If you have ever tried to bring an international engineer on-site in the United States, you know the H-1B lottery. You file in April. You wait. You might get selected. You might not. You plan around a random draw that caps at 65,000 visas per year for the entire world.
Chilean engineers do not go through that process.
What Is the H-1B1 Visa?
The H-1B1 is a specialty occupation visa created specifically under the U.S.-Chile Free Trade Agreement. It allocates 1,400 visas per year exclusively for Chilean nationals — completely separate from the general H-1B pool.
Those 1,400 visas have never been fully used. There is no oversubscription. There is no lottery.
H-1B1 vs Standard H-1B: The Key Differences
No Lottery
The standard H-1B process begins with a lottery in April. Even if your engineer is highly qualified and your petition is flawless, selection is random. Roughly one in three applicants gets selected. The H-1B1 bypasses this entirely — applications are reviewed on merit, not chance.
Faster Processing
Because the H-1B1 pool is never oversubscribed, USCIS processes applications faster. Premium processing is available. Timeline from approval to arrival at your Tampa office is measured in weeks, not months of lottery waiting.
Annual Renewal
The H-1B1 is granted in 1-year increments versus 3 years for standard H-1B, but renewals are straightforward and there is no hard cap on total duration in the same way the H-1B has limitations. For a startup building a long-term relationship with a Chilean engineer, this is a manageable tradeoff for the advantages you get upfront.
How It Works in Practice
Most BridgeBuddy engagements start remote — an engineer in Santiago working Tampa hours, integrated into your team’s stack and communication flow. The H-1B1 matters when the relationship grows to the point where you want them in your office.
The pathway looks like this:
- Engineer is placed remotely through BridgeBuddy
- Engagement grows — you want them on-site in Tampa
- BridgeBuddy guides the H-1B1 petition process
- No lottery. Application reviewed on merit. Engineer arrives.
Who Qualifies
H-1B1 requires a bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) in a specialty occupation — engineering, computer science, architecture, mathematics, and related fields. Chilean engineers from ABET-accredited universities qualify directly. The credential maps cleanly to U.S. standards, which is part of why the FTA included this provision in the first place.
Why Most Founders Do Not Know This Exists
The H-1B1 is genuinely obscure. Immigration attorneys often default to the standard H-1B playbook because that is what they process every day. BridgeBuddy was built specifically around this market — which means we know this pathway, we have navigated it, and we factor it into every engagement from day one.
“What sold us was knowing we could bring them on-site via H-1B1 if the project grew. No other nearshore option gives you that upgrade path.”
For Tampa Bay startups that think long-term about their engineering teams, the H-1B1 is not a footnote. It is a competitive advantage that starts the moment you choose Chile over every other nearshore market.