How difficult is to a F-1 Student to get a H1B Visa? And from there, how difficult is to get from a H1B Visa to a Green Card?
Let’s put this scenario: An international student gets accepted in a selective university in US (such as Ivy League, Stanford, Duke University, Columbia University, etc etc) with the major being Economics or Business Administration. From there he works hard, has excellent grades and graduates as one of the best students from his major.
What are his options now if he wants to work in US? As he was one of the best students in his major and he attended a selective university, probably he will be approached by companies that tend to hire graduates from selective universities, right? What are the steps he needs to take to work in those companies? What are the chances for him to get an H1B Visa to work in a big company? Do big companies usually hire F-1 Students straight out from college if they stand out? Do this companies help F-1 Students to get the H1B Visa? Or do they ask for an internship first and therefore F-1 Students need to get OPT?
Moving on, let’s say he gets a H1B Visa and he starts to work at a big company related to his major. If he gets fired or he quits working for that company, does he loses his H1B Visa? Does he need to leave the country?
How difficult is for him to get a Green Card from H1B Visa? What does he need to do and what influence does the company that hired him has in the process? Do big companies tend to help their workers to get a green card?
I know that this are a lot of questions but i hope that you can clarify my doubts as i’m trying to understand what are my chances after i attend an US university for staying in the country.
Many of your questions can be answered through a simple Google search. Use it.
As far as your chances of getting sponsored for an H1B visa - NO ONE can tell you that. It depends, in part, on how many H1B applications are filed that year (there are more applications than available visas.)
Not that I know of.
The few corporates that may sponsor someone wouldn’t be involved in that.
US companies have strict guidelines. They have to tell the government that there are no available US candidates for certain positions. With business majors, there are plenty of US candidates.
You are making a lot of assumptions. As @katliamom has indicated, no one can tell you that you will be sponsored but the odds don’t look good.
I did my research but here i’m asking questions regarding a specific example; also i didn’t quite understand the all process as it’s complex and difficult to understand for someone who’s not from the US.
Actually @auntbea, there ARE companies who help their workers get green cards. I worked for one. But out of the hundreds of H1B workers (almost all in IT) it hired, about 5 got green card help in the ten year period I was with the company. Rare, but it happens.
@pedrofbandre, this person did not go to an elite university. She did have an MBA, but both her undergraduate and her Master’s were from a small regional school unknown beyond the remote area where it was located. She lucked out: she got the job on a H1B visa for a position that required specific expertise – expertise which just happened to be the exact topic of her Master’s thesis. From there on, she excelled, and today is one of the few women in upper management of a Fortune 200 company. I would actually say that her being a woman helped her get the green card more than anything: the company was constantly criticized for having too few women in its tippy-top management.
But there are more than 800,000 international students in the US. How is ONE specific example going to help you?
That Google search you said you did would tell you that MOST of the international students who stay in the US past their OPT do it by either going to graduate school, or marrying a citizen.
OP:
You go F-1, to OPT. With a STEM degree, you can get a 24 mo. OPT extension after the first year of OPT. Your employer must be the one to sponsor you for an H-1B or for a green card. It is typical for an employer to do an H-1B first, before making the commitment to sponsor for a green card.
For an H-1B, you need to get selected in the lottery. This makes it nice to have a 24 mo OPT extension, so you can try more than once to get the H-1B lottery. Make sure your major and job are in a field that require a degree in a particular field for entry into the occupation. A general business administration major may not qualify for an H-1B, but a STEM field job - yes.
It’s all about the employer being willing to sponsor you, and doesn’t depend so much on what school you went to and how well you did. So browse around the U.S. Department of Labor website, and you’ll find a lot of info about which companies are applying for H-1B’s, and what cities and parts of the country are submitting the most green card applications to the Department of Labor. Also look at the USCIS website, and the .gov website about OPT and EADS’.
We sponsor employees for green cards. They are very hard to get. The typical success story involves a PhD in a specialized field and globally recognized achievement in the field (in the form of patents, internationally acclaimed research, etc)
You could always get lucky in the H1B visa lottery, but the short answer to your question is this: A bachelor’s degree from a top school will do little to help you, or an employer sponsoring you, get permanent residency in the U.S.
Marrying an American citizen would be more expedient.
^^ Not really. Can get an employment-based green card with a Bachelor’s degree, or even without one at all. You do NOT have to be an outstanding Ph.D to get an employment-based green card. That is merely one avenue.
OP: Instead of hearing anecdotes on an anonymous forum, contact the Foreign Student Advisor (the office that has to sign off on your I-20 so you can apply for a visa) at various schools to try to get a more factually accurate picture.
The visa situation may change in the next decade, but right now your outlook would be pretty bleak.
H-1B visas are awarded by lottery, because the number of visa applications exceeds the number of available visas. (For FY 2017, 236,000 H-1B petitions were received in the very first week that applications were accepted, while at most 65,000 + 20,000 visas can be issued.) It doesn't matter that you graduated from Stanford and Goldman Sachs wants to hire you - you're still subject to the lottery.
In order to sponsor you for a green card, your employer would have to conduct a national search for your position and document that there were no qualified American applicants.
In practice, talented foreigners who want to stay in the US after college have two options:
(1) Marry a US citizen. BY FAR the fastest and most reliable route. (You’d have an unconditional green card after 2 years of marriage.)
