[guard-of-terra]

My co-workers raised a note that H1B no longer relevant so much for the purpose described in headline.

It's much easier to bring workers on L visa - they have even less opportunity to skip jobs or aruge for a raise than H1B holders, and there's no lottery and no limits. Just bring as much people on L as possible.

As far as I know, Microsoft did this with Canada long ago. They hire you and relocate to Canada, then after a year they make L visa for you and toss over the border to Redmond.

[jordanb]

L visas are abused like crazy but there are important differences, namely that a company has to employ you for a certain amount of time offshore and that you can not work offsite in the USA. The first rule means they're only available for international companies and the second means they don't work for outsourcing firms.

Usually when people talk about the "H1b" debate they're talking about the whole constellation of skilled temporary worker visas (H1, L1, OPT, etc).

[guard-of-terra]

We're in XXI century, so I think it's trivial to make your company international if you ever have something to gain from it.

> can not work offsite

Can you elaborate what's officially permitted and what is not? Because wikipedia is unclear on the subject and refers to legalese that I have no hope of understanding.

[wdcgu]

Don't forget the TN visa. Those Canadians are stealing American jobs. Really surprised that everyone likes to complain about the H1B/L1 but not the TN visa.

[mavelikara]

Or the E-3 visa [1], which give citizens of Australia 10,500 indefinitely renewable visas each year.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-3_visa

[calvinbhai]

Totally agree with you. H1b visa combined with the green card backlogs are meant to systematically keep immigration of Indians and Chinese citizens disproportionately low.

Many countries have agreements with US that allow their citizens to work without the hassle of h-1b

Sadly, because of the clout Indian outsourcing firms have in filing the number of h1b applications, most people think Indian outsourcing firms are steeling jobs.

[Fazilka]

No more cheap labor for SV to exploit.