Companies That Sponsor Green Cards

Green Card & Citizenship, , , ,

A lot of people who come to the US on dual intent visas like the H-1B visa, O-1 Visa and L-1 Visa and the non explicit dual intent visas like the TN Visa for Canadians and E-3 Visa for Australians ultimately hope their employer sponsor company for their non-immigrant visa will be happy to sponsor them for a Green Card one day under EB-1, EB-2 or EB-3.

Now many never get the chance because their employer companies don’t want the additional expense and time to do this and/or the actual foreign sponsor doesn’t want to endure the long wait times and static career growth as a result of this process. Recently we looked at where Green Card & Visa Sponsored non-immigrant foreigners reside around the US to help people get a better idea of where the opportunities and competition lies.

Today we will look at both the companies that are sponsoring the greatest number of Green Card Applications by their Labor Certification data as well as what countries dominate the demographics of these foreign applicants. This data also comes from the US Department of Labor and is for the 2011 Immigration year.

Microsoft is by far and away the greatest sponsor of Green Card Applications with 39% of the Top 25 companies total and 6% of all applications. So maybe getting a job in Redmond, WA near Seattle is a great idea! This list is dominated by Technology and Finance companies and the positions that most of these applications tend to be for are Engineers in Computer Science with a few Accounting/Consulting type roles as well.

Company PERM Applications
Microsoft 3,531
Cognizant 1,942
Cisco 604
Intel 345
Google 343
Qualcomm 343
Texas Instruments 227
Amazon 202
Bloomberg 192
Bank of America 182
IBM 180
Hewlett Packard 178
Juniper Networks 144
VMWare 143
Broadcom 135
JP Morgan & Chase 133
Deloitte Consulting 125
Ericsson 123
Apple 120
NetApp 115
Pricewaterhousecoopers 115
Credit Suisse 109
Mastech 100
InfoSys 97
Oracle 96

Indian nationals makes up over 50% of all Green Card Applicant sponsors with an average annual salary of  above 90K. This is the second highest among the other Top 5 countries being China, South Korea, Canada and Philippines. Canadian sponsored permanent residents average salary for the sponsored roles tops 100K which is possibly not surprising given their long standing relationship and proximity to the US and thus their citizens being on the most equal footing with US Citizens of any foreigner when applying for roles and negotiating salary.

countriesperm

 

L-1 Visa Rejections Increasing Due to USCIS Crackdown

Immigration News, , , , ,

After the H-1B visa lotteries of 2007, 2008 and more recently in 2013, due to the strict annual quota of 85,000 visas, many large multi-national companies and indeed smaller ones turned to the L-1 visa as a way to get high skilled and much needed foreign talent to work in the US. The general criteria for the L-1 visa is the company must have locations in multiple countries and the foreigner must have worked at least one year in that foreign location.

Some companies have abused this L-1 visa, however the real reason it is being used by companies like Microsoft and up and coming companies like Square and Airbnb is because the high-skill talent is needed and current US Immigration law is arcane and Immigration reform just never seems to get done.

However the USCIS has decided under some form of direction to go completely crazy with these application petitions and reject first time and renewal application at an alarmingly high rate and for respectable companies like the Big 4 Accounting firms and tech giants like Microsoft and Google let alone the smaller companies. This is causing havoc not just for the companies but for the foreigners and their families themselves and underlies the huge flaws in US Immigration for legal, law abiding and high skill immigrants.

The 3 charts below so how major the problem has become in recent times. (from Reuters)

  • In Chart 1 you can see the denial rates of L-1 visa applicants is almost 30% in 2011 and trending higher

l1 chart1

 

  • In Chart 2 you can see 60% they are doing a Request For Evidence (RFE) which essentially requiring the sponsor employer to provide endless additional documentation about the role and companies which always delays the process by many months with little guarantee of success and a whole lot of internal and legal costs

l1 chart2

 

  • In Chart 3 you can see that in the middle part of the decade this may have disproportionately affected Indian nationals particularly at companies like InfoSys and Tata who had been accused in past (although not proven) to abuse the L-1 Visa system. However given the sharp drop in L-1 visa holders from Indian applicants in recent years but the continually high rejection rate it shows that either or both of Indian applicants are continuing to be scrutinized most and this sweeping high rejection rate is affecting all foreigners and thus the US economy at large.

 

l1 chart3

 

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