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:
People on H-1B visas getting laid off have 60 days to leave the US.
Many have begun an 11 year long green card process but are 5, 10 years away from getting it.
Employer lays them off, and it’s all gone. 🙅🏼
Pack your bags.
There’s a solution nobody is talking about:
On an H-1B and want to build a startup? 🛠️
With a full time job, your visa only lets you work for one employer. 🤦♀️
Your options seem limited.
How to become a CEO without jeopardizing your H-1B, dropping your salary, or leaving the country.
I've helped 20+ people do this:
A Master's/ PhD does improve odds in the H-1B lottery, but even IF an Indian student goes through undergrad, and/or Master's and/or PhD here, there's no endgame.
The current wait for an EB-2 visa, the green card for highly skilled/ advanced degree holders, is about 100 years.
About HALF of graduating Master's and PhD students are international students, (compared to ~5% of undergrad students.)
One could argue the immigration system is so bad it forces 10x as many international students into academia.
More schooling only delays the problem...
Those students will graduate in 4 years, and most will enter the job market in the US. They have 1-3 years to get a work visa to be able to stay longer.
The H-1B visa is the most common option. In the last lottery (yes, its dumb 🙄) only ~13% of applicants were accepted.
There's no future for the vast majority of Indian EB2 holders unless policy changes. You could work here 20+ years but not be able to set down roots or retire here.
It's a broken system where everyone loses.
Working professionals forced to return home or migrate elsewhere.
As it stands, the majority of international students won't be able to work in the US beyond three years of graduating. Many will return home, while many will opt to go back to school, so they don't need to give up their friends, professional network, personal relationships, etc.
How many of those 200k students entering the US are going to live until they are 125?
Only other real options:
1. Compete with millions of other Indian people for the roughly 7,000 EB-1 visas that are available to them each year.
2. Marry American
3. Go home
Does the average American benefit from a shortage of engineers and doctors? 🤔
The universities might be the only ones that benefit from this system:
- International tuition fees
- Special cap-exempt work visas for immigrants that work with universities,
Employers that can't keep highly educated employees long term.
American students lose spots in the top schools (Ivy League schools accept 3x as many international students as the average university), to grads that will take their skills abroad.
-Students re-entering academia (paying more tuition) to buy themselves more time
It's a completely broken system that needs to be addressed. Changes to the H-1B lottery system, and per-country visa caps are doing the most damage.
200k Indian students enter, ~3% get to stay.
Roughly 1,000 new Indian followers in the last three days after I tweeted about H-1Bs. 😍
Just so everyone is clear:
I will do visa consultations for your mother’s biryani and/or vindaloo recipes.
DMs open.
Shukriya❤️
On a sort of related note, I'm building a tool to help people with the EB-1 arms race. You can track progress, collect documents, and have a team sourcing media/ press/ other opportunities for you.
Retweet the first message or reply with 📗 emoji and I'll DM you for early access
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:
The new H-1B rules will make it harder (not easier) for startup founders to work under H-1Bs:
H-1B holders can now (explicitly) own a majority of the company. That’s great, but…
Tightening restrictions on job duties and specialty occupations will make it harder for founders
In the last week, I met with 3 Indian founders looking to get EB-1 green cards.
One of them about to take their company public.
One running a profitable company doing $15m+ in revenue.
One with 2 previous exits.
None of them thought they were qualified for a US green card.
I don’t understand this line of thinking. The H-1B system is flawed, but not in the ways portrayed here;
- the unemployment rate is pretty much the lowest it has been in 20 years, there’s no shortage of jobs for skilled/educated people
- the “cheap labor” comes with a
There’s already a “smartest visa” program that has no quotas/caps — the O-1 visa program.
The great lie here by Silicon Valley types like
@garrytan
is to deceptively claim that H-1B visa is about “high-skilled” immigration. It’s really about cheap labor.
If you're a founder/exec/manager with Indian employees on visas, chat with them about their long term plans and "EB-1".
