IMMIGRATION HELP PHILADELPHIA
Work Visas
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Foreign nationals who want to live and work in the United States temporarily can sometimes be granted a work visa. A work visa is a nonimmigrant visa that is temporarily granted to a foreign national who comes to the United States to work for a particular employer. Some of the more common nonimmigrant work visas are the H-1B, the L-1A, the L-1B and the TN. In order to obtain a work visa, a specific employer has to be willing to sponsor you. It can take up to 6 months for the work visa to come through, so the employer will have to start the sponsorship process long before they actually want you to arrive in the United States and start working for them. When you arrive in the United States and are permitted to work via a work visa, you are only able to work for the specific employer who is sponsoring the visa. That means you cannot have any part time jobs or work on the side. This also means you can’t quit and look for a new job and just start working somewhere else. The work visa is specific to whoever is sponsoring you at that time. Only if you are able to find a new employer who is willing to sponsor you may you switch jobs.
An H-1B is one of the more common types of work visas that foreign nationals obtain in order to live and work in the United States temporarily. As stated above, a specific employer must sponsor you in order for you to obtain the H-1B. Additionally, the job you are going to have in the United States must qualify as a specialty occupation. This means it has to meet one of the following requirements: you must have a bachelor’s degree or higher in order to work in this particular position; the job is so unique or complex that it could only be performed by an individual with at least a bachelor’s degree in a field related to the position; the employer normally requires a degree or its equivalent for the position; or the nature of the duties of the job are so specialized that the knowledge the job requires is usually associated with obtaining a bachelor’s degree or higher. Further, an H-1B must actually be available at the time you are trying to obtain sponsorship to come work in the United States. There are only 65,000 H-1B visas given out each year (with a few exceptions, but generally this is the number of visas that is given out).
An important note is that a work visa is not the same thing as an Employment Authorization Document (EAD). With an EAD, you can work anywhere; you can have multiple jobs and are not restricted to working for one specific employer as you are with an H-1B. There is also no cap on the number of EADs that can be given out. The biggest difference between the EAD and an H-1B is that EADs are given to people who are already legally in the United States. An H-1B allows someone to come to the United States to live and work for a period of time. If you have any questions about EADs or any other work visas in general, please contact us and we can help you determine if you are eligible and we can walk you through the process. |
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