There are a lot of sites out there that propose to help potential H1B applicants from everything from their finding a company, writing resumes, interview practices, legal help, transferring to a green card option, etc.

The legal helps site differ dramatically in what type of help they offer but a word of caution immediately is that any time you start paying for a legal service in the US, be fully aware and informed about what you are paying for in advance, and what it does and does NOT cover. The US legal model is very much based on pay for time, so if you are not paying much, more likely not much time is spent on your individual case and nor will you get much or quick turnaround support.

I will be brutally honest, most of these sites are unscrupulous and either SCAMS or on the borderline. These are easy to spot as they charge large amounts of money, charge for and do not mention the green card lottery is completely free, offer scant information prior to payment and otherwise are more style than substance.

Some off a legitimate service but the service they are offering is not entirely accurate in the way it is marketed nor is it mentioned anywhere that all the best bits of information they have like the Top US Visa Employers are freely available to the general public. They do however provide a type of value added service by repackaging this information in a more user friendly way and at least state they will provide ongoing support, although not really sure how accurately when it comes to real hard slog, grind and few ups and many downs of job searching in the US as a foreigner. (I would put H1Base in this category as a Value Added Service).

Now I would put H1Visajobs.com in this category as a Valued Added Service. Their main product seems to be repackaging the US Visa companies (that I provided links for above) into classification lists like IT, Health, etc. and selling these to a prospect. They also of course have offers to cross sell multiple databases and then further special offers for students and institutions like universities who may want multi-user access.

Finally they have a 30 minute consultation, although reading further it is not entirely clear how much that costs or exactly what is on offer during this time. They do have a running tally (annonymized) of the people who were the most recent subscribers according to them.

I will firstly say noone at E3visa.info has had firsthand experience with H1visajobs and nor are we basing this review on either user comments sent to us here or that we have read elsewhere. This is purely observations based on navigating the site and our what we would like to think is growing deep knowledge of the US Immigration and US Visa system.

Their prices are cheaper than a lot of their competitor sites but then again they also are offering you are lot less. Like I said though other sites may state they offer you a lot but it could be different in reality. A classified database would be helpful if it is done very well and provides multiple layers of search and categorization (given the complex nature of companies like Microsoft wanting IT talent but also talent in other areas).

This would certainly take effort to do this compared to just a raw list of companies and would be extremely helpful further down the list where the company itself may not be as obvious to the average person as to what they would do. As mentioned for this to be truly worthwhile it should be regularly updated (i.e. Top 2009 US Visa companies vs. Top 2008 US Visa Companies) so person can make full determination on the information.

Also if the categorization is just basic, in that the IT list has just all companies who are IT related with no further information beyond that, then it may be worth saving your money and just browsing the lists yourselves.

H1Visajobs to their credit provides some links to useful resources for US Immigration and from those sites although no easily first seen you could actually navigate to US Visa Employer Sponsor lists. So it is definitely not trying to isolate a potential customer as to stating they are the only service, and nor are they offering any crazy guarantees just stating they want to help.

The site itself is very basic in nature as if was created using MS Front Page many many years ago and rarely changed since then. Not that this is a minus but I hope like I said that is not a reflection of the currentness of the databases they provide.

All in all I am a little on the fence with them as on the face of it I would NOT recommend or use them but as I mentioned above they are certainly not seemingly an unscrupulous site or marketing themselves to be anything more than what they seemingly are. However if their databases are constantly revised and as deeply classified as I described earlier then it may be a worthwhile investment for you for your particular niche. (maybe this is something you can ask in your 30 minute consultation with them if indeed that is free!)

CJ

©2012 E3 Visa. All Rights Reserved.

- At best, H1Base is a overpriced business designed to exploit immigrants further in a US Immigration process already difficult, costly and skewed against them

- At worst, H1Base is a a scam promising things it cannot deliver upon and stating services and facts on their website that are dubious at best.

