[mdda]

Actually, it's more farcical than you're thinking. Suppose I have a foreign employee that graduated in the US, and has worked for my company (on a valid OPT, followed by an H1B) for several years. In order to progress to the Green Card stage, I must prove that there are no other Americans that are suitably qualified, and willing to do the job. Thus, I have to put up an advert for the job, and interview applicants. That's why you'll see very narrowly defined job criteria advertised in newspapers : They're designed to prevent anyone but the current employee (who, after all, is the one that currently has the job) from getting the job.

But then there's a matter of 'prevailing wage' : Whereby one has to define the job to be as menial as possible (so that the employee doesn't suddenly expect a much higher wage bracket), while still making it demanding enough that all their qualifications are 'essential'.

And once the initial paperwork is filed, they're then bound to you for years while waiting in line, since if they lose their job (or have a change in job title), they have to restart the whole process.

Large numbers of people are trapped in bizarre employment situations, waiting on unbelievable bureaucracy - never able to complain on the offchance that the person they're talking to might be having a bad day and send all the documents back (and restart the process)...

[jbarham]

> And once the initial paperwork is filed, they're then bound to you for years while waiting in line, since if they lose their job (or have a change in job title), they have to restart the whole process.

This is precisely why I decided it wasn't worth waiting. Too much risk with too many restrictions for too little upside.

[rdtsc]

An interesting test would be if there was a way to expedite the processes. Say pay more and it gets rushed and wait time is now only one or two years. Would employers do that or not? Otherwise aren't they actually interested in prolonging the process artificially ("Oh yeah our lawyers are working on it, get back with us in 5 years..." kind of attitude).

[mdda]

For H1B visas there certainly was an expedited process - a couple of times our firm paid ~$1000 to get the response within 2 weeks, rather than 'several months'. Reducing uncertainty was valuable to us, since otherwise we might have been mentoring an excellent employee who could be plucked out of the workplace by the INS on any random day : and due to the whole bureaucracy thing, any 'appeal' would be a huge, huge waste of time (and life).