Employment Based
Employment based immigrant visas are divided into five preference categories. Certain spouses and children may accompany or follow-to-join employment-based immigrants.
Employment First Preference (E1): Priority Workers
Employment Second Preference (E2): Professionals Holding Advanced Degrees and Persons of Exceptional Ability
Employment Third Preference (E3): Skilled Workers, Professionals, and Unskilled Workers (Other Workers)
Employment Fourth Preference (E4): Certain Special Immigrants
Employment Fifth Preference (E5): Immigrant Investors
Employment First Preference (E1): Priority Workers
Persons with extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics. Applicants in this category must have extensive documentation showing sustained national or international acclaim and recognition in their fields of expertise. Such applicants do not have to have specific job offers, so long as they are entering the U.S. to continue work in the fields in which they have extraordinary ability.
Outstanding professors and researchers with at least three years experience in teaching or research, who are recognized internationally. Applicants in this category must be coming to the U.S. to pursue tenure, tenure track teaching, or a comparable research position at a university or other institution of higher education.
Multinational managers or executives who have been employed for at least one of the three preceding years by the overseas affiliate, parent, subsidiary, or branch of the U.S. employer. The applicant’s employment outside of the U.S. must have been in a managerial or executive capacity, and the applicant must be coming to work in a managerial or executive capacity.
Employment Second Preference (E2): Professionals Holding Advanced Degrees and Persons of Exceptional Ability
Professionals holding an advanced degree(beyond a baccalaureate degree), or a baccalaureate degree and at least five years progressive experience in the profession.
Persons with exceptional ability in the sciences, arts, or business. Exceptional ability means having a degree of expertise significantly above that ordinarily encountered in the sciences, arts, or business.
Employment Third Preference (E3): Skilled Workers, Professionals, and Unskilled Workers (Other Workers)
Skilled workers are persons whose jobs require a minimum of 2 years training or work experience that are not temporary or seasonal.
Professionals are members of the professions whose jobs require at least a baccalaureate degree from a U.S. university or college or its foreign equivalent degree.
Unskilled workers (Other workers) are persons capable of filling positions that require less than two years training or experience that are not temporary or seasonal.
Employment Fourth Preference (E4): Certain Special Immigrants
Broadcasters in the U.S. employed by the International Broadcasting Bureau of the Broadcasting Board of Governors or a grantee of such organization
Ministers of Religion
Certain Employees or Former Employees of the U.S. Government Abroad
Special Immigrant Juveniles (no family member derivatives; Adjustments Only)
Employment Fifth Preference (E5): Immigrant Investors
Immigrant Investor (also called Immigrant Entrepreneurs) visa categories are for capital investment by foreign investors in new commercial enterprises in the United States which provide job creation.