The US admits about 200,000 international students from India every year. 4 years later, they graduate into a free-for-all fight for green cards. Fewer than 3% will stay long term. The student visa-to-green-card pipeline is broken, and it hurts everyone. Quick math:

If the wage is high enough, this totally makes sense. If an employer is going to go through the hassle of visa/work permit sponsorship for high-paying jobs, there aren’t tons of highly skilled people available, and the whole exercise is a waste of time. PERM should do the same

Stopping 7 (very large) companies from filing PERM immigration cases isn’t really a fix - and could just lead to Balkanization of the tech companies and consultancies, making enforcement in the future harder to track. Any of those firms can just start many new, smaller entities to hire people out of and sponsor applications.

Two companies have come to us in the last 3 days saying they want to leave their “AI-Native” law firm because they are …. Too slow. I couldn’t tell you how an AI-native immigration firm is supposed to work, but I can tell you that I haven’t seen any AI that handles immigration questions accurately, any AI systems that reliably draft advisory opinion letters of good quality, or any that make clients feel comfortable and secure. I CAN tell you that I’ve seen lots of “AI firms” that are a fancy UI papering over a silent bunch of lawyers and paralegals, who are frustrated that they can’t just talk to their clients to get the right answers and move cases.

There are two concepts I talk about everyday with employers, founders, visa-holders, and people about to apply for visas: 1. Eliminate surface area for scrutiny. 2. Progress to the most stable visa categories or a green card as fast as you can. What is "surface area"? Surface area is any of the stuff related to your employment or visa that is in a "gray area,” nonstandard, or not expected by USCIS. That includes things like: - paying yourself a lower salary than what was in your initial visa application - paying a portion of that to another country - changing the hours that you are working - going on garden leave - changing your work location - calling yourself something on X and LinkedIn other than what your approved job title is - doing anything other than a 40-hour work week with biweekly payments to a U.S. bank account You've added surface area if you are doing things outside of your original job description. If you called yourself a founder and chief product officer but you are no longer building product and spend all of your time fundraising, hiring, and doing CEO-type roles, you should probably be updating your file with USCIS. Founders: The government doesn't share your view of what a "founder" does, so just because you said your role is “founder and CTO” …. doesn't mean that you have the ability to work laterally on anything that the business needs. Reducing surface area means not traveling in and out of the country frequently if you don't need to. Every border entry is another chance for the government to scrutinize what you're doing and whether or not you have been maintaining your visa properly. If you're googling or asking friends or taking advice from Reddit on what you can do on a visa, you're likely adding to the surface area for scrutiny, with whatever actions you decide you can take afterwards. A 10-minute check-in with an attorney would save a lot of people from visa rejections, getting banned at the border, and other issues. What does “progressing to the next stable visa mean?" We can look at the government's actions over the last 2 to 3 years and see: - immigration bans on 30+ countries - 100k H-1B fees - an increase in travel bans, deportations, and detentions - bans on student visas... and see that things are generally getting harder, not easier, for people on visas and green cards. Approval rates are dropping - you may be able to qualify for visas now that will become significantly harder in the future. Visa programs change in two ways: via policy (TN visas for engineers now require Engineering degrees, $100k filing fees, additional processing for people of X country) or they can change by adjudicators creating a new standard for approvability. The latter doesn’t generate headlines and you won’t be given advanced notice. In light of all that, people should be moving to categories that have less scrutiny and more stable situations ASAp This means getting to a visa category that has either longer durations, less government scrutiny, more ability for renewals, or an easier green card pathway as soon as possible. It may be wise to move: - onto an H-1B even when you have STEM OPT available for a few years - from a newly granted J-1 to an O-1 ASAP - to an NIW or PERM (or whatever I-140) application as soon as you can “to secure your spot in line” - off an E-2 towards an O-1 for future career flexibility

