a. He is on an L1 visa, which is highly restrictive (cant change employer). Here, there isn't much you can do to help until the company converts him to H1B (after L1 runs out).

b. He is on an H1B visa. If this is the case, ask him if his I-140 is approved. If it was approved for more than 6 months, he can safely change jobs without visa running out (new employer needs to sponsor for an H1B, but you can get indefinite 3 yr extensions). See if you can refer him to your friends working in other companies, or encourage him to apply for other jobs (since you think he is good at his job). Once he gets a competing offer, he will have the leverage to negotiate a raise or move to a new position.

c. He is on an H1B, without an approved I-140. If the company isn't filing one for him yet or delaying it, he needs to leave ASAP, or he will have to leave the US after 6 years on his H1B runs out. This is a very stressful situation to be in. The best you can do for him here is to refer him to another job where visa workers aren't being exploited.

As another Indian on H1B, I really thank you for your concern for your colleague. There are so many Indians out there stuck in bad work situations due to their perma-temp work visa status.

You're welcome.

I appreciate you sharing your perspective. It's not an enviable position to be in.

Again, I'm not a lawyer and I was on this visa more than 10 years ago, so maybe a lot has changed since then. Can you link to official documentation explaining this?

I'm confused what you mean by "safely". The only way it could be safer than that is if there were no approvals required from anyone to transfer.

I changed employer twice with an H1B, and both times I made damn sure that the petition was approved before giving a notice (also, back then there was no official grace period, but I would have done the same).

i think timing plays some sort of role, too. from a very small sample size, between December to April, transfers go pretty quickly. not hard to imagine the USCIS' load is higher from April to maybe October

Thank them for their help in standup, highlight their work in your 1-1s with your manager and tell them that you think this person deserves a raise or promotion. Tell higher ups that you think this person has been doing really well, etc. One thing that can be helpful is showing how much work that person did. In this case she compiled the numbers of how many stories, incidents and defects she closed relative to other people on her team, which showed her at almost double the average. Of course this is an imperfect metric and can be gamed, but having data is valuable. Good luck

That is not true - h1b holders can switch jobs and transfer the visa to the new employer

In the past USCIS offered an unofficial grace period of about a month to find another job, but this is unofficial, and considering the current environment where the SC just approved a government request that allows the government to use the fact that you apply for a green card as a negative during your green card application, people should be extremely worried about the transition time.

Further, the USCIS has been ridiculously slow for the past couple of years in approving stuff, and has been holding up requests for trivial reasons, but now specifically, they will be hitting the March time period when new visas take priority and the odds of a transfer approval happening in a reasonable amount of time is really low.

I don't think you are in a position to help your colleague. What you are suggesting would be a complex task even without the colleague having Visa.

Not complex in the sense that asking raise is complex, but complex in the sense that you would affect 1. the behavior of your colleague 2. how your employer values your colleague 3. how your employer assigns raises.

Your message does not give enough context to verify you could "coach" him. Coaching generally requires the experience of successes and failures in similar situations. If this is an unfamiliar situation to you, then you are in no position to coach him.

It's well-meaning, but at the same time a bit condescending to think that you can assist him by some techniques picked up at an internet forum.

In addition, based on what you told, you don't know if he already has asked for a raise, and been denied.

I don't think it's condescending to show empathy for, and attempt to learn how to help a colleague.

At worst, it's naive, because OP may not understand what a complex circumstance it can be - but I've worked with a number of Americans who do not understand work visas at all and have no intention of learning more. It's good to see OP asking; this industry could use more people looking out for each other.

I was not trying to shame empathy, but I felt it would be cruel not to point out the difficulty of the situation. "Move fast and break things" does not apply when you have only one shot.

There are some situations (for example medical conditions) where a simple checklist approach can provide tremendous value. These are situations where most of the variables are fairly known, and none of the steps are likely to have bad consequences.

I don't think there is a good checklist unless someone has been in the exact position as the friend (same industry, same skill base, same visa, etc) and can come up with helpfull pointers.

I do not think promotions or raises are a "one shot" situation, and I don't think having an advocate on your team is going to result in bad consequences, not unless they force the issue or management is truly awful.

