SHRM26 Debrief · Global Workforce Trends · #2852

What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You: Obligations and Considerations When Sponsoring Employees’ Work Authorization

with Priscilla Muhlenkamp

& Nathalie Fassie

▶ Watch on the SHRM portal ~91 min, distilled

H-1B visaSTEM OPTF-1 students

"You'll have a Fortune 500 company with a publicly traded annual report, all of that, and they'll ask, 'Give me your entire organizational chart for your entire organization of 300,000 people,' which is insane."

What it was about

Sponsoring foreign national talent (students, H-1B workers, green card candidates) carries a dense web of compliance obligations across multiple federal agencies, and employers must treat immigration as a centrally-governed program with contingency planning rather than a case-by-case, decentralized activity, especially given rising enforcement and policy uncertainty.

By the numbers

$100,000 filing fee

Fee applied (since Sept 20, 2025, now under litigation/appeal) to H-1B applications that are consular-processed rather than change-of-status

17% decline

Decline in new international (F-1) student enrollments

~50% win rate

This year's H-1B lottery win rate under the new wage-weighted system

Key notes

Designate a single owner (ideally within HR/global mobility) for immigration program compliance rather than leaving it to individual managers.
Maintain a clear, up-to-date list of all sponsored employees (STEM OPT, H-1B, etc.) with contact information so you can respond quickly to site visits or officer inquiries.
Train managers and front-desk staff on their obligations, including how to handle an unannounced FDNS site visit (ask for ID, notify legal/HR, do not let anyone in without verification).

The contrarian takeThe public perception that FDNS site visits are akin to ICE raids is wrong and counterproductive. FDNS officers are investigators, not enforcers, there to ask questions and gather information, not to detain anyone. Yet employer panic, mistaking them for ICE, creates unnecessary crises.

Take this back Monday

Do this for your team

Name one HR owner for immigration compliance and give managers/front-desk a one-page protocol for handling a surprise FDNS site visit.

Say this in your next leadership meeting

Immigration sponsorship needs one centralized owner and program-wide consistency now, since agencies compare filing patterns across our entire portfolio.

Watch out for

Letting individual managers handle immigration compliance informally/case-by-case with no centralized oversight or escalation path.
Failing to update the STEM OPT training plan or notify the university when a student's job duties materially change (scope creep).
Being overzealous with I-9 documentation, requiring specific or extra documents, or rejecting legitimate-looking documents. This constitutes unlawful document abuse or discrimination.

Fun fact · Priscilla Muhlenkamp

She's ranked in Chambers USA and named to Best Lawyers in America multiple years, after 25+ years advising on U.S. immigration law.

If this landed, see these

↳ Go deeperEmployers in the Hot Seat: Surviving Form I-9 Audits and Enforcement in Trump 2.0Widens the lens from FDNS site visits to the full multi-agency enforcement landscape sponsors now face.⇄ The counterpointNavigating the Wild Habitat of Workforce RegulationsThat single immigration owner also needs to track contractor classification, DEI, and AI rules at once.✦ The unexpected oneThe Chief Disruption Officer: Architecting Tomorrow’s Workforce EcosystemSuggests upskilling existing staff before reaching for the sponsorship paperwork in the first place.