Employment immigration: Securing a temporary work visa

Louisiana is a great place to live, and foreign nationals have several different options for making that happen. One way is through employment immigration, which gives immigrants the opportunity to work in the United States. Temporary work visas are fairly common in employment immigration and can be used both by highly skilled workers as well as those with more menial skills.

As the name implies, temporary work visas allow immigrants to work in the United States for a limited period of time. H-type visas are some of the more well known work visas. These cover a number of different fields and workers.

H-1A visas are exclusively reserved for registered nurses when there is a shortage of American nurses in the medical field. While this is a visa for highly skilled workers, an H-2 visa can be used by less-skilled workers in the agriculture industry. Like the H-1A, H-2 visas are used when there are not enough U.S. agricultural workers.

H-1B visas can be used a bit more broadly than H-1A and H-2 visas. A worker must have a highly specialized knowledge and a bachelor’s degree or higher to secure an H-1B, but he or she could be employed in any number of fields or industries, from IT to health care. However, the position that he or she is filling has to actually require a college degree. Simply having specialized knowledge does not matter if the job does not require it.

Employment immigration has a number of requirements that both workers and employers must meet. This includes things like showing that the position’s wage is comparably sufficient for the field and that there were not any qualified or willing U.S. workers. Although these various requirements might feel overwhelming at first, successfully navigating the process can be exceptionally rewarding to Louisiana employers and foreign nationals who are ready to work in the U.S.