It should be extremely relaxed and extend if there is a little bit of evidence that work is being pursued. It's expensive to live without working, people aren't going to do it on a lark.
If even the opportunity for sporadic work is there, this may be a better option than going to your home country where either pay is much lower, or the type of work isn't available. These rules are made to avoid obtaining a reserve of foreigners who do not work, even if they're capable.
I'm not arguing whether this is good or bad, but that seems to be the intent.
Germany's visa for job search for professionals gives you up to 6 months to find a job. A foreigner who has completed an academic degree in Germany can get up to 18 months afterwards and a foreign researcher who has finished her or his research up to 9 months. For a vocational qualifications it is up to 12 months.[1]
These time limits are maxima, but are usually granted for people already living in Germany if their livelihood is secured and no other important aspects speak against it, such as a criminal record.
There is no time limit if a foreigner has an open-ended residence permit, which is possible after 5 years living in Germany (additional requirements apply).[2]
Not sure how feasible it would be, but the limit should be a runtime calculation depending on various factors (e.g. Median time it's taking to find a job nowadays).
A static time limit, I feel is wrong for somethimg that is so fluctuating. Especially in current climate.
Extending the duration based on a poor job market would certainly be more accommodating to the people on H1-B visas who are between work, but it works against the stated purpose of the program.
The H1-B program is designed* to provide labor force supplementation when no citizens/permanent residents can be found to fill a given position.
In a prolonged recession, I'd expect the median time to find a job to go up substantially, but also for the argument that "we can't find any permanent residents to fill this position" to be substantially weakened.
In theory, you are possibly right, but in practice, that is not always the case.
For instance, in France, currently some departments have a fixed number of interview slots per month, meaning people either have to hack their way into finding an available slot (e.g. using scripts to refresh the website in the middle of the night and hope to wake up when a slot becomes available; good luck if you don't know how to hack the system yourself), or they have to pay scalpers to get an appointment.
Then, you get assigned a pre-interview slot, which can take as long as a year of waiting. If you are lucky and everything works out, in the pre-interview, you will get assigned an actual interview slot. Which will be communicated by letter. And which can take yet another year of waiting.
Then, when the actual interview takes place, they give you no definitive answer for almost a year. You only know if it worked out at the end of the process. Overall, the "be in the country for N years" can thus become "be in the country for N+3 years, while not being sure that the next step will actually work or you will be sent back to the beginning"; also, hope that no politicians change the system in the meantime, since all of this is unspecified, so that they can change the rules at any moment and there's no one to complain to.
Of course, your mileage may vary; if you are rich enough to live in Paris, you will probably get better treatment.
So, the US is definitely bad, but the real situation in some Europeans countries is not as good as it looks like.
Why should someone be penalized for something they have no control over?
What is the differences between a person being of specific race or gender and a person born in a specific country? All of them are not a choice they made. If there is no safety reasons, i.e coming from a hostile country, why should a person born in India get treated completely different from someone born in the US? That is just racial discrimination to me.
I read it somewhere and still think it is true: if a native can't compete with a foreigner on their home soil, it just means the native lacks qualifications.
Because it is not a penalty despite it looks like one. They got a privilege they normally do not have (the visa) which has an expiration date.
Do not get me wrong, this is hard for every single person and sucks in a general economic turndown where the issuing country is no longer in need of foreign specialists.
The "privilege" to work should not be a privilege.
And there is absolutely a penalty. Every step of hiring is more difficult for a foreigner than a native, down to the interview step. The need for a sponsorship is a barrier for hiring since that is an extra cost. Approving and reporting a foreigner to the IRS is more involved. Requesting an SSN and doing background check on someone from another country is more expensive. Maintaining a foreign hire is risky due to H1B lottery, etc. And yet the companies are legally required to pay these H1Bs the same salary on top of all the extra costs. Those are definitely penalties for hiring a foreigners imposed so that a native hire is more desirable.
You can argue those are not meant to be punitive policies, but in effect they are acting as deterrents. And yet everyone is still hiring H1Bs. How many Indian and Chinese do you work with? That should say just how much the US economy depend on these high skill immigrants. Yet they get treated like disposable slaves.
