It doesn’t start with a denial or a rejection. It starts with a conversation—one where your PI bluntly tells you the grant didn’t work out, and your contract runs out in a few months.
For most postdocs on academic H1Bs, that moment is more of a countdown than a conclusion. And when your green card application hangs in limbo, the countdown only becomes more constricting.
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When funds tighten up—like they did recently for a researcher whose position expires this August—investments in career development start draining fast. Only a 60-day period is left to find another career-tracking job. And with NIH budget cuts constricting hiring tighter than usual, the timing couldn’t be worse.
Here’s the twist: the researcher is not only working—he’s waiting too. An NIW green card application already existed. The I-140 was filed back in April 2024 but still no approval.
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Premium processing can help speed it up, and there’s also a hope that the I-485 (Adjustment of Status) filing window might open just in time—perhaps even within the grace period.
But what if it doesn’t?
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This is where the B1/B2 visa path comes into play. These are usually business or tourist visit visas—not work visas, but an acceptable legal way to be in the U.S. if no other quick fix is an option. Some in this situation see a transition to a B1/B2 as something to get them through until their window of time for I-485 opens.
It’s not perfect. B1/B2 conversions of H1B need to be filed by the end of the grace period—and USCIS would need to approve the request. And it comes with a caveat: no work, no income, and future visa processing would be jeopardized if the conversion seems like a workaround.
And yet, sometimes worse than overstaying or leaving the country at a critical green card moment. Especially for researchers who have already sunk years of work into contributing to U.S. science.
This holding pattern—between jobs, between statuses, and between approvals—happens fairly regularly. More academic H1Bs remain here, suspended between immigration policy and funding limitations.
The line between legal residence and forced exile narrows to hairline-thin. And timing, more than anything, decides what happens next.
