Love and Weather calling me south

[rcbanker]

Hi - I am a professional banker with more than 20 years exerience. I am looking at moving to the US. I can transfer most likely with my current employer. I have an Uncle residing in Florida that immigrated several years ago. I am not sure if he can sponsor me?

What can I do to get things started? Years ago, I recall a lottery, but I can't seem to find any information about this now. I guess that dried up post September 11.

Look forward to anything you can provide.

Thank you,

RC

[Reba]

Uncles cannot sponsor you. Only spouses or parents, unless your uncle is your adoptive father.

If its for love, get married and have your spouse sponsor you.

If its for the weather, get an L1B intra-company transfer.

[Steven]

You probably want L-1A or L-1B - intra-company transfer. L-1A is for management and L-1B is for employees with "specialized knowledge", which means bespoke knowledge about how the company works, not that you have a Ph.D or something like that.

L-1A is the better one to get because it can be renewed one extra time than L-1B and lasts for seven years maximum, L-1B is only five years.

What you do then is get your employer to sponsor you for permanent residency, but this takes awhile which is why it's not really practical straight away. You probably fall into EB-3 skilled worker - if you bang that into the USCIS website it will tell you what the requirements are, but the one thing it doesn't say there is that it takes 3.5 years roughly for a visa number to come up after the I-140 is filed (and for that to be filed, first the labour certification has to be done) and then however many months for bureaucracy to take place for your AOS to permanent residency (a year probably).

So do the math and basically you need to get your employer to sponsor you pretty much immediately for permanent residency if you go in as L-1B, otherwise it will run out before your application is completed.

If you're lucky you might qualify for EB-2 (check the requirements), which is much faster as visa numbers are usually available pretty quickly.

[Reba]

One thing to note about the employment visas is that if the company lays you off, you have to leave the States pretty much immediately. And in this current economy, losing ones job is more of a sure thing than being able to keep it for the duration of the visa. So if the real reason you're moving south is for a partner, and you're going on a test run to see if the relationship would work out or not, be aware that you may have to leave sooner than expected, which means you're back to square one.

[rcbanker]

Thank you all for your input. I have found all of this information very helpful.

However, after inquiring with my employer, I learned that they allow for transfers between countries, but they will not sponsor. I have reviewed most of the information for the Visas available and it appears that individual are not able to apply for them, rather the employers must file.

Any other information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,

[Reba]

How can they "allow" for transfers if they don't sponsor the visa? How else is an employee expected to transfer?