U.S employers use green card sponsorship as a tool to acquire and retain foreign employees, survey says

A new study finds that compared to last year, the U.S employers have made more number of green card sponsorships during this year and which is the highest ever compared to any other previous years.

According to the Envoy’s ‘Immigration Trends Report – 2021’, nearly 74% of respondents said their organisation had sponsored a foreign national for a green card. This was up from 71% in 2021 and the largest number reported in any previous year.

The study also finds that the U.S employers use early green card sponsorship as a tool to acquire and retain foreign employees.

58% of employers who participated in the survey also stated that they start the green card process before an employee’s first anniversary as large backlogs for approval particularly for applicants from India and China exist.

Over 500 human resource professionals and hiring managers in the US have been surveyed by the Envoy which is a global immigration services provider.

“Despite a spike in general US unemployment, employers in our survey clearly stated that they still required high-skilled foreign talent to fill key roles at their organisations, particularly as sudden remote work conditions accelerated the need for technological innovation and digitisation,” Times of India reported quoting Richard Burke, CEO of Envoy Global .

“In a year of border closures and limited consular operations, US universities and graduate schools served as an even more important recruiting source for this type of talent and will likely continue to play a role in talent acquisition,” he stated.

According to Times of India report, visa sponsorship remains an important talent acquisition strategy for employers despite travel restrictions and an economic slowdown in 2020. As per the survey, 82% of respondents said that they expected their foreign national headcount to at least remain the same over the next year, and 59% expected it to increase. In addition, 41% said the widespread adoption of remote work will result in more foreign national sponsorship, largely due to what they said was a still constrained supply of talent.

Immigration policies remained a point of contention for employers: 54% of respondents said that the lack of visa availability became more challenging under the previous Trump administration and 52% pointed to increased costs.
Moving forward, employers cite quicker processing times and increasing the number of green cards and visa options available for employment-based immigration as the most important reforms they would like addressed. However, support for changing or eliminating per-country green card caps was mixed, with 48% of employers covered by the survey saying it would make hiring and retention easier, and 32% who said the opposite.