Close All Tabs - The H-1B Visa Process But Make It a Video Game

Episode Date: April 22, 2026

Life on an H-1B visa — a visa that lets U.S. companies hire foreign-born workers for specialized jobs — is difficult, unpredictable, and has gotten even harder under the Trump administration. A new gaming studio, Reality Reload, is trying to capture that experience in a mobile game. It’s called H1B.Life, and it simulates the difficult choices, competing priorities, and personal sacrifices visa holders face — complete with chaotic design elements, like all-powerful “gods” who control your fate. KQED reporter Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman joins Morgan to break down the game’s surprising design choices, the mission behind it, and the stories he heard from people navigating the H1-B process. Guest: Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, reporter at KQED Further Reading/Listening: What Does It Take to Get a H-1B Visa? This Video Game Shows Just How Complicated It Is — Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, KQED Meta, Google, and Amazon slash H-1B petitions after Trump's visa crackdown — Geoff Weiss, Melia Russell, Andy Kiersz, and Alex Nicoll, Business Insider  Faculty Warn Against State Bans on H-1B Visas — Jessica Blake, Inside Higher Ed  H-1B Visa Restrictions Will Hurt America’s Research Potential, Experts Say — Shelby Bradford, PhD, The Scientist  US Tech Visa Applications Are Being Put Through the Wringer — Lauren Goode, Wired  A New Game Turns the H-1B Visa System Into a Surreal Simulation — Zeyi Yang, Wired  Read the Transcript here Email us at [e-mail] Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok⁠ Credits: Close All Tabs is hosted by Morgan Sung. Our team includes producer Maya Cueva, editor Chris Hambrick and senior editor Chris Egusa who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music from APM. Audio engineering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our Director of Podcasts. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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From KQED. Hi, it's Morgan. Be honest with me. How many tags do you have open? Feeling a little overwhelmed by closing them? Well, we have an episode for you. If you like our deep dives and want to hear more, please rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show, and tell your friends about us too.

Okay, let's get to the episode. Quick note. In this episode, we use the term immigrants in a broad sense to refer to people living and working in the U.S. on H-1B visas. In legal terms, the H-1B is a non-immigrant temporary visa, though many visa holders hope to stay in the U.S. long term. Every March, a corner of the Chinese social socialization, media app, Red Note gets flooded with posts about Chick-fil-A. The users go all out, buying

Chick-fil-A keychains, changing their profile pictures to the red and white chicken logo, and, of course, treating themselves to a hearty meal of a chicken sandwich and waffle fries. You'll often see the same emojis in each post. Prayer hands, a chicken, and an American flag. All of these users are applying for the H-1B visa, a visa for highly skilled immigrant. sponsored by an employer. Many come to Silicon Valley to work in tech. Hundreds of thousands of hopefuls apply every year, but only 85,000 applicants are selected. So what does this have to do with fried chicken? It turns out that there's a tradition amongst Chinese H-1B applicants here in the United States, that they believe that eating a lot of Chick-fil-A and just generally associating

with Chick-fil-A brings you luck and will increase your chance. of getting selected in the H-1B lottery. Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman is a reporter at KQED. And apparently if you go to a Chick-fil-A, like here in the Bay Area, around March, you're likely to see, like, a lot of Chinese immigrants who potentially could be H-1B applicants eating there. And it's not really clear, like, where this started, but it's definitely, like, a thing. Azul said that this trend, the annual Chick-Fillel

Friense on social media is part of a much bigger story. To even apply for an H-1B visa, you need an employer to sponsor you, which means that you need to have a job offer. It doesn't guarantee a visa, just that you can enter the lottery. The process for getting an H-1B visa has been changing, and a system that was already difficult has become even harder for applicants. It is true that with the Trump administration, there has been a lot of of changes specifically to this year's H-1B visa process. The first is that there's now a $100,000 fee if a company wants to sponsor somebody who isn't currently living in the country. In wake of the changes and very steep application fee, some universities and companies

implemented a hiring freeze for H-1B applicants. The ones that are still hiring are sponsoring far fewer visas than in previous cycles. The updated application system isn't totally random anymore. Higher paid applicants have a better chance of being picked now. But for the most part, the application process feels like a game of luck. At the end of the day, it's still a lottery. Which is why good luck traditions, like getting Chick-fil-A during the registration window, have become baked into the modern mythology of the American immigrant experience.

