Visa Info | Live & Work in America

The H-1B visa is possibly the most controversial visa in the entire US Immigration system and certainly receives the most press coverage. We have tried to help all of you via our posts and answering your comments and emails by trying to provide resources so you can find a employer sponsor and get your H-1B visa.

We have looked at the past year’s Top 100 H-1B visa employers as well as more basic topics like like creating the best US resume format and preparing for US H-1B Job Interviews.

We will look at another avenue to consider to getting your H-1B visa which of tens of thousands purse each year to great success making it the most common and thus pre-cursor to get a H-1B visa.

There are actually two ways we will eventually discuss as you see below but for now we will look at the F-1 visa route

via F-1 visa
via J-1 visa

The F-1 Visa:
This visa is a full time student visa and used mostly by International students from all over the world to study at US college and universities for their undergraduate, masters/graduate and/or PHD programs. I will cover more on the F-1 visa in future posts including all its benefits and pitfalls, requirements as well as how to apply, etc.

It is very popular and historically has been the main way people from all over the world have been able to transfer from student to the H-1B visa. So in essence it is already used extensively as a stepping stone for Internationals to become full working professionals in the United States.

Of course this is not a cheap option, as outside of outstanding students and those in many PHD programs, chances are you will have to pay for your education in full. As you may be aware, college tuition fees in the US are not cheap.

Now it is very difficult for International students to get loans in the US, however Sallie Mae does have a program called Tuition Pay allowing to break up payments evenly over the months of a semester.

Well short of having a source of funds to be able to attend one of the prestigious universities in the US like the Ivy League Group including Harvard or Yale, you can attend state universities where the tuition is much lower (although still probably expensive by global standards).

The tuition at state universities is subsidized by the Government and is even lower for residents of that state (normally you have to live in a state for 1 year to qualify for this so after a year of study your fees may even go down depending on the regulations of that state and university regarding foreign students).

The fees are generally charged by the amount of credits each subjects gives you and of course you need a certain amount. Without going into too much detail about this in this post, you are looking at up to $5,000 per semester for undergraduates but this depends on a large amount of factors and could vary. Here is a link from Sallie Mae to help you estimate costs. Of course Masters programs can be more but is generally only half the length of a undergraduate degree (2 years vs. 4 years)

After all that what the F-1 visa does give you is the ability to do 4 things which greatly enhance your chances of finding an employer to sponsor your H-1B visa easily.

CPT – Curricullum Practical Training which allows you to work for credits to your degree (don’t do more than 12 months as it makes you ineligible for OPT)
OPT – Occupational Practical Training which is 1 year for undergraduates and now possibly up to 2 years for Masters or Higher Degree Holders to work at a US company. This is usually done by a student following graduation
Network via University, Alumni and Above Work Training Programs – The contacts you meet will be invaluable probably for the rest of your life and you will have so much help, support and advantage compared to the average E3 visa hopeful
Time – This may be the most important advantage as say you do a 4 year degree in the US or even transfer here for a part of your degree, you have so much time to do practical things like apply for jobs, build resumes and attend job interviews.

This is the almost the best option in your quest to obtain your H1B visa as it is the path most often used as a foreigner already has established contacts in the US and time to navigate the Immigration system and US job market within the US.

As with most things that crossover with the law, immigration becomes complex to comprehend due to all the legal technicalities, complex wording, acronyms and lawyer jargon used. So therefore the most complex immigration system in the world of the US and one of its most recent visas, the E3 visa, is a nightmare for most people to navigate through.

So essentially this post is to explain a few of the terms you are bound to hear in relation to the E3 visa as you try and find a way to find an employer to sponsor your E3 visa to begin your life living and working in the US.

TERMS:

E3 visa: Without going in to the whole detail of the E3 visa as you can read about it in my blog post about E3, it was a visa that came into being inT 2005 after the AUSFTA (Australia and United States Free Trade Agreement) negotiated between the Howard Government in Australia and the Bush Administration in the US. It is not actually a part of AUSFTA but came subsequent to it as a direct result of the agreement. It is essentially a visa that allows Australian citizens (and their spouses who don’t have to be citizens of Australia) to work in the US for 2 year rolling periods mainly in professional roles.

Non-Immigrant: This is the status the US puts on all legal immigrants who come to the US in a working, student, etc. capacity who don’t have a green card (i.e. US permanent residency). Therefore if you are on a E3 visa or H1B visa working in the US then you are classified as a non-immigrant.

Dual Intent: This is a condition/benefit of non-immigrant visas in the US that allows a person to pursue more permanent status in the United States (i.e. green card) while on their current non-immigrant visa. The H1B visa is a dual intent visa but the E3 visa does NOT have that benefit. Some visas prohibit the application of permanent residency while on that visa status like the J1 visa.

Now to complicate matters further even though the E3 visa is not Dual Intent, it does allow for application for a Green Card as this regulation states below;

“An application for initial admission, change of status or extension of stay in E-3 classification, however, may not be denied solely on the basis of an approved request for permanent labor certification or a filed or approved immigrant visa preference petition.”

Regardless of the above though you still must prove your ties and your “residence abroad” and your intention to leave the United States at the end of your visa period.

Specialty Occupation: This is a term for the E3 visa (and other visas like H1B) that confuses a lot of people as the nature of the wording around what it is makes it sound highly technical and thus it becomes vague as to who it may apply to;

A theoretical and practical application of a body of specialized knowledge; and
The attainment of a bachelor’s or higher degree in the specific specialty (or its equivalent) as a minimum for entry into the occupation in the United States.

Essentially it works like this. The position you are being sponsored for must have a bachelors degree as a minimum requirement for the role even if you don’t hold such a degree. (you can have enough years work experience in that particular field of knowledge to compensate for you lack of degree). This is the reality of a specialty occupation for the E3 visa.

USCIS: Is the United States Customs and Immigration Service which evolved out of the old INS (Immigration and Naturaliztion Service) when the US created the DHS (Department of Homeland Security). Essentially the USCIS is responsible for all things immigration in the US all the way to citizenship, although for the E3 visa the only authorization you need is from the DOL (Department of Labor) which is unlike the H-1B visa which needs the application to also be approved by the USCIS.

I hope this helps clear up some of the terms in the US Immigration system in relation to the E-3 visa 🙂

Live & Work in America

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