Had a brutal call with a founder this morning. He chatgpt’d the building of his O-1 visa, and got approved. Took legal advice from Reddit and hacker news. He might not be allowed in the US again. “I need some advice... and I need to review my visa. That should be easy right?” “Yes - super high certainty as long as you’ve been working in that same role and getting paid.” “Okay, I'm still working for does it matter how I get paid?” “Like…. What account? Or who pays you? ” “So like… I thought a renewal would be easy too but I got an RFE asking to see paychecks?” “So show your paychecks? That's typically how to prove you've been maintaining your O-1 status.” “Well, I saw founders on Reddit and in founder groups say that you can defer salary on an O-1 visa and pay yourself equity instead of salary.” “Please tell me you didn’t…” “I wrote a board resolution for my company to defer salary until we hit our fundraise, because we can’t afford payroll.” “So you’ve never paid yourself a paycheck for three years?” “Well, two and a half years, but yeah. Is this going to be a problem? There’s a board resolution that says I'm getting accelerated equity and going to get a bonus when…” “The government doesn’t give a fuck about your board resolution - in their eyes... you’ve probably been out of compliance with your visa for two and a half years.” "Really? Oh jeez. I did a lot of research and lots of people said..." "Look, the government doesn't lay out all the exact steps you need to take to be compliant. They don't say 'you must be paid on the 1st and 15th of every month.' Some people will take that to mean that they can pay themselves whenever it's convenient, or defer payments for months at a time. But with this administration, doing anything other than what you told the government you will be doing - the title and job duties you hold, the location of your work, the salary your company set forth - is surface area that can be scrutinized. When you go for the renewal, a border crossing, apply for a green card... all this stuff can be looked at and they could decide that you weren't following what you submitted in the visa petition. And a board resolution that you wrote for your company isn't likely to persuade them that you maintained your visa status properly." "So I'm fucked?"

Theres a proposal to change the EB-2 green card process (PERM). Here’s what I’m expecting the US to change: - no need to advertise jobs in obscure newspapers or late night radio ads, LinkedIn accepted - prevailing wage determination is two expert letters from people in industry to determine what wage should be - processing time cut to 2 months, reviewed with AI - $109,300 optional fee to “reduce inefficiency” and skip all paperwork/reviews - people without spouses can give one friend a green card (fight the male loneliness epidemic, fill more jobs) - IT Analyst designated as a job of national importance, fast-tracked green cards These rumored changes would do a lot to speed up highly talented people getting green cards for themselves and their families, and would likely quiet many critics of the current system

I’ve never really shared much about the Legalpad acquisition or my time at Deel, but I can share this: One of the few things I actually got done at Deel was building out the refund policy for US visas/immigration. Deel was striving for 60%+ margins on every product and service. The core refund idea I built on was if a customer was leaving us because their circumstances changed: - refund all unused government fees - then evaluate how much work was actually done (as a % of completion) - refund that % of the service fee - if work hadn’t started, some minimum percentage wouldn’t be refunded (10% or so??) just to cover transaction fees and overhead If we fucked up, refund everything. Missed a key deadline - full refund. (Retention and goodwill more important than margin, IMO) Did 50% of the work on an H-1B and the employee found a new job? The company would get something like $7500 back on a $10-11k purchase The main goal was to have clear refund policies in agreements so that refunds weren’t requiring long reviews, and trust wasn’t lost with customers - Deel could show the work that was done and be transparent on the math with the refund I argued that if the service fee had the 60% margins baked in, pro-rating the work and refund would keep those margins intact. From what deel customers are saying, it sounds like this all may have been nuked after I left. My experience at Deel, and Legalpad before that, has largely influenced how I’m building Compass Visas: - small team, small-ish client base - not VC-backed / growth at all costs - no outsourcing to other firms - no AI being used to draft petitions - experienced staff on every case - no team inbox / black box where questions disappear to - profitable but not software margins

US immigration is caught up in: - DHS trying to end the 60 day grace period - “hire the best available” vs “hire American” Everybody missing that there’s a real talent war happening. Forget visa fraud, consultants, body shops etc - the stuff everybody wants to see ended - and you can see that there is a real need for highly skilled tech employees in the US. This job-centric viewpoint ignores the needs of the companies and industries hiring people globally. OpenAI isn’t hiring H-1Bs because they are cheap. They are paying 3x the average US household income to get talent that keeps them (and the US) ahead. No US employer pays $300k+ if they could find cheaper employees that are capable of the same work.