As to coaching/checklists - I don't think someone has to be in the exact same situation to help. Every good coach starts from zero coaching experience, and it's easy to advocate on behalf of a teammate. I've had a lot of help from lots of people with different backgrounds, skills, etc. in my career - I would hate for them to think they couldn't help me because they haven't been in the exact same position.

In my sad experience deserving developers the world over are screwed over each and every day, particularly developers from India and Asia.

- first, US visas are complicated but not that complicated. Plenty of people have been in that situation before and there is a lot of advice but online and offline about how to deal with this. Coaching someone doesn't necessarily mean giving them a play-by-play of how to do things – you can point them to the right resource.

- second, it's possible that OP's colleague simply feels trapped and just hasn't considered that it was possible to improve their situation. Even a small nudge from OP could provide a huge improvement in their colleague's life.

@OP – thank you for doing this.

It also brings light to a hard situation that many people may be ignorant of.

But given so many unknowns, it's quite irresponsible to give any actionable advice to the specific end of getting a raise at the current employer. Without knowing all the cards (a lot of which the friend has), worst thing that could happen is that the friends contract is terminated, without him having a secured another position.

If the intent was to increase the friends salary, then finding another employer would be the safest way to do it (without any other information).

"The H-1B visa program should help U.S. companies recruit highly-skilled aliens when there is a shortage of qualified workers in the country."[1]

"Examples of H-1B fraud indicators may include:

..There is a wage disparity between H-1B workers and other workers performing the same or similar duties, particularly to the detriment of U.S. workers.

..The H-1B worker is not performing the duties specified in the H-1B petition, including when the duties are at a higher level than the position description. "[1]

The H1B visa was designed to fill talent gaps but has been used to keep wages down. Your friend isn't the only one getting screwed.

[1]https://www.uscis.gov/report-fraud/combating-fraud-and-abuse...

Now if the company gives him a promotion and that results in material change to his job duties, then the company has to restart his green card process .

Usually that implies trying to find an American for the job and convincing the government that they could not find a suitable candidate and they need to sponsor him at the newly promoted position.

Also that process for new Gc takes from 6-15 months and about 5-10K USD that no company wants to spend again for each promotion

I worked at at a company where a manager kept pushing for a raise/promo for a worker he really liked. Ended up screwing over the guys work status and getting him deported.

It might be "unfair" that he is being under-compensated. But you also needs to figure in the tens of thousands the company is spending on his behalf as part of "total comp."

If he is on H1B he will be exploited because his bargaining power is low. If you are a citizen your leverage is much higher and you are more likely to seek more.

However, if your friend has not pushed for more, it is his fault. Sometimes, we must ask for more because honestly it is in our interest. Some businesses are better at giving raises to their top performers, others are hoping to save money because some employees will stick around anyway and maybe become lifers. If an employee delivers and negotiates aggressively during reviews, the employer knows this and might be more likely to give them annual raises. It is a game.

You were already employed in a foreign country and get transferred to the US division

It is significant enough to make a difference.

I have a colleague on L1 visa in US. His visa is from Capgemini and so, he can't even change project due to Visa restrictions

H-1Bs are permitted to change jobs, and if they are laid off from their current job they have 60 days to find new employment before having to leave the United States. Even if they have to leave, they can continue to job hunt remotely (really hard, I know) and if they get an offer they can return to the US on the same H-1B (no lottery). In NYC at least, medium to large employers are very happy to process the H-1B transfer paperwork because good engineers are in such high demand.

If your co-worker is as good as you claim he is, he should start looking for a new position. It's not as hard as many people think it is on this status. The main thing is to get beyond the mentality that you're beholden to your original sponsor - you aren't.

If he's on an H-1B there's only one thing you can do for this particular coworker. Help him prepare for interviews and get a better job offer. He should be able to have his work visa transferred over to the new company in 5-6 weeks. There's no reason he can't ask for a raise too. I've done it, on an H-1B, and sometimes I've gotten it. No one's going to fire a good performer for asking for a raise, especially if the job market is good. But some people find that too confrontational - getting a better offer is easier, in that case.

(BTW, if the company is underpaying him, I'd encourage you to shop around a bit too. Maybe you aren't at market rate either?)

