EB-1 Visa
The EB-1 First Preference Visa is an immigrant visa that allows a citizen of a foreign country to permanently come to live and work in the United States together with their spouses and children. The EB-1 Visa is an employment based immigrant visa category and does not necessarily require an employer sponsorship.
The United States sets a numerical limit for permanent employment based immigration. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, currently the United States can issue 140,000 employment based immigrant visas each year, including eligible spouses and unmarried children. The 140,000 immigrant visas are divided into five ‘preference categories’, favoring those with more sophisticated training, expertise, and skills. The first preference employment based category (EB-1) includes aliens of extraordinary ability, outstanding researchers and professors, and multinational executives and managers. The United States can issue 40,000 EB-1 visas each year and any number of unused visas from the fourth preference (EB-4) and fifth preference (EB-5). In addition to the numerical limits placed upon the various immigration preferences, the Immigration and Nationality Act also places a limit on how many permanent immigrants can come to the United States from any one country. Currently, no group of permanent immigrants (family-based and employment-based) from a single country can exceed seven percent (7%) of the total number of people immigrating to the United States in a single fiscal year.
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The EB-1 Visa allows the foreign national to apply for permanent residence in the United States, commonly known as Green Card if they fall under one of the following occupational category: (1) the applicant possesses extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics through sustained national or international acclaim, (2) the applicant has been recognized internationally for outstanding achievements in a particular academic field, has minimum 3 years experience in teaching or research in that academic area and will enter the United States to pursue tenure or tenure track teaching or comparable research position at a university or other institution of higher education, or (3) the applicant is a multinational manager or executive who was employed outside the United States in such positions in the 3 years preceding the petition for at least 1 year by a firm or corporation seeks entry to the United States to continue working for the same firm or organization.
Under the EB-1 visa program a foreign national may petition for herself or himself or their employer in the United States may petition on their behalf. Whether or not a foreign national can self-petition for an EB-1 visa depends on the occupational category the foreign national intends to apply under. For the EB-1 visa, self-petitions are available for aliens who possess extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics through sustained national or international acclaim. Aliens who fall under the outstanding professor and researcher category or the multinational manager or executive must have their employer petition for the EB-1 Green Card on their behalf; self-petition is not available for these categories.
The EB-1 process is complex and requires substantial documentation. Contact us, your experienced business immigration lawyers in Miami, Florida, to schedule an appointment for your immigration case and find out more about the EB-1 visa program and other visa options available to you.
Malescu Law P.A. – Business & Corporate Lawyers