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Employment Immigration

Atlanta Employment Visa Attorneys

If you are hoping to immigrate to the United States, or if you are an American employer hoping to sponsor a foreign national to work here, there are several different kinds of employment based visa options that may be appropriate. Our Atlanta work visa lawyers can help ensure that you seek the visa that corresponds to your situation, and that the documentation you submit supports your visa application.

Employment Based Immigrant Visas

If you work in a field that is in demand in the United States, you may have a smoother experience obtaining an employment based immigrant visa. Priority Workers (Employment 1st Preference or EB-1 visa holders) receive 28.6 percent of the yearly worldwide limit of employment based immigrant visas in the United States.

Employment First Preference

Priority workers include those with extraordinary abilities in science, art, education, sports, and business. Although you do not have to have a job offer in the United States to qualify for this kind of visa, this is a competitive category. You must have documents that demonstrate national or international recognition, and you must also plan to continue working in the field in which you have extraordinary ability in the United States. Priority workers also include top-notch professors and researchers that have international recognition in their field, plus three years of teaching or research experience. The third category of priority workers includes managers and executives at multinational corporations.

Employment Second Preference (EB-2)

Professionals holding advanced degrees and persons of exceptional ability may be able to get an EB-2 visa. You may qualify if you have a degree beyond a baccalaureate degree or a baccalaureate degree plus five years of progressive experience in the profession associated with the degree. You may also qualify if you have a degree of expertise substantially above the ordinary in a science, art, or business.

This type of visa holder must have a job offer and a labor certification that is approved by the Department of Labor. If you are an employer who wants to bring over a foreign professional on an EB-2 visa, you must file an Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker on behalf of your prospective employee. If you hope to come to the United States on this kind of visa, you can seek an exemption from this requirement if the exemption is in the United States national interest.

Employment Third Preference

If you are a skilled worker (meaning that your job required a minimum of 2 years of training that was not temporary or seasonal), a professional whose job required at least a baccalaureate or its foreign equivalent, or an unskilled worker whose job requires training for less than two years but that is not temporary or seasonal, you may qualify for an Employment Third Preference (EB-3) visa. Like EB-2 applicants, an EB-3 applicant must have a prospective employer file an Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker and obtain a labor certification approved by the Department of Labor.

Experienced Employment Immigration Attorneys

There are other options for employment based immigration besides the ones discussed above, such as the L-1 visa for intracompany transferees (employees who have been employed by a multinational company abroad), and nonimmigrant H-1B visas for business immigration. With over 90 years of collective experience on both sides of immigration issues, including prosecutorial and judicial experience, our Atlanta employment visa attorneys are poised to help you with any employment immigration matter. Contact Pozo Goldstein, LLP for a free, in-office consultation at (404) 566-7698 or online today.