[drdaeman]

This sounds weird.

What kind of software engineer in their sane mind would want to stay in the US illegally (I don't think one can get any long-term tourist visa?) _and_ get paid peanuts? Even if they really want to live in the US, being poor sounds like a very strange sacrifice.

Unless one's a junior developer (where I heard it's hard to compete those days), as far as I know there are a lot of realistic options to find a legal immigration venue to a first-world country (probably not to the US, though) - so, why do stupid things like that?

[mdpopescu]

I actually went to the US in that exact scenario - tourist visa, six months, paid peanuts. (This was back in 2000.) Until then, it had been a dream of mine to visit the US and that accomplished that dream.

I have fond memories of that time and I would revisit... but I'll wait until things return to how they were back then. (Start at "no TSA" and go from there.)

[drdaeman]

Makes sense, thanks. Yes, no doubt US is a good country and one can wish to live there.

I didn't knew tourist visas can be as long as 6 months - thought they're normally shorter.

Yet, this is still odd to me (just me). As far as I get it, if you're caught, you're banned from visiting the country again, and for a long while. Feels like a bad way to end a dream.

It must be that my subjective perception of the risks involved overweighted the positive aspects.

[vgs_interviewee]

To be fair that was actually an issue he brought up- he said that several of their Ukrainian staff could not come to the US because they were not willing to lie on their visa application.

[GFischer]

Yours was a good question, no idea why you got downvoted. Mdpopescu provided an insightful answer.

Also, it opens up networking opportunities for said developers, maybe they get a better remote contract afterwards.