100-150K/year. The median household income in SF is $72K, so you're probably going to be OK. Plus, the partner who's not working has some very real imputed salary value. In fact, the economic value of a non-working partner is much higher in a high cost of living area than a low cost of living area. If they save you from paying for professional childcare, the expense saved may be $4K/month rather than $500/month. Ditto for other services, especially meals at home. As a Canadian who did three years of immigration horseshit in the US with a non-working spouse, the real issue is that your spouse is making a huge sacrifice of their freedom. Being a kept person can chip away at your sense of self-sufficiency and self-worth. The people I met in my situation all left the country (the majority) or had kids (one couple).
  - bdamm 12y ago
    Well, I'm doing it. It hasn't been all that easy but nobody said immigration would be.
  - induscreep 12y ago
    The spouse is free to find a job that sponsors their H1B...absolutely no restrictions on that.

moogoo 12y ago

Sorry no empathy. I have no degree and could have the same job and do just as well or better. Better luck next time.

rdtsc 12y ago

Just curious, what would you have done to fix the root issue -- handling a large number of H1B requests? One answer is well why should there be a cap. Well there is a cap and one reason is probably because opening the gates wide open will skew the job market in US. For better or for worse it is hard to say but if you ask those in US they might say for worse. So there is a cap. (And obviously it is being pushed against, there is demand, you wanted to work for Apple, others want to work for other companies and so on). So how to you fix the problem? I can see these things as possible solutions: 1) First come first serve. That would be interesting, each year on a midnight of a particular date. Some server or some office in DC will will swamped with thousands of instantaneous requests. In less than 1 second it will all be over. Those with servers closer to the facility or those that have better synchronized clocks will win. Or put everyone in a long queue maybe and just wait year to year. Watch the queue extend for decades. 2) Make it an auction. So now each spot initially costs some processing fee to handle. Then well do first come first serve but increase the fee according to the demand. Maybe it takes $2k for initial spot. And $200k for last available. > Since the job required me to be in Cupertino, the deal simply fell through. Shouldn't you also blame Apple here too, at least just a bit. Presumably if there is this huge talent pool abroad they would at least consider opening an office in EU or let you work remotely in some capacity. Tech sector is interesting because that becomes possible (and has been done). I don't quite understand their position either. Here is a global company that they found a top person they want to join their team but well, they can't win some stupid lottery. Well fuck it, maybe they can do something more than just drop the deal? Wondering, what are you thoughts on Apple's position?

allochthon 12y ago
but if you ask those in US they might say for worse. American here. I definitely wish it was easier for high-skilled people in other countries to obtain documents for working here.
- seanflyon 12y ago
  I agree, but I think general American sentiment is against it. "They are taking our jobs"

NearAP 12y ago

> It took the USCIS four months to let me know that my application was not selected.... Simply being curious here - didn't Apple provide you with the case ID? Typically, when you submit an Application to USCIS, you get an ID that allows you to check your status online and maybe you would have been able to know immediately that your application was not selected.

moranlf 12y ago
It doesn't work that way. Imagine that USCIS receives a huge pile of envelopes. They then run a lottery to decide which envelopes to open. The opened envelopes are then processed and the employer gets an ID for those cases. Only after ALL SELECTED cases were processed (some accpeted, some rejected, some pending more info), the closed envelopes are returned to the employer. This is why it takes months (4 in my case) to inform an applicant that he wasn't selected even though the lottery is the first stage of the process.

projectmayhem 12y ago

I have a friend in a similar situation (eerily similar). Apple moved him to Vancouver to reside until they can get a visa for the US, but in the meantime more & more employees are being 'stationed' in Canada, which opens up the opportunity to simply setup a facility there instead of hustling the US system. Canada has been a regular "holding pattern" location for Europeans trying to get to the US. It's about time Canadian authorities realised they could exploit this for their own economic gain.

djb_hackernews 12y ago
Is that really ideal for someone who is at the top of their craft to be put into purgatory in Canada when they really want to immigrate to the US and settle down? If it were me I'd rather be king of the hill in my home country over putting my life on hold like that.
- untog 12y ago
  when they really want to immigrate to the US and settle down I'm not sure that's actually true. They want to work for Apple/Google/Facebook/Tech Giant Inc. - they must live in the US to do so. If Canada is smart it'll give companies incentives to build permanent bases in the country - then people won't always be waiting to move south.
- shiven 12y ago
  If it were me I'd rather be king of the hill in my home country over putting my life on hold like that. King of the hillock you mean? Seriously, why do so many people go through the utter shit that is the US system, rather than go/stay back home? There is only one Apple, and it is in California. So say all their products. Comparing it to any other company in the world is like, well, comparing apples to oranges! You may have made your peace with eating oranges, not everyone is willing/can/ready to give up that easily.
- rbanffy 12y ago
  > purgatory in Canada It's actually a nice place. Many friends of mine are doing the "holding pattern" thing and quite a few decided they'd just stay. > If it were me I'd rather be king of the hill in my home country It all depends on the size of your hill and the company you keep. Also, the hill gets lonely after a time. I like to surround myself with people smarter than myself and that becomes increasingly harder with a fixed size hill.

