Item — HN Reader

> It looks like the next Andrej Karpathy (born in Czechoslovakia, educated in Canada) will be taking their talents somewhere besides the US in the future.

Karpathy, with a Stanford PhD, would not have received or needed an H-1B.

This, like the new $100K fee, is about shutting down the Indian body shops that consume the vast majority of "tech" H-1Bs.

1 comments

There's so many Americans who have this intuition you're expressing, that there must be some good immigration system for responsible people who obviously ought to be allowed to stay in the country. The reason there isn't is that immigration reform deals have been sabotaged for decades by the people who are feeding you this disinformation. To emphasize, the person who told you this information knew it was false, lied to you about it in order to serve their political goals, and you must not trust anything they tell you going forwards.

The actual law, dictated by the F-1 visa program allowing foreign studies, is that a foreign Stanford PhD must permanently depart the United States within 60 days after graduation. There's a one-time extension available under the OPT program, where they can stay up to one additional year so long as they maintain employment complementary to their education for at least 20 hours a week. But after that year they must either obtain an H-1B or leave.

Thank you so much for this factual reply debunking the GP's (very common) misconception.

Via popular media, there's a narrative that "it's easy to come here legally". Having done that myself, I know that it's not straightforward -- even if all of your paperwork + travel history is in order.

It's not easy for an individual to come to the US because it is such a popular thing to do. From the perspective of Americans, it appears that large numbers of regular people are accomplishing it (because they are - they're just numerically small compared to all the world's people who want to accomplish it).

>you must not trust anything they tell you going forwards

I respect the rest of your comment and have no reason to disbelieve you factually. But this comes off as propaganda. It's a hateful assumption about a person and a conversation you have no idea of. You shouldn't say this to strangers if you're trying to convince them of something.

I'm quite confident, based on my interactions with both strangers and non-strangers in the past, that the original commenter got their information from anti-immigrant propagandists. It does me no good to convince them of something if they're just going to read another paper or tune into the next podcast episode and get more false reasons why immigration should be restricted.

Meanwhile, I didn't ever qualify for H1B because I don't have a degree, but getting a kennismigrant visa to the twelve starts of harmony jurisdiction was basically "find a place that can pay you above 4k month and file one form with the government".

>The actual law, dictated by the F-1 visa program allowing foreign studies, is that a foreign Stanford PhD must permanently depart the United States within 60 days after graduation. There's a one-time extension available under the OPT program, where they can stay up to one additional year so long as they maintain employment complementary to their education for at least 20 hours a week. But after that year they must either obtain an H-1B or leave.

Strange how you accuse me of intentionally lying, yet write the above. I will be more kind than you, and assume that you are unaware of (for example) the EB-2 visa which someone like Karpathy would certainly qualify for immediately. All a H-1B allows, from the "dual intent" perspective, is to temporarily extend the time one can stay in the US while looking for a job that will sponsor for another visa type (typically EB-2); it by itself *does not automatically lead to a green card or US citizenship*.

EDIT: I somehow overlooked another, ahem, inaccuracy in your riposte. Someone like Karpathy would easily have qualified for the 24-month STEM OPT extension to the base OPT year.

Bottom line: A Stanford PhD (not necessarily in a STEM field) who wants to stay in the US has very good odds of being able to do so.

EB-2 application timelines are measured in years. If you qualify for a national interest waiver and are not from China or India, it's plausible that you can get a green card before the STEM OPT extension runs out. If any of the three conditions (STEM; national interest waiver; not from China or India) fails, OPT doesn't give you enough time to get a green card.

And after the STEM extension, most have to go through the H1B process to stay. As for EB2, it has quotas as well right, which pushes many into H1B?