(2) Pursue an academic career. There’s an unlimited number of work visas available for university employees. Furthermore, the grueling hiring process and tenure review process for research faculty covers most of the requirements for an employment-based green card. This path could get you a green card in as little as 17 years:
4 years college + 5 years PhD + 2 years post-doc (on J-1 visa) + 6 years tenure-track on H-1B + tenure review + waiting time for employer-sponsored green card (0 to 20 years depending on your nationality and qualifications).
This drawn-out process may sound like a pain in the butt, but it’s appealing enough that the majority of PhD students and research faculty at US universities are foreign-born. That should tell you something about the difficulty of getting a green card on the private market.
Yes, your H-1B visa is tied to a specific employer. If you quit or lose your job, you have to depart the country immediately.
All of the legwork has to be done by the company. The employee is a passive spectator in the process. Outside of universities, I have met very few foreign workers with an employment-based green card and all of them had an advanced degree (mostly PhDs and MDs).
If you want to see what kind of positions may sponsor an H-1B or green card, you can find a list of labor certification applications here: https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm
The labor certification is the first step in the process for a work visa and merely establishes that the position meets the requirement of the visa category. Most successful labor certifications will NOT lead to a visa. That being said, I find the files interesting to play around with because they list employer names, job titles, wages, level of education, etc.
So from what i’ve understood, when you finish college as a F-1 Student you have an option for OPT. The durability of OPT depends on your major. From this point, your employer have the option to sponsor you for the H1B Visa. If you get luck and you win the H1B Visa in the lottery you can stay in the country for 3+3 years working.
But can you change your job between this period? Also, can you change from one company to another without having to request another H1B Visa?
About getting a green card, from what i’ve understood the fastest and the easiest way for you to get a green card is to get married with a US citizen between this period when you have a H1B Visa. Also, companies can sponsor you to get a green card but that would be more difficult as they would have to conduct a national search for your position and document that there were no qualified American applicants.
Student you have an option for OPT. The durability of OPT depends on your major.
No. Everyone has maximum 12 months
From this point, your employer have the option to sponsor you for the H1B Visa. If you get luck and you win the H1B Visa in the lottery you can stay in the country for 3+3 years working.
Yes.
But can you change your job between this period?
Yes. But your new employer must file for H1B for you. It’s an expensive process for the company.
Also, can you change from one company to another without having to request another H1B Visa?
No. Your second employer must file for H1B visa for you.
About getting a green card, from what i’ve understood the fastest and the easiest way for you to get a green card is to get married with a US citizen between this period when you have a H1B Visa
You can get married to a US citizen at any time
Also, companies can sponsor you to get a green card but that would be more difficult as they would have to conduct a national search for your position and document that there were no qualified American applicants
Yes, HOWEVER, only very big companies sponsor workers for green cards, and even those don’t do it very often.
Just want to clarify for OP.
Initial OPT is 12 months. STEM’s can get a 24 month OPT extension.
Very tiny tiny companies can sponsor an employee for a green card. There is no size restriction on a company for sponsoring an employee for a green card. The employer just has to be willing to do it, and must meet other requirements (i.e. show ability to pay the employee’s wage). Employers do NOT conduct national searches as part of recruitment in this process. Employers must recruit in the geographic region where the employee would work, and must attest that no qualified U.S. applicants were available and willing to accept this job.
Sponsoring an employee for a green card is not a rare occurrence, just because some companies never do it. Other companies, particularly in areas where getting and retaining talent is difficult - do this all the time.
@chopsmo Although there is no size requirement for company green card sponsorship, the reality is that it’s VERY EXPENSIVE for employers to do it, in part because the process can take years. As result it’s the big (or very wealthy) companies that end up with the bulk of such undertakings.
And @chopsmo , the application for a green card (for talent ) requires the company to demonstrate that it has the ability to supervise and make use of that talent. There are certainly small companies who can demonstrate that - often tech start ups - but it’s not something every company can do. Even if a company is willing to foot the not small legal bill, it takes a lot of work
OP, you are best off looking at an immigration website. It is easy to stay for a while after you graduate for training. Beyond that, it will depend on all kinds of things.
Hopefully, by the time i graduate, things have changed in a positively way for immigrants. I believe that, with the year by year increase on H1B requests, if US don’t keep up with this numbers (in terms of H1B Visa numbers distributed each year) they will be losing many workers who could have, if they were allowed to work and stay in US, a positive impact on US economy.
Anyways, thank you all for the help. The information you provided me really allows me to have a better vision of how things work there. For now i’m going to focus on getting at a good university, hopefully in US.
We may have different definitions of the word “rare.” In FY 2014, there were 92,377 employment-based green cards issued to principal workers in EB categories 1-3. (I am purposefully excluding their family members.) About 41,000 of them went to EB1 “aliens with extraordinary ability.” Another 24,000 went to EB2 “professionals with advanced degrees.” Less than 20,000 went to EB3 “skilled workers” or “professionals with baccalaureate degrees,” which is the category that OP would most likely be in with a Bachelor’s degree. I would call 20,000 a relatively small number compared to the size of the labor market and the number of foreigners in the US who would very much want one of these green cards.
@gardenstategal, no requirement that the company must demonstrate it has ability to supervise an employee, for a green card. Other categories, yes (i.e. H-3, J-1 trainee). But for an employment-based green card, no.
There is for many categories, particurly those than require education, (I 140) which is OP’s interest. If there’s not, our lawyers have been messing with us big time!
We’ve gone a bit off topic here, but I have an OCD urge to correct something that’s incorrect when I see it posted. Sorry #gardenstategal. 16-year immigration lawyer here who has handled many, many employment-based green cards. There is no requirement that a company must establish that they will be supervising their employee for an employment-based green card.