It can all feel like a game, one in which the rules seem arbitrary and unpredictable. So when Azul heard about a studio turning that experience into a playable app, it made perfect sense. H1B Life is a game that tries to simulate the experience of an immigrant who's trying to get H1B visa status. And it's a pretty early prototype now. Basically, it's sort of like a text-based decision tree on your smartphone. And I played a demo of it, and it was actually kind of interesting. So one of the opening scenes of the game says, During high school, you spent hours and hours on your laptop,

binging Gilmore girls on shady, unauthorized streaming websites. Everything in your drowsy new town reminds you of the show. If it wasn't for Lorelei and Rory, you might have never decided two, and then there's like two decisions. And one is study journalism or come to New England. And I was like, wow, that's really oddly specific. And it turns out that H-1B Life is based on real-life interviews from H-1B applicants, specifically Chinese immigrants living in Silicon Valley.

We're diving into H-1B life today, the arduous application process, how capricious policy changes impact the trajectory of an immigrant's entire life, and the cost of chasing a dream, all wrapped up in a mobile game. This is Close All Tabs. I'm Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let's get into it. Before we talk about the game itself, let's get into the reality that inspired it. And as always, we're starting by opening a new tab.

Life on an H1B visa. Last month, the annual game developers' conference, took over San Francisco. The Asian Art Museum was hosting a showcase for a game that involved chance, timing, and bureaucracy to, quote, determine who stays and who is deported. The game was H-1B life. Azul had heard about the game and decided to check it out. At the event, he talked to a few people about their own experiences with the immigration system. The first person I talked to, his name was Don Duke Dovden, and he's an ethnically Mongolian Chinese National, who now is a U.S. citizen.

So I came to stays 12 years ago for my master degree in Washington, D.C., and eventually I got H-1B. And then later I got Green Card. Don Duke said the process demands a lot of sacrifice, and that it can be hard to ever feel secure about the future. He told me it is a very hard and arduous process to get H-1B status. And then even once you have age 1B status, you're still not secure. You have to work towards getting a green card. And then citizenship.

I didn't see my parents for 10 years. I didn't see any of my relatives for 10 years. So I think that's still very emotional for me to say. Like I eventually went back, I think two years ago when I became citizen. It was so emotional. And I feel I miss them. They missed me a huge chapter of our lives. 10 years, like many Americans, it's just unemotional.

imaginable. Don Duke's tenure gap without seeing his family may be on the extreme end. H-1B visa holders are technically allowed to travel internationally and re-enter the country, as long as their visa stamp is still valid. But he's not alone. The decision to stay in the U.S. is often driven by fear of not being allowed back in. Over the last year, given the heightened scrutiny of visa holders and the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, some legal experts, universities, and even tech companies who employ visa holders have cautioned against international travel. Concerns about travel aside, taking time off to visit family abroad often depends on your employer's time off policy. H-1B visas hinge on employment. Changing jobs involves a new

sponsor and another mountain of paperwork. Some H-1B visa holders have spoken out about feeling trapped in abusive work environments because of their visa status. When I was on H-1B, I met very shady employers who technically did not pay me, which was illegal. And he was like, if you dare to report me, you would get your H-R-R-R-R-Vote. So eventually, I was lucky enough and I left that organization, but I heard other people in WERD just to get one H-1B worked for three years free. And afterwards, you work at a restaurant or bubble tea store.

illegally for three years. Getting picked in the visa lottery doesn't guarantee long-term stability either. H-1B visas have a six-year cap, and visa holders have to spend a full year outside of the U.S. before they can reapply. Don Duke mentioned one of his friends, who's also Chinese Mongolian. He recently had to say goodbye to her. She self-deported herself three, four days ago.

We were at the airport. She was on H-1B for five years, but no companies was willing to sponsor her a green card. She spent 14 years in States. She even bought a house. And she sold the house, sold the car, and moved back. Visa status can be all-consuming. At the showcase, Azul spoke with another attendee,

who's currently on a different work-based visa. He said that whenever he meets up with other visa holders, the number one thing that they ask each other is what visa are you on? Because it has such a powerful determining factor over what you do, who you date, where you live, where you work. You have to keep your employer happy and they have to continue to sponsor you. You know, you might need to take a job that takes you traveling out of the country. But with the Trump administration, you know, maybe it's hard for you to get back into it. the country based on your country of origin. So I think people are constantly taking risks and living

under uncertainty, you know, from one presidential administration to the next, they're not sure how these rules surrounding H-1B status are going to change. In his reporting, Azul talked to an immigration lawyer based in Silicon Valley, Sophie Alcorn. The game metaphor made sense to her that the H-1B process is sort of like a game. She said that Her two young sons invite her to play video games when she's home. And she says, you guys, I'm already playing one of the hardest video games. I don't need to play another game because the immigration system is so complicated as it is. There's randomness, there's luck, there's skill, there's strategy, there's trying to go around and collect

