[huhsamovar]

This is false. The status of permanent resident can be obtained much sooner if your employer or spouse is willing to sponsor you. The problem is that a lot of companies can manipulate you by treating you poorly, and justify it by threatening permanent residence status.

[parfe]

I find the government giving a company the power to coerce an employee through the threat of deportation fairly horrible. It's indentured servitude. The H1-B program needs to be abolished and replaced. If companies have trouble finding workers of a certain skillset the government needs to open up immigration to that skillset.

But the companies should then need to compete in the free market for those hires.

[deskamess]

Some reforms along the lines of:

1) Decouple the work authorization from the employer. The employee gets an open work permit for X (say 5) years.

2) If you can prove you have been gainfully employed above some agreed upon salary (via tax records) for 3+ years you get temporary permanent residency without any employer interference/input. You then finish out the other formalities (health, security checks) to get the official permanent residency.

The goal of 1) is to empower the employee with work mobility that does not affect future residency. If there really is a skill shortage they can leave without additional formalities or negotiate for better compensation. If they are talented, have stayed legal in other respects, and wish to stay in the US, they are now set.

[rbanffy]

This is a great idea. However, how can you certify someone has a given skill set, in special with environments where the skill sets themselves change very fast? How can you ensure those skills are really absent in the local work force?

[huhsamovar]

Companies have to offer their jobs to citizens first, before giving a visa to a foreign national.

[anxrn]

This assumes your spouse is a citizen.

For the employer case, this is true for prospective immigrants of all national origins except India and China, which also make up the bulk of potential engineers looking to become permanent residents. As of today, the average time for an Indian in the EB2 ('advanced degree or exceptional ability') category is roughly 5-6 years and this number is going up because of increased demand. For the EB3 category, the wait is at least a decade.

I agree that companies have the potential to abuse this power they have over you, but in practice, I have rarely seen this happen.

[huhsamovar]

Yes, I was implicitly assuming the spouse was a citizen. Apologies for the confusion.

You have rarely seen this happen because it is illegal. It is also illegal to hire based on nationality, gender, race or any other identifying feature. You can't seriously claim that this doesn't happen in practice. While this may be cynical, I don't doubt this for a minute.

[deskamess]

Not entirely true for employer based sponsorship... the time frame depends on your birth nation. People born in China and India have a long wait regardless of how cooperative their employer is. The system is just back logged for years for those people (EB2, EB3 categories).

[jgh]

Looks like the line for Canada (where I'm from) - And most of the rest of the world, including russia - is currently about 6 years long...