For a lot of people, highly skilled or not, the siren call of the United States, and its claim to be the land of opportunity is the type of call that cannot and should not be denied. How great the United States really is, can be best answered, by the sheer numbers of people that wish to immigrate to the United States, which reflects that the United States is considered to be, by many that wish to immigrant, a very desirable place, indeed.
In America, there are legal protocols to follow for all those that wish to immigrant, of which, there are more than one avenue to get to this land of opportunity, in which, one of them is the H-1B visa, which permits those that have certain specialized work skills that are in short supply domestically to thereby work within America for a specific period of time, such as three years. This would seem to represent the ideal “win-win” situation, in which both the foreign worker as well as the company that has hired such, benefit from this transaction. However, as might be expected, in the corporate world, many a person so employed, domestic or foreign, is considered to be an “at-will” employee, which signifies that when that employer “wills” that someone leave their company through a layoff or being fired, that the foreign worker has little or nothing that they can do to actually preclude such. So then, when a foreign worker who has a H-1B visa is terminated, for whatever reason, or for no reason, they are thus considered to have fallen “out of status,” which means that they are now typically mandated to leave America, within 60 days of having lost their job, unless they are able to secure employment, in a similar field, and get approval from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for this change of employment venue.
In short, while a H-1B visa will certainly get a foreign worker through the American door, the status of being kept in good standing is for the most part, controlled by that employer, not by the foreign worker. Regrettably, when it comes to those that have that sort of power over a given person or entity, there are always going to be those that will abuse such power to their own advantage. In other words, when a persons’ right to work within America is in the hands of someone else, then the independence of that foreign worker and the inherent sovereignty that they so have is compromised. This means that wages, bonuses, vacations, sick leave, personal time, overtime, stock options, and the like, are all subject to being manipulated in the favor of the employer, without the foreign worker having a lot of say in the matter, at all. That is to say, employers that know that a given foreign worker needs to have continual employment in order to guarantee that they are still a member in good standing with the USCIS, lends itself to possible abuses by that employer, for many an employer, prefers foreign workers as well as any others that do not have the full status of American citizenship, because it makes exploitation so much easier.