[garyhalliday84]

Hi all,

I received a phone call from an Amercian company the other day with regards to potentially gainining employment in Orgeon. The only stumbling block on this could be the visa.

In terms of gaining a visa to work in the US (obvioulsy with the aid of the company sponsorship), can anyone advise on roughly how long these things take? The company were going to contact their lawyers regarding this but i just wanted to know if anyone could shed some light on it for me whilst i wait?

The employer was asking about my current notice period (which is a month). So i was wondering if it could be done in this time scale?

Thanks for any help
Gary

 

[drakecabot]

You need to clarify what sort of job it is so that people on the Forum can understand the visa that is being applied for. If it is an H1B visa (because you have a skills that no American has due to a specialism or labor shortage for your job type over here), then the visa can be fast tracked and processed in 15 days. That is the good news. The downside is all the information gathering and form filling that precedes the application. This can be done in days but mine dragged to 3-4 weeks, as letters of support had to be obtained from previous employers etc. There is also a limit to the number of visas, again, if H1B, so they need to get going quickly - the visa process opens in April and is predicted to reach its limit sometime midsummer, though it dragged out to Sept/Oct in previous years due to weakness of the economy. Finally, the H1B visa does not take affect until 1 October, so that would be the earliest that you could begin work on an H1B. Plenty of info online about visa types, info which you can source yourself - start with USCIS. The example I have given is H1B.

 

[twostep]

Here are the most recent H1B numbers USCIS - H-1B Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 Cap Season