With recent immigration changes, helping them get some professional recognition or press can be relatively trivial for you, but 100% life-changing for them.
Rare Deedy post I (slightly) disagree with. If you didn’t get picked in the H-1B lottery, here’s what you should consider next, and why to avoid Day1 CPT.
The O-1 has no yearly cap or lottery process, and most people that *really* want to qualify for the visa can spend about 90
The H-1B lottery results just came out yesterday.
The US laws today think the best way to decide which high skilled talent they want to keep in the country is luck.
If you didn't get picked in the H-1B lottery, please look up "Day 1 CPT" or explore an O-1!
May luck be with you.
Every week there’s another startup “solving immigration.” It’s usually an engineer or smart person that got a visa or green card, had a shitty experience, and think they could do better.
They build for about 3 months and then move on to something else.
Why?
Visa approvals are
*Most* US work visas have the same pitfalls:
Lose your job, lose your visa. Leave in 60 days. Bye 👋
Almost all people on visas are W2 employees and their visas are controlled by a corporate HR team :(
Founders often make the same mistakes, even with their own company.
If
There’s huge demand for a biz to qualify people for EB-1 visas. 💰
$10k/yr to get press mentions and interviews, publish, apply to memberships, awards, etc.
Indian big tech employee could give 3% of their salary or wait 11 years for a green card. No brainer.
More thoughts:
Help! Need 5-10 people to beta test a screening tool for O-1 and EB-1 visas.
It gives a pretty good idea of who is/isn’t qualified for visas. Takes 3 minutes to complete. Will do a call / visa consultation with testers to verify accuracy afterwards.
Comment or DM for link❤️
Every now and then I get a client like Abril: extremely accomplished, ambitious, and with a whole career ahead of her to build on.
Super excited to see where her journey in the US will go, and what she does with
@lalentco
😁
You can have stability, and not have your life upended by an employer’s whims or a declining economy or a goddamn pandemic.
The key:
Get another visa that YOU control.
I’ve helped hundreds of people get this visa, (I’m on it too 🇨🇦➡️🇺🇸) so trust me, I get it…
🚩 New VC red flag just dropped 🚩
Casual email exchange, we go back and forth a few times on some other topic.
They ask if/when we would raise VC.
“Maybe, if we hit [milestone].”
“Got it.”
WITH COMPETITOR ON CC.
No explanation, not their portfolio company.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
On July 4th, 400+ brilliant ppl signed up to start on an O-1 visa or have a consult. 🇺🇸
overloaded and traveling rn, will respond this week
i promise you'll get an email, whatsapp, cal link, or webinar invite to learn more about us visas options
have a great weekend! ❤️
Hey immigrant friends:
Writing a course about getting O-1 Visas to start new businesses in the US.
For founders, bootstrappers, side hustles, consultants, (and those who lost H-1B)
Releases this month.
What questions should I answer??
So far I have:
@horizonspeaks
You might be right. Strange wording on the stat I read, using “year over year” and “X students chose to study in America”
Either way, it’s a lot, it’s growing, and the system isn’t working.
People will say this path is impossible.
It’s simple.
An O-1 visa through an agent.👨💼👈
I’ll walk through the whole process here, but lemme dispel some bullshit first so people keep reading:
❌ You don’t need a PhD
❌ Or patents
❌ You sure AF don’t need 100 citations
International students, F-1s, recent grads: 👩🎓
85,000 people will win the H-1B lottery in 5 weeks!
About 500k people will apply.
Those odds suck.
There are things your school and employer probably haven't told you.
Here's how you can win, but you need to hurry:
This is the number one reason to get an O-1 Visa through an Agent Petitioner.
Applying to jobs without ticking this box, and being able to avoid the 60-day rule in a layoff, is the next best thing to having a green card.
I’m on a mission to help 100 founders get visas and start new companies this year.
