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Case
Study: Getting A Russian In today's global economy, working on projects out of several development offices has become standard practice for many game development teams. For example, on our soon-to-be-released first-person shooter, Will Rock, we worked with individuals in six offices spread across five countries to complete the project: the United States, Russia, France, Canada, and Romania. While web-based collaboration tools have made production from diverse locations relatively easy, it is still important to have the ability to move personnel quickly from office to office. Unfortunately, due to the strict and the sometimes capricious application of immigration laws, this is not always possible. This is especially the case when working with individuals in countries where visas are not so readily available such as many Eastern European, Asian and South American countries. Even for individuals with substantial experience in immigration matters, it is often a challenge to acquire visas for personnel seeking to come to the U.S. The type of visa you seek depends largely on the reason for the individual's visit to the U.S. If your goal is simply to bring an employee over for a short stay or to an event such as E3, then a B-1 visa for business purposes is preferable. If you are seeking to bring an employee over for an extended period of time to work out of your U.S. office, then a work-based visa such as an H-1B or one of the L-1 flavors would be preferable. Here are some instances from my own experience which illustrate the difficulties in moving personnel for smaller start-up teams with offices in countries where visas are given only after extracting a pound of flesh from the applicant. Currently I am the President of Saber Interactive, a two-year old game development company. We have offices in New York City and St. Petersburg, Russia. In a former life I practiced immigration law, so I have substantial experience in visa matters. You would think, then, that it would be easy for me to bring Russian personnel to my US office. Unfortunately, recent experiences have proved otherwise. Last year we wanted to bring our lead artist over to attend E3 in Los Angeles. He did not possess a visa allowing entry into the United States, and because he is from Russia, a country that is not on the "visa waiver" list (a group of countries whose citizens can enter the US without a visa), it was necessary to procure a visa from the consulate in St. Petersburg for entry. As our intent was to have him come over to the U.S. for a relatively quick, uncompensated business trip, we decided that the B-1 visa was the best route to take. This visa has the advantages of being cheaper to acquire, and it doesn't require prior approval by the BCIS (formerly the INS). The disadvantages of the B-1 visa are that it requires the applicant to prove to the consular officer in his home country that he has significant ties to his home country to warrant his return home. In other words, the consulate wants to make sure that the individual receiving the visa has every intention of returning to his home country after his trip. While it is impossible to prove intent with 100% certainty, there are certain factors that weigh in an applicant's favor. Such factors include the following: substantial past travel abroad (particularly to the United States and Western Europe), having close family members remaining in his home country, a good job with a good salary to return home to and the ownership of an apartment or home in the home country. These factors tend to indicate that the applicant has reason to return home. In our case, our lead artist was able to provide documentation to prove the majority of the above factors. He had been to the United States previously, he had spent considerable time in Western Europe, he had a wife who was remaining in Russia and he had a great job with a substantial salary awaiting his return. Armed with documentation to prove all of this, he headed for his visa interview in St. Petersburg. It took all of two minutes for the consular officer to reject his application. The reason: the officer was not convinced he would return home. Needless to say he missed E3, and thus a great opportunity to see what other developers were working on. The most frustrating thing about this case is that there was nothing we could do to change the outcome. Maybe the consular officer was having a bad day. Maybe the consular officer hated video games. Maybe that individual had already given his quota of approvals and felt compelled to deny our case. Whatever the reason, we were in a relatively helpless position and decided we needed to take action to prevent this from happening in the future. In response to this denial, we prepared an application for an L-1A visa for our artist. An L-1A visa is used to transfer managerial personnel from a foreign office to a US office. Having this visa would allow our lead artist to come to the US as many times as necessary over the next three years as long as he worked as a manager while in the US. In order to receive an L-1A, you have to prove several things:
If your primary objective is just to get your employee into the U.S., this visa has one major disadvantage and one major advantage over the B-1 visa. The disadvantage is that you need to file a lengthy and costly application (plus a $1000 expedite fee if you need it quickly) with the BCIS. Only once you have received this approval will it be forwarded to the consulate in the country where the applicant plans to receive the visa. The advantage is that you do not have to prove "home ties" as with the B-1 visa. Thus, a consular officer has substantially less discretion in visa issuance for an L-1A visa. This is also the case for L-1B and H-1B visas, which are other viable options for many employees. This is not to imply that success is by any means guaranteed, but if you need to get employees over to the US and the individuals qualify for one of these work visa types, they are a much better option for ensuring visa issuance to the applicant. In our case, we received an approval for our lead artist who is now free to come to the United States at will for the next three years. We are also free to pay him a salary in the United States -- something that we would not have been allowed to do were he here on a B-1 visa. Navigating visa issues is as much a question of luck as it is skill. The key is knowing which options are available to you and picking the option that is right under the circumstances. While larger companies are usually able to procure visas for their employees with ease, smaller companies often have to fight to get their employees over. With a lot of persistence and an understanding of the way the system works, success is likely, if not immediately then in the long-term.
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