EMPLOYMENT BASED IMMIGRATION

Los Angeles attracts people worldwide who want to live and work in this unique, dynamic environment. Many multi-national corporations have headquarters or regional offices in L.A., and a large percentage of the city's population consists of immigrants. The Law Offices of David M. Haghighi, APC provides knowledgeable legal counsel and aggressive representation to both employers and workers who need help cutting through the bureaucratic red tape of the U.S. immigration legal system. We have extensive experience in working with agencies including the State Department, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and others. We can assist with non-immigrant visas for temporary workers and employment immigration visas for those who plan to take up permanent residence and perhaps pursue the naturalization process to full U.S. citizenship.

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Immigration Visas Based on Employment. 

The U.S. government strictly regulates the number of visas that are available any year for employment-based immigration. Only about 140,000 such visas are allocated on an annual basis, and this number has to meet the entire worldwide demand. There are five categories of such visas:
 

E1: Priority workers, including those who possess extraordinary ability

E2: Professionals holding advanced degrees and persons of exceptional ability

E3: Skilled workers, professionals, and unskilled workers

E4: Special immigrant categories including certain broadcasters, employees and former employees of the U.S. government abroad, certain religious workers and others

E5: Immigrant investors

 

Some categories require that the employer obtain labor certification by proving to the Department of Labor that the hiring of foreign nationals will not deprive local workers of jobs and will not depress their wages, as well as to file a sponsorship petition on behalf of the immigrant. Others, such as the E1, do not carry these requirements.