Employment-Based Green Cards – Application Process

After you have actually gotten an appropriate task offer from a U.S. employer (if you need a task offer under your prospective category of lawful irreversible home), getting a U.S. green card is a multistage procedure. Here, we’ll provide an overview.

Basic Steps to Receiving U.S. Lawful Permanent Residence Based on Employment

Exceptional Case: Getting a U.S. Lawful Permanent Residence Without Labor Certification

Lawful Permanent Residence for employment Spouse and Children of Employee

Basic Steps to Receiving U.S. Lawful Permanent Residence Based Upon Employment

In short, getting an employment based green card involves these steps:

– Your prospective employer requests what’s called a fundamental wage determination (PWD) from the U.S. Department of Labor, using the online FLAG system. The PWD is the Department of Labor’s official judgment regarding just how much money is typically paid to individuals in jobs like the one you’ve been used. The PWD will normally end within a year or less, so it will be important to hire for and file the PERM labor certification soon after the PWD is issued.
– Your employer markets and recruits for the job you’ve been used and ultimately identifies (in good faith) that there are no qualified U.S. workers available and happy to take the task.
– Your employer files a PERM labor application online, using the electronic USDOL Form 9089.
– You wait the several months that the DOL will take to adjudicate the PERM labor accreditation application, and mail the accredited PERM application to your employer (this time frame can extend approximately a year if the DOL selects your PERM application for audit).
– Within 180 days of the PERM labor accreditation approval, your employer prepares and submits a petition using Form I-140, released by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
– After USCIS authorizes the petition, you wait up until a visa is readily available. It may be right away offered, if the number of people who used in your classification because very same year is less than the number of visas available; or if too numerous individuals applied, then you might need to wait until your Priority Date ends up being existing. (Get details on monitoring your Priority Date.).
– You submit a green card application and pay the costs, either using USCIS Form I-485 to “adjust status,” which eventually includes an interview at a local immigration office near your home, or by completing several actions to eventually have an interview at a U.S. consulate beyond the U.S. (through what is called “consular processing”). Which procedure you utilize depends upon where you are living now, and if you are in the U.S., whether you are lawfully present or otherwise eligible to adjust status. (For detailed info on these procedures, see Getting a Green Card: employment Consular Processing vs. Adjustment of Status.).
– If your interview is at a consulate, after approval you go into the U.S. with your immigrant visa, at which time you become a permanent resident. Your green card will show up by mail numerous weeks later.

Note that in cases when there is no backlog in your green card category (and everyone’s top priority date is present according to the Department of State’s latest Visa Bulletin), you can submit your I-485 application in addition to your employer’s I-140 petition. If you’re following the consular processing option, you’ll require to wait for I-140 approval from USCIS before preparing your files for the visa interview abroad.

Exceptional Case: Requesting a U.S. Lawful Permanent Residence Without Labor employment Certification

If you receive an immigrant visa classification that does not require labor certification, then you will not need to follow all of the actions laid out above.

You or your company will just file the USCIS Form I-140 immigrant petition directly with the USCIS Service Center and, once it’s authorized, either file a Kind I-485 permit application with USCIS (if you are legally present within the United States and qualified to adjust status) or await guidelines from the National Visa Center (NVC) to prepare you for a visa interview at a U.S. embassy abroad.

Lawful Permanent Residence for Spouse and Children of Employee

If you’re wed or have children listed below the age of 21 and you get approved for a green card through work, your spouse and kids can get permits as accompanying loved ones. They will need to provide proof of their household relationship to you, such as marriage or employment birth certificates.