Hmmmm, at first you said: "or are allowed to work for any employer in their home country." which makes it sound like you cannot go back to your home country and work for any employer there. Which I believe is untrue.

But in the above quote, it sounds like you are talking about working inside the USA for a company which is based in your home country, which this is true.

I guess I thought you meant the first, now you've clarified what you meant. You are right. You can't work inside the USA, not even for a company which is based in your home country. But you CAN go back home to your home country and work there.

Rene

From a current perspective:

1. A 1 minute google will find the limitations and issues of a H4.

2. As has been said a H is a temporary work visa for the individual concerned, it allows family to accompany them. It will not be suitable for all, in which case go for another category, another quick google will find their are many more applicants who think it is good enough than their are Visa's.

3. If one of those family members wants to work, temporarily or otherwise, in the US then they are at liberty to seek their own Visa.

I consider myself pretty smart. Very smart, in fact.

I also consider myself well informed, totally comfortable with online research, and pretty much in control of my life.

The same goes for my wife, but more so.

And yet none of that did us a damned bit of good when it came to me being offered an H1-B position over here. We talked to my prospective company's lawyer, one of the best in the country, and he told us that my wife would not be able to work for "6 to 9 months" while we filed to adjust status. My wife and I discussed this, and decided it was worth taking the risk for this "once in a lifetime" opportunity in my career.

We understood nothing about what we were getting ourselves into. We took the word of the lawyer, and made a life-changing decision for our family based on those words. We never went looking for online communities like this one, and we never suspected that we could find better information that we already had.

Only after one year of employment did my company agree to sponsor my PR application, and then their lawyer submitted it as an EB-3 filing. After another year, as news of Priority Date Retrogression stared to appear on sites like this, I realised we were in serious trouble if my wife was ever going to work again, and if we seriously wanted to stay in the US.

It wasn't until three years after we arrived, through my own personal pig-headed, demanding, obnoxious driving of my company's lawyer that we finally were granted our Green Cards via a National Interest Waiver.

If it had not been for my realization that we were screwed after that first year, we would still be in H1-B/H4 hell.

My point is, we didn't come over here as starry-eyed immigrants looking for a land paved with gold. We didn't come over here because England was going to the dogs. We didn't come to escape all those damned immigrants.

We just saw an opportunity to progress my very specialised career, and took it. It never occurred to us the trouble we were getting ourselves into.

Ian, I didn't mean any offence. It's just that even the smartest people make odd decisions in their lives, and the H1-B visa is intended for just that kind of person. They're not wanted by the US, but they're needed. They're well informed, but find few places to find the raw truth about what the H1-B/H4 visa really means to their lives. And they're being kicked out of the US every day because even well-intentioned lawyers tell them that "it'll all be OK in the end" and fail to tell them that after 6 years they're going home if they don't find a way to file for PR.

It sucks, and it sucks ten times worse when the spouses of L-visa holders get to work because their particular interest group lobbied Congress more effectively than all the Indian computer programmers on H1-Bs.

I've got my own story to tell, but I just got home from a business trip and I'm dead tired, so can't be ar$ed.

Suffice to say that our story is not too dissimilar to yours. More often than not, H1bs are given inadequate and misleading information by employers.

There is no rhyme or reason, or any degree of justice, in the fact that H4s - unlike other dependents - are not allowed to work.

I don't want to get wrapped up in the arguement - but with regards to going back and getting an L1 visa ... as long as Fidelity are still interested and as long as you left them within the past three years ... you are eligible for the L1 visa. Just thought that I should add that in.

I almost was in the same boat in that I was offered a H1 visa transfer to the US by my current employer. I looked up the details and saw that it was a tough visa to work and live on. I also found out more about the L1 visa and found out that I was eligible as I had worked for the company that I was transferring to the US with for 12 full months within the past three years (they were not my current employers). I found this info out from BE (so thanks everyone!) I had to convince HR and the lawyers that i was right about this and I had to refuse to go the H1 route. Incidently they did not tell me anything about the hardships that we would face on the H1 visa ... BE and Google helped me out with that.

why does that sound oh so familiar

Its pretty much the same story here. Thankfully we started PR movings as soon as we got here in 05. AOS applications went in with the July hordes and OH now has her EAD and has a rather nice job that she started this week. That comes on the back of doing nothing since we got here (thankfully her new employer has a lot of foreign nationals working for them so they understood her enforced 2 year 'vacation' )

Thanks for the great piece of info! I have worked for more than 1 year in Fidelity and was eligible for L1 while I was resigning and it was within the last 3 years. But I thought once we resign, we need to work again for another full year outside the country to be eligible for L1 visa.I still have good contacts with people in Fidelity and shall definetely give it a try!

Yes - sounds like you are eligible for the L1 visa. All you need is to have worked for Fidelity for 1 full year in the past 3 years.

If you can get in touch with someone in Fidelity - try to speak to their Legal or Immigration Lawyer if you can. Do not speak to HR as they will probably not get this right and may tell you that you are not eligible.

Anyway - good luck!

They are widely abused as there is NO massive shortage of high-tech workers; that self-corrected post-2000. I agree that there will always be a need for some specialised labour but when you see the top ten H-1B recipients, they are ALL tech firms.

Immigration is de facto discrimination. No country admits everyone who comes knocking and most countries restrict the rights of immigrants and their families in some way (eg not being able to vote). I do wonder about the demographics of L vs H spouses and think that's part of the reason H spouses aren't allowed to work.

With the current climate of retrogression on PR's you should bear in mind that if your are on an L1 visa and are stuck in retrogression, as most are, then you cannot extend beyond the 5 or 6 year max. With H1B you can continue to extend while you are in the back log. I had to change from L1 to E3 to stay in the country. As you an see there is no great visa just go through the heart ache to stay in this country. Sometime you have to ask yourself is it all worth it. I am now on an EAD as is my wife and daughter waiting patiently for our GC's with maybe another year or two wait on top of the 5 years we have already been waiting. Good luck to everyone else.