Many employers are unfortunately intimidated and unwilling to take a chance on hiring a foreign national. While there are some risks and limitations to doing so, there can also be significant advantages to sponsoring an immigrant in Naperville. If you want to hire a foreign national at your company or would like to learn more about that possibility, an immigration attorney could provide more information.
There are a few employment-based sponsorship options for employers seeking to hire a foreign national. The most commonly used visa categories for this process are H visas, L visas, or O visas, among a few others. H visas are for highly skilled workers, L visas are for multinational corporations with foreign employees, and O visas are for employees who have “risen to the very top of their field.”
All these visa types require the employer to compile a petition to send to the government. This petition needs to convince customs and immigration that employing the foreign national in question—known as the “beneficiary”—would satisfy all regulations for that particular visa type.
Petitions are usually a mixture of government forms, statements from the employer, statements from third parties, or other documentary evidence. A seasoned immigration attorney could help anyone looking to sponsor an immigrant in Naperville with filling out forms, collecting evidence, compiling a final petition, drafting supporting letters, and submitting the petition.
Some employment-based visas require a Labor Conditions Application (LCA). This process entails sending a form to the Department of Labor to certify four criteria:
This submission is made using Form 9035 and usually takes about 15 days to process. Those seeking H-1B, H-1B1, and E-3 visas must file LCAs before they can submit a final petition.
The LCA can become a significant problem for employers starting in mid-March. Because of the way the H-1B lottery works, most H-1B visas are already granted by early- to mid-April. If a petitioner waits until April 1st to submit his or her LCA, he or she may not even be able to file an H-1B petition before all the visas are gone.
Fortunately, other employment-based visas do not require petitioners to file LCAs. For example, O-1 visas and L-1 visas are not required to submit LCAs.
For L visas, this is because any beneficiary is, by definition, already employed at a foreign branch of the company. For O visas, there is an alternative process called a consultation.
This consultation must be from a person who knows the beneficiary and is an expert in the beneficiary’s field. He or she must attest that the beneficiary’s role is so complex and difficult that only an extremely qualified person of extraordinary ability could do it.
Employment-based immigration is often a very complicated process, but this does not always have to be the case. An experienced immigration attorney may be able to help you sponsor an immigrant in Naperville quickly and with little hassle. If you are looking to hire a foreign national but do not know where to start, call today to schedule a consultation and discuss the options available to you.