If he's on an L1 visa (i.e. transferred from an overseas branch of your company, rather than being hired directly) then I don't know if there's much you personally can do for him. He has to find a new job that pays more money, applies for an H-1B for him, and is willing to wait until October, which is when it starts. Or he can ask for a raise - see above.

If he has an I-140 in process, it's possible he wants to stick around until that's done (although what's the rush really? Indians applying today won't get a green card for 40+ years at current rates). If the company isn't doing that for him, or if it's already done, he has no real reason to stay.

Wait what? That's an interesting take because I think the exact opposite. I find that showing up at your manager's desk with an offer in hand is way more confrontational than just asking for a raise. Asking for a raise is cheap, it takes 15 minutes. If it's denied you can start a conversation around goals, how to get there, etc.

Showing up with an offer means that you already spent hours finding a new job and you're basically coming to the table with an ultimatum.

Next you should advocate for the outcome you really want. “Fair and equal treatment of our visa employees”. This you can champion without getting ahead of yourself. I tend to find that pushing for the principle can be better than the specific instance. If you win, you accomplish more than your original intent and you’ve done humanity and your workplace a good deed. If you lose, you can sleep at night knowing you tried.

You’re correct. We have no idea where the employer stands, because he hasn’t taken any action to find out.

This gives employers a lot of leverage to overwork and underpay.

I feel sorry for your friend because I was in that position in Microsoft. Once I got my green card, I got a 75% raise by going somewhere else.

My advice would be for him to talk to his boss and explain his case. If the company really wants him then they’d give a raise.

It’s really hard to get raises at an existing job. That’s been my experience. Sure they’d level you up, but % increase is pretty meh. Switching jobs usually results in a higher % compensation.

Compensation does not have to be financial. As a foreigner, simply getting to live in the country I chose is already a form of reward.

Other things that would make a huge difference to the lives of immigrants like me are payments for things like children's education, healthcare, or permanent contracts. If money is too short, consider allowing them to have more time off to spend with family, or on side projects. Many people move country for more important things in life than money, and therefore some immigrants don't even perceive getting a "raise" or having "career progression" as a goal: instead, it's all about providing a better, stable, future for a family.

That said, if you think that's never happening at your employer, then they have some options IF they're here on an H-1B. IANAL & I don't know anything about other visas either.

If your friend has a degree from a reputable US school and your employer is also reputable, they should have no trouble finding a new job and transferring their visa. GC applications may be redone as well, with the caveat that you don't hit H1 renewal after your previous employer revokes their application and the new one is approved. You could help coach them for interviews and with referrals, but that's about it.

There are risks involved in all these steps of course, so weigh the current salary with potential rise.

If your colleague were to ask for a raise and imply that he'd be willing to leave the company without one (no need to commit to anything in a negotiation), and your company cannot identify the value he is providing then they may be persuaded by considering the cost of replacing him. If you are involved in the hiring process and explain how difficult it is to find quality candidates and how expensive the good ones are then that might help the company see that giving him a raise is the cheapest and lowest risk option.

- He can always search for a better job while employed.

- Leverage is like poker. The facts are only half the game.

- Although he can minimize the impact, it will always hang over his head as a migrant unless he gets a citizenship. It might be worth seriously considering other countries that offer much faster & secure routes to green cards/citizenship.

Either way, you should limit your helpfulness here. I understand how you feel, but your coworker's pay and your boss's desire to pay him are not your responsibility.

You will work with many underpaid and overpaid people in your career. Underpaid people will teach your kids and pick up your garbage.

If you want to help your coworker, put the energy into systemic change (donations, political activity, voting) rather than trying to take the steering wheel of his career. It may be less welcome than you assume (or he lets on).

> Your coworker can and should ask for a raise. Your boss may say no, but no one gets fired for asking for a raise.

H1B visa abuse does result in people getting fired and their visas dropped for asking for a raise. No one will say that outright, but other reasons can be found after someone disturbs a stable situation.

> Either way, you should limit your helpfulness here. I understand how you feel, but your coworker's pay and your boss's desire to pay him are not your responsibility.

