Why Every Workplace Needs to Document Its Immigration Policy Now

As sweeping immigration policy changes and workplace enforcement ramp up in President Donald Trump’s second term, employers are facing more questions from employees about the potential for immigration sponsorship, visas, and work authorizations. That uptick makes a documented workplace immigration policy essential to codifying your organization’s answers to these questions, according to Kelli Duehning and Josiah Curtis, partners at law firm BAL in San Francisco and Boston, respectively.  

For example: Such a policy can lay out whether your organization does any visa sponsorship, and if so, under what circumstances. It can state what happens when an employee’s work authorization expires and they are waiting for a new one to be processed. Similarly, it can dictate whether a company helps with visas for family members of employees, Duehning told an audience at SHRM25 in San Diego.  

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Benefits of Documenting a Policy

While these are just a few of the dozens of particulars that a policy can lay out, Duehning and Curtis pointed to the four big reasons to write down an immigration policy — or to review and possibly update one that a company already has.

1. Having a single source of truth. That means not just HR, but supervisors, managers who may be overseeing foreign nationals, general counsel, and even outside contractors who may be managing immigration issues are all on the same page about how an organization handles certain situations. 
2. Taking the emotions out of the conversation. “This document gives you something to point to if there’s a challenge,” Curtis said. “People bring so much emotion to these conversations,” so having a document to point to helps keep things objective.  
3. Saving time for HR. For HR pros who are the main source of immigration information in their company, addressing these issues takes a tremendous amount of time. “An immigration policy can really help you in terms of freeing up your day so that you’re not constantly answering the questions from your foreign nationals,” Duehning said.
4. Increasing visibility. Writing a policy can make an organization’s stance on immigration issues clear to employees and managers, but it can also  let the C-suite know how much HR is doing to manage such issues. In companies that don’t hire a lot of foreign nationals, these topics may not be on the C-suite’s radar, Duehning said.

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How to Get Started Writing (or Updating) a Policy

Duehning and Curtis likened the process of getting started documenting an immigration policy to an investigation of sorts: Essentially, HR will need to start answering the “who, what, when, where, why, and how” about an organization’s employment of foreign nationals.  

Who and What 

Who is covered under a policy? This will likely include examining or creating a talent strategy and answering several key questions: 

• Are you recruiting international students?
• Are you supporting dependents?
• Is your process different for high-level executives?
• What visa types are you open to sponsoring?
• What roles qualify for visa sponsorship?

“Investigating who and what of your immigration policies is probably going to take the longest amount of time,” Duehning said. 

When and Where

There is a “complicated web to untangle” of potential immigration practices at an organization, Duehning said. Those questions include: 

• When do your employees become eligible for you to sponsor them for their green card? Is it only based on tenure, or is it based on reaching certain experience or performance levels?
• Where are you hiring? Just in the U.S., or also globally?
• Does your policy change based on office location?
• When do you review the policy?

For example, a law firm may have a blanket policy that they make the decision on whether to pursue green card sponsorship after four years, because it’s tied to when the firm has an idea of whether the associate is on the partner track, Curtis said. Meanwhile, a university hiring extremely high-level researchers may tie sponsorship to performance reviews — but make exceptions in certain circumstances to attract top talent.  

Those exceptions should also be documented, Duehning said. 

“It’s all about compliance as well,” she said. “The policy makes sure that everyone is moving together so that if there are deviations, you can explain why certain exceptions are being made versus when they’re not being made.” 

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Why and How

This step is about identifying how an immigration policy fits into an organization’s strategic business goals — or if it doesn’t currently fit well, how to change it so it does. That means asking questions such as: 

• What are the business needs driving your immigration policy?
• What are the goals of your immigration program? “Sometimes it’s diversity; sometimes it is filling gaps where you aren’t finding the talent,” Duehning said.
• Are you shifting to skills-based hiring?
• How are you implementing and enforcing your policy?
• Where is the budget coming from for these hires, given that there are costs to the sponsorship process?
• How is your policy being communicated? Who are those stakeholders? Is it just being communicated to your foreign nationals, or to everybody?
• How are you ensuring the policy is competitive in your marketplace?

“It starts with that motive of why, and then making sure all the elements stack up,” Duehning said. “Who do I need in the room, understanding the business? What is it that we need? Where do we have gaps in our talent? And then making sure all those elements that you want to include in your policy, you have thought it out, so you know how to execute on each of those.”