3 ms·

h1b makes switching jobs difficult.

• Bluestrike2 12y ago
  In what way?
  • ambrood 12y ago
    In a sense that your employer needs to file a Labor certification application, determine the prevailing wage and ultimately USCIS granting your petition. It takes a while to get it all done.
    • potatolicious 12y ago
      ... like 2-3 weeks? That's how long mine took, just a short while ago. H1B presents some friction in switching jobs, but to call it "difficult", especially in current market conditions, is vastly overselling it.
      • geebee 12y ago
        What if you wanted to work in a completely different field, go to law school, or quit your job and start a new business?
    • pcl 12y ago
      Transferring an H1b is really not that hard to do. We did it for less than $15k or so and a few weeks of back-and-forth at my last startup. Don't be put off by the process.
    • Nimi 12y ago
      It's a bit hard to get a clear impression from this discussion about the amount of difficulty for transferring between employers on an h1b. Can anyone who has been through this process more than once (either as an employer or employee) shed more light on this please?
  • waps 12y ago
    TLDR : lose your job or quit, and you lose your visa. Zero grace period (laid off/quit on Friday, illegal immigrant by Saturday). Although the regulations do not provide a grace period for unemployment between H-1B employers, USCIS generally approves petitions to change from one employer to the next and considers you to have maintained status if the gap is 30 days or less. CAVEAT: your (new) employer is the one that has to request the change, so if your new employer isn't organized to do this, or doesn't want to, you're in the country illegally and won't get paid. So there's a "the administration hates congress" grace period of 30 days. After that, you actually have to leave the country and cannot start work somewhere else.