It’s well known the United States is one of the most difficult countries to immigrate, even temporarily. The process to apply for a temporary visa can be annoying and it comes down to the purpose for which you are coming.
I interviewed a U.S. immigration lawyer, James Pittman, to find out more about temporary visas and how an online software can support travelers to fill out immigration applications, ultimately helping them to save money.
Be aware of what you can and can’t do
You have to have clear in your mind the reason why you want to reach the United States, because it will affect substantially your visa.
Once you pick a visa category, you must follow the guidelines you find on the U.S. embassy website, because it’s easy to run into troubles.
Tourism visas
Mainly, if you want to come to the U.S.A. for vacation, you can easily obtain a B1 or B2 visa. With this kind of category, you are able to come as a tourist for a maximum of 90 days.
If your travel involves business affairs, you need to pick the B1, because the B2 visa is strictly for holiday travel.
Western European countries, Australia, New Zealand and few others don’t need a visa for traveling. In this case, the application process is super easy, cheap and completely online.
Student visas
If you want to study in the U.S., you have plenty types of visas. If you want to attend a full-time academic program at a college or university, you would likely apply for a F visa.
Particularly, the F1 visa is interesting, because you can also work for max. 20 hours per week inside the college or the school where you are studying. So it allows you to gain some money and earn some job experience while you’re studying.
Finally, if you wanna take vocational classes to learn a trade or specific job skills, you might be eligible for an M visa.
J visa category
There is also the J category which I hesitate to suggest due to my own personal experience with it.
Basically, it’s a visa you can obtain easily, once you have an organization which sponsors you, and is necessary to take specialization classes. The difference between the F or M categories is that the program to which you apply is not full-time.
The problem of J visas is that if you win a scholarship or your program is funded, somehow, by a third party, you are eligible for the 2 year residency rule.
It means you can’t switch your visa for any reason (even if you want to get married) and you must go back to your home country after the J visa expiration date, without any possibility to get back in the U.S. for the next 2 years.
I didn’t know about it and I came to the U.S. with a J1 visa with the 2 year residency rule applied. The rule posed many troubles for me, because, you know, I work in marketing and need to have the freedom of traveling everywhere.
To get rid of this rule, I had to apply to the J1 waiver program. Every country has its regulations on it and, in my case that I am an Italian citizen, I had to pay a $150 fee, fill out long and complex documentation, wait four months and finally get my waiver.
Just a business to gain money on travelers? I don’t know, maybe I’ll deepen that matter in another article, but the fact is I don’t suggest to use it, if you have a chance.
Temporary job visas
I think this is the most interesting part of the article for many of you, but I don’t have any good news. Of course, it exists some temporary job visas, but it’s not so easy to obtain the final right to come and work legally in the U.S.
Basically there are two main types of temporary paid employment visas and they are the H1B or the TN (trading national) for people from Canada or Mexico.
The most common one is the H1B for which you need an employer who is willing to invest in you in order to activate the process. Then, he has to sponsor you and apply during an exact period of the year that is, usually, around April.
So you have only one shot per year to apply to an H1B visa and there are only a specific amount of visas for each nationality. I’m Italian and, as you can easily imagine, there are many many Italians who apply every year for a job in the U.S.
So, standing on the official rules, if there are more applicants than job visas, the government picks randomly who can come and who can't.
Not easy peasy right?
A great solution for an on-going problem
Fortunately, someone has launched an intelligent online interface which helps applicants with their immigration process.
Jeremy Peskin and James Pittman have founded Borderwise, a web-based platform which supports travelers to fill out immigration applications and provides professional attorneys for an affordable price.
The procedure is user-friendly and applicants are guided through easy questions during the intake process. At the end, Borderwise provides an immigration lawyer who can check the final application and assure the documentation is sent smoothly without mistakes.
WHAT DO YOU THINK
Have you ever been involved in the annoying process of completing an immigration application? Tell us your experience.
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