No country other than your country of origin owes you a right to stay.
It's not inhumane or something to have visa only for work and not for indefinite residency. If the work visa was defacto a permanent residency visa, no one would give it and no one would get it.
> It's not inhumane or something to have visa only for work and not for indefinite residency.
It is in fact inhumane. It is also "or something" if you mean "unethical" by that.
The purpose of the arrangement is to obtain easy to exploit workforce to undercut the one locally available. The fact that it is precarious and exploitative is not an accident, but the goal.
By your characterization of the problem, the solution would seem to be to abolish work visas all together, and not allow any foriegners to stay for mere work.
Hopefully we can change that in the future - people have been displaced over the centuries (and worse) but what you're saying is such a 20th century phenomenon that I'd like to see us move forward to better structures.
How is it a 20th century phenomenon? In the past we had barely no movement in comparison with today and at least here you actually had to apply for permission to move away.
The whole welfare system is based on the requirement that it only applies to a selected few and adults today support the elderly so they can retire under the assumption that children will pay the adults for their retirement. If you open up the welfare system for 7 billion people that haven't contributed, it will all collapse.
Why even your country of origin? Okay, they can't just pick another country and shove people there, that's not fair and no country would accept that, but they could maybe dump unwanted people in the ocean. Just a thought.
Most countries have a path to permanent residency after 5 years of gainful employment in the said country. In the us it is a quota based on your nationality or a lottery system.
Why should it matter how many other people from X country applied for a GC that year if I worked in the US for 10 years and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes?
If humans were merely fully replaceable units in the machinery that is a nation (and it seems that this is the goal of many of the elite), then that would make sense. But many humans actually form communities and welcome new residents in. Some of these newcomers become part of the community and even create new members.
You could argue that even your country doesn't owe you anything merely for existing. You have responsibilities, not just rights.
But for the purpose of this discussion, I'm assuming a person already has a country they belong to which does give them the right to stay.
No other country owes you the right to stay. Singapore does not owe me the right to be there, let alone stay there. Each country is free to decide the rules for who it allows in and how long it allows them to stay and under what conditions.
That's the general social contract that most people have as their mental model: "If I pay my taxes and do my part, my children will get the standard benefits of citizenship".
Honestly, I'm not sure what use you see from asking this question.
Is missing from the title imo. Since it said "rest of the world" .org, presumably a joke regarding USA-centricity, I was expecting it was about something other than the USA. Joke's on me!
While I understand this would be good publicity for the H1B visa and its notice/grace period. I think if people were more aware (open to see another perspective) that the biggest problem, especially for those who are Indian and Chinese (the top two H1B recipients), is the abuse of sub-contractor companies being set up and using these visa recipients which create the backlogs.
Another thing, I've noticed everyone on an H1B already knows the responsibilities of holding this temporary visa. This type of article is nothing but complaining without providing a solution. Yes it sucks, but naivety to your responsibilities as a visa holder and to something that can happen to you is immature. And also risks putting other immigrants and visa holders in a bad light.
I've seen more and more of these types of writing regarding the H1B, visas, and the immigration system in light of the layoffs but I feel they are doing more for negativity than any positivity at all. If this could assist in anyway in moving towards seeing what the actual problem is in the system then ok but it didn't read at all like that tbh.
Wouldn't the actual solution be removing country caps (before bringing up diversity remember that country caps are on your country of birth, not naturalization so tell me how country of birth is not a skin color filter?) Or making this a point based scheme or making this region+comp based instead of a universal category all over? Also can the govt do anything to catch and filter the sub contractor companies or is it allowing it as it is a great revenue source?
No, I think country caps help in filtering. If removed it would open a pandora's box like experience for anyone in the process and those processing the applicants. Systemizing immigration into a manageable process and system is a hard task. Too many layers. I think modifying the country caps right now would be of benefit rather than stricly removing them. Then a refresh of the filtering process, processing system overhaul, and other parts would need working. But I don't think country caps are of any priority tbh.
