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Anyone who’s been to New York City (or almost any large US city for that matter) will note how an enormous proportion of cab drivers are immigrants. In New York it’s primarily South Asians, however there are Africans and South Americans at it too. This gives me hope in my quest to move to the US because if they can get in then I reckon I eventually will be able to as well. I was wondering though; how did they get in? No disrespect to them (really, the majority I've encountered have been great) but cab driving isn’t exactly something you need to be world class at or that is in huge demand so how do they manage to get in? There are so many of them that there must be some way (something to do with unskilled labour maybe?). It’s something that I’ve always been curious about, especially since I began doing more research into the bureaucratic wall that is the US immigration system and discovering first hand how complicated it all is.
Well, first off, you can't just cross the pond and get a job. If you go to the 'sticky' at the top of this page, all will become clear about the ins and outs of obtaining resident status and, by the time you've absorbed all those details, becoming a cabbie will be a distant dream.
Even if you were eventually fortunate enough to be able to work in the US, the licensing rules and regulations for cabbies in NYC or any other major metropolis are very stringent. The immigrants you've seen driving those cabs are legal immigrants and they've paid a high cost and gone through rigorous testing to get where they are. Hope that's answered your question - the photo is cute! Cheers!
Lol, thanks. I know that they're all legal, I was just wondering how they got in. I only ask because I know that rules and regs for getting into the US to work are very strict and they're very picky about who they take. I don't get how the US prioritises so strictly based on the importance of the applicant's career or vocation and yet so many people seem to be able to get in to be cab drivers.
Immigrant Cabbies are either:
1. Immediate family of US citizens or Permanent Residents (PR's).
2. Refugees.
3. Visa Overstays.
3. Illegal Immigrants.
There is no other way in unless you are an sponsored high-tech worker with at least a BS, have a vocation in high demand (like nursing), are a migrant worker on a temporary work visa, an international model, movie star, sports player, or have a spare 500K lying around to invest. Cabbies are none of these.
Immigrant Cabbies are either:
1. Immediate family of US citizens or Permanent Residents (PR's).
2. Refugees.
3. Visa Overstays.
3. Illegal Immigrants.
There is no other way in unless you are an sponsored high-tech worker with at least a BS, have a vocation in high demand (like nursing), are a migrant worker on a temporary work visa, an international model, movie star, sports player, or have a spare 500K lying around to invest. Cabbies are none of these.
Good luck.
Illegal immigrants and visa overstays cannot get a license to operate a cab.
Could they not possibly be working on EB-3 visas? On the US Department of Immigration website it says that one of the groups that come under EB-3s ('Skilled or Professional Workers') are "Foreign national unskilled workers". Could that not potentially include drivers of some sort?
Also, assuming they did something else to obtain permancent residency status and then chose to become a cab driver later on, are they allowed to even do that? I had always assumed that if you jacked in whichever job you got your green card in order to do then you'd be booted out?
Also, assuming they did something else to obtain permancent residency status and then chose to become a cab driver later on, are they allowed to even do that? I had always assumed that if you jacked in whichever job you got your green card in order to do then you'd be booted out?
Isn't the system really open to abuse then? By the sounds of things then, in theory someone could just take a job to get the visa and then quit a week later and take up something they couldn't have gotten a visa for.
Isn't the system really open to abuse then? By the sounds of things then, in theory someone could just take a job to get the visa and then quit a week later and take up something they couldn't have gotten a visa for.
You're thinking backwards. Go to the sticky at the top of this page and read up on the basics of immigration.
I understand the basic principle of it but I took what you said to mean that if you get a company to sponsor you for a green card and then quit the job, you can just get another job elsewhere instead of having to leave. I'm pretty sure that won't be the case unless the system has a huge hole in it.
Nevermind.
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I know that they're all legal, I was just wondering how they got in. I only ask because I know that rules and regs for getting into the US to work are very strict and they're very picky about who they take. I don't get how the US prioritises so strictly based on the importance of the applicant's career or vocation and yet so many people seem to be able to get in to be cab drivers.