I’ve helped founders that put satellites into space. Teams that can detect cancer with a cell phone. Companies folding proteins, assembling robots, and democratizing mental health care.
The
The O-1 Visa is daunting. It requires “Extraordinary Ability” and the regulations talk about Nobel Prizes. Most people see that and decide they can’t get it.
THIS PROCESS CAN BE HACKED.
I’ve got this visa three times and I’ve never passed a calculus class.
You. Can. Get. It.
I quit my job this week!
After 4.5 years at Legalpad/Deel helping 1000s of founders and startups with US work visas...
I'm building something new. 🛠️
I just got MY visa to work FT, consult, and... do cool stuff. Ankur and I will give you the playbook to get yours too.
🧵⬇️
OK, we covered a lot in this thread!
50% of this is my experience and 50% I learnt from
@Loganullyott
If you want to learn about this in more detail, he & I are hosting a free live workshop on Tuesday, April 11:
We'll send a replay to all signups too!
Roughly 1,000 new Indian followers in the last three days after I tweeted about H-1Bs. 😍
Just so everyone is clear:
I will do visa consultations for your mother’s biryani and/or vindaloo recipes.
DMs open.
Shukriya❤️
Something I think is true, am seeing evidence of, but don’t have enough data for:
There will be fewer international founders building their businesses in the US in the next 3 years.
As a weird knock-on effect of fraud in the H-1B lottery system, fewer students can stay in the
Product managers should thank Brian Chesky for the soft landing in marketing.
ZIRP job for people that want to work in tech but can’t code, design, or sell…
Now they can make vague statements about brand impact and keep collecting a paycheck.
Incredible luck.
I’m willing to bet the US government would outperform most VC fund managers in picking winners if they:
Gave every startup with a founder on an O-1 visa $100k on a SAFE.
Any databases I could check this math on?
If you're awesome, want to apply for an EB-1, and are sick of hearing about patents and citations... DMs are open.
If you read this far, you should probably follow me or hit one of those buttons 🔽🔽
Too many founders can't really build their businesses because of work visas.
Here are 5 paths to transition to your startup or side hustle, without giving up your job.
1. O-1 visa: "agent" or concurrent
2. H-1B
3. OPT/ STEM OPT
4. Green cards
5. Dependent visa
Details ⬇️⬇️
@yohansudheer
@ankurnagpal
Ping me if you wanna chat O-1s. Happy to screen you for our Founder O-1 track, we’ve had 15-20 approvals this month already!
You need to show you’ve won awards in your field.
You don’t wanna waste time on this, there are easier criteria, but…
You’re a founder? Raising venture capital, winning a pitch competition, or other tech/VC related prize.
In tech? Win a hackathon or award
2- Memberships 🤝
Congrats Ary! We’re lucky to have worked with you, and the US is fortunate to have you 🦅
If you’re a founder working in AI, you should get to know Ary and the KyberKnight team!
O1 Visa Approved! Happy 4th of July 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Immensely grateful for the last 7 years in the US, the people I have met, the things I've learned and the places I have been fortunate to visit. Most of all grateful for the opportunities I've had to work on important problems with
This thread has prompted lots of DMs, so let me explain the “LLC O-1” in a little more detail.
It’s a dumb name, but shorter than “Own Your Own Company and Sponsor Your Visa With It”
It’s an O-1 visa to work for one single company, but that company is yours. It’s essentially
*Most* US work visas have the same pitfalls:
Lose your job, lose your visa. Leave in 60 days. Bye 👋
Almost all people on visas are W2 employees and their visas are controlled by a corporate HR team :(
Founders often make the same mistakes, even with their own company.
If
@markpinc
@vkhosla
There have been more O-1 visas approved in the last two years than any of the previous years since its implementation in 1990.
Whatever your take, he is allowing talent-based immigration, at record levels.
Not taking shots here, mostly just ignorance, but…
does Canada have one single half-decent accelerator program?
