Transferring Jobs During Return of Service
While in your return of service, you have committed 3 years of your life to an underserved area or an exception to an underserved area. What if you realize that you have been hoodwinked about your job and it is not even close to what was advertised to you? There are ways out, but it comes at a mental and financial cost. If you find yourself in this kind of situation, you may qualify for an “Extenuating Circumstances” transfer.
If you have used your “special” waiver already (working in a geographic location that is not defined as underserved by zip code but serves an underserved population, which you can only use once), your job transfer will land you only in an underserved area defined by zip code*. Your time served in your original waiver position does not reset. Once you transfer, you’ll pay off the balance of your time.
*See 3Rnet.com to find out if your prospective job is in a geographically underserved area.
EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES:
If you get terminated from your position at any point during your H1b visa, this falls under the category of “extenuating circumstances”, and you have 60 days to find a new sponsor to continue your H1b visa.
If you find yourself in a situation that is untenable, you must demonstrate hardship.
1. Demonstrating hardship:
a. Hardship is not well defined anywhere and is left as an open interpretation to account for unique physician situations
b. Hardship is a situation that is considered untenable to continue in and can get as serious as threats to your mental and physical well being
An example would be a toxic work environment where discrimination or racism is documented. The following tips will help build a case for allowing a transfer while under your return of service to another H1b sponsored underserved by geographic location job.
1. Contact your immigration lawyer about the situation to see if what you’re experiencing is grounds for a transfer
2. Keep a log of your daily work hours (starting from day 1).
3. Keep all your monthly schedules issued to you and document any “sudden” changes to the schedule that puts you in a bad situation (eg. The schedule changed because my colleague forgot that she had to attend a week long meeting, thus putting me to work without a break for 35 days).
4. Any kind of meetings you have (good or bad), write documentation of it (date, who was present and a summary of the content). This is a kind of diary style writing and save it in a folder on your personal computer. You do not have to share that you are writing meeting notes with your supervisors.
5. If the job becomes a toxic work environment and it is causing mental/physical issues:
a. Find a psychiatrist or psychologist to document your mental distress:
i. Before you go to a psychiatrist/psychologist, find one that will write you a letter of support to leave your job situation.
ii. You will need about 6 weeks if going on a weekly basis to establish a rapport and have the psychiatrist/psychologist be comfortable enough for you to write a letter of support.
b. Get letters of support from colleagues indicating that your treatment is far different than their personal experiences (2 letters from physicians and 1 from your mental health provider is sufficient).
c. Save any emails and text messages that help support your need to transfer.
d. Get an employment lawyer to look over your contract for limitations on labor laws (some states have strong and clearly defined labor laws, others do not).
e. Check your personal file prior to leaving your job. Sometimes you will find more support for a transfer from your workplace, such as unilaterally signed documentation of your “behavior” that your supervisor/boss had written or events that had occurred during your employment filed without your knowledge:
i. These documents can either be removed from your file or kept there with the rebuttals that you submit depending on the rules of the job.
ii. Write rebuttals to each of these letters with evidence used from the text messages and emails.
f. Find a job that is willing to sponsor your visa and is in a geographically underserved area
Ideally, you will have a job willing to sponsor you and once you finish your contracted work, you’ll file for an H1b transfer and 60 days is plenty of time to get an answer with the expedited fee. Sometimes, the job is so untenable that you must quit without another job already secured.
If you cannot secure a position or have your H1b in pending status within the 60 days grace period, you will have to leave the country and go back to your home country until you do find another job. If you choose to stay in your home country and find a job there, the time you spent in the USA under your return of service does not count and the clock resets to your 2-year home residency requirement.
If you happen to find a job within the 60-day grace period, you can begin work on the H1b visa in “pending” status; however, if your application is rejected, you’ll have to leave the country.
ADVICE: If you know that your job is toxic early on and you want to quit:
1. Quit at the 1-year mark to show on your CV that you worked in a job for a year or longer before moving on
2. You do not lose time on the return of service. The max time served will be 3 years regardless of your country of origin.
FINANCIAL COSTS OF TRANFERRING:
As you are transferring the visa itself, the initial sponsoring job will lose the money it invested in you, and it is illegal for them to ask for this money back. The new sponsor will have to uptake the visa and will pay approximately $7000 to file a new sponsorship agreement. In some cases, your personal immigration lawyer can help with the documentation to transfer you to your new job. In other cases, the state or sponsoring agency has their own lawyers, and your personal lawyer can help guide them as to what to submit to the federal government (“ghost writing”).
