vicepresident
New Member
I have an interesting employment situation. After reading thru this board, I'd be interested in other peoples opinions.
I have an H1 with Alphacorp LLC in a tech management role. Although Alphacorp has only a couple of employees and limited income, the owner of Alphacorp is very very wealthy with interests in multiple tech companies. I have worked on several different projects for him in technical management roles, with new and prospective tech investments. Alphacorp filed for labor certification for me in 2002 so I can get a green card.
In mid 2002 my boss and another person founded a sister LLC I will call Alpha2. It is a software company and my boss holds his investment in Alpha2 directly rather than thru Alphacorp. He generously offered me a 30% share of Alpha2 for a cash investment, and since then I've invested more. In the last two years, I've worked mainly on the Alpha2 project, but I am only paid thru the original Alphacorp company. My boss sees this as his way of ensuring Alpha2 is successful because he has no time to work on it himself. Alpha2 income has been minimal to date, but the long term goal is for Alpha2 to pay Alphacorp for my services. To date it has not done so.
This was all approved by a good immigration attorney, but it raises the question. Can an H1 employer instruct the employee to work on any project, or must there be a financial relationship between the work and the employer? Would USCIS consider my work for Alpha2 to be outside the scope of my employment with Alphacorp?
I have an H1 with Alphacorp LLC in a tech management role. Although Alphacorp has only a couple of employees and limited income, the owner of Alphacorp is very very wealthy with interests in multiple tech companies. I have worked on several different projects for him in technical management roles, with new and prospective tech investments. Alphacorp filed for labor certification for me in 2002 so I can get a green card.
In mid 2002 my boss and another person founded a sister LLC I will call Alpha2. It is a software company and my boss holds his investment in Alpha2 directly rather than thru Alphacorp. He generously offered me a 30% share of Alpha2 for a cash investment, and since then I've invested more. In the last two years, I've worked mainly on the Alpha2 project, but I am only paid thru the original Alphacorp company. My boss sees this as his way of ensuring Alpha2 is successful because he has no time to work on it himself. Alpha2 income has been minimal to date, but the long term goal is for Alpha2 to pay Alphacorp for my services. To date it has not done so.
This was all approved by a good immigration attorney, but it raises the question. Can an H1 employer instruct the employee to work on any project, or must there be a financial relationship between the work and the employer? Would USCIS consider my work for Alpha2 to be outside the scope of my employment with Alphacorp?
