chicagojlo

Well you are supposed to wait a year after arriving to apply, but it's not supposed to take another 2 years after that. Perhaps they are confused with the type of green card, HR people are not always the most informed of people, especially when it comes to immigration. My husband works for a Fortune 500 company and their HR people don't know what day of the week it is. We usually speak directly with the external immigration lawyer instead.

jumping doris

Sometimes HR people don't always know.
We always spoke directly to the lawyers about anything to do with visas/green cards.
We were lucky because the lawyers and the company always kept us in the loop and we phoned or emailed as often as we wanted with legal questions.
We always had lots of questions because our big issue was our eldest daughters age...we were paranoid that she would age out!

UK-Trinity

I guess I should have known that - the HR people where I work are clueless too...

Apologies to any HR people reading, especially any with common sense.

meauxna

Isn't that an oxymoron?

(sorry HR folk!)

chicagojlo

Exactly what I was thinking...

Socal Local

Even for the EB1C category, approvals are taking longer at the moment because of the rush of applications in July, but I would still think that you are looking at 12-18 months rather than 3 years - of course there are never any guarantees and this assumes that the category remains current.

I had a similar problem with the company I worked for thinking that the only reason I was pushing for a green card was to go and work for someone else. This was despite the fact that I have been with them for 7 years and have no plans to move. They also thought we had all the time in the world to deal with it and couldn't understand why I was in such a hurry to get things moving. In the end I signed a letter agreeing to reimburse some of the legal fees if I left within a certain period after getting the green card and this seemed to be the kick start needed to get the employer to get things underway.

chicagojlo

Wondering if I should take my husband's employers' readiness to apply for a GC as a bad sign!

Folinskyinla

Last time I looked, it was required that the COMPANY have had the US presence for a year.

augigi

I'd doubt it very much, but you'd have to check with whatever uni you're considering.

Could they be? Absolutely! LOL

Folinskyinla

Hi:

Why do you doubt it? Just curious.

augigi

Because of what other people have posted about being unable to get the resident tuition fee without a GC (I think it was jumping doris?)

As I said though, you'd have to check with the particular institution, as I'm sure they have different rules.

chicagojlo

I meant it as a rule of thumb rather than an actual rule, since the purpose of the L visa is temporary transfer, but since L1A is a dual intent visa maybe that's not such a big deal.

Folinskyinla

Hi:

I missed the "resident" thing. Mea culpa. As for immigration, it is not a violation of status for an L-2, H-4 or E-1/2 dependent to attend school. You are right about differing rules -- the last time I had a case with that, the California State University had DIFFERENT rules than the state University of California. Go figure.

jumping doris

It was me.

My eldest started college while she was still on her H4.
We live in PA and to be classed as an instate student for tuition purposes you have to be resident in the state for 2 years and fulfil other criteria.
One of the other criteria was being a LPR.
However the PA code for education ( I think that was it's name) didi say that if you could demonstrate that you were actively pursuing LPR status then the college could use it's discretion about tuition fees.

The big state colleges weren't interested and classed my daughter as an international student but the smaller ones were more flexible.
We had lived here for 2 years though and fulfilled all the requirements, other than the GC.

Some states only require you to be resident for a year, some didn't require that but they are talking about citizens or LPR's and residency within the state not the country.
Lack of a GC will always be the issue I would imagine.

We only looked at State schools I don't know how private ones would class someone. I know Carnegie Mellon would have classed my daughter as an international.

Also being on an H4 meant my daughter wasn't eligible to file a FAFSA (an application for federal aid) and that had a knock on effect for state and college aid and even on campus jobs.