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Comment by bijowo1676 | Hacker News Reader

not true, you can only "dangle" the PERM which gives you an I-140 petition. PERM is usually approved within 12-24 months. That's it. You cant dangle anything and cant force a bona fide employee to be a "subservient slave labor" like some people would imagine this process.

Once the I-140 petition is approved (14 days), and I-485 is pending for 180+ days, and employee can easily leave to another employer, it only takes them to file couple forms like transfer of H1B and transfer of I-140.

So the most you can keep the employee on a leash is ~2-3 years which happens to be median tenure at tech.

the immigration discourse is filled with false information, and for this reason I prefer only immigration attorneys discuss the matter as they are the most qualified of all the quirks and nuances of the US immigration law.

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Employers can and do require a certain length of employment before initiating sponsorship.

Say that’s 12 months. If their I-40 is approved at 30 months, the employer can withdraw it for 180 days and the approval will be revoked.

So we’re talking 36 months until changing employers doesn’t set you back.

That is longer than the median FAANG tenure. That means you have an employee whose floor tenure is longer than the median.

And even then if at anytime the employee is fired (until they get their green card, which can take many many years), they have 60 days to find a new employer or leave the country.

silicon valley starts PERM from day1, lower tier firms require like couple years.

that's still absolutely normal regular tenure. You work for couple years, show your performance and convince your manager to initiate the perm process.

I have never ever seen anything even close to resembling the "servitude" conditions where tech workers are kept at one company against their will. Nobody is revoking your I-140, because you just transfer it when you change jobs.

re 60 days I agree, this is brutal and should be abolished. I believe H1B workers should be able to remain until the duration of their I-94 even without the job, to seek the new employment in case of job termination

I don’t think I ever referred to anything resembling “servitude”.

Employers have much more leverage over H1B workers in the first 2-4 years than they do over other workers, and then they still retain more leverage after that.

This lowers wages. If we’re going to have this program, we need to remove any additional leverage employers have over employees from day 1.

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