If you work without authorization on purpose, it is important to understand the implications. One is your violation of status which is much easier to fix and the other one is if you lie about it in any immigration proceeding. The first one, lets say you are close to getting an H-1B and you have three months or six months or even a year of working without authorization. In a worst case scenario you will have to go outside for H-1 visa stamping. You will not get your change of status. Make sure there is no history of misrepresenting your work status to the government. The moment you prevaricate or you lie about your situation to gain an immigration benefit you have committed a felony which is punishable by five years and also it is a permanent bar from entering the US. Make sure you understand that lying about work authorization or working without authorization is much worse than actually doing it.
But what happens when you do it inadvertently?
For ten days you work without authorization not realizing you don't have the authorization, then it is a very small violation. The government might ignore it and let it go. It is called de minimis. It simply means it is a minimal problem. Hence the point is if you have violated the law inadvertently and unknowingly by mistake you have several options. First of all disclose it when you file the H-1B and if you have fallen out of status talk with your DSO and act upon their advice. They might tell you to apply for reinstatement which should be readily given.
---------------------------------------
Note: Unless the context shows otherwise, all answers here were provided by Rajiv and were compiled and reported by our editorial team from comments, blog and community calls on immigration.com. Where transcribed from audio/video, a verbatim transcript is provided. Therefore, it may not conform to the written grammatical or syntactical form.
My wife and I got the I-485 approval email notice in June 2007. We filed the I-485 in April 2007. The LC was done by another law firm and I switched to Rajiv and filled the I-140 and I-485. The I-140 was approved in one week under Premium Processing and I-485 was approved in less than 3 months. I told our company HR to switch to Rajiv S. Khanna and we are processing our employee’s H1B and GC through Rajiv. During the GC process, our company was sold and Rajiv and Mathew helped to resolve this issue, rather than starting the GC process from scratch. Mostly I dealt with Prerna Mehta and Mathew Chacko. Both provide me excellent help and support during the process. I dealt with Rita Dhakal for a short period of time and she helped me in great deal. Mathew called me on my cell phone to answer my questions, and he was polite, fast and correct. Also, I praise Prerna for checking my documents and forms thoroughly (I did not get any RFE) and providing correction/feed back immediately. I found the Rajiv’s immigration forum would be one of the best places for gaining more knowledge, and I would recommend every one to read and learn more.