Building Immigration Strategy in an Age of Uncertainty: Maria's Journey at Nextracker
11th November 2025
Date
Interviewee
Maria Florencia Escobar
The Friday afternoon when the new immigration fee announcement dropped, Maria had minutes to act. Emails flew to employees scattered across countries. Were any of them abroad? Could they return? The regulatory landscape had shifted again, and no one knew what Monday would bring.
"We had no idea if they were going to be able to come back," Maria recalls of that moment. It encapsulates the challenge facing every global mobility professional today: managing workforce strategy when the only constant is change.
For Maria, Global Mobility Specialist at Nextracker, this uncertainty isn't just policy talk. It's personal.
From Seven-Year-Old Immigrant to Immigration Expert
Maria moved to the United States when she was seven years old. Immigration wasn't an abstract concept debated in boardrooms but a lived reality that shaped her childhood and, ultimately, her career path.
The connection between her personal experience and professional calling came during the last class of her undergraduate degree. "I just needed something to finish my degree plan and I thought that sounded interesting," she explains of the global HR course she took almost by chance. The class introduced her to the field of global mobility, though she had no roadmap for entering it.
After graduation, Maria joined an immigration firm as a legal assistant. The role became an intensive education in the mechanics of immigration law. She spent years as a paralegal, immersing herself in H1B visas, PERM applications, and the labyrinthine green card process. "I know way too much about that to be honest," she jokes.
The experience at a relocation company broadened her understanding beyond legal compliance to the full employee experience. When a global mobility specialist position opened at a biotech company, Maria seized it. Within months, that company underwent a major transition, and Maria found herself job-hunting again.
That search led her to Nextracker nearly two years ago.
Maria at Nextracker: Building a Global Mobility Program from Strategic Foundations
Nextracker presented a unique challenge. The company had recently transitioned from operating within a larger enterprise to functioning as an independent organization. While foundational processes existed, they were originally designed for a much larger scale.
"Those were processes and policies built for a global enterprise, which is significantly different from what a company of our size needs," Maria explains.
Her approach combined listening with strategy. She talked extensively with employees about their experiences and needs. She drew on her technical knowledge of immigration processes. Most importantly, she understood something many in her position overlook: how profoundly immigration status affects someone's entire life.
"Using my personal approach and then what the company wanted to do in the company's strategy" created Nextracker's current program. The results speak for themselves. "I've really enjoyed it," Maria reflects. "The results have been rewarding.”
Her work has since evolved into a leadership role shaping long-term immigration strategy and workforce planning.
From Compliance to Strategic Partnership: Maria's Expanded Role at Nextracker
When Maria first joined Nextracker, her work focused primarily on compliance tasks: signing forms, managing processes, ensuring regulatory adherence. As the company scaled and the immigration landscape grew more complex, the role demanded transformation.
"My role at the beginning was really more just, you know, managing processes," Maria explains. "And now as we've scaled and our program has grown, it's been more of guiding leadership on how to make decisions, how to interpret all of the recent changes in immigration law."
The shift reflects a broader truth about modern global mobility: compliance alone is insufficient. "The function really has to become more of a strategic partner to the business because at this point compliance is really not enough. It's more about workforce planning and retention and cost management."
Today, Maria leads Nextracker’s immigration program, advising leadership on policy interpretation, workforce planning, and long-term talent strategy.
The Volatility Challenge: Maria on Managing Immigration Uncertainty at Nextracker
Ask Maria about the biggest challenges in global mobility today, and her answer comes immediately: volatility and uncertainty.
"It's like nothing we've ever seen," she notes. Even immigration attorneys with decades of experience echo this sentiment. The regulatory environment forces employers into unfamiliar territory.
"The environment is basically forcing employers to be more proactive rather than take a reactive, compliant approach," Maria observes.
Her strategy centers on preparation and consistency. “For us, taking a conservative approach means ensuring our immigration petitions are consistent, well-documented, and defensible,” she explains. “We focus on building long-term, compliant strategies that minimize risk and ensure continuity for employees.”
Even with recent H1B changes and potential lottery modifications, Nextracker's careful groundwork provides stability. The key is thinking systemically about workforce planning rather than treating each visa as an isolated transaction.