The government can do something to catch and filter the companies but I think they are partly playing a role in their existence and continued business. When you talk about great revenue sources, do you mean for the gov? If so, probably both directly and indirectly. Probably part diplomacy sprinkled in
For anyone in this predicament, the place I see the most hiring for software developers is large non-tech companies like Walmart. They have 1379 job openings with “software” in the title. Many are in CA, WA or TX, and hundreds were posted in the past few weeks.
As someone who worked in US over 20 yrs ago on H1B... It was a great adventure in a great country with great people. However, the temporary nature of the visa, with having to leave swiftly if you lose your job, combined with being sponsored and therefore beholden to one's employer, really restricts your options and can give a feeling of limbo. It can affect friendships and everything, the feeling that ultimately you're likely to have to leave. Of course, in theory you can go for a green card. In practice I heard tons of horror stories of people sponsored for green card for years, and pressure to work weekends etc, and then laid off when they nearly got it. When I quit the last job I did in US, HR offered to sponsor a green card and acted like I was nuts and turning down a great opportunity when I said "Thanks but no thanks". My team lead totally understood though. Even if that company can be 100% trusted that they aren't just trying to get me to stick around a year or two, who knows the future. If they made less money and had to do layoffs, you're back to square one with the green card. I guess to a lot of Indians and Chinese, USA is sufficiently better than back home in certain ways, they feel its worth sticking it out and trying to get a green card. But my gosh, the stress, pressure, uncertainty, possible wasted years, inability to fully put down roots. Nowadays I'm surprised most Indians and Chinese don't just go for Canada or Europe - seems a lot better systems. And the daft thing about all this... if these H1B workers were given more permanent status sooner, they'd contribute to US economy by buying houses, furthering their career, perhaps starting companies and hiring people. Sure some people ultimately do that starting out from H1B, but it really is difficult. But it was a great experience working in USA and I'm thankful for the privilege. :)
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90 days is the typical tourist visa duration; that seems more reasonable as a minimum duration to me.
Does it need to be 180 days? 364? I just don't know, but 60 seems too low.
90 days if you are let go during your first year of working in the country.
180 days if you have been working in the country for more than a year.
365 days if you have been working in the country for more than three years.
Why is that?
I'm not arguing whether this is good or bad, but that seems to be the intent.
These time limits are maxima, but are usually granted for people already living in Germany if their livelihood is secured and no other important aspects speak against it, such as a criminal record.
There is no time limit if a foreigner has an open-ended residence permit, which is possible after 5 years living in Germany (additional requirements apply).[2]
[1] § 20 AufenthG, see: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/aufenthg_2004/__20.html (in German)
[2] For mor infos see: https://www.bamf.de/EN/Themen/MigrationAufenthalt/Zuwanderer...
A static time limit, I feel is wrong for somethimg that is so fluctuating. Especially in current climate.
The H1-B program is designed* to provide labor force supplementation when no citizens/permanent residents can be found to fill a given position.
In a prolonged recession, I'd expect the median time to find a job to go up substantially, but also for the argument that "we can't find any permanent residents to fill this position" to be substantially weakened.
* - at least ostensibly.
When it's higher, this deliberately sets a higher bar for foreigners.
Deleted Comment
It's the only place I know of that doesn't have a clear, fixed-time based, permanent residency program, without quotas.
As an example, in all European countries that I know of, permanent residency works like this:
- you need to fulfill some prerequisites (usually a civics course/test, a language course/test, no criminal record, be employed or in education)
- then you need to be in the country for N years
- then you need to apply and you generally get the result in a few months, maximum
That's it. For the average person the "hard" requirements are actually: learn the local language up to the required level, spend N years.
It doesn't matter where you're from.
For instance, in France, currently some departments have a fixed number of interview slots per month, meaning people either have to hack their way into finding an available slot (e.g. using scripts to refresh the website in the middle of the night and hope to wake up when a slot becomes available; good luck if you don't know how to hack the system yourself), or they have to pay scalpers to get an appointment.
Then, you get assigned a pre-interview slot, which can take as long as a year of waiting. If you are lucky and everything works out, in the pre-interview, you will get assigned an actual interview slot. Which will be communicated by letter. And which can take yet another year of waiting.
