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by dragonwriter 3670 days ago
> why haven't you just applied to be a citizen?

IIRC, an H-1B can't apply to be a citizen, you have to be a permanent resident to do that, which you can only do from an immigrant visa. The H-1B is a "dual purpose" visa, which is a non-immigrant visa that doesn't require you to leave the country before applying for an immigrant visa, but you still have to qualify for one of the immigrant visa categories and make it through any source-country-specific backlog for that category. (And the vast majority of tech-industry H-1B's are from India, which is also near the top for waiting list length in many of the immigrant categories -- including all but one of the Employment-based categories.)

1 comments

Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification.