H-1B Alternatives for Italian and European Professionals in 2026: O-1, L-1, E-2 and EB-2 NIW
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- October 29, 2026
H-1B Alternatives for Italian and European Professionals in 2026: O-1, L-1, E-2 and EB-2 NIW
Here is where the H-1B stands in October 2026, in plain terms. The $100,000 fee announced in September 2025 is on the books and extended for another year, but two federal courts have blocked the government from collecting it, so right now nobody is paying it. The lottery that replaced random selection with wage-weighted selection ran for the first time this spring, and registrations fell by more than a third. Employers who had treated the H-1B as the default route for hiring from Europe spent the year discovering that it was never the only one.
That last point is the useful one. For a software engineer in Milan, a research scientist in Munich, or a founder in Turin, the H-1B was always a lottery ticket with a one-in-three chance and a fixed start date in October. The alternatives were there the whole time. What 2026 changed is that the people who should have been using them finally started asking.
What actually changed this year
Four things, and they interact.
The fee. A presidential proclamation in September 2025 attached a $100,000 payment to certain new H-1B petitions for workers outside the United States. A Massachusetts federal court vacated the implementing policy on June 8, 2026. A second court, in California, issued a preliminary injunction on September 30, 2026, blocking enforcement under both the original proclamation and the September 18 extension. The government has appealed both rulings, a third court upheld the fee in a separate case last December, and that appeal is also pending. USCIS has said it will collect the fee if the orders are lifted. So the honest description is: not being collected today, legally unresolved, and planned by the administration to run through September 2027.
The lottery. A final rule effective February 27, 2026 replaced random selection with a system weighted toward higher wage levels. For FY2027, USCIS received 211,600 registrations, down 38.5% from the year before, reached the 85,000 cap by July 17, and ran no second round. Of those selected, 71.5% held a U.S. advanced degree. Early-career candidates at the lower wage levels now face worse odds than the old lottery gave them.
The review. An executive order in September directed closer federal scrutiny of H-1B filings generally. Separately, USCIS policy effective August 5, 2026 restored officers’ discretion to deny petitions in any category without first issuing a Request for Evidence where the filing is incomplete.
The uncertainty. Employers do not budget around court calendars. A hire that might or might not cost $100,000 more depending on an appellate ruling is a hire many companies simply decline to make through this route.
Does the fee even apply to you?
Before anyone abandons the H-1B, this question is worth thirty seconds. The fee, where it applies at all, targets new petitions for people outside the United States who would enter on the visa. It was never aimed at extensions, or at change-of-status petitions for people already here in another status. A European graduate finishing a U.S. master’s degree and moving from F-1 to H-1B inside the country was outside the fee’s design from the start. The wage-weighted lottery still applies to that person. The fee does not.
For a professional currently in Rome or Lyon with no U.S. status, the calculation is different, and that is the person the rest of this article is written for.
The O-1: the route Europeans underestimate
Most professionals hear “extraordinary ability” and assume the O-1 is for Nobel laureates. In practice it is for people who can document a sustained record of recognition in their field, and the evidentiary criteria are concrete: awards, press, judging the work of others, original contributions of significance, a critical role at a distinguished organization, high remuneration, membership in selective associations, published material. Three of the criteria met, with a credible petition and a consultation letter from a peer group, is the standard. In the arts and entertainment the O-1B has its own, somewhat different list.
We see strong O-1 candidates who never considered it: a senior engineer who led a product used by millions and spoke at two industry conferences, a chef with press coverage across two countries, a researcher with a modest but consistent citation record and reviewer invitations. None of them would call themselves extraordinary. The petition does not ask them to. It asks for evidence.
The O-1 has no cap, no lottery, no fixed start date, and premium processing. It is employer- or agent-sponsored, which is both its limitation and its flexibility: founders routinely use an agent or their own U.S. company as petitioner. Initial approval runs up to three years, with extensions. The thing to understand in 2026 is that the evidentiary review has tightened. Renewals are examined as independent cases, as we covered in detail in our article on O-1 renewals and the 2026 changes, and the August 5 policy means an incomplete file can be denied without a second chance. The O-1 rewards preparation. It does not forgive improvisation.
The L-1: through your own company
If a European company has, or is willing to establish, a U.S. entity, the L-1 moves its people without a lottery and without the H-1B fee. The L-1A covers executives and managers, the L-1B covers employees with specialized knowledge of the company’s products or processes, and the requirement that matters most is continuous employment with the group abroad for at least one year in the three before the transfer. Spouses receive work authorization automatically. L-1A status can run up to seven years in total, L-1B up to five.
Two features make the L-1 more than a stopgap. First, it connects directly to the EB-1C green card for multinational managers and executives, which skips the labor certification stage entirely and is the fastest permanent route available to most corporate transferees. Second, it forces the question many European companies have been postponing: whether to form a U.S. subsidiary at all. A subsidiary formed for a market reason also becomes the qualifying entity for L-1 transfers, which is why the immigration planning and the corporate planning belong in the same conversation. We laid out the corporate side in our guide to setting up a U.S. subsidiary for a European company.
