"The H-1B lottery system isn't merit-based. Each year, there's one lottery where applicants are put into a pool, and around 85,000 people are picked randomly. Twenty thousand spots are also reserved for people with a master's degree, but even though I had a master's, the odds were still low. It felt like I was playing the slots at Las Vegas. You win a few times, but you lose most of the time, and you don't have any control over it."
"After the first H-1B miss, I started looking into the O-1 visa, which I heard about from my colleagues. The O-1 visa is reserved for individuals with "extraordinary" capabilities. There are eight categories for eligibility, and you need to satisfy at least three of them. When I went through it, I realized I already satisfied at least two of the criteria: I had published work on artificial intelligence, I used to judge hackathons, and I used to review papers for other conference journals."
A 26-year-old software engineer from Bangalore worked at Kimberly-Clark before pursuing a master's in information systems and artificial intelligence at Johns Hopkins and then joined IBM in the Bay Area. He applied for the H-1B visa three times and was not selected due to the random lottery that awards about 85,000 spots annually with an additional 20,000 for master's holders. After the first miss, he pursued the O-1 visa for individuals with extraordinary ability. He met multiple O-1 criteria through six years of AI contributions, including published research, judging hackathons, and reviewing conference papers.
Read at Business Insider
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]