Caught Between Immigration Law and Time Zones, Developer Loses Job

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By Fran Berkman2013-12-01 16:00:07 UTC

This is part of an occasional series about the technology industry's plight to reform immigration law in the United States.

Aron Susman would sometimes wake up at 3 a.m. to have real-time discussions with his nascent company's user interface expert. Other times he would schedule the talks for 1 a.m. and just stay up late.

The employee, we'll call her Jane for this story, shaped the look and feel of the New York-based company's website after Susman hired her as an intern in June 2012. Although both employer and employee were happy with one another, it would not prove to be a long-lasting relationship.

See also: The High-Tech Immigration Debate: Everything You Need to Know

"She was just ridiculously passionate," Susman told Mashable. "All she wanted was to live in the U.S. and work for a tech company."

Even though Susman's company offered her a job as head designer and sponsored her work visa application, Jane was not approved. She was forced to return to Turkey in February. Susman didn't want to lose Jane's expertise for his commercial real-estate startup, TheSquareFoot, so he decided on what he called "the second-best solution" — employing her remotely.

"She was obviously going to be an employee in the States," Susman said. "She was going to be paying taxes. She was going to have a job, health care, all that kind of stuff."

From February until August, Susman resorted to conferencing at odd hours with Jane. Before long, however, he decided to pull the plug on the arrangement. Susman hired a different person to fill his company's role as Chief Product Officer and told the Turkish employee that she could continue to contribute as a contract worker.

"It was too taxing on the entire team," Susman said. "She can still do some stuff for us but can't be a living, breathing part of the process."

There is an increasingly loud chorus of voices calling for immigration reform of late, but the technology industry — from giants like Facebook and Google to small startups — has been making the most noise.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently called immigration reform "one of the biggest civil rights issues of our time." Zuckerberg, in April, threw his support behind FWD.us, a tech industry-powered lobbying group focused on immigration reform.

The roster of founders and supporters on FWD.us's website reads like the guest list of an ultra-exclusive tech industry insider's party, including names such as Bill Gates, Napster co-founder Sean Parker, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen and Dropbox CEO and founder Drew Houston, to name a few.

These entrepreneurs want to be able to hire the most qualified high-skilled workers, regardless of their nationality or residence status. One of the main legal changes they're hoping to enact is an increase to the number of H-1B visas, a temporary employment visa for highly skilled workers.

Under current law, the H-1B cap is set at 65,000. The company that wants to hire the foreign worker must sponsor his or her application, a process that can involve several thousand dollars in legal fees.

"We went through that rigamarole, and she did not get approved," Susman said. "There was really no rhyme or reason. They don't really give you an explanation." U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services does not respond to case-specific questions.

Opponents of increasing the H1-B cap argue that these companies can fill their open positions by hiring U.S. nationals, and that tech companies are trying to keep wages down by adding to the pool of potential employees.

It's not just entrepreneurs supporting immigration reform. There is substantial will to enact new legislation coming from politicians on both sides of the aisle, though more so from the Democrats. President Obama has moved the issue to the front of his legislative agenda.

"We invite the brightest minds from around the world to study here ... and then, we don't invite them to stay," Obama said in a Nov. 25 speech in San Francisco. "We end up sending them home to create new jobs and start new businesses someplace else; so, we're training our own competition."

With bi-partisan support, the U.S. Senate approved a comprehensive immigration reform bill in June. The vote tally was 68 to 32 with 14 Republicans joining the entire Democratic caucus in favor of the bill (PDF), which was drafted by the "Gang of Eight" senators that includes prominent Republicans such as John McCain, of Arizona, and Marco Rubio, of Florida.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said the Senate immigration bill would boost economic output and decrease federal budget deficits by $197 billion in the next decade. The next step would be for the House of Representatives to take up the bill or draft its own version.

In the meantime, Susman's designer is still hoping to find a way to come back to the U.S. to work. She asked to keep her real name out of this story, and would not comment directly, out of fear of angering immigration officials. "We're still trying to help. She's still trying to find a way to get back here," Susman said.

(Disclosure: Mashable was founded by Scottish-born Pete Cashmore, who has taken the position of supporting immigration reform.)

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Image: Aron Susman, TheSquareFoot

Topics: immigration, Tech, U.S., US & World, World