Current to the October 2026 Visa Bulletin
Nine routes to permanent residence exist. Most people are only ever told about one.
The workbook for finding yours — every route, the real timelines and filing costs, the official rule behind each one, and how to find the employers who actually sponsor. Yours to download the moment you pay.
$17.00one payment · instant download
- Download the moment you pay
- All nine routes, in full
- Every claim traced to a .gov source
9 routes, in full
Why people get stuck
The problem is not a shortage of options. It is that nobody ever lists them.
There are nine routes to permanent residence and seven separate mechanisms for staying lawfully present while one runs. Almost nobody is shown the whole board — and a route you have never heard of is indistinguishable from one that does not exist.
One route gets filed, and it is rarely the fastest
Employers file the category they always file. It is chosen for the company's convenience, not for whether it is the quickest route available to the person it is filed for.
The numbers everyone quotes are about a queue, not about a person
A decade-long category average says nothing about whether a shorter category is open, whether a different column applies, or whether a visa number is already available. Those are facts about one file, and they have to be checked.
The answers are public, and that is exactly why nobody reads them
All of it sits in the regulations, a monthly State Department bulletin, and government datasets anyone can download. Free to anyone. Also forty pages of statute and three files nobody opens for fun.
What is in the workbook
Seven sections you work through yourself
Not a generic guide. A workbook that ends with your shortlist, your next step, and the official source behind both.
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01
Where you stand
Which bulletin column applies to you and how to read it. It is set by your country of birth — the single most common thing people get wrong — and every current date is printed in the workbook.
Section 1 -
02
Where was your spouse born?
Where spouses immigrate together, either may be charged to the other's country of birth. For some people that is worth more than a decade. It is in the statute, it is routine, and most of the people it applies to have never heard of it.
Section 1 -
03
Narrowing nine routes to yours
One honest test per route, applied by you, in a few minutes. Including the ones that close, and why.
Section 2 -
04
All nine routes in full
The legal standard in plain English, the official source to read yourself, the real current timeline, the real total filing cost, and what government data shows about approval rates.
Section 3 -
05
Staying lawfully present while you pursue it
The extensions, work permits and cap exemptions that apply to your status. This is the part with hard deadlines, and the part most people discover too late.
Section 4 -
06
How to find the employers who sponsor
Every H-1B petition and every labour certification is a public record. The three free government files, what each does and does not tell you, and how to tell an H-1B sponsor from a green card sponsor — which are not the same thing.
Section 5 -
07
What it all actually costs
Current government filing fees for every form in your path, including which ones your employer is required by law to pay and cannot charge to you.
Section 6
A real section
This is section 2, where nine routes become yours
One honest test per route. You apply each to yourself and rank what is left by the bulletin table in section 1 — not by which route sounds most impressive. The redacted column is each route's next step.
| Route | Open to you if… | Who petitions | Queue position | Next step |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cross-charge via spouse's birth country | Check section 1 | n/a — a filing position | worth 11.2 yrs | Included with purchase |
| EB-1C — multinational manager | 1 yr managing abroad | Your employer | EB-1 · 3.7 yrs | Included with purchase |
| EB-3 — skilled worker (PERM) | Employer sponsors | Your employer | EB-3 · 12.8 yrs | Included with purchase |
| EB-2 NIW — national interest waiver | Advanced degree | You — no employer | EB-2 · 12.9 yrs | Included with purchase |
| EB-1A — extraordinary ability | 3 of 10 criteria | You — no employer | EB-1 · 3.7 yrs | Included with purchase |
The full test, the costs, the deadlines and the next step for each are in the workbook.
Free · no email · nothing saved
Before you pay anything, find out whether you have options at all
Seven questions, about ninety seconds, scored in your browser. It names the routes that look worth examining for you and flags anything in your position that people are routinely never told. Most people finish it having found at least one route nobody had mentioned.
How it works
Three steps, one sitting
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STEP 1
Take the free quiz
Seven questions in your browser. It tells you which routes look open to you, and costs nothing.
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STEP 2
Download the workbook
Available the moment your payment completes. Nothing to schedule, nothing to wait for.
