[eps]

It's not the recruiter, it's the company policy. They are stalling and keeping you as an option B, because for any company smaller than Google sponsoring a work visa is a major hassle. They won't move on unless they absolutely have to.

[sokoloff]

We're a medium-sized company and it's not that big of a hassle (or maybe more precisely, it's a hassle of invisible size that is packaged up by someone else in exchange for a simple bag of money).

The bigger issue is the uncertainty (for both the candidate and the hiring team).