badges and items to upskill to be able to get to the next level, just like in a game. In games, players are the most affected by the rules, but they also have the least control over them, right? Players are beholden to the rules, but the people that make the rules are not playing the same game. I mean, you could say that we're now playing on, like, difficulty level hard with the Trump administration. Okay, let's talk about the game itself, H-1B life. Dundup, the guy who just got his American citizenship, actually thought the prototype he played was too realistic. He said that the gameplay was a little triggering for him. It was too real. We're going to get into that after this break. But first, we wanted to remind you that close all tabs

depends on listeners like you to keep us going. You can support us by becoming a member at donate.kwed.org slash podcast. Okay, more about the game after the break. Stick with us. Support for KQED podcasts comes from the Exploratorium, presenting life in space. Explore the science of how life, human, or extraterrestrial might survive in space. Now through September 13th at Pier 15. Tickets at Exploratorium.edu slash space. This summer, switch to Xfinity and get Wi-Fi so reliable you can host the world. And now you can lock in your price for five years guaranteed.

Xfinity, imagine that. Restrictions apply, select plans only. Welcome back. We're getting into this game. H-1B life. Who is it for? How does it work? And can it really help make sense of the immigration process? Let's open a new tab. How to play the H-1B visa game. The immigration system, at times, can seem like a black box to applicants, lawyers, and maybe most of all, to natural-born American citizens who've never needed to think about this. The seemingly arbitrary rules that can change at the whims of an

unseen entity, the gravity of every single decision, the pressure to succeed as the perfect model immigrants. That is the experience that developers are trying to capture an H-1B life. America, the big and beautiful country, but you need a visa. Be talented, big brain, build chips. Then you might get an H-1B visa. That's the trailer for H-1B life, which is still a very long way from being playable. The Kickstarter hasn't even launched yet, but Azul got to try a demo. It's basically like this text-based decision tree. The top half of the screen is like a text prompt, and the bottom half is like a series of choices.

And then as you play through the game, you select different choices. There are these like four core attributes that you need to maintain. It's intelligence, wealth, social support, and burnout rate. So this kind of like simulating. the things that it takes to be a person going through the H-1B visa process. You make smart choices to get that visa and stay. What separates winning from losing is how you react when fate happens. As you play, you're presented with these different choices.

Like, you're done with your study abroad program and you go back home to Shanghai and you want to pursue journalism. But, you know, maybe you can get a job in this field and get an H-1B visa. So you decide to put off your dream and pursue something else, right? And as you do that, your core attributes sort of change. And so you're having to sort of weigh those choices. You know, you can spend social capital. Like instead of going to, you know, your friend's birthday party, you stay late at work

because, you know, you're trying to get sponsored, right? So your social support goes down, but, you know, your intelligence goes up, right? Like, that's kind of the balancing act. Then what's promised in subsequent versions of the game is that if those core attributes run out, it triggers a sort of like slot machine feature where different gods decide players' fates. And that's sort of supposed to describe this random nature of the H-1B visa process. Don't forget the immigration gods. Code God.

Free God. Fried chicken god. Even orange god. Can you tell us more about these different gods in the game? I know there's one called the Orange God. So the Orange God is the one that caught my eye. The Orange God bears a very strong resemblance to Donald Trump. And the Orange God claims to control everything and has already changed the policy 500 times before you finish reading the sentence.

That's what the description of the Orange God is. He's the newest God in this universe. He's very powerful. He can destroy your life any minute he wants and he usually do. So you have to be very careful. of him. That's Alison Young, the founder of the game studio, Reality Reloode. She told Azul about the other gods in the game. So there's the code god who looks like a cyborg and is obsessed with tech and optimization. The free god resembles a statue of liberty and is supposed to represent the

American dream of a free society. And the fried chicken god? A nod to the annual chick-fil-a-trad tradition. And that god... According to the game description, keeps you surviving through the Power of fast food grease. Reality Reload is a game studio made up of immigrants, developers, designers, and journalists. The founder, Allison, has a background in journalism. And I love journalism, but over the year, as editor and reporter, I realized less and less people are reading long form, but there's so much stories and information we want to pass on. I had luck to step into game industry for 7, 80 years now, and I realized it's the opposite.

people spend a massive amount time in the game. They complained one of my game to be too short is two hours. At the same time, they would complain that one of my article is too long. So I thought, what if I turn it around like a Georgian horse? Like we raft the news or information into a game, and people doesn't have to know that. They're just playing something fun. And they're exposed to information anyway.

