J1 Career training Visa help please!

Good evening everybody. I am new to the forum and am considering the J1 training visa. I'm 24 and have a business & maths degree, plus 1 years experience in a bank and futher experience in teaching business and also doing a little marketing.

I have researched the area but am still having a few questions. I have found that much of the information on this topic is vague at best so any concise answers would be greatly apreciated!! OK here goes...

1) Most companies will offer to sponsor the visa. Some would be charging around £4000 to place me in a host company. ALL say, very casually, that they can simply sponsor me "once I've found a job" for a much lower fee, usually around £1000. However NONE of these sites provide information or links to how to actually go about doing this. Does anyone here have any? Or is it simply a case of emailing companies? I read only certain companies have the right to hire staff. Where do I find a list of such companies?

2) I want to work in the finance/business sector. I have read on forums that J-1 visas, because not "proper jobs", can pay very lowly, in some cases near-minimum wage. Yet I found this on http://www.jobsamerica.co.uk/faqs.htm:

Q How much will I be paid?
A You will earn the same as an equally qualified American citizen doing the same job. Salaries vary tremendously according to what you do. As a general (and we stress this is only a general) guideline you can expect to earn more then you would doing the same job in the UK.

So what is the pay like? Please don't misunderstand me: I'm not someone who craves money, but there is a gulf between USA minimum wage and what is stated above, so what should I believe?

3) Can anyone tell me is the following statement true or false?

"You can do the J-1 visa for a year, and then transfer onto the H1b (assuming you are a lucky one with the visa cap). All you need is a waiver from your embassy that negates the 2 year return home element. This is fine as long as you are not in the medical profession or are doing the programme with the UK government paying."

4) Also, about H1bs, are sites like www.h1base.com legitimate sites? do they actually increase your chance of getting an h1b visa?

Thank you so much for any help with any of these points

Kind Regards,

Andy

Avoid all companies that promise visas in return for money. They are all scams. If you want to find a job in the US you have two ways. You can apply directly to a US based employer, but it'll be hard to get the visa (H1B). These days it's a lottery, with many more applicants than places. Even if you did obtain a visa, you'd only be able to start work in October of the following year. As you can imagine, there aren't many companies willing to hire people who can only start working that far in the future.

The other option is for you to find a job with a London-based US bank or financial institution, then after a year or so apply for a transfer to the US. That would be using a different type of visa (L1) for which there is no quota.