redgrapes

Hi,

Your priority date is not current yet though, is it?

Yes it has to be legit. The original poster's situation seems to be legit. It doesn't seem like a warehousing operation. It's not a matter of if we find it hard for a certain company to qualify. It's based on whatever the rules are, which we both do not have concrete knowledge on. This is why I suggested a good immigration attorney.

Talk to a good immigration attorney based in the US. I don't believe the previous poster is right. This specific employment forum seems to have a lot of misinformation. Try other ones like trackitt.com for better information. There are lots of IT people on those boards that are not employees of the companies they perform services for. They typically work for an IT consulting firm, who files for their H-1.

My husband lost his SSN a few months back. He got it when he was on F1 years ago. Well he was on H4 and tried to get a new card but they said he wasn't eligible for one. So even if you have a SSN, you can't get a card if you're on H4. Luckily he just got his H1 approved anyway, so he'll be able to get the card now.

Personally, I think it's better if everything is brought up in the beginning. My 2 employers have been firms that are quite familiar with the immigration process so it wasn't a big deal. I didn't want to waste my time and needed them to file for my H1 so it was something I needed to know from the start.

My husband just went through the process and let HR know that he did need to be sponsored (he didn't have the OPT option anyway so there was no way to work without an H1 so any employer would have needed to file for him from the start). A number of employers were not willing to do this but he eventually got an offer with a reputable employer that actually brought up the H1 issue before he did and they sped up the interview process because they wanted to make sure that if they decided to hire him there will still be H1s available left (they just filed for his H1 a couple of weeks ago).

It is true that not all employers that are willing to file for H1 visas are willing to sponsor for a green card. There is no "eligibility" perse, the employer just has to be willing to do it. There is no way to really guarantee that an employer willing to sponsor H1 would be willing to do the same for the green card.

There seems to be a lot of misinformation in this thread.

In my opinion, you should just go ahead and apply for OPT before you graduate, so at least you have it. It doesn't stop you from seeking an employer that would file for an H1 for you. If you find one that is willing to file an H1 for you, you can still go ahead and do that even if you have the OPT. So I'm not sure why you wouldn't get the OPT to begin with. I started my previous job with an OPT (I knew the employer was going to do the H1 though) and the employer filed my H1. The up side was I didn't have to wait for my H1 to go through to start working.

Also, an employer doesn't have to wait for 5 years before filing for your green card, like a previous poster mentioned. There is no wait time. They can file for the green card at any point. How long it takes for the green card process to be completed depends on a variety of factors, including the preference category (E1, E2, E3), your priority date, retrogression, etc. Even if you have a masters, it doesn't mean your preference cateogry will be E2. The position (job you will be performing) has to require a master's degree or bachelor's + 5 year's experience for you to qualify for E2.