People should absolutely work together to help each other. If someone is being harmed because they lack protections or abilities that you possess, and you have the ability to remove or reduce that harm, I feel strongly that you have a moral responsibility to help.

> You will work with many underpaid and overpaid people in your career. Underpaid people will teach your kids and pick up your garbage.

Don't confuse the way the world is with the way the world ought to be.

> If you want to help your coworker, put the energy into systemic change (donations, political activity, voting) rather than trying to take the steering wheel of his career. It may be less welcome than you assume (or he lets on).

Do both. It's true that this local situation is the result of larger systemic factors, but and individual has little power to make systemic change and great power to make local changes. You can't "Take the steering wheel of his career" but you can assume your coworker is being honest if he's asked for your help and be intentional to publicly compliment the good work he's done with the goal of being his advocate where he cannot do that.

I have never seen such a thing and never heard about it happening. I have only heard about people being afraid of it. But if your company really does this kind of stuff it’s time to look somewhere else. it will be a miserable with H-1 or without. And it’s very possible to change jobs H-1. Especially in big companies it’s not a big deal.

And, again, no one ever gets fired for asking for a raise if they're a productive employee as OP suggests. I've been in software for 15 years and have relatives on H1B. Turnover is incredibly painful even for low-skill employees, and asking for a raise is not an "offense" to the employer. It often leads to other accommodations to keep employees happen if a raise is not doable.

2) the best course of action is for that person to look for a job, get an offer and then decide if they want to stay here and negotiate. If they have green card in processing, there are kinda SOL

3) as some others said, he should still ask. I'm a strong believer in: if you don't ask the answer is always no.

Another tip is to take credit for the work that makes a difference to the company, and in the bigger picture to be doing work that matters.

Please tell them to seek outside jobs.

Context: This is a technology company (3k+ employees) which offers a SaaS product to enterprise customers. I was part of the customer-facing account team (think: sales person, solution engineer, professional services team, and support team). The support team was often located in "low-cost centers" (such a euphemism!), such as India. My Indian colleague was on the support team, where often they would spend long amounts of time diagnosing customer issues. I was a solution engineer / "CTO for the customer" / technical account manager-type role.

After some informal phone calls & chats with my Indian colleague, I found out that he wanted to work more closely with the customer as a solution architect capacity, instead of just performing a more reactive support role. I was really excited to help him pursue this dream.

Here's some of the the advice I'd offer to others on how to help "level up" an undervalued overseas colleague:

* Have regular 1:1s with people you find valuable, from all over the organization. In this case, I spent several 1:1 meetings with my Indian colleague, getting to know personal information (what area of India he was from, what the food's like, what's the work-life like, what do you do for fun - soccer, etc). This helped ME build up empathy for who he is, who he wanted to be.

* Find out unrecognized skills — I found out that my colleague used to tutor other students on math & science when he was in university, and loved mentoring people, and was pretty good at ad-hoc presentations. I found out that our company often performs customer-facing classes about our products, to teach customers how to get the most out of the stuff they bough. My colleague was already so familiar with the product at a technical level, so I just had him practice presenting to me in a coaching session, where I'd pretend to be the customer. Later, I had him present a very focused topic to one of my trusted customers (it was something like, "Top 10 diagnostic tips, tricks & tools for Product X" - showing off the various debug tools, logs, etc available). The customer LOVED it, and actually recorded the session to share around the company. I asked my customer to send me email containing feedback about my colleague's presentation. I got glowing feedback from the customer, which I forwarded to a large internal distribution list - "Check out this awesome presentation Support Engineer X did for Big Customer Y!" (+cc'ing my colleague's manager). The email thread got lots of good attention from "high visibility" people like sales & management, who are happy to see examples of people "delighting the customer". If you think about it, these people are 99% of the time dealing with the fall-out from issues, support escalations, and so on. Positive vibes are a welcome refreshment!