ulfw 12y ago

Time for more companies to do engineering/product overseas then and not just open sales/marketing offices. I can't imagine having 10,000+ engineers sitting in one location/timezone where you often can't get the best talents due to visa issues be more efficient than say have three large offices with say 5,000/2,500/2,500 each in America/Europe/Asia and be done with it. Sorry for your lousy experience with USCIS. I wholeheartedly agree with you that building your life stable is the more sensible thing to do than putting your life in the hands of a lottery!

curiousDog 12y ago

You know why you lost the lottery? Because Indian outsourcing firms like Infosys, Wipro flooded it with applications to bring in cheap labor! There's no talent or extraordinary ability among the people they bring in. IMO, outsourcing companies should be banned from h1-b/greencard, period. Banning them, I doubt the H1-B quota will even fill-up EDIT: In response to the downvoters, Im Indian myself and I know the quality of candidates these bodyshopper/outsourcing companies bring in. They are pretty much the bottom rung if the Indian education system. Most of them barely even speak/write English legibly. They also bring an incredibly bad name to the rest of the Indian developer community.

untog 12y ago
I have interviewed a few candidates from companies like this, with Masters in Computer Science/IT/whatever. They were perfectly adept at coding C#, using the Entity Framework, etc... writing SQL? No. A few literally had no idea how it was structured. One of a few reasons I'm glad to not be in the .NET world any more.
bruceb 12y ago
All the people I know in Infosys/Wipro speaking English perfectly fine. While for some position they don't get the cream of the crop they are still companies that server a worldwide customer base. You are exaggerating or thinking of other outsourcing firms (there are bad ones for sure with mediocre talent)
cgh 12y ago
The quality of Indian programmers tends to vary wildly. I currently work with some guys who are really good, and one guy who is simply incredible, while in the past I've worked with people who literally had never since a command line interface before. This was for a position where we deployed to Linux.
- nesyt 12y ago
  The quality of programmers tends to vary wildly.
12y ago

bitL 12y ago

Get O visa, as a PhD holder you should be fine. E visa is also a possibility, though it costs at least $100k to get in.

inoop 12y ago
I tried for O, but was told my resume was not strong enough, even with a PhD from a good European university, and several a-rank publications.
- induscreep 12y ago
  Have you tried for an EB1-A green card? Contact one of these online lawyers (wegreened/hooyou), and they will evaluate your CV for free. I personally know a few (non-US) people who avoided the H1B problem this way.
  - inoop 12y ago
    Thanks for the advice, I'll look into it.

diogenescynic 12y ago

Blame the offshore firms like Cognizant then. They are the ones scooping up 50%+ of the H-1B quota: >IT service firms use H-1B workers in offshore outsourcing contracts. IT workers affected by offshoring decision will typically train their replacements as a condition of severance. This has been the situation, for instance, at Northeast Utilities in Connecticut, which late last year announced plans to outsource some its IT work to Infosys and TCS and cut around 200 IT workers. >"The offshore outsourcing firms are once again getting the majority of the visas," said Ron Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. "The program continues to promote the offshoring of high-wage American jobs." http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9247241/Offshore_firms_took_50_of_H_1B_visas_in_2013 http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9247241/Offshore_firm...

countrybama24 12y ago

The H-1B system should at least be an auction, not a lottery. The companies that use the system to source cheaper replacements for current workers would get priced out of the market and the individuals who contribute the most to the company (and the economy) would get in. Bonus: more revenue would be raised by the government.

jonny_eh 12y ago
An auction based on the salary of the employee. i.e. the money doesn't go to the government, it goes to the person being hired. This also removes the criticism that the H1B is being used to bring in "cheap labour".
shas3 12y ago
This could potentially increase the 'cost-to-company' for each employee. Also, it could well be that an employee is worth a lot to Infosys, Cognizant, or other off-shoring companies who make up a bulk of the H1B applications, and they may be willing to spend enough to be the highest bidder.
- sbierwagen 12y ago
  Yes, that's the point of the H-1B visa? It's supposed to be used for people with rare and unusual skillsets, the kind of people who command very high salaries; not for offshoring. The H-1B is a non-immigrant visa in the United States... [that] allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations. The regulations define a "specialty occupation" as requiring theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge in a field of human endeavor including but not limited to biotechnology, chemistry, architecture, engineering[...]

lttlrck 12y ago

When I went through this I was deeply involved the paperwork and the impression I had was that the whole process is far more nuanced than a computer-generated go/no-go. A minor paperwork error, DHS agent on bad day, or misunderstanding a qualification or another candidate deemed more applicable would do the trick.