Our team has supplied both corporate and employment attorneys as well as Human Resources Professionals with due diligence support by reviewing the current status of employees authorized to work for a party to a merger or acquisition for the purpose of drafting a memorandum listing all the visa classifications present in the company and the affect such a merger or acquisition will have on such visas. Furthermore we have suggested strategies to maintain work authorization for those employees whose status, or green card processed, may be negatively affected by the transaction.
For example, when a company that utilizes either E1 or E2 Treaty based visas, a change in the ownership of the company may result in the invalidation of those visa status.' Additionally, the EB-1(c) International Manager or Executive base Green Card process may be compromised if the merger will result in the foreign related entity that the beneficiary worked at prior to transferring to the U.S. will no longer be related or doing business. That being said, based upon the timing of the closing, the resulting company can take advantage of the AC21 Porting rules to maintain the Green Card process.