Some Lehigh Valley companies are looking to hire foreign nationals to fill job vacancies
Written by Victoria Scialfa on July 20, 2021
Some Lehigh Valley companies are looking to hire foreign nationals to fill job vacancies
By Genesis Ortega
July 20, 2021
ALLENTOWN, Pa. – Industries across the country are facing employee shortages, and that’s also true in the Lehigh Valley. One local immigration attorney says that he’s helping local employers look for new ways to fill job vacancies.
Raymond G. Lahoud is the Chair of the Immigration Law Practice Group for Norris McLaughlin P.A. Attorneys at Law in Allentown.
He said while his office never slowed down during the pandemic, now he’s seeing a significant caseload increase from Lehigh Valley employers who are finding that jobs go unfilled locally.
“I’m getting a lot of calls from restaurant owners who want to take advantage of this program called the H-2B visa,” he said.
H-2B visas allow employers to hire foreign nationals to come temporarily to the United States to work.
“The work shortage is leading a lot of industries that we work with to kind of look at their recruiting and are starting to expand recruiting even for short term non-professional work. They’re looking abroad,” said Lahoud.
He says going this route presents its own set of challenges, including processing backlogs both domestically and abroad.
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