Prioritizing unique and more educated applicants for temporary work visas, employers play a central but understudied role in the U.S. immigration bureaucracy, with implications for careers and American innovation, new Cornell research finds.

Analyzing a decade of initial applications for H-1B visas – skilled immigrant workers’ primary temporary pathway to U.S. employment – the research details employers’ strategies for navigating a highly uncertain regulatory process after applicants first make it through a visa lottery.

By paying for speedier adjudication, persisting through an otherwise lengthy review process or seeking longer visa durations, employers help shape outcomes such that immigrants with identical qualifications may be treated very differently. One could quickly win approval for a visa lasting the maximum of three years, while another waits months to learn that a shorter-term visa has been denied.

“Employers have great agency in shaping the speed and likelihood of visa approval, outcomes typically attributed to regulator discretion, and thus play a critical role in the immigrant work visa process,” said Ben A. Rissing, associate professor of organizational behavior in the ILR School. “We show how employers use the limited tools at their disposal to maximize the chance of success for specific applicants.”

Rissing is the first author of “The Need for Speed: The Role of Employers in Immigrant Work Visa Regulatory Prioritization,” published Oct. 11 in the ILR Review with co-author Laura Carver, M.S. ’20.

Scholarship on immigrants’ paths to destination countries has typically focused on immigrants’ own decisions and the role of government actors that screen applicants, such as at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Employers have received little attention, even though access to some of the U.S.’s most economically important immigration programs requires employer sponsorship, including for the 85,000 new H-1B visas granted annually. (Some nonprofits and universities are exempt from that cap).

“Extensive policy discussions focus on these critical ways of entering the U.S. that have potentially large impacts on our national competitiveness, creativity and innovation,” Rissing said. “Employers are the first stage in navigating that process for many immigrants.”

To study employers’ role, Rissing and Carver analyzed more than 530,000 initial applications for H-1B temporary work visas filed by nearly 30,000 employers between 2011 and 2015, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.  Employers had multiple means of prioritizing these applications, including paying a $1,225 fee (now $2,805) for “premium processing” to ensure a decision within 15 days instead of up to six months; requesting longer employment durations; and persisting through the government review process (that is, not withdrawing or abandoning the application).

The results showed that employers were more likely to prioritize H-1B applications across all three dimensions for immigrants with higher levels of education.

Businesses sought premium processing for less than half of all visa applicants, but the data showed they were approved at a higher rate – 83.2%, compared to 78.7% for standard applicants. Meanwhile, companies voluntarily withdrew or abandoned 2.6% of applications.

While the premium processing advantage and smaller percentage of abandoned applications might not seem like big numbers, Rissing said, both represent many thousands of immigrants whose lives and career trajectories were significantly impacted.

In addition to education level, the researchers found employers were more likely to request expedited processing and request longer visa durations for applicants whose backgrounds differed from those they’d previously sponsored.

“We find a taste for novelty at employers,” Rissing said. “They are much more likely to prioritize an immigrant applicant who looks distinct from their prior filings.”

For policymakers, Rissing said, the research shows the government cedes some authority to employers in determining who is allowed to work legally in the U.S. and for how long. For employers, the work highlights strategies for mitigating uncertainty in the immigration bureaucracy. For immigrants, the research suggests their odds of a speedy approval may improve if they are dissimilar to an employer’s prior applicants or if they can cultivate atypical skills.

Rissing said the work also adds to understanding of a two-tiered immigration system whose premium processing option, which generates substantial revenue for USCIS, disproportionately benefits established businesses compared to startups or mom-and-pop businesses.

“Smaller firms with less resources are going to have to wait longer and endure more uncertainty for longer periods as a result,” he said. “This is an example of how money can impact the structure of our regulatory systems.”

The research was supported by ILR’s Shah Family Dean’s Excellence Fund, the Cornell Center for Social Sciences and the Luo Pan Foundation.