* Develop & be recognized fro subject matter expert (SME)-like skills: Several of my customers were concentrated in a specific customer vertical (e.g. "Media", vs "eCommerce"). My colleague didn't recognize it at the time, but he worked primarily with several large customers which were all in the same customer segment. As a result my colleague was very knowledgeable in a couple product areas specific to that customer segment, and that segment's challenges. I setup some internal "lunch & learns" where 2 people would present some of the use cases for which their customer is using a product, and share out any advice, gotchas, etc. For my presentation - instead of traditionally having the customer-facing solution engineer discuss the technical parts of the presentation - I asked my Indian colleague to co-present with me. When presenting, I would deliberately defer to my colleague for certain areas - to reinforce credibility & trust - but I also had him present the "advice & lessons learned"-part. Afterwards, he got SO MUCH positive feedback from internal folks. I made share to socialize & forward on this feedback around - greatly increasing the visibility of my colleague's name, way outside of his immediate group. From that point on, my colleague was known as an expert in that area, and would commonly be hit-up to answer questions, do presentations for other customers, etc.

* Be recognized as a human being. This might sound obvious, but the unfortunate truth is that in many USA-based technology companies, overseas colleagues can be pretty invisible to the "home office". They are often deliberately hired because their salaries can be lower; they are not physically present in the main offices where informal chit-chat occurs; culturally, there may be barriers like English language fluency, or even the spelling/pronunciation of their names. I made a point to learn how to pronounce my Indian colleague's name (and he even offered a "Westernized" nickname which he liked, which sounded like a cool rapper's name, so we just rolled with it!). In our team, we often had to go onsite with customers ("customer business reviews) - what we're working on, how the product is being utilized, etc. I made a point to include a "Your Team" slide - and it included the names AND PHOTOS of the members of the team aligned with the customer. Instead of boring corporate photos, I included photos with actual personality (e.g. my Indian colleague scaling a rock wall, or him and his family at a birthday party in India). These photos would always invite questions & comments from the customer, and my colleague would get some air time to talk about themselves. Really helped the customer get to know them (and avoid the pejorative, "get me someone who actually speaks English" attitude), and built trust both ways.

* Get endorsement from the people with the money. There were times when there were staffing changes, which might result in a customer-aligned support person to be moved to another customer. I would often give my customer a heads-up that there might be changes to the staffing - and I'd tell them, if you feel strongly about keeping Person X on the team aligned to you, please send me a "strongly worded email" asking to keep the person on your team and why. This would often result in the customer explaining how important person X is to their company, the impact they had to their business, etc. Very good stuff for internal managers to see.

THE RESULT

OK, so I've accidentally written a novel here, and you might be able to te tell I feel strongly about helping raise my colleague up. So what actually happened?

* I asked my Indian colleague to help out with a small professional service project for a customer, paired with a senior person advising along the way. This was outside of his typical role, and was OK'd by his manager (I made the sales person ask it, so it was more "unrefusable"). The project went very well, and again got great feedback from the customer.

* An "associate" solution architect role req opened up. Originally it was just for employees located in USA, not remote-friendly. I successfully petitioned that we TRY to do it as a remote-only position, and have my Indian colleague try it out for 6 months, and work with customers who already know & trust him. It worked great. As a result, my colleague got a job title change and a very SMALL pay increase. But since he was on the "revenue generating" team now, he got tons more visibility around the organization - his name was tied to various "high-five" emails and such.

* About a year later, a solution architect position opened in Boston - again, not remote-friendly. I asked my colleague if he'd be interested in the job & relocation - he said VERY INTERESTED, but that from his experience in India, it was nigh unheard of for the company to do that kind of transition. I made a point to speak to some of the highest level people I could find - basically telling the story of this skilled person who's personally recommended by some of our most strategic customers, who's looking to relocate for this role. "What can we do to endorse this move and make it happen?" I actually challenged an executive, I bet you can make this happen. It turns out, we got attention from enough of the right folks, and we were able to hire him in (along with all the legal / H1B stuff required for that) to the Boston slot. He got a huge salary increase, moved to Boston with his wife. I don't work at the company any more, but I stay in contact with my former colleague. He's super happy, and just checking out his Facebook photos, it looks like he's really into snowboarding & microbrewing now :)

H1b transfer is possible, transfer when greencard is underway is possible.

If he hasn't even asked for a raise, that is the first thing to try.

Until that conversation has been had, nothing else matters, and he/you know nothing about the situation.