It is common practice for United States employers to ask whether job applicants will require sponsorship to work for them legally. However, you should not pose this question merely to eliminate these applicants from the running. In a drastic case, this may be argued to be a form of national origin discrimination in your hiring decisions. Rather, you should not shy away from the established, streamlined procedure for sponsoring your employees. With that being said, please continue reading to learn how to sponsor an employee for a work visa and how an experienced work authorization permit lawyer in Milwaukee, WI, at Sesini Law Group, S.C., can help your prospective employee gain entry into the country as soon as possible.
How do I go about sponsoring an employee for a work visa?
First things first, you must determine which employment-based visa type your prospective employee is eligible for. Namely, there are the EB-1 (for priority workers), EB-2 (for professionals with advanced degrees or persons with exceptional ability), EB-3 (for professional or skilled workers), and EB-4 visas (for special immigration). Rest assured, you may gain further clarification on which visa category is most fitting by navigating the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website.
From here, sponsoring an employee for an EB-1 visa requires you to fill out and file Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Workers, with the USCIS. As for an EB-2 or EB-3 visa, this Form I-140 must be submitted only after a labor certification is filed with the U.S. Department of Labor. Lastly, for an EB-4 visa, you may only have to offer Form I-360, Petition for Amerasian, Widow(er), or Special Immigrant, to the USCIS.
How long will it take for an employee to start working for me?
You must understand that your prospective employee cannot enter the United States and begin working at your company until you receive an official notice of approval from the USCIS. Unfortunately, getting this permission may take longer than what would be ideal. This is because there is overall a high demand for employment-based visas. On top of this, the USCIS imposes a limit on the number of these visas it distributes per year.
That is, every fiscal year (October 1st through September 30th), the USCIS makes 140,000 work visas available for qualified applicants. As you already know, these visas are divided into five preference categories: EB-1, EB-2, EB-3, EB-4, and EB-5, Immigrant Investor Program. And so, there may be more EB-1 visas given as opposed to EB-2 visas (generally 40,000 visas plus any unused visas from the EB-4 and EB-5 categories), and so on and so forth.
This is to say that, even if you fill out the necessary forms correctly and your prospective employee meets all the eligibility criteria, there is still a chance they may not be granted a work visa sponsorship opportunity. If you have made it this far, please do not hesitate to seek further information from a skilled work authorization permit lawyer in Milwaukee, WI. The team at Sesini Law Group, S.C., is willing and able to guide you through your future legal processes.