How Do Work Visas Work?

A work or working visa for the alien to be employed in the United States must be petitioned by an employer. The petition may be routed through the Department of Labor for certain labor classes that require a labor certification, including temporary agricultural workers, and will certainly pass through Citizenship and Immigration Services, the National Visa Center for processing petitions, and the Department of State via the embassies and consulates working in its employ. The employee may have applied for their work visa through a direct appeal, focusing on a particular skill or experience level of value to the employer.

The realities of the work visa process today are such that even though some forms (notably the Diversity Visa) are handled exclusively electronically, the human element will never be removed from the review of visa petitions and applications.

While this may be a blessing in catching some errors a computer might not, and certainly provides warmer customer service, there are delays inherent in the visa application process, which should encourage the applicant to complete their forms and reviews as early as possible. When approaching the visa application process, it is important to put things in perspective, namely that work visa applications tend to vary based on the type of skills one has to offer and the highest level of their education.

There is a hierarchy based on preference of work visa applicants, with priority given to qualified individuals, exceptional talents and personalities of international intrigue. Also, some job classifications, may require appeals to the Labor Department. Moreover, even highly qualified applicants must sometimes wait years for their turn in the visa line based on yearly quota limits.

With the assent and patronage of an employer, petitions and applications must be sponsored for the applicant's passage to American shores and residency therein. Once more, the Department of Labor certification may be of issue for certain classes of workers, so the employer must determine whether or not a labor certification must be attained for a job when citizens and permanent residents are not available; it should also be known that there are permanent certifications for these labor categories. Other forms that will be involved with the work visa operation are the Petition for a Non-immigrant Worker, Form I-129, and an I-797 Notice Action.

On top of this, the application for the visa must be filled out along with a supplemental form for people from the ages of 18 - 45. For working holiday visa applicants who are travelling on the basis of financial capability even before supplemental employment, this is popular among non-American English-speaking countries and it is subject to the different labels countries may apply to their form categorizations.

One special category for a work visa is a Diversity Visa, whose application process is also known as the green card lottery. The pool from which applicants may be chosen is decidedly different from the regularly lottery, and yet also normal visas. 50,000 winners are chosen from people who meet the minimum work experience and educational experience requirements. The Diversity Visa lottery is also determined by immigrationattorney

When formally submitting the work visa application, it is important to mind the individual elements of the submission and interview process, which often intersect with the processes of other visa reviews. First of all, there are potentially hundreds of dollars in fees stemming from the basic visa application and further modified by the type of work visa applied for and any reciprocal issuance fees that exist between the country of origin and the country to which the worker will travel.

The length of one's stay, pending renewal, is also subject to the review of the I-94 Arrival-Departure Record upon arrival in the U.S. At other points in the application process, proper documentation such as birth certificate and passport will need to be reviewed, and two visa photos following highly specific Department of State guidelines must be attached to any application.