Advocate for immigrant architects and visa challenges

To be successful in the architecture profession, immigrant architects must overcome a unique combination of educational, monetary, and cultural challenges. This candid interview sheds light on human resources (HR) and provides job opportunities and visa support for immigrant architects. From the job post, recruiting, visa sponsorship, and other support, each of our distinguished panelists shares these encountered challenges and their perspectives regarding immigrant architects’ support. This interview was organized by the AIA Washington Chapter and led by Shibei Huang, Jeff Jamawa, Nishu Sinha, and Li Ren.

Melody Fahie HR generalist – immigration specialist, Perkins Eastman Architects DPC With over 20 years of experience, Melody is recognized as an associate within the firm. Her passion in the workplace is to ensure that current and prospective hires feel engaged and welcomed. In addition, she has gained substantial experience working in areas of recruiting, onboarding new employees, and procuring visa applications and renewals while ensuring continuity of eligibility for US employment.

Bree provides HR support and strategic HR management for HOK’s Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Tampa, and Miami offices. Before joining HOK in 2012, Bree gained valuable HR experience at Tektronix Service Solutions, an engineering testing service firm; Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage; and InfoPro, a government contractor. Throughout her 20 years working in all aspects of HR, helping others has been her top priority.

Bree Pirkhezranian Sr. human resources manager, HOK

Li Ren (LR): Why did you choose to do the immigrant architect support work as an HR?

Bree Pirkhezranian (BP): I am married to a Kurdish man who is from Iran. I met him when he was a permanent resident, and we went through the citizenship process together. I helped him complete all of the forms and paperwork so that we did not have to use an attorney. We also did the same in getting permanent residency for his mother. Because of this I know how much effort goes into everything that is required. I understand how time-consuming, confusing, and challenging the whole process can be. It warms my heart to be able to help people navigate the system and go through this process from an employment perspective. That is the reason I am happy to support immigration in my role with HOK. Melody Fahie (MF): My story is a little different. I have been with Perkins Eastman for a long time. When I first got into HR, I was trying to go through I9 documents and make sure people were compliant with it, being a file clerk for everyone. I saw many situations of colleagues coming to Perkins Eastman from all over the world and facing challenges such as visa expiration. It was hard to communicate with the attorney, so it led to their separation from Perkins Eastman. I was touched by those stories and decided to focus on this immigrant part. I had a long conversation with my family, I purchased books to study it, and finally I committed myself that I would not want those [things] ever to happen to anybody again. Because of my input and great effort, our firm appointed me to be the immigration specialist and in charge of all the visa-related work.

LR: Why do you think it is important to hire immigrant architects? What are the benefits the team can get from those immigrant architects? What tips do you have for recruiting immigrant architects?

MF: We hired a lot of immigrant architects and most of the time those immigrant architects from all over the world have higher degree levels, depending on the industry. Most of the time, you can find the individual has a different variety of backgrounds with education or experience. Hiring immigrant architects will expand our brand to different countries and benefit our effort to work on international projects. This option also can tie in to our diversity; having different cultures and diverse languages could be a great base for our equal and diverse office culture. However, sponsoring the immigrant architects will cause extra hiring costs so we have to consider combining those costs with our avenue of practice direction.

BP: Having a good job description in place is important when recruiting. It sets expectations up front but is also going to help in the future for different parts of the immigrant process. It’s important that immigrant architects, on any type of visa, be transparent with their future sponsorship needs. This way the employer can consider whether they are willing to sponsor someone for the H-1B work visa. Both the candidate and the employer may not want to risk valuable time and money training if the candidate will need to return home after their visa expires. For example, F-1 visas expire in just one year, or three years if there is a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) extension. LR: For many small businesses that do not have fulltime HR, do you have any advice for them to hire immigrant architects?

MF: What I would advise is that the small business owners can try to find an attorney. It may be expensive to hire a local attorney, but many attorneys offer a remote service, so I suggest that employers do some research on that and consider hiring a more affordable attorney in other locations. For small business owners, some fees like the extra fee can be waived if your team is smaller than 25 people. Hiring an affordable attorney will make this process much easier than you thought.

BP: If you have a well-developed job description, as mentioned before, it will make part of the process working with the attorney go quicker and smoother. Another thought is to hire immigrant architects who have an H-1B visa already. This option is attractive because the employee does not have to go through the H-1B lottery again therefore the business does not have the same risks of losing the employee if they are not selected.

Li Ren, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP BD+C

Ren is a project architect at Perkins Eastman. He is thefounder of AIA|DC Asian American Designers Union, AIA|DC 2020-2022 board member/ Director-at-Large, and the recipient of the 2021 Emerging Architect Award.