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103 points MilnerRoute | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.2s | source
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lokar ◴[] No.45159119[source]
For people saying "they should have had the right visa", no one does this.

Any day of the week all of the big tech companies will have dozens of overseas engineers in the US attending meetings, and gasp working on-site (writing code, etc). They all have either tourist visas or visa waivers.

And it's the same thing when the US engineers visit the remote sites in other countries.

Regardless of what the letter of the law is, this has long been the practice, because it's the only workable solution and is clearly within the spirit of the law.

In this case LG was fitting out a new batter factory. That is a very complex setup with highly specialized machines. The ONLY way that was ever going to happen was with LG specialists coming over to do the setup and get the line working. And it's almost certain that getting "correct" visas for all these people would have been practically impossible, and has not been the actual practice for many decades.

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general1465 ◴[] No.45160299[source]
What you are describing - going to a remote site, sort out something with client and going back - is a business meeting and that falls under visa waiver / tourist visa in any country, because the worker who is doing the job is not paid by the local company, but by his employer in his home country.

With this logic it would be illegal to have a vacation and also write a code in a free time.

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pylua ◴[] No.45162279[source]
Ianal but my understanding is you can’t do any work , even coding, debugging, if you are in the us on a non work visa.

It does not matter who is funding you.

I could be wrong though. I have personally seen companies abuse this. I’m glad it’s be cracked down on.

replies(1): >>45162507 #
lokar ◴[] No.45162507[source]
I agree, it's probably the law (not just in the US, but most places). But, IME, it's almost universally ignored, and has to be.

I've never worked in fab/manufacturing, but I assume if you buy a bunch of gear from ASML (100s of millions of $), they are going to send a team out to help set it up and get it working for you. How else could that work? Some story for advanced batteries.

And a similar story for large (multi-national) tech/software companies. People need to travel back and forth between sites. Getting "work" visas for these short visits would be impractical.

Why are you happy to see a crack down? How do you think this should work?

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1. pandaman ◴[] No.45163116[source]
There is nothing impractical about getting a business visa, in fact it's the same process as getting a tourist visa and some consulates issue just a generic B-1/2 visa, which can be either, depending on the purpose of your visit. And these visas are usually multi-entry, so you don't need to get one for every visit. Same for visa waiver - it can be used for either business or tourism, you just need to declare the purpose.

The problem in the topical case, is likely, that it was not a short visit but people being employed in the US illegally.