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I recently got a job in the US. My new employer X will be applying for an H1B visa for me. They are applying for an expedited visa and are looking at a start date two months from now.

My current employer Y requires a notice of 2 months. That is, I need to inform them 2 months before that I am planning to leave the company. Given that an H1B visa can be denied, I am thinking of giving notice at Y only after I have an approved H1B visa. This is because if I give notice before receiving the visa and if by chance, the visa gets denied, then I will have lost my current job at X also! Since the H1B visa will take some time to get approved, I will then provide notice to Y and join X after at least 2 months after that. Thus, I need to delay the start date by around a month or two.

However, Y does not seem to be too happy about delaying the start date. I've explained the situation to them and told them that if I give notice before the visa gets approved and if my visa is denied, I will be out of a job. But they are saying that their lawyers are the ones who decide the start dates based on the estimated visa process and (I feel) that they are avoiding a late start.

What should I do in this situation to join X while avoiding being out of a job?

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    H-1B visas are far from guaranteed - even if you do have all your ducks lined up you could be denied simply because there are too many applicants and you're not lucky in the lottery. You are very sensible to be concerned about this! In fact, unless there are some extremely unusual circumstances in your case, you have virtually no chance whatsoever of being approved for this year (2019) since USCIS only accepted applications for 2019 from April 2 to April 6 before the quota was met. Unless I'm missing something, your new employer and/or their immigration attorneys appear to be incompetent ...
    – brhans
    Aug 27, 2019 at 19:20
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    @brhans The employer could be cap-exempt (not profit, academic, government research organization).
    – mkennedy
    Aug 27, 2019 at 21:22
  • @mkennedy - true, I guess that is a possibility.
    – brhans
    Aug 27, 2019 at 21:47
  • @BruceWayne - do you know if your new employer X a visa-cap-exempt institution like a university, etc?
    – brhans
    Aug 27, 2019 at 22:12
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    "However, Y does not seem to be too happy about delaying the start date." - - - do you in fact mean company X?
    – P. Hopkinson
    Aug 27, 2019 at 22:28

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What should I do in this situation to join X while avoiding being out of a job?

Don't resign from your current company until you have a true start date from X. If this means that you would not have enough time to fulfill your two months notice then you can once again approach X and explain your situation and ask if they can extend your start date. If they continue to push back, then maybe this is not a company worth working for as they are basically asking you to break your contract with your current company. You would at best burn bridges at Y or worst case be in some sort of legal dispute.

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    I think that answers the question. Perhaps downvotes reflect question quality, not answer
    – aaaaa says reinstate Monica
    Aug 28, 2019 at 4:46

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