One caution. A newly formed U.S. entity files what USCIS calls a new office petition, approved for one year initially, and the agency looks hard at whether the operation is real. Premises, a business plan, the capacity to support the role. An entity set up two weeks before filing, with a mailbox address, does not pass.
The E-2: the route only treaty nationals get
This is the structural advantage the headline promises, and it is worth stating directly. The E-2 treaty investor visa is available only to nationals of countries with a qualifying treaty with the United States. Italy is one. So are Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and most of Europe. India and China, which together account for the large majority of H-1B registrations, are not. The crowd competing for the H-1B is, for the most part, a crowd that cannot use the E-2.
The E-2 has no cap, no lottery, no fixed minimum investment set by statute, and for Italian nationals it is issued with validity of up to five years under the current reciprocity schedule, renewable indefinitely as long as the business is ongoing. The requirements are about the enterprise: the investor must be in control of the business and shall own more than 50% of a real, operating U.S. business, the investment must be substantial relative to the cost of that business and genuinely at risk, and the business cannot be marginal, meaning it has to do more than support the investor’s own family. The spouse of an E2 investor can apply for work authorization, Italian applicants file through the U.S. Embassy in Rome, which handles all E visa adjudications for Italy.
Two kinds of professionals use the E-2 well. The founder who was going to start a U.S. business anyway and simply structured it to meet the test. And the professional who buys an existing U.S. business, a route that solves the “is it real and operating” question on day one and that we examined from the buyer’s side in our due diligence checklist for foreign buyers of U.S. businesses. The E-2 also covers essential employees of the same nationality, so an Italian company with an E-2 qualifying U.S. enterprise can bring Italian managers and specialists in under it.
What the E-2 does not do is lead directly to a green card. It is a nonimmigrant status, renewable for as long as the business qualifies, and investors who want permanence pair it with one of the routes below.
EB-2 NIW: the long game that runs in parallel
The National Interest Waiver is a green card category, not a work visa, and that is exactly why it belongs in this list. Advanced-degree professionals whose work has substantial merit and national importance, who are well positioned to advance it, and for whom waiving the usual job-offer and labor certification requirements would benefit the United States, can self-petition. No employer. No PERM. Premium processing is available.
For a European researcher, physician, engineer, or founder, the NIW often runs alongside one of the temporary routes above: the O-1 or E-2 provides status to live and work now, the NIW builds toward permanence. And European nationals hold a quiet advantage here as well, because the per-country limits that create decade-long queues for applicants from the largest countries do not affect them in the same way. We walked through the whole employment-based green card system, categories, priority dates, and all, in our step-by-step green card guide.
Four professionals, four answers
The engineer in Milan, eight years’ experience, was offered a role by a U.S. company with no European affiliate. The H-1B is possible, subject to the lottery and, if the courts lift the block, the fee. The O-1 is the route to test first: if the record supports it, the engineer starts when the petition is approved, not next October.
The operations director in Bologna whose employer is opening a U.S. branch. This is an L-1A case, and the subsidiary should be formed with the transfer in mind. EB-1C follows.
The founder in Turin with capital and a U.S. business plan. The E-2 was built for this person. Ownership, investment, and a non-marginal enterprise, filed through Rome, with a five-year visa at the end of it. An NIW alongside if the venture has the right profile.
The postdoctoral researcher in Naples with publications and a U.S. lab that wants her. An O-1A or a cap-exempt H-1B through the university, with an EB-2 NIW filed early, since her profile fits it and the queue is not her problem.
None of these people need the lottery.
Nationality is the lever
Step back from the individual routes and one pattern holds. The H-1B became difficult in 2026 for everyone. The alternatives did not become difficult for Europeans, and one of them, the E-2, is close to the nationalities that make up most of the H-1B crowd. A European professional or employer who plans around that fact, instead of around the lottery, has more routes, more control over timing, and in several cases a cleaner path to a green card than the H-1B ever offered.
The planning has to be specific. Which route fits depends on the person’s record, the employer’s structure, the capital available, and the long-term goal, and the answer changes if any one of those changes.
How Di Martino Law Group approaches this
The firm’s immigration practice is built around exactly this population: Italian and European professionals, founders, and the companies that employ them, moving into the United States. As an Italian lawyer for US immigration practice based in Los Angeles and working in both languages, the firm evaluates a candidate against all of the routes above before recommending one, handles the corporate formation when an L-1 or E-2 structure needs an entity behind it, and files the green card strategy in parallel where the profile supports it. For a European employer, that means one engagement for the transfer and the entity. For an individual, it means a plan with a date on it rather than a lottery number.
If you are a European professional or employer whose U.S. plans were built around the H-1B, an Immigration Attorney in Los Angeles who works these routes daily can tell you in one conversation which of them fits. The litigation over the fee will take its course. Your timeline does not have to wait for it. Contact Di Martino Law Group, an Italian immigration attorney and Italy immigration lawyer practice, for a U.S. work visa strategy consultation.