That gives you money
That is actually helpful
That has produced meaningful exits
The visa through an agent lets you work for multiple co’s, adding and dropping clients as you please. You can work full time at your main company, but have side projects, freelance, etc.
And the most crucial part, you’ve probably figured out already:
No 60 days. You can stay.
There are 8 criteria.
🔘🏆
🔘🤝
🔘📰
🔘🤴
🔘💰
🔘✍️
🔘🧑🏾⚖️
🔘🔬
You can apply for as many as you want.
You need to hit 3. ✅✅✅
Here are the criteria, and how I would approach getting the visa.
Criteria 1: Awards 🏆
I know three women founders in the last year that were told by well-known immigration lawyers or VCs that if they wanted to be founders in the US they should “just marry an American.”
2 of 3 💁♀️now running their businesses.
1 will be very soon.
Zero arranged marriages 😃
All of
Had a call the other day that infuriated me
(nearly had to hang up)
The guy on the call had just spoken to a founder who got their O-1 visa (has a PHD, patents, etc.) and that founder told him that he probably wouldn't qualify
Btw, there are 8 criteria for the O-1, you only
You COULD get an attorney to do this (waste of $, IMO)
I'd recommend:
@CapbaseInc
- haven't used, but CEO
@miaskiewicz
is brilliant in this space. (recently acq'd by Deel)
@doolahq
I have used. Seamless all-in-one platform, handles tax + compliance too
Wow! Just finished a super fun session with 500+ people exploring entrepreneurship as US immigrants.
@ankurnagpal
and the team at
@ochowealth
are building an incredible set of resources for individuals and business owners to understand their finances and explore opportunities.
@bonam
Happy to help!
I’ll do a few more soon on:
- starting businesses on H-1Bs and F-1
- maximizing H-1B lottery chances
- how to hire ppl on visas without wasting time and money
DMs are open for anyone looking for help.
Interesting thread. Here are the contributing factors that I think have lead to more Indian nationals (and founders) getting O-1s.
1. H-1B lottery 📉:
With approvals dropping from ~35% to ~15% means people need to find other visa categories to apply under. That applies to
Given how much of our portfolio and our friends from India have been applying for O-1s over the last couple years, I wanted to take a look of the historical precedent of Indians being issued O-1 visas (spoiler alert: it's has grown a lot)
👋 Hey everyone that sent me a DM re: visas
There are a lot of you 😊
I'm making a system to collect some info, so I can connect you with the best resources:
- Consultations
- Referrals
- Office hours
- Playbooks
DM if you're looking for help, and thanks for patience
Pay for the press.
$ will get you BS Forbes Business Council articles, press releases, into Inc.
Reach out to local papers/ blogs.
The strategy isn’t to have a 10pg feature in NYT, it’s to get a bunch of press so you look like a prolific professional on the rise.
Next:💰💸
Just had a YC founder ask about “success-based” fees for getting visas, money-back guarantees, guaranteed approval, etc.
Here’s a non-intuitive lesson to getting better customers.
This took me about 6 years to learn. Probably applies to any high-skilled service business.
***
@AustenAllred
I think about this like every week now. Amazon's so large that it's interesting to think about what they AREN'T doing.
Where is Amazon's Squarespace or Shopify clone? Seems like a no-brainer to let people build their sites/ brands on Amazon, leverage AWS and Amazon fulfillment.
USCIS: “So, you’re the best in the world? Come on in!
Oh, no…. no, sorry.
We meant you, not them.
They can hang out though, I guess, maybe.”
Also USCIS: “You have a degree?! 😮AND OUR MAGIC 8-BALL PICKED YOU?!? 😮 😮
Oh yeah, we want you.
Bring the whole fam.
Y’all want jobs?”
If the US is serious about winning the war for talent,
@USCIS
needs to create a visa allowing spouses to work.
Surviving on one salary while doing important work is tough.
Not having a timeline for your spouse to work is a major strain on the relationship, affecting work.
