Employment-Based Green Cards – Application Process
After you have gotten a suitable job offer from a U.S. employer (if you require a job offer under your potential category of lawful long-term residence), getting a U.S. green card is a multistage process. Here, job we’ll supply an introduction.
Basic Steps to Receiving U.S. Lawful Permanent Residence Based on Employment
Exceptional Case: Looking For a U.S. Lawful Permanent Residence Without Labor Certification
Lawful Permanent Residence for Spouse and Children of Employee
Basic Steps to Receiving U.S. Lawful Permanent Residence Based Upon Employment
In quick, making an application for a work based permit includes these actions:
– Your potential employer requests what’s called a fundamental wage decision (PWD) from the U.S. Department of Labor, using the online FLAG system. The PWD is the Department of Labor’s formal ruling regarding just how much money is normally paid to people in tasks like the one you have actually been offered. The PWD will typically expire within a year or less, so it will be very important to recruit for and file the PERM labor certification quickly after the PWD is provided.
– Your company advertises and hires for the task you’ve been used and eventually identifies (in excellent faith) that there are no certified U.S. workers readily available and happy to take the task.
– Your company submits a PERM labor accreditation application online, utilizing the electronic USDOL Form 9089.
– You wait the numerous months that the DOL will require to adjudicate the PERM labor certification application, job and mail the certified PERM application to your company (this time frame can extend approximately a year if the DOL chooses your PERM application for audit).
– Within 180 days of the PERM labor accreditation approval, job your company prepares and submits a petition using Form I-140, provided by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
– After USCIS authorizes the petition, you wait until a visa is offered. It might be right away offered, if the variety of people who used in your category because same year is less than the number of visas offered; or if too numerous individuals used, then you may need to wait up until your Priority Date becomes existing. (Get info on monitoring your Date.).
– You file a green card application and pay the costs, either utilizing USCIS Form I-485 to “change status,” which eventually consists of an interview at a local immigration workplace near your home, or by finishing a number of steps to eventually have an interview at a U.S. consulate outside of the U.S. (through what is called “consular processing”). Which procedure you utilize depends upon where you are living now, and if you remain in the U.S., whether you are legally present or otherwise eligible to adjust status. (For detailed information on these treatments, see Getting a Green Card: job Consular Processing vs. Adjustment of Status.).
– If your interview is at a consulate, after approval you get in the U.S. with your immigrant visa, at which time you become an irreversible local. Your permit will get here by mail a number of weeks later.
Note that in cases when there is no stockpile in your permit category (and everybody’s top priority date is present according to the Department of State’s most current Visa Bulletin), you can send your I-485 application in addition to your company’s I-140 petition. If you’re following the consular processing alternative, you’ll require to wait for I-140 approval from USCIS before preparing your files for the visa interview abroad.
Exceptional Case: Looking For a U.S. Lawful Permanent Residence Without Labor Certification
If you receive an immigrant visa classification that does not require labor accreditation, then you will not require to follow all of the steps laid out above.
You or your company will simply submit the USCIS Form I-140 immigrant petition directly with the USCIS Service Center and, once it’s approved, either submit a Kind I-485 permit application with USCIS (if you are lawfully 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 kids listed below the age of 21 and job you certify for a green card through work, your partner and children can get green cards as accompanying family members. They will need to provide proof of their household relationship to you, such as marital relationship or birth certificates.
