Managing Immigration Across HR and Legal

Emily McIntosh
Jul 22
2 min read

Why It Falls Through the Cracks, and How to Fix It

In a lot of companies, immigration lives in a weird gray zone.

Cartoon-style illustration of three office workers—an HR rep, a legal team member, and an operations person—standing in a circle, pointing at each other in confusion. A folder labeled ‘Immigration’ lies on the floor between them. One person holds coffee, another has a Slack notification, and a potted plant sits nearby.

It’s kind of HR’s job.

Sort of Legal’s.

And maybe Ops… if you count the one person who onboarded a foreign national two years ago.

And when something goes wrong?

Everyone looks around like:

“Wait… who was supposed to handle that?”

Welcome to the shared ownership trap, where everyone touches immigration, but no one truly owns it.

The Hot Potato Nobody Wants

Immigration doesn’t neatly fit into one department’s domain, so it becomes a hot potato. A floating responsibility passed around in Slack threads and project plans until - oops, a deadline gets missed.

You’ve probably heard some version of:

“Legal was looped in, weren’t they?”
“Oh, I thought HR was handling that part.”
“Pretty sure the manager submitted the documents…”

The result? Confused employees, last-minute scrambles, and a whole lot of avoidable stress.

The Fallout of Fuzzy Ownership

When immigration is “kind of everyone’s job,” here’s what happens:

Deadlines get missed. No one’s tracking the visa expiration until it’s too late.
Green card processes stall. Because a promotion wasn’t flagged or a worksite change went unreported.
Employees get frustrated. Silence from the company often feels like neglect, especially when immigration status is tied to their future.
HR becomes the default. Even if they weren’t owning the process, they’re expected to clean it up.

And when the government asks, “Who’s responsible for this filing?”

There’s no option to check “¯\(ツ)/¯.”

Why Managing Immigration Across HR and Legal Is So Murky

It’s not because people don’t care.

It’s because immigration is cross-functional by nature:

Legal knows the filings and compliance rules.
HR knows the employee and the timing of promotions or transfers.
Ops (if involved) knows how systems track changes and documents.
And law firms often assume HR will manage the timeline, reminders, and communication.

So it ends up like a group project where no one knows who’s making the final PowerPoint.

What Ownership Should Look Like

Ownership doesn’t mean doing everything; it means someone is accountable for seeing it through.

Here’s how better-run teams handle managing immigration across HR and legal:

✅ Legal handles legal strategy. Filing decisions, responses to RFEs, government-facing work.

✅ HR handles internal actions. Getting signatures, flagging role changes, coordinating with the employee.

✅ A designated partner manages the flow. Centralizes tracking, sets priorities, and makes sure nothing slips.

And most importantly:

🎯 Someone owns the process. Not “sort of.” Not “informally.” One person or team is clearly responsible, even if other departments are involved.

If It’s Everyone’s Job, It’s No One’s Priority

Shared ownership sounds nice. Collaborative. Flexible.

But when it comes to immigration, it’s a liability.

Because what starts as “we all pitch in” quickly becomes “we all assumed someone else had it.”

And foreign national employees can’t afford that kind of assumption.

So if your company’s immigration strategy currently lives in five inboxes and a spreadsheet named “Copy of Copy of Visa List - Final FINAL”… it’s time to pick an owner.

(And no, it doesn’t have to be you. But it should be someone.)