Maria's Advice to Global Mobility Leaders: The Importance of Strong Immigration Partnerships
For leaders shocked by this year's regulatory changes, Maria's counsel emphasizes partnership and strategy.
The starting point is assessment: where does immigrant talent fill critical gaps? Not every organization has an actual strategy. "Some people just think, ‘oh, we have a candidate and they need an H1B, and can we do it?’ without thinking about the long term," Maria notes.
Her recommendation is clear: "having a good immigration partner and discussing how that partnership should work in the long term." This means ensuring programs can adapt, developing backup plans, and helping business leaders understand the risks inherent in immigration decisions.
The partnerships matter because the stakes extend beyond compliance. Immigration decisions affect entire lives, and those decisions require both expertise and empathy.
The Green Card Challenge: What Maria Wants Changed About Immigration
If Maria could change one aspect of the immigration system, the answer is immediate: the visa bulletin and green card availability process.
The backlog creates untenable situations. Individuals from certain countries face decade-long waits, potentially longer for those starting the process now. "That makes people be completely dependent on an employer for however long it takes for them to get a green card," Maria explains.
The dependency affects far more than employment. "It's not just your employment that's affected by the kind of visa that you have. There are so many things in your life that are impacted by that," she reflects.
People face decades of uncertainty, vulnerable to layoffs or acquisitions, unable to make long-term life decisions. "That's really no way to live," Maria says simply.
Whether current backlogs resolve or remain, she advocates for systemic reform to accelerate the process for qualified, employer-sponsored applicants.
Empathy in Immigration: Maria's Human-Centered Approach at Nextracker
For employees navigating the green card backlog or other immigration challenges, Maria's advice begins with validation.
"The most important thing when speaking to people about this is to have empathy for them and to make them feel, have them know that you understand to an extent," she explains.
She acknowledges the limits of that understanding. Neither she nor most global mobility professionals fully comprehend what years in immigration limbo feel like. But empathy and honesty matter.
Beyond that, Maria encourages employees to educate themselves about immigration processes independent of their employer, to understand how status affects their lives, and critically, to trust their own value.
"I think that a lot of people are kind of hesitant to ask for what they need or to look for resources with their employers," Maria observes. "A company's immigration strategy will impact someone's entire life. My advice to anyone seeking sponsorship is to recognize their own value, and to know that the support they need should be something they can confidently ask for.”
Artificial Intelligence in Global Mobility: Maria's Perspective on Technology at Nextracker
The global mobility industry buzzes with AI tools promising compliance tracking, case management, and data analysis. Maria sees both potential and limits.
"I love data analysis, and it takes so much time to do it yourself," she acknowledges. The ability to justify program value through clear metrics matters enormously, especially as Nextracker scales.
Yet she remains pragmatic about AI's role. "No matter how much data is available, employees will still always email you. They want to talk to a person, they want to have a phone call with a person. That's just what it is."
AI tools can facilitate by reducing administrative burden, freeing professionals for human interaction. But technology cannot replace the personal guidance employees need when navigating systems that profoundly affect their futures.
For now, Maria’s focus remains on building scalable foundations, with data automation positioned as a future enhancement as operations mature.
Maria at Nextracker: Strategic Leadership for an Uncertain Future
Maria's journey from seven-year-old immigrant to global mobility leader illustrates how personal experience, technical expertise, and strategic thinking combine to create effective immigration programs.
At Nextracker, she has built a program grounded in conservative case management, long-term planning, and genuine empathy for employees navigating uncertain systems. Her recent promotion reflects the growing strategic importance of global mobility in today’s evolving business environment.
As regulatory volatility continues and the industry grapples with technology's role, Maria's approach offers a model: understand the human stakes, plan proactively, partner thoughtfully, and never forget that behind every visa application is a person building a life.
In Maria's words, every immigration success "always is a personal impact." That understanding drives everything else.
About Maria Maria serves as Global Mobility Manager at Nextracker, where she has built and scaled the company's immigration program over the past two years. An immigrant herself, Maria brings deep expertise from her background as an immigration paralegal and roles at biotech and relocation companies. She recently advanced to a strategic leadership role guiding Nextracker's global mobility program.
About Nextracker Nextracker is a growing solar technology company with operations across multiple international locations, employing over 1,000 people globally.
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