“Celebrity” is generous, but I did dump everything I know about the O-1 into this course, including hours of videos, templates, and examples from approved petitions.
It’s got to be the most comprehensive playbook to starting a business on an O-1 visa.
If you happen to be an
@ochowealth
customer, we have a very detailed course explaining the process
@Loganullyott
is our celebrity instructor and breaks down the exact process with some very specific examples
You can find it in the Courses tab and here's the outline:
“I don’t have any press, I don’t like the attention”
Suck it up.
Get press about your work. Work in a 5,000 person company that will never mention you in articles?
Start a side project. A Git repo. A mini biz. Make friends with journos. Launch on Product Hunt.
Or cheat…
Some days I think the immigration space is over-crowded; too many people in a market that's just not that big.
And then I look at the people handling my green card, and see instructions like this.
This is what $25m+ in VC funding buys.
I should raise a venture round.
@businessbarista
The LVMH
@AcquiredFM
podcast. Super entertaining and learned a lot. Listened to it over a few long car rides, wife (who doesn’t listen to business podcasts at all) kept asking if we could put it on.
Talking with a TV producer about getting her O-1 visa:
“Oh, and I forgot to mention this, but obviously my country (South Africa) is pretty small, so I’m one call away from Trevor Noah…. if him signing a letter is something that might look good.”
“Uhh… yes. Yes, it would.”
@itskaranj
@kylegawley
Take a look at what YC* companies are raising (and their valuations) right now.
Nothing wrong with it, but big money is coming in at idea stage. “Conservative” isn’t really a term I would use to describe 😃
* not just YC co’s obviously
🔑The key: Get familiar with "permissible activities."
You might be surprised what you're allowed to do on a visa. (That includes student visas and visitor visas 👀)
You can:
✅Register a company
✅Research your market
✅Pitch VCs
✅Get investments
Setting up a new biz:
I'm giving a webinar on O-1 visas tomorrow:
How to qualify
Getting one as a founder
Agent visas
Working for your own company
How to meet the requirements
and a ton of time for Q and A if you have any questions about the visa or the process.
It's free!
A cool thing happens when I tweet about immigration:
For helping immigrants, I’m labeled
pro-slavery, exploitative, and a Nazi (?)
For helping employers: I’m racist, Anti-American, destroying US jobs
Can’t wait for the next election cycle to really hype up the brain damage 🤗
High Salary
Show you’ve been paid, in the top 10% of professionals in your position, in your region, at some point in time.
Making $100k as a SWE in SF? Probably not gonna work. Head somewhere with a lower cost of living for a month or two. Get a job offer to prove it.
Or…
Twitter won’t let me change my name to Visas for Vindaloo, but… the diaspora coming through with mom’s (mata’s?) recipes 🤤
I love this little corner of Twitter.
@secpost
@cdolan92
@ChrisJBakke
No dude it’s easy. For me, a Seahawks and Kraken fan - you just get
NFL Sunday Ticket
Fubo for blackout games and some hockey
Prime Video for Thursday games
ESPN for hockey
NBC Peacock for Saturday NHL
A TNT subscription for Wednesday NHL
And then figure out playoffs and add it
Use a future job offer to hit criteria. You can use annual salary, hourly rate, or total comp/ equity. A high-paying hourly contract is ideal.
Or visit your parents in Poland or Pune for a couple months. Keep your current salary and you should hit.
Next - Critical Role 🤴
Not gonna name names, but there are *enough* law firms charging people $500-$2500 for "boot camps" and "prep courses" to prepare for an O-1 visa application. 🙄
I'll buy you a year of Ocho if you can find a visa course with more detail than this.
If you happen to be an
@ochowealth
customer, we have a very detailed course explaining the process
@Loganullyott
is our celebrity instructor and breaks down the exact process with some very specific examples
You can find it in the Courses tab and here's the outline:
@zachweinberg
Some thoughts on the comment section:
- there’s always some people suggesting you study up on the topic but offering no suggestions or critique
- DEI could be renamed “race-based acceptance” and people would lose it
- there are no threads the OF girls won’t touch
Oh, and super important: you can use anything you’ve done in your industry, at any point in time, anywhere in the world, to hit the criteria.
