It seems like it would be easy enough to do, and refusing can turn away qualified candidates?
In: 0
Its not that easy and its not cheap, and it takes a long time. It takes a lot of work (meaning time) for someone to do all the paperwork, along with consulting an immigration attorney and services that do a lot of the work for you and make sure it will pass, and even then, it still takes a while for everything to get approved.
In addition to that, it can be very difficult for some positions to get approved for H1-B visas
Lots of time and money invested for what could be nothing, or just hiring someone local who can do the job and never have to worry about any of this.
Because they don’t need to. It’s expensive, and risky, and there’s plenty of talent here to chose from.
It’s incredibly expensive and time consuming.
Unless it’s a field with extraordinarily limited local/US talent
You need to hire someone now. Do you
1) hire someone who can start right away
2) hire someone who might be able to start work an indeterminate amount of time in the future after an expensive, complicated & uncertain legal process
Firstly, the kinds of businesses who could afford to recruit overseas generally do not lack qualified candidates here in the states. (It’s a big, populous country.)
Secondly because US immigration law is difficult to navigate and there are caps to the number of applicants from many countries.
Lastly, the employer must justify why they are not hiring a US citizen to be able to sponsor a visa. (In most cases if qualified applicants can be found within the country, you won’t be granted the visa.)
There are a lot of good answers here, but I’ll also add that there is a direct fee levied by USCIS.
Effectively, in most cases, hiring someone who does not require sponsorship is multitudes cheaper.
Because it costs money to do so. It’s designed to deter employers from just hiring all foreign employees at a wage and encourage employers to hire domestic employees. If employers had their way they’d hire only international applicants since they will more likely be wiling to bend over backwards. If you are on a work visa and are fired, you are very likely to be forced to leave the country; employers know this so they take advantage of that. The government discourages this by disincentivizing employers from hiring foreign workers on a visa by making the process expensive.
In addition to the upfront costs. There are maintenance costs involved. Legal fees to make sure things are staying legal and such.
Most of these answers are not correct. Sponsoring an H1-B is relatively cheap (under $5K or so). However, it’s a non-guaranteed lottery system that takes time.
You might spend $5K to wait a long time to find out that your employee did not get the visa. That’s a lot of time spent on someone who can’t work for you.
Source: I was successfully sponsored for a work visa.
Latest Answers