The only costs to you as the applicant is the expedited fee ($1250 as of when I transferred) to ensure that your documentation is in pending status, and you get an answer in 15 business days that your new visa sponsorship is approved (or rejected).
Additional costs not related to immigration include:
1. Possibly repaying a moving stipend
2. Moving costs if your new job does not offer a moving stipend
3. Payment of apartment fees if your leasing agreement does not allow a break lease until they find a new tenant.
4. COBRA coverage for as long as you are unemployed (optional)
5. Hotel fees if you must stay somewhere short term
6. Gas or transportation of your car across the country depending on how far your next job is
CAVEATS:
Once you finish the required time defined in your contract after you hand in your resignation letter, you have a 60-day grace period to get a new sponsorship submitted to immigration. The 60 days does not count towards your return of service (the clock pauses); however, that time does subtract from the 6 years total that you can have an H1b visa. This means that the 3-year return of service does get extended for as long as you are not employed and your time to convert to a green card is diminished.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:
I was on a H1b visa and a first year attending. I was at a place with two other physicians, who were 10 and 15 years my senior. We all had the same fellowship training so I had no area of special expertise compared to the other two. With the wrong people, this a situation ripe for abuse.
o I was diagnosed with circumstantial, severe anxiety and depression from a psychologist after approximately 10 months of working in an extremely toxic work environment. The environment thrived on gaslighting and I attended therapy for 4 months. During that time, I got support letters from two forensic pathologists and my psychologist, all stating in some way that it was best that I leave my position. After my departure from this workplace, my depression and anxiety were alleviated.
o I had discovered several letters submitted without my knowledge or consent signed by the chief and director of operations submitted into my personal file. This discovery occurred during my Human Resources exit interview (you have the right to view your personal file at any time). I photocopied the relevant pages and created rebuttals against the unfounded accusations, supported by texts and emails as well as the diary documentation. These letters were submitted by the chief and director of operations to Human Resources 6 weeks AFTER I had submitted my letter of resignation. I confronted the Human Resources manager as to how this documentation got into my file without my knowledge and the County Council was consulted. It was determined that if feedback was ever to be documented, it should have been during a set review time and not letters submitted without my expressed knowledge as this practice is, not surprisingly, illegal. Human resources removed the documentation.
o I did not have a job secured when I quit. I sent emails to many different offices inquiring if they are willing to sponsor an H1b visa. Some responded, some did not. California, Colorado, and New Jersey expressed interest in helping with sponsorship.
o Some offices are willing to tackle the immigration paperwork and fund your transfer but with the severe shortage of H1b sponsors in the field of forensics, the education period and policy changes take longer than the 60-day grace period and it is a race against the clock for the applicant.
EXAMPLES OF TOXIC WORK ENVIRONMENTS
Some of these may be obvious to pretty well everyone and retrospectively this is obvious to me; however, when you are in a very vulnerable situation, being gaslit and manipulated knowing how much you have to lose and how long you have had to wait for a job, it was more of a “Really? Was that really said/done to me?” The following are just some examples of what I experienced:
1. “You are a brown stripe on our flag”
2. “No, it is ok, I would not want to put my fellow in danger” (I was a board-certified attending)
3. Being held in the office against my will with the implicit fact that if I left, I would be fired or severely reprimanded.
4. Getting incorrect/dubious “advice” on cases and told if I did not accept the advice, I would have a meeting with the chief. This happened several times.
5. Falsely accused of unprofessional behavior e.g. Walking in the hallway unprofessionally?!?! The false accusations placed people including ancillary staff, who were not immune to this treatment, on eggshells and created a toxic work environment.
6. Being slated to work 35 continuous days because I was forced to take an extra vacation day due to being trapped in a polar vortex and could not make it back to work on time via flight. It is not my responsibility or fault that hell froze over but my toxic work environment thought so.
When I realized I was in a toxic work environment, it was very difficult to find advice on how to make my situation better. This post was not written lightly and it is a topic that was not discussed in any detail when I had tried to search for advice and answers. The life changing moment for me happened when I was finally given “permission” to go on a vacation 10 months into my first year as an attending. I went to New Zealand and opened up to a world of strangers about my work related problems. Being literally across the world, I could not enjoy a single moment of this amazing trip. Out of the 8-10 strangers who became dear friends, all had experienced the same kind of work environment (all had different careers) and all had been kind, caring and understanding of my situation. They uniformly gave me the same advice to cope with my issue: “quit”. They told me they were much better off and that advice was not only true, it saved my life. I hope this post can help guide you to not get into a life threatening situation both physically and mentally and to help arm you with the knowledge and power to set your boundaries in a toxic work environment.