So as Allison told Azul, the point of H-1B life is to educate people about the complexities of the immigration system. I think they started with the H-1B visa because it's sort of like this caricature of the visa system. Like, it's highly sought after. It's very competitive. But they realize that it's not just H-1B visas. Like, it's the whole United States immigration system.

The Reality Relo team initially designed the game based on their own experiences as Chinese immigrants in Silicon Valley. They conducted dozens of interviews with other Chinese immigrants for storylines in the game. But the team quickly realized that this experience is more universal than they first believed. And it's kind of funny because there is internal tensions between people of different origin who are competing for the same visa. But when we were talking to them, we realized it's the same race. And you're competing with each other not because the other part is evil or better is because you have to. And then everyone's or every context, country of origin, have their own dilemma. Like when we talk to Latino, people from Bolivia, here is already very hard to find a job.

But people at home find it very difficult to believe they couldn't find money in the States. They have to mitigate through that. I talked to my physician who is Indian. And she said their problem is even if they get a visa, there are too many Indian visa holders. They have to wait. I'm sure this number is not right, but she said 100 years to get a green card. So it's like different versions of a game. H-1B life revolves around choices and rules, which the player may or may not know about until they break one.

And the rules are changing every day. The players are usually the one who has the least power or say, but they are the one who have to play through. So that tension is something we want to focus on. Allison did admit that early versions of the game were maybe two real. She told Azul that when they ran playtests, some people, like Donduk, found it a bit traumatic because they've dealt with this in real life. Donduk thought the game was triggering and not playful enough for a typical video game. Here's Azul again. But he did think that it could have an application in like corporate diversity trainings.

You could imagine like being a Google and a lot of your coworkers are H-1B, you know, sponsors. being like, wow, I didn't know that you had to go through that to get here, you know, and that's so different from how a United States citizen would get here. So that's like one potential application. H-1B Life is still a prototype. The Reality Relo team is still interviewing other immigrants to weave their experiences into the story. And they plan to add more fantasy and play to the game before it launches. Azul mentioned one mini-game in the works, which involves juggling.

Your hands are full with a social life, maintaining grades, and looking for a job that will sponsor you, all while checking emails from your immigration lawyer. This is core to the game, managing the tension between competing priorities. It prompts players to consider what they want more, to pursue their dreams, or to fit the mold of an ideal immigrant in order to stay in the country. At the beginning we saw, we're going to do a simple visa simulation game, And now we realize it's more about how people figure out what kind of life they want, where they want it to be. Which is also a sentiment that almost all employment-based visa holders have to consider.

Except, unlike in the game, there's no decision tree guiding their path. They have to make these choices for themselves. What does life look like when it's not dictated by a precarious visa status? Let's open another new tab. The post-visa midlife crisis. For Dunduk Davden, he came here as a student and he was pursuing a master's degree. And now he needs to decide where he's going to work, not based on what he wants to do, but based on who will sponsor him for an H-1B visa.

After you get an H-1B visa, then you're on a six-year timeline where you have to hit certain benchmarks in order to get a green card. after, you know, 10 years of uncertain visa status, once he got his U.S. citizenship, he basically had like a midlife crisis. Because like before, when I was on H-1B, the only thing my goal was to survive and be in this country. So I do whatever takes to get a job that sponsors me for H-1B. And I do whatever takes, make my boss happy. But when I eventually got a green card, I finally had a privilege to sing like America and like, oh, what do I actually? I want to do with my life. I think now I'm still figuring out

what do I actually want to do. Now I'm like a 21 years of American just graduated from college. I have all the opportunities finally opened up for me. And I remember when I became citizen and I decided to quit PhD, that was the hardest time in my life because like I'm like now finally I can move

to anywhere in the States. I can be a bartender in Miami, but do I really want to be? I don't know. Like I spent two months wondering where should I go next And I know some other also H-1B workers. They were like of the best coders as a company or program manager or whatever. And then when they got a green car, some guys, I know one guy, he quit and he moved to Midwest. And he opened a bakery.

Because that's what he actually is passionate about. And I think it's just, it's like finally, as immigrants, like when we got our green car, the citizenship, we finally have the privilege to ponder what I'm actually. Americans did probably in around 18 years old, our early 20s. Like, what do you actually want to achieve? What do I really want to do with my life? It's a conundrum that American citizens can ponder at any age, but most consider it when they're teenagers or fresh out of college.

