Last modified 10/09/2023

Contracts of employment in the Usa:

When immigrants are sponsored by a company, they receive job offers that constitute the contract of employment because in it, the benefits and the working and economic conditions are registered, which are decided by the employer and consists in giving them to the immigrant worker as long as he or she carries out what is established in the contract according to the North American rules.

EEOC, Visa, H – 1B Visa, H – 2B salary, working certification

Every worker in the United States, regardless of his or her condition as a legal resident, knows that the working, salary and anti – discriminatory conditions, are regulated by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), for which the employment contracts that must be subscribed between employee and employer must be fulfilled framing the legally established conditions.

The working relationship between the immigrant and the sponsor American company starts when it processes, before the Working Department of the United States of America and the National Security Department, the certification of the working offer and requests the immigrant worker.

After obtaining the certification, the sponsor sends the information to the immigrant, so he or she can process his or her visa. Among the sent documents, the working conditions and the benefits that the employer is offering, must be recorded.

This job offer, which, in the ends, constitutes the working contract, must specify the following:

• Duration of the contract, pointing out when it begins and when it ends.
• Contract conditions.
• Working schedule.
• The salary that the immigrant is going to be receiving.
• Vacations.
• Compensations in case of working accidents.

Usually, the type of contract that immigrants access to is the one that implies temporary work, meaning that it only lasts for a determined period of time, if we take into consideration the visa with a longest extension, which is the H – 1B Visa that lasts for up to 6 years, and then there is no possibility of returning to work, unless the immigrant fulfills a series of requirements to get the permanent residency or Green Card.

There is another type of contract, which is the seasonal, meaning that the contract is valid during the season in which all the non professional immigrants with the H – 2B Visa or the immigrant for agricultural work with the H – 2A Visa, enter into the United States of America.

However, the Immigration and Nationality Law also allows hiring workers with contracts of permanent character for certain works that the sponsor company has to prove through certain documentation. The difference in these contracts is in the salary, which, any times is the highest one in the sector, or the salary paid to a North American worker with the same qualifications.

The non immigrant visas destined to work, such as the H – 1B Visa, allow the immigrant to access to a social security card, which, at the same time, will allow him or her to receive health plan benefits, unemployment insurance and pension plans.

Summing up, in the United States of America, most of the immigrants only have the possibility to access to jobs with seasonal and temporary contracts, because the given visas last, been the H -1B Visa the longest one, up to 6 years. Those immigrants, who access to permanent contracts of employment, are usually the ones who have the permanent residency or Green Card. In both cases, they receive the benefits that the Law admits for every North American workers, in both, the working and economical aspects, not been subjects of discrimination.