Status Change within USA

Note: The issue of status conversion while staying in the USA is a frequent concern. Many guys consider it because it eliminates the chances of being held back in their home country (due to either visa rejection or FBI clearance) to an extent such that their residency contract is often cancelled. However, the major disadvantage remains – not being able to leave the USA. Another point of notice – status changes cannot be done if one has entered the USA via a visa waiver.

Q Is it possible to get my work visa stamped from the US?

To answer this we need to understand some basic terms:

Status vs. visa
Both your ‘visa’ and your ‘status’ may be H1 or J1 but they vary from one another in some fundamental ways. While the ‘status’ is your legal permission to reside in the US, the ‘visa’ is the actual stamp on the passport which allows you to (re)-enter the US. So, although you may legally have your status changed from the tourist B1 to the Working H1, this will not allow you to come back to the US if you ever have to leave and you are hence STUCK. To enter the country, you need a valid visa.

Getting a visa involves going through the US consulate in your country, and this means going through the infamous ‘security clearance’ for guys. Currently, no one knows a hassle free method to get a visa from any country.

While the duration of the ‘status’ can be extended from within the US for up to six (for H1) or seven (for J1) years, your ‘visa’ will only be valid for the duration that it was initially stamped. To re-enter the US after that date, you shall have to get another visa stamped from the Consulate. Now here is where the H1 and the J1 can differ: It is possible to get an H1 stamped for up to three years while a J1 is only stamped for one, so a person on H1 can come and go from the US as he/she pleases for three years while the J1 only has one year.

So the answer to the above question is that you may have your status changed from the Tourist B1 to H1/J1, and it will be 100% legal, but you will not have a visa on your passport.

Note: This article has been derived from "Roadmap to Residency" authored by AKU graduates, with permission from few of the authors. Name of the original author, has purposely not been mentioned on request of one of the authors, for privacy reasons. If you are the original author of this article and want your name to be mentioned or wish this article to be modified/ removed from this website, please contact us and we would be more than happy to entertain your request. We fully respect your privacy, acknowledge your efforts put in authoring this article and appreciate your hard work involved in it.