In Bangladesh 4 years ago? Great.
With a different company? Perfect.
Okay, let’s see how you can meet the criteria:
Yo
@AirCanada
I can’t check in for my flight because I:
- live in the US
- am not a permanent resident
- don’t have an alien number
And your system doesn’t allow me to do anything. I might miss my flight because of this. DM me.
Applying for the O-1, same as H-1B:
👫Need an employee-employer relationship, so cofounders or a board.
💸Need to show ability to get paid by co.
📅Should post-date your start for clean transition/ no burnt bridges.
Hope this helps. As always, DM me with Q's or for a review.
If you run through that list and you hit 3 ✅✅✅
Apply for the visa.
If you don’t, your next three months are a sprint to get a membership, judge an event, get some press, and have a high-paying hourly contract from a potential client ready to go. That’s 4.
The application:
Hey founders: I’m looking for someone that wants to apply for an O-1 to “guinea pig” some new systems.
Heavy discount on your visa in exchange for feedback.
(Failsafes in place, not going to risk any immi issues for anyone)
Tag a founder that wants to move to the US and I’ll
Teaser: Dropping something to help employers, hiring managers, recruiters understand how visas work in the US.
With a little knowledge of how visas work, what "sponsorship" means, and true costs / timelines...
There's a huge hiring edge 👀
Mini 🧵...
@BrettFromDJ
You’re going to have all these 1:1 conversations but repeat a lot of stuff.
Would you consider doing webinars with cohorts of 10 people?
Say, 1 hr overview of business, 2 hrs AMA?
$500 x 10 = $5000 for three hours. You get 3.3x more per hour, customers get 3x more info.
Critical capacity:
2 parts to this one.
1- You have been critical to a business.
2- The biz has a distinguished reputation (is well known/ accomplished).
Being critical: Show that you have led a division, department, product, or team that is crucial to the biz.
Some ideas:
I’ve known Joseph for ~5 years, seen his capabilities. But, watching him build Supademo while we worked on his visa was incredible - the pace of iteration and customer growth has been insane.
Remarkable founder, but an even better dude. In NYC? Go meet him. I’ll buy the coffee.
Last month, I moved to NYC on an O1 Visa 🎉
While I love being Canadian 🇨🇦, there's nothing that compares to the ambition, network, serendipity, and luck at play in the United States 🇺🇸
Shoutout to
@Loganullyott
and team for helping on this journey
Gusto (
@tomerlondon
)
EventBrite (
@renaudvisage
)
Cloudflare (
@zatlyn
)
Moderna Therapeutics (
@NoubarAfeyan
)
Stripe, Jawbone, Cloudera
All $1b+ companies.
All have founders that came to the US as international students.
If you're on an F-1 or H-1B, you can build that business.
⬇️
150+ people looking for support with O-1 visas and green cards after the
@ochowealth
session yesterday!! 😱
I will get to everyone ASAP, but need to build a scheduling system and way to organize notes first.
Thanks to everyone who attended!
Ocho - recording available still?
If you want to learn more about O-1 visas, who can apply for them, and how to quickly meet the criteria,
@shaiunterslak
and I are chatting about the visa, our experiences getting them, and giving you a playbook to follow.
Wednesday / Jan 17
@BrownPoints
Such an underrated place to travel - so safe, clean, easy to get around, and relatively cheap.
This is a tourist visa right? Not a work visa?
@imkialikethecar
👋 I went through three visas in four years, and now I’ve helped hundreds of companies and founders get approved visas.
Yesterday I did an AMA with
@techstars
@KaceyRaeWherley
and
@ItucasSara
to help founders looking for answers on visas. Can chat and give you many names!