« What to do if my GC expires and I’m not in the U.S.? | Home | What to think about if you want to hire someone who has an H-1B »
H-1B visa holders not let in the U.S. – How to avoid this problem
By Jim Nolan | February 17, 2010
Recently some unfortunate H-1B visa holders were not allowed into the U.S. at Newark Airport. When immigration attorneys asked what happened we learned that Immigration has started a new policy at Newark that people with H-1B and L-1 visa will be randomly stopped and questioned about their job and employers. If the immigration officer isn’t satisfied with the answers they will ask the poor person to either voluntarily return home without coming into the U.S. or, force the person to return to his or her home country. We don’t know if Immigration will do this at other airports, but we have to assume it will in the future.
The people who appear to be most at risk are people working in the computer industry who work at client’s office, not the office of the company who sponsored them for a visa. Immigration has been closely watching this industry to make sure that the people with the visas are really working for their sponsors and not being “farmed out” by recruiting firms.
Also at risk are H-1B and L-1A visa holders who are owners of the company who sponsor them.
In both situations Immigration is concerned that the visa holder is not really employed by his or her sponsor. In the computer industry, Immigration believes that the company whose office the visa holder is working at is the real employer and should file for the visa directly, not the sponsoring company. For self-employed people, Immigration is concerned that they are not really employees because the owners won’t fire themselves.
Any visa holder should be sure they have a copy of the forms and support letter sent to Immigration to get their visa with them when they travel and know what the forms and support letter say about the following:
- Their title and duties on the job;
- Their salary;
- Where they will do their work and, if not at the sponsor, why and how the sponsor is reviewing and controlling their work;
- For computer industry people they should understand and be able to explain how their sponsor will evaluate their work and tell them what they should be doing on the job. If they have any recent evaluations by their sponsoring company they should bring them. The client should not be evaluating the visa holder or controlling his or her work duties.
- For self-employed people the situation is more difficult. They can’t lie about the ownership of the company and, if the Immigration officer clearly is not going to let him or her come into the U.S., they should agree to voluntarily return home without coming into the U.S. and work on getting a new visa back in their home country.
We’ll keep you updated on this serious development.
Topics: Business work visas, H-1B | 3 Comments »
Japanese
German
March 19th, 2010 at 6:16 am
Nice post and this fill someone in on helped me alot in my college assignement. Thank you on your information.
March 19th, 2010 at 8:32 pm
i genuinely adore your own posting way, very interesting.
don’t give up and keep penning considering the fact that it just that is worth to look through it.
looking forward to looked over a whole lot more of your web content, stunning day
April 3rd, 2010 at 10:25 pm
?? ???? ? ???? ??????….
Immigration at Newark Airport and possibly others has a new policy to randomly stop people with H-1B and L-1 visas for questioning…..