Hacker News Reader

Comment by raju | Hacker News Reader

I am on an immigrant, and to answer your question, I don't think there is an easy way to accomplish this. Your best, and most legit option is to wait out for the green card.

There might be a way to spin off a company with a citizen, but even then, to work with them on a H1-B visa, the company needs to show some revenue so that as to convince the INS that it may potential need additional employees, especially immigrants.

Please take what I say with a grain of salt. I looked some into this, and from what I understood, this is the only safe route. Good luck, and I will be interested in knowing if you find something that disagrees with me...:D

View on HN

You can't be employed by the company you own. And you can't share the ownership to avoid this restriction. As far as I know, they don't care are you 1% or 100% owner. So, this means neither H1B or EBGC are possible. And yes, among with solid revenue stream, ability to prove that you're not "one man shop", and that you're not trying to make your business of solving other's immigration problems, the company also needs to be able to pay competitive salary within the market range. So, if you're getting H1B for Software Developer, I'm pretty concerned that you'll ever get approved if your company is stating your salary is less then 65K annually (in CA). And, as far as I know, the companies and visa applicants are getting audited very often to assure that they keep the salaries not lower then stated.

My experience is the thing about ownership isn't true, and I can think of plenty of people who are counter-examples. Me (own shares in digg.com), Daniel Burka (digg, pownce), Tara Hunt (Citizen Agency). All three in the US on TN visas.

You're saying about TN status (sometimes referred as TN visa). I was saying about EBGC and H1. Only Canadians and Mexicans can use TN.

Yeah, my bad. I mixed up comments. Or maybe I mixed up visas. Which is about the easiest thing in the world.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com