Good information goes a long way, and the government is terrible at it. I just tell people what they have to do, which pitfalls to avoid, and how the process usually goes. That makes the whole thing a lot less stressful.
I'm slowly adding more tech to the problem. For instance, I'd love to build a residence permit picker that tells you exactly what your immigration options are. Again, this information is very hard to gather from official sources.
It's not a startup, just a website. Does that still fit?
- Lack of political will to fix the bureaucratic mess: I had to come to Immigration Office standing in the queue at 3-4am due to lack of appointment slots online.
- One of the biggest companies in Germany didn't know how to move my employment permit from Berlin to Hamburg. No complicated case even! I was on visa, single, residence tied in Berlin and for 4 weeks their HR and Immigration partner kept deliberating on where/how the application should proceed. I worked at small startups as well as some big ones and I felt a major lack of empathy for foreign workers among German/European colleagues who never had to deal with such paperwork.
- I felt tons of virtue signalling here but minimal support for once you were in the country. Eg. Poland had had Immigration Advisory Centers you could call and seek advice on your case for free, in multiple languages incl. English. Poland! - the country "infamous" for not being very foreigner-friendly. Zero such support in Immigration Center (Auslandsamt) in Germany with silly argument of "we can't speak in English even though we work in an office where we must interact with foreigners every day because what if legal repurcussions?"
Long story short, it left a poor taste and I chose to leave.
Turned out for the better but just wanted to point out: I still believe that problem is not just collecting information (there are sites like allaboutberlin that are good at it) but handholding/support (like Jobbatical/Localyze are doing and some lobbying/support to the govt. to fix the bureaucracy that is living 20 years back in time.
checkvisaslots.com informs about visa slot availability in India
visaholics.com a community that shares US visa experiences
boundless.com .. . ..
I see now your thought is more about helping people navigate existing policy. I do think this can be very helpful.
I'd be willing to pay actual money for a "one stop shop" to navigate all the H1B issues that unifies all these things :)
h1bdata.info which provides list of companies that sponsor H-1B visas along with the job titles and salary
checkvisaslots.com which informs about visa slot availability
visaholics.com a community that shares US visa experiences
boundless.com .. . ..
In terms of waitlists and queues increasing, which is what has essentially been a lack of control and adoption to an ever growing number, I don't think a startup could feasibly rise as a business in order to address these pain points. If anything offering a system solution to a publicly unknown problem that could be adopted at scale is a great challenge and one that could and should be invested into. But the root problem isn't known publicly and/or is too complicated and entirely not software/tech solvable.
I think this is also why the rise of companies aimed at efficiency that are in some way related to these immigration pain points like Flexport(logistics), Rippling(HR), deel(HR/PEO), Stripe/Modern Treasury/Adyen(finance), Exec (coaching),Replit(edu/dev tool) and others I'm missing, continue to gain prominence, funding, and adoption.
Yes, that's the whole point!
So basically for years you cannot LEAVE the US because even though you have all the approvals, you cannot get an appointment?
So much on their site whining about H1Bs simply have no clue what they’re talking about. Which is especially ironic because commenters here simultaneously complain about how there are so many H1Bs that it should be easy enough to ask one of their colleagues.
Why does Canada have a long wait time? Population is smaller than California.
