[kjellsbells]

First, not a lawyer. But you basically have a few paths. L1A or L1B, O visa. L1, you can work for your FrenchCo (eg, you get a job at Mistral) in France for a few years, then get transferred to the US to work for the US arm of the same FrenchCo.

Going from L1 to a greencard takes several years and is much easier if you come in on the management L1 rather than the specialist knowledge L1.

If you are a 'known' researcher, you might also be able to get here on an O visa which is for extraordinary talent. This is the visa that actors use to move to Hollywood for example, so the bar isn't as high as say needing a Nobel prize. But you need to show that you are well known in your field, eg press articles about you, papers, journals etc.

Another path might be to immigrate to Quebec, which IIRC controls its own immigration and would be especially interested in a French speaker with AI skills. Once you have Canadian residency you can dip back and forth to the US easily. I guess you could probably even get a TN visa to stay longer in the US.

All of this stuff takes years by the way. You gotta figure out if the glow of the NY tech scene will last the decade that it might take to achieve legal permanent status in the US. My journey from L1 to greencard took nearly ten years.

[Dejobism]

Thanks a lot! Questions:

- how soon did you get into the US during your journey? Was it a couple years in Europe, then immediately L1, then waiting 8 years for a green card? More like starting a job and moving 5 years later?

- do you expect the situation to change in the next couple years? the new election, current criticism of the H1B, apparently overdue reform of immigration due to border issues (?); I read that the Trump admin changed the H1B rules which made them closer to a lottery, maybe the process could change again?

- does Canadian _residency_ give you better chances of US job visas/residency? Do you need citizenship? I would be okay with staying a few years there if I find good jobs (or remote US jobs!)

- why is it harder to get a green card from the technical L1? how much harder? that's probably what I would be going for, unless I can find a job that includes both

- assuming that I manage to get respected in a field, but maybe not world-class researcher, does this help? in making companies more willing to sponsor me maybe? (I can probably co-publish more and get references if that's all it takes)

[kjellsbells]

Difficult to answer all these without a wall of text that will bore the other readers. DM me on LinkedIn? Address in HN bio.

[seabass-labrax]

This specific question isn't relevant to me, but please do be liberal with the walls of text. I can't count the number of times that I've found a thread through HN's search that is far more helpful than anything on the top pages of Google. Space online is cheap, and there's surely no better place for educational walls of text than here.

Plus, I am clearly not the only one who feels this way! https://xkcd.com/979/

[Dejobism]

Thank you, will do!

[kjellsbells]

Obligatory disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.

5 years in Europe (UK) for the same employer, then posted to the US subsidiary on a L visa. Couple of years on that, then adjustment of status to a green card. All told, about seven years in the US before a green card.

I don't expect the situation to change because of the election. Specifically because European countries are not the Central American nor Asian countries that give politicians pause. If you wanted to immigrate from India or Mexico, you would have an incredibly hard time no matter who is the next president.

If your aim is to get to North America and leave Europe: then Canada, and specifically Quebec for French speakers, may be an attractive option. The Canadians are going through their own wrangling about the effects of immigration on their society however. So I expect things to get harder. But Quebec is generally very keen on educated European French coming over. Again you might be looking at several years to complete the process.

If your aim is NYC/SF or bust, then going via Canada is an option, but it's not an especially great one, because while you are doing all this stuff with moving and visas and housing etc, the clock is ticking. You might be talking 10-15 years from departing CDG to holding a US green card.

L1 is an interesting visa class because the management version L-1A doesn't (or didn't: IANAL) require your employer to prove to the US authorities that no US national exists to do your job (aka "labor certification"). The specialist knowledge L-1B does. And it is not an easy thing to prove. I strongly suggest that you spend time working at your European employer in a well-documented management capacity before filing for L-1A prior to your posting to the US. You can mutate L-1B into L-1A, but it is very hard.

Re: O visa, there are no guarantees or hard rules of what the US authorities will accept, but more evidence, from peers in your industry, helps. If you think about someone like Mustafa Suleyman, he didn't go the PhD and academic prizes/paper route, but I guarantee that Google/MSFT's lawyers could easily get him an O visa based on his position in the industry. That said, O visas are commonly used for academics that get poached from Europe by deep-pocketed US universities.

This page: https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/options-f... is a helpful summary.