May 1, 2026
Visa Games: Bureaucracy Edition
I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
Startup lawyer opens the floor and the comments instantly turn into a visa panic room
TLDR: Peter Roberts, an immigration lawyer for startup founders, opened an AMA and quickly got hit with anxious questions about visas, green cards, and eye-watering costs. The community reaction was a mix of confusion, frustration, and sharp jokes about a system that many commenters think feels stacked, fake, or impossible to navigate.
A startup immigration lawyer with Y Combinator ties showed up on Hacker News for a six-hour "ask me anything," and the crowd wasted zero time turning it into a live therapy session about getting into America, staying in America, and surviving the paperwork maze once you do. The most upvibe question was brutally simple: if you’re a young engineer from the Western Balkans with no experience, what’s the path to legal status and eventually citizenship? Peter Roberts’ answer was not exactly Hollywood magic — basically: your choices are limited, and a work visa lottery, student route, or internship path are the main doors. Cue the collective sound of dreams meeting bureaucracy.
But the real spice came from the comments circling the system itself. One commenter sounded downright scandalized by the PERM process, describing it like a fake job posting ritual where everyone has to pretend the opening is real. Another was stunned by rumors of giant six-figure visa costs and asked, essentially, how is any normal person or startup supposed to afford this? Then came the classic Hacker News grenade: "How do you advise startups who plan to break laws as part of their business models?" That one brought instant chaos energy.
There was also a modern twist: lawyers grilling a lawyer about AI, hallucinations, and whether legal tech is helping or just confidently making things up. The mood? Equal parts desperate, cynical, curious, and darkly funny — like a comment section trying to crowdsource the American dream while roasting the system that controls it.
Key Points
- •Peter Roberts introduced himself on Hacker News as an immigration attorney who works with Y Combinator and startups and hosted a six-hour AMA.
- •He stated that he could not provide legal advice on specific cases because he would not have access to all the facts.
- •In answering a question about starting from zero legal status, he said the main options are H-1B for employment, F-1 for schooling, and J-1 for internship or training.
- •He noted that the H-1B process involves an annual lottery and that J-1 status requires a host company or employer.
- •He said H-1B and EB-3 are not directly comparable because H-1B is a nonimmigrant visa while EB-3 is a green card category, and he estimated typical H-1B total costs at about $5,000 to $10,000.