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STEP 3
Work through it and take it to an attorney
You arrive knowing which category to ask about, with the source for every claim — instead of paying professional rates to ask an open question.
One payment
Less than a quarter hour of an attorney's time
An initial immigration consultation runs $300 to $500 and ends with a quote. This is research, priced as research, and it is yours to keep.
- All nine routes to permanent residence, in full
- How to work out which column and which routes are yours
- Real timelines, real filing costs, official source for every claim
- How to stay lawfully present, with the deadlines for your status
- How to find the employers who actually sponsor, from free government data
- The employers that never enter the H-1B lottery
- Yours to download the moment you pay
Instant digital delivery — nothing ships
Research and education, not legal advice. Instant download — the files are yours the moment payment completes.
Secure checkout by Shopify
Before you buy
Questions people ask
Including the ones with uncomfortable answers.
Is this legal advice?
No, and we are careful about this. HireTrekk is a research and education service. We are not a law firm, we are not attorneys or accredited representatives, and we do not prepare, review or file forms or represent you before any agency.
What we do is research: we take the published rules and organise them so you can work out which ones touch your situation. Every claim cites the government source it came from, so that when you do speak to an attorney, you arrive knowing which category to ask about instead of asking an open question.
How do I actually find employers who sponsor?
That question has a public answer, and section 5 of the workbook is entirely about it.
Every H-1B petition filed in the United States is a public record. So is every labour condition application, and so is every labour certification. USCIS publishes the employers; the Department of Labor publishes the job titles and the wages actually offered. All three are free, downloadable in bulk, and almost nobody opens them.
The workbook names each file, shows you what it does and does not tell you, and explains the distinction that decides everything: an H-1B sponsor is not necessarily a green card sponsor. Plenty of employers do the first for years and never do the second, and only one of the three files can tell them apart.
What are cap-exempt employers?
Institutions of higher education, their affiliated nonprofits, and nonprofit and government research organisations are exempt from the annual H-1B cap under INA 214(g)(5). No lottery. No March deadline. They can file any day of the year.
In FY2023, around 21% of all new H-1B hires in the United States went to employers that never entered the lottery at all — 8,199 out of 38,314. If you were not selected in the cap, this is the single most useful fact available to you, and you can verify it yourself in the USCIS data.
Will this get me a green card?
No, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something worse than this. A workbook cannot file anything, approve anything, or promise an outcome.
What it can do is make sure you are not spending years on the slowest route available to you while a faster one sits open, and not missing a deadline nobody told you about. That is worth a great deal, and it is a different thing from a guarantee.
Immigration rules change constantly. How current is this?
It states the Visa Bulletin month it was built against and carries the date every source was checked, so you always know exactly how fresh it is. We re-check the bulletin monthly, fees and processing times quarterly, and active litigation as it moves — the H-1B payment proclamation alone changed twice in 2026.
It is a snapshot of the position on the day it was built, and it says so on the first page.
What is the difference between the free quiz and the workbook?
The quiz tells you that routes are open to you and names them. It is a coarse first pass over seven questions and it is genuinely free — no email, nothing saved.
The workbook tells you why, where you actually sit in the queue for your country of birth, what each route really costs and takes, which deadlines apply to your status, and how to find the employers who sponsor. The quiz is not a cut-down workbook; it answers a different and much smaller question.
Why is it only $17?
Because the expensive part is doing the research once, and we have done that. Reading forty pages of statute, a monthly bulletin and three government datasets is systematic work, not bespoke work — which is why it costs $17 instead of the $300 to $500 an initial consultation runs.
It is priced to be an easy decision on something that should not require a hard one.
Ready when you are
Find out what is actually open to you
Nine routes, the rules behind each, and the employers who actually sponsor — with the sources, so you can check every word of it yourself.
- Everything above, downloaded the moment you pay
- Every claim traceable to a government source, with the date we checked it
Instant digital delivery — nothing ships
Research and education, not legal advice. Instant download — the files are yours the moment payment completes.
Secure checkout by Shopify