Jessica Chen comments

I'm just curious at one commenter above who said he has been in IT field for over 25 years holding various high demand certificates but can only score 60 on point based visa. In my opinion, The point based system is quite lenient to IT compare to business professionals. Being an IT professional I assume you should at least a bachelor degree, which is 10 points. For have been working over 10 years you should get 20 points. As years of experience and high demand certificates holder, it shouldn't be difficult to have salary exceeds 10 million yen annual, which is another 40 points. 70 points in totally easily. I wonder how is it possible that with your IT background you only s orde 60.

After reading some of the comments above i'd like to say, As a new immigrant from Taiwan to USA, I can tell you that other than getting a bank account, USA treats us foreigners almost the same as Japanese do in many aspects such as changing between jobs, find a housing etc.

I give credits to Japan gov. for at least issuing point based visa even before an applicant actually found a job in Japn. Do you guys know how USA H1b visa works? First of all you need a job offer from an E-verified company who would sponsor you (in other word, pay for your H1b legal fees and abide restricted H1b laws) AND assume that company would give you offer by April 1st (the first day H1b visa applications accepted, and the very first day the annual quota exhausted) and willingly to wait for you to start working from Oct 1st. There will be 6 months waiting period from the date your company filled your application till the date you actually can start to work legally. Think about how many companies would like to hire you over hiring Americans.

Also, being a H1b visa holder, all the jobs that you get paid with, that company will need to file a separate H1b. Your job title has to be relevant to your degree and your job should pay you as the same as other Americans (according to the wage rate from Labort Dept.). By law, all H1b visa holders have to obtain a job at all time or else you are out of status. There is no grace period for any H1b holder remain in USA without a job. And if you are lucky to get your next job while working on current job, your next employer has to file your H1b again.

Shall I continue to tell you how difficult to obtain a green card through an employer? Well, I know some Indian guys who filed their employment based green card at the time their kids were under 10 years old but now kids are over 21 but still waiting in line for green card. Not to mention after a dependent over 21, that dependent is no longer eligible to obtain a green card through a H1b visa holder; s/he has to maintain his/her own status (F1 or so) to stay in USA.

It even frustrated those highly skilled professionals when they see illegal Latinos pay 500 bucks to be a legal residence through Dream Act. Most of the H1b/H4 family pay thousands or even tens of thousands in legal fees prior to obtain their green card. Paying 500 fines and then get a residence for illegals is like slapping the face of all immigrants and telling us how stupid we are to follow the laws.

My point is, people in every countries are all afraid that immigrants might take their jobs. We all do. Japanese are and so do Americans, of course my country too.