Understanding immigration law and the H-1B Visa program

By Dani Sheehan. 

The H-1B Visa program can be an opportunity for employers to find workers. Tune in to this podcast episode to understand the nuances of the application program and stay ahead with best practices. 

Summer is right around the corner, which means the construction industry is entering its busiest time of year, increasing the need for skilled workers. As our industry continues to face labor shortages, Heidi J. Ellsworth sat down with Mary Kate Fernandez of Adams and Reese in a recent episode of Roofing Road Trips®, to discuss the H-1B Visa program introduced by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) department. We learned how this visa offers opportunities for employers to find workers and how to seek professional guidance when understanding immigration law. 

Mary Kate assists employers with identifying foreign talent they want to hire and retain by helping them legally obtain the proper employment visa. When it comes to the topic of immigration, she shares, “I think a lot of the focus is on the border when it really needs to be on what we're talking about today, like legalized employment in immigration. That's what business owners are interested in, and that's what a lot of the country is interested in. But the conversation is so skewed at this point, and people really need to be educated about how to be able to use our laws to effectively hire foreign talent.” 

If you aren’t already familiar with an H-1B Visa, Mary Kate explains, “The H-1B itself is an employment visa that can be obtained for up to six years. It's an employer-sponsored visa. You must have an employer's job position. The employer's going to sponsor the individual registrant. And then an important thing about this visa that I think people don't always understand is that it's a specialty occupation visa. So, this is a higher-level specialty position visa.” The government caps the number of visas at 85,000 for each year, and to obtain the visa, a person must have the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree or five years’ experience in a specialty occupation. 

For the construction industry, Mary Kate tells us what sort of positions qualify for this type of visa. “Definitely project manager positions and anything that's going to require an engineer. It's larger companies that have multi-level management, and then people that are going to have a degree that fits into the requirements of that role. A lot of where we see this in use is a project engineer position or a project manager.” 

Read the transcript or Listen to the podcast to further understand the intricacies of the H-1B Visa and ensure smoother navigation through the program.