Then, when the actual interview takes place, they give you no definitive answer for almost a year. You only know if it worked out at the end of the process. Overall, the "be in the country for N years" can thus become "be in the country for N+3 years, while not being sure that the next step will actually work or you will be sent back to the beginning"; also, hope that no politicians change the system in the meantime, since all of this is unspecified, so that they can change the rules at any moment and there's no one to complain to.
Of course, your mileage may vary; if you are rich enough to live in Paris, you will probably get better treatment.
So, the US is definitely bad, but the real situation in some Europeans countries is not as good as it looks like.
Deleted Comment
It isn't what could be described as malevolence, see those US green card policies that make the processing time for some cases take decades.
Deleted Comment
What is the differences between a person being of specific race or gender and a person born in a specific country? All of them are not a choice they made. If there is no safety reasons, i.e coming from a hostile country, why should a person born in India get treated completely different from someone born in the US? That is just racial discrimination to me.
I read it somewhere and still think it is true: if a native can't compete with a foreigner on their home soil, it just means the native lacks qualifications.
That would be nationalism or xenophobia, not racism.
Generally speaking it's an organizational issue, determining who can do what on a mass scale.
Do not get me wrong, this is hard for every single person and sucks in a general economic turndown where the issuing country is no longer in need of foreign specialists.
And there is absolutely a penalty. Every step of hiring is more difficult for a foreigner than a native, down to the interview step. The need for a sponsorship is a barrier for hiring since that is an extra cost. Approving and reporting a foreigner to the IRS is more involved. Requesting an SSN and doing background check on someone from another country is more expensive. Maintaining a foreign hire is risky due to H1B lottery, etc. And yet the companies are legally required to pay these H1Bs the same salary on top of all the extra costs. Those are definitely penalties for hiring a foreigners imposed so that a native hire is more desirable.
You can argue those are not meant to be punitive policies, but in effect they are acting as deterrents. And yet everyone is still hiring H1Bs. How many Indian and Chinese do you work with? That should say just how much the US economy depend on these high skill immigrants. Yet they get treated like disposable slaves.
It's not inhumane or something to have visa only for work and not for indefinite residency. If the work visa was defacto a permanent residency visa, no one would give it and no one would get it.
It is in fact inhumane. It is also "or something" if you mean "unethical" by that.
The purpose of the arrangement is to obtain easy to exploit workforce to undercut the one locally available. The fact that it is precarious and exploitative is not an accident, but the goal.
The whole welfare system is based on the requirement that it only applies to a selected few and adults today support the elderly so they can retire under the assumption that children will pay the adults for their retirement. If you open up the welfare system for 7 billion people that haven't contributed, it will all collapse.
Because its a UN convention.
https://www.unhcr.org/un-conventions-on-statelessness.html
But for the purpose of this discussion, I'm assuming a person already has a country they belong to which does give them the right to stay.
No other country owes you the right to stay. Singapore does not owe me the right to be there, let alone stay there. Each country is free to decide the rules for who it allows in and how long it allows them to stay and under what conditions.
It's not a "human right".
Honestly, I'm not sure what use you see from asking this question.
Is missing from the title imo. Since it said "rest of the world" .org, presumably a joke regarding USA-centricity, I was expecting it was about something other than the USA. Joke's on me!
Another thing, I've noticed everyone on an H1B already knows the responsibilities of holding this temporary visa. This type of article is nothing but complaining without providing a solution. Yes it sucks, but naivety to your responsibilities as a visa holder and to something that can happen to you is immature. And also risks putting other immigrants and visa holders in a bad light.
I've seen more and more of these types of writing regarding the H1B, visas, and the immigration system in light of the layoffs but I feel they are doing more for negativity than any positivity at all. If this could assist in anyway in moving towards seeing what the actual problem is in the system then ok but it didn't read at all like that tbh.
The government can do something to catch and filter the companies but I think they are partly playing a role in their existence and continued business. When you talk about great revenue sources, do you mean for the gov? If so, probably both directly and indirectly. Probably part diplomacy sprinkled in
https://careers.walmart.com/results?q=software&page=1&sort=r...