I have already written two posts about H1Base including; H1Base in my opinion and a post following an H1Base Newsletter that they sent out which stated that a new larger H1B visa quota was likely to happen this year which of course you can see it hasn’t and was never going to. In fact funnily and sadly if Senators Grassley and Durbin get their way the H1B visa quota may become smaller.

So I am not going to redo all the points made in those posts as you can certainly read for yourself and make up on your mind. I also encourage you to read widely about other opinions on H1Base. Read the British Expat Forums or other Immigration Forums and read people’s experiences there as well as type in “H1Base Scam” in Google and see what results and information you find.

The final thing I encourage you to read is the comments below my 2 H1Base posts supposedly made by 2 different people who have nothing to do with the site and trying desperately to defend it If you believe nothing else about what you read anywhere about H1Base, that alone should demonstrate the nature of the people and service you are dealing with.

On their site one of the terms and conditions is:
6.3 No Guaranty of Results. H1 Base makes no representations or guarantees regarding the effectiveness or timeliness of the Site in meeting the Member’s U.S. immigration, visa, and employment objectives.

So what exactly are you paying for then?

As always read extensively and with US Immigration whether it is H1Base or the Green Card Lottery scams where people try and charge for the Lottery which is free to enter with the US Government and don’t pay for anything unless you are sure.

Good Luck,
CJ

©2012 E3 Visa. All Rights Reserved.

Well firstly to grab your attention but secondly to help stop the crappy untruths filling the visa space. I wrote an earlier piece about my feelings on H1Base so I won’t re-hash all that here now, suffice to say I am not a fan!

Anyway the above headline in quotation marks was the headline of an email newsletter that H1Base sent out yesterday and it annoys me how many people may believe this is true and then pay money to these people in the hope their chances will increase.

Let’s Give Them The Benefit Of The Doubt!
Let’s say everything they say is true. After all I haven’t got inside information on Barack Obama’s Administration plans not to mention the Congress. Even if a bill was to pass with their stated increase to 180,000 visas instead of the annual 65,000, then it would usually only take effect the following year. Then given the way the H1B visa works you would only start working on October 1, 2010!!

Why This Bill Probably Won’t Even Be Up For Debate Possibly Till The Next Presidential Term
As I said I have no inside information (so I am safe to assume do H1Base) but there are few major reasons why immigration changes are unlikely in this next year or two.

Firstly when the original bill was up for vote in 2007 that as they point out Obama supported (and incenditally so did McCain who was a major proponent of the bill), the US economy was on a high and the stock market reached all time highs in October 2007 following the defeat of this bill.

Now of course the economy is in a year long recession with potentially another year to go. Millions of American citizens and residents have lost jobs (along with visa holders) in 2008 and two of the biggest hit area, manufacturing and union jobs and NY finance are in the majority Democratic supporters.
Do you really think these people would be happy and support more foreign workers when they have no job themselves?
Do you think Obama is stupid enough while riding high popularity and pressing concerns like economic stimulus, 2 wars he wants to end, health care mess and other major home and foreign crisis is going to focus on immigration?

(hey even  Bill Gates’ Microsoft laid of 5,000 people yesterday for there first ever mass lay off and Bill Gates himself is one of the biggest proponets of huge increases to the quota)

Also one of the biggest reasons the Democrats supported the 2007 immigration bill was the section allowing a form of amnesty for current illegal immigrants. This is the part of the immigration reform that is probably top of their wish list so am sure if you here anything in relation to immigration in the next year or two, it will be about this more than increase visa quotas.

What Does This Mean For You?

As a foreign applicant, essentially you will have the same difficulties as a US worker trying to apply to less jobs in an economic recession. However don’t give up and head for your dreams, just don’t be taken in by false promises from organization such as this without hearing all the facts and judging for yourself.

Like I said I don’t know what will happen either but I do know that making statements like this as a prophecy is certainly misleading unless you evaluate the facts.