Maybe a couple years into your career, you realize that it's not for you, and you can pivot. But if your legal status in this country hinges on being able to do one highly specialized job, you don't get to pivot. Your whole reason for being in the country is holding these special degrees, you know, this special job. And at the end of the day, that's not all anyone is. Like nobody is just an H-1B visa holder. Like, there are complex people with multitudes of desires.

And I think feeling the weight of that lift can be unsettling for people. Dunduk, for one, questioned whether this pressure is worth it for everyone. He told Azul that he was glad to stay in the United States. States, which, despite everything, is a safer and more free place for him as an openly gay, ethnically Mongolian person. But if he knew that he could live in China without fear of persecution, I think the U.S. is getting harder and harder to stay here for immigrants. Like, you have to evaluate what do you value more? If you can live a comfortable life in your back home country and you value your family connections, do you really want to spend 10, 15 years here, just working like a dog,

to get a green card here. And also we heard many other stories, like some immigrants eventually as they moved to Singapore or Canada and they found happiness there or even some move to Africa. It's not like U.S. is the only place you can be happy. Fewer international students are interested in studying in the U.S.

Last year, international enrollment in American universities dropped 17%. Both Texas and Florida have banned H-1B hiring at public universities. Many scientists have raised concerns that the U.S. will lose its competitive edge in research between Doge and Forest Funding cuts and H-1B hiring freezes.

But as for working in the U.S., outside of academia, U.S. citizen and immigration services said that they did hit their cap this year, so obviously there is still a demand for H-1B visas, but the Trump administration has made it a lot harder to get an H-1-B visa. A lot of the reality reload team are Chinese immigrants. And coming here, they've had the same experiences as the people they interviewed for these stories.

I think it is very personal. And part of why they wanted to give a voice to this experience, because it is so pervasive in, you know, especially in like the Bay Area or other places where there's a high need for specialized immigrant labor. this is really a huge thing. And I think it's not something that a lot of American citizens are aware of. What do you think the game says about the intersection of technology and very bureaucratic systems like the immigration process? I think immigrants feel the whiplash of American government policies from like Democrat to Republican, maybe more than most groups here in the country and how it can upend their lives. And so I think this is a way for immigrants to tell their experiences and for them to feel seen and maybe to inject like a little bit of critique into real life.

Sometimes like the experience can feel so arbitrary or so gamified. So maybe a game is the best way to understand and work towards making these processes better or at least like explain them. I have the privilege of being a natural born U.S. citizen. Both of my parents emigrated here when they were young. and I've never had to navigate the complexities of the immigration system myself. Many of my close family members have dealt with that, but I admit that even as a journalist, I struggle to differentiate between types of visas and what you can do with them. H-1B, O-P-T, EB3-O-1, L-1B, K-1?

It's a dialect that's unintelligible to a lot of natural-born citizens. There's a whole other world of paperwork and red tape. that most Americans never have to think about. But that doesn't mean it's unimportant. So how do you get through the doom scrolling and get American citizens to understand the real-life impact of these shifting immigration policies? Like Allison pointed out,

people who aren't inclined to spend 20 minutes reading about visa changes may be more convinced to spend 20 minutes in a game, trying to avoid the wrath of the Orange God. Through surreal slot machines, fickle deities, and some skill jobs, games like H1B Life can open players up to an unseen reality that exists right in front of them, one that might affect their friends, their coworkers, and their neighbors every day.

Special thanks to Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman for sharing this story, along with the interview recordings you heard today. You can find a link to Azul's story and more about H-1B Life and the immigrant experience in our show notes. Okay, let's close all these tabs. Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios. and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Agusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music.

The Close All Tabs team also includes editor Chris Hambrick and audio engineer Brendan Willard, additional music by 8pm. Audience engaged in support from Maha Sinad, Jen Cheen is our director of podcasts, and Ethan Tovin Lindsay is our editor-in-chief. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild,

American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California, local. This episode's keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran and recorded on his white epomaker, I-75 keyboard with Frogridan, Red Samurai keycaps and Gatoron Milky Yellow, Pro V2 Switches. Thanks for listening. Hey, it's Olivia Allen Price from the Bay Curious podcast. You've probably heard that federal funding for public media has been cut. That's left KQED with an $8 million budget gap. So now, more than ever, we need your support.

Please give whatever is comfortable for your budget and help keep programs that you love going strong. Visit donate.kud.org slash podcasts. Hi, I'm Sasha Koka. I host the California Report Magazine. We bring you in-depth personal stories about your neighbors, your communities, and the issues affecting all of us as Californians. But the future is powered by you.

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