Hayman Woodward PLLC, a leading Immigration and Business Advisory firm based in Washington D.C., announced that the increasingly unstable political-economic landscape in Brazil is leading Brazilians to seek opportunities outside their country. Brazilian IT professionals focus primarily on Silicon Valley, home to the world’s largest technology companies, including Microsoft, Google, Apple and Facebook.
IT clients, which once represented only 6% of Hayman Woodward’s portfolio, have recently doubled this percentage, and this growth is expected to continue at the same level in the next few years. To further strengthen this trend, the US is currently experiencing a growth momentum with the lowest unemployment rate in the last 50 years.
Notably, there is a great lack of IT professionals in the US market, both in quantity and quality. About 40% of these workers, who currently work in 
large US companies, are foreigners. The vast majority come from China, Japan and India.
Regardless, Brazil is historically among the largest exporters of skilled labor in the area of Information Technology, mainly to the United States, Japan and Canada.
Although many IT professionals migrate to the US with H-1B visas, the EB-2 National Interest Waiver (NIW) visa has proven to be the best immigration option for those most qualified. Those categories provide an excellent opportunity for qualified foreigners who will contribute to the US in certain areas of work that are either lacking or requiring skilled labor, without the need to have an employer as a sponsor or a concrete job offer. Unlike the H1-B, which is a temporary visa, the NIW EB2 visa results in permanent residence in the US via a Green Card. The EB-2 NIW category can benefit people already in the US with other types of temporary visas, such as the H1-B, for example, or immigrant visa holders who possess an advanced academic background and/or unique professional skills.