In this video I'll break down the secrets how to get a green card through a job offer
and an employer.
Stay tuned.
I'll see you on the other side.
Hello everybody.
My name is Jacob Sapochnick and I'm an immigration attorney based in San Diego, California.
In this short video, I'm just going to cover in general what it takes to get a green card
through an employer and a job offer.
So there are many, many ways to get a green card through starting a company, through being
an entrepreneur, a person of exceptional ability.
But the most common way that most people that are not doing it through a family petition
is to get a green card through a job offer, essentially being sponsored by the employer
that they are currently working for or their future employer.
And this process is called…it has several steps and in the future videos I will separate
them and I'll make videos about each and every step of the process.
So the first step in the process of getting a green card through an employer is actually
have the employer commit to giving you that job.
The permanent job offer, it has to be a permanent job offer and the employer is willing to support
you in the green card process from start to finish.
And the reason is because not only that employer has to sign the forms, be involved in all
the recruitment process and everything else that we're going to describe, but also they
have to be paying most of the fees that are involved in the process, including the lawyer
fees.
And sometimes employers are not aware of their responsibilities and that can create problems
and delays.
And sometimes some of these employers are not willing to continue with that process
because they're not aware from the start what are their obligations.
So let's start with step number one.
Once you have the employer confirm that they're willing to do that.
The first step in the process is going to be, we called his perm, PERM Labor Certification,
the Labor Certification.
And the Labor Certification process involves essentially an employer filing a petition
with the Labor Department and several other things with the Labor Department proving that
there are no U.S. citizen workers that are qualified to do this job.
And we went through all this process to show, to demonstrate that there weren't any U.S.
citizen employees that are qualified or that are that applied.
And therefore the foreign national is the one that should be getting this.
So this is the first step of the Labor Certification.
Once we have a certified labor certification, after we went through all the hoops of advertising
and doing whatever is required, the employer with that certified labor certification, they
can go ahead and proceed to step number two.
And that's filing the immigrant petition.
We call this the I140 and again, depending on the category, there are different categories
in employment based sponsorship.
There is the EB3 where we have skilled and non-skilled workers, people that have either
no education, no formal education or they have at least a bachelor degree with five
years experience or less.
And they'll fall under the EB3 category.
And if you know, when you are applying under those categories, it's important to look at
the visa bulletin to see if there are current numbers for you to be able to get your green
card.
If there are no…if your numbers are not available, then you're not able to adjust
your status.
In this case you're only going to file the I140 at that point, which requires the employer
to prove financial ability to pay the wage for the employee to make sure they show that
he's still qualified to work at that job.
So we look at his qualifications and his experience and what he does for work.
Employer will provide financial documents, pay stubs, tax returns and if all those are
met then the I140 will be approved.
If their visa numbers are available then the employee will have the option to file a concurrent
adjustment of status application 45 as well if not just the I140 is filed.
If somebody has an EB2 category, most of those are current but if you are from China, the
Philippines, Mexico, those are usually backlogged and there are many ways to overcome that and
strategies what to do if your visa numbers are not available.
But assuming that are available you can file the I140 and the 45 concurrently.
If not, you just filed them.
I140.
Once the I140 is approved and your visa numbers are available, you can go ahead and file the
adjustment of status, the 45 and that is the final step in the process.
Typically when you do file the I140 or the 45 immigration may request more evidence and
if that's the case you have to respond and hopefully the case will be approved, but that's
in general the process to file a green card through an employer.
If the applicant is married, typically we advise to file the application for the spouse
at the same time where when you file your own adjustment of status application, because
if the green card is already approved for that employee and they are married and they
failed to file for their spouse, they'll have to file for their spouse separately.
And that may take a few years and it may result in family separation.
So in a nutshell, we have to do the Labor certification first.
Once that's approved we can move to the I140 stage and once that's approved we can either…we
can file the 45 adjustment of status or if visa numbers our current during the I140 stage
then you can file those concurrently.
Again, if you have any questions about this process and if it makes sense or if it doesn't
make sense, if you have questions, just post them in the comments.
You can email them as well to me, and hopefully you enjoyed this video.
It makes more sense.
I'd love to hear your feedback and I'll see you at our next video.
Thanks for watching.