The Council for Global Immigration’s second Employer Immigration Metrics Survey provides new insights into the obstacles that multinational employers face when managing global immigration operations. The survey examined employer perspectives on global visa availability, processing times and consistency of immigration adjudications. It also explores how employers manage their global immigration operations and how much they spend to do so.

The results show that immigration represents an investment in an organization’s future and that employers strategically manage their immigration needs to compete globally. Among the other key findings:

• 86 percent of employers report that the ability to obtain visas in a timely, predictable and flexible manner is critical for meeting business objectives.
• Outside the United States, respondents employed an average of 4.35 full time employees (FTEs) to work on immigration—one for every 2,207 FTEs.
• Global employers spent an average of 9 hours to complete a single application/petition for temporary employment authorization to work in countries outside the United States.
• 62 percent of respondents’ organizations have employees who need visas to work outside of the United States.
• At the top end of the global spectrum, 74 percent of employers in East Asia and the Pacific and 73 percent of employers in Canada agreed that there were sufficient temporary work visas to meet workforce needs.