GOOD LUCK AND STAY AWARE……

CJ

©2012 E3 Visa. All Rights Reserved.

I don’t recommend these people or company in any way or whatever it claims to be and this is the reason why and if you have a different story, please feel free to share in the comments section.

Before I first moved to the US to live 3 years ago, I like you was lost and did searches online and H1Base came up in the paid listing in Google along with numerous other people proporting to help you get a work visa (for a fee of course!).

Now after browsing through most of them H1Base seemed the most reputable as it provided genuinely helpful information and didn’t ask to charge you the moment you entered the site as most others did. Additionally the US Diversity Visa Lottery (or Green Card Lottery as it is more commonly known) run by the US State Department was mentioned on there as a simple form you could complete yourself to enter. This is entirely true, it takes all of 5 minutes and is as basic as a form could be and is FREE to enter. However many sites charge a fee to do this for you, claiming all sorts of things and difficulties you may have.
To me the only difficulty you could possibly have  is if you can’t read or speak English. However if that is your issue you wouldn’t be able to understand the site asking for your money anyway

So I digress, H1Base seemed reputable. It had as one of their offerings at the time and still does when I look at the site a guaranteed job finding service that will not stop until they secure you a H1B visa job (or E3) and you get your visa. On the face of it that sounds awesome given the relatively low price you have to pay (currently under $200USD) but has one major flaw. Ultimately regardless of whether they even do find you a job, there are a few bridges to cross.

Firstly the USCIS (US Customs and Immigration Service) formerly known as the INS, and Department of Labor have to approve separate petitions of the company willing to employ you and pay relevant costs.

If you pass that hurdle then you have the significant hurdle of the Quota for H1B (there is a quota for E3 too although has yet to filled in any year it has been running). H1B applications open each year on April 1 and the last 2 years at least they received in excess of 100,000 application on that first day alone.
So you can see instantly there is an issue. There is huge demand and even if you have ticked every box 100% successfully up to this point you can still lose out here very easily because there is an element of luck involved. Granted there are things that can help having a US Masters Degree or higher (which would have most likely cost you a lot already) which puts you under a different cap, working for an approved  non-profit/government/education institution which are often uncapped, paying the Premium Filing Fee (an extra $1,000) to help expedite your case and have access to your case officer by phone, etc. but in the end this is still out of yours (and H1Base’s hands).

Finally you have to be approved by the US Consulate that you apply too and you can be rejected there for a whole host of reasons either because of something to do with you or the company or both. Consulate’s are funny entities and can operate completely differently depending on the city or country you apply. Generally if you have paid all the fees, you haven’t lied about anything yourself, there is no criminal history, the company documents and fees are in order, etc. you should be fine but there are certainly no guarantees.

So H1Base claim of guarantee of a job and a visa does not mean much when they have no say over 95% of the process!

Now the suspicious aspect of this all for me is that (by the way I am still waiting for that live chat support I mentioned at the beginning) when I was in Australia and I emailed them asking for help, they answered all my questions quickly and fully and seemed very friendly. When I moved to the US initially under a J1 visa and was looking for a permanent work position and contacted them for help via email mentioning I was in Boston, I never once got a response.

Given I was in the US I also thought I would call their numbers as well but the numerous times I tried during normal business hours (given they are supposedly based in Florida and same timezone as me) i went through an endless look of automated answering options and no matter what options I picked I always ended up at a voicemail at the end. Very Suspicious I Think!!

When you look at their site they supposedly have recommendations from Monster and CNN and Universities and maybe its true and maybe it isn’t or it has been taken out of context but I’ll bet if those institutions knew about my experiences they may think twice about their comments.

Anyway I will be back soon again for more help….but otherwise Happy Searching!

CJ (still no response from their Live Chat…surprise, surprise!)

P.S. as a side note, read one of their ridiculous newsletter headlines and then obvious comments from someone from the below the post (even though he can’t admit it)

©2012 E3 Visa. All Rights Reserved.