This is why YC “membership” often doesn’t work for O-1 visas. USCIS wants to see people being selected - based on their work - to a notable group for people in a unified field. When you have hundreds of people, many under 25, with no professional experience (recent grads or never had a “real job” before) it’s hard to demonstrate that this person is at the top of their field. A quick look at their resume would make you think they haven’t really started their career yet. There’s also the issue of “what profession is this?” and it’s hard to lump founders, engineers, designers, product managers, college dropouts into one profession that YC is supposedly selecting professionals from. YC is a great program, but USCIS has changed what they will accept as: - immigration administration changed - YC batch sizes grew - accepted founders have become less accomplished USCIS sees a ton of O-1 applications and (like YC) is good at pattern recognition. Getting into YC used to be a “guaranteed O-1 visa” and founders that still believe that, (or are told that by VC-backed immigration teams that need to hit sales numbers) are often getting surprised when cases are denied, and subsequent applications become significantly harder.

Superhuman had the biggest head start on email. In 2018/2019 there was a waitlist to get personally onboarded and taught how to use email. People waited weeks and would brag about getting access. 7 years later, they completely missed the boat on integrating AI. They should be able to draft emails that sound like me - after all, they have tens of thousands of emails to reference. IMO, the Grammarly acquisition is pairing two companies that missed a window where they had leverage (users, data, funding) to build a significant product. Leading up to the acquisition, Superhuman was valued at $800m+ on (what I’ve heard) is like <$3m ARR. The product stayed the same for years and the user base never really grew? Or it churned like crazy? Not sure what to make of the redesign, but it feels like Superhuman is moving to a suite/ OS of work tools, when the remaining users…. just want it to be good at email. Not calendars, not a personal assistant, just good at sending emails quickly. Been trying Slashy over the last month. It sends emails that actually sound like me. Guess I’m switching.

Wait until the anons find out that Australians have their own H-1B visa (the E-3), and they can just apply for it any time without a lottery. Oh, they’re gonna be so mad with all those Strayan blokes taking our bloody jobbos.

Is there a way to map X's anon accounts and activities? The timeline goes crazy with H-1B and immi chatter, and the anons come crawling out. It's like 30% real people trying to have real conversations, 70% anons yapping bout "invasions" and race traitors and jeets. All bots?

Area man solves the national debt by pitching products that already exist and nobody wants. Trump card ($1m) = 1 sale $100k H-1B = 85 sold We are 999,915 H-1Bs and 499,999 citizenships to the goal.

has anyone solved 2FA for bots? I'm spending waaay too much time authenticating google, looking at codes in text messages, hitting buttons in youtube, opening google auth. I'm just a fleshy authbot for my ai stuff at this point.

Calling people to tell them their visa is approved is one of my favorite things. When they don’t answer…

Corgi is going to lure a generation of tech bros to random events and accidentally teach them how to talk to women. We should thank them for their service.

Just lost a client to a “competitor” that is promising to get someone working on an H-1B (including a new certified LCA) by Monday morning. It’s Thursday. They need a gov cert’d LCA before they file. That takes ~7 biz days. I told them this isn’t possible. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Biggest scam I’ve seen this week: The $30,475 O-1 Visa Absolutely leeching on immigrants trying to build a life and career in the US Super expensive O-1 visa + $14,500 in agent fees to **do nothing** over 3 years. Will cost even more if any changes needed to add/remove work.