From Visa to Green Card: Strategic Pathways for Essential Employees

Streamed August 20, 2026

TLDR: Sponsoring an employee for a green card involves three main steps: testing the labor market (PERM labor certification), filing an immigrant petition with USCIS (I-140), and applying for the physical green card (adjustment of status). In this video, Berardi Immigration Law attorney Gabriella Agostinelli breaks down each step, typical timelines, and what employers need to know about work authorization, travel, and job portability along the way.

Transcript:

All employees. And how do we keep them? This is what we’re going to be covering today. So you guys, I’m Gabriella Agostinelli, I’m with Berardi Immigration Law. And some of you might be employing people from all different places with all different visa categories, but how do we keep them? Today we’re gonna be going over 3 key steps of the permanent residency process.

When hopefully you’ll leave this with a little bit more information. And if you like to learn more about immigration, please like this video and subscribe to our channel. We appreciate you being here. Now, in terms of the permanent residency process, there are a multitude of ways that individuals can obtain a Green Card in the United States, but the most popular method based on employment is what we call PERM. PERM has 3 main steps, which you can think of as involving the Department of Labor and Immigration.

And in this setup, the first step starts with testing the labor market. But it’s a little bit more than that, too. In this critical step, we are first trying to understand what is the job that is being offered to this person? we have to really finely tune what is the job description? What are the duties? What are the special skills needed? What are the requirements for education and experience?

And once that is determined, we then send this job description to the Department of Labor, which will determine what the real occupational code is and what the proper salary is for somebody who is working this position in your geographic location. And once they come back and say, “This position is most akin to this specific occupational code, and this is how much you should be paying that person,” and assuming that works for your team, the figure that they’ve given you, we can then proceed to a comprehensive recruitment campaign.

And this is where, now in most cases, the attorney will drive this whole process. It’s not as intimidating as it sounds. But we run a, a comprehensive recruitment campaign where we are posting job descriptions in various locations to incite individuals to come forward and apply for the job. This is because the US government wants to make sure that we are adequately giving US citizens a chance to apply for this job before we are going to give it to a foreign-born individual.

So we test the labor market, and if no other qualified workers come through, that’s great, we can go on to the next step. And the way that we actually determine this is if a qualified worker comes forward, or if a US citizen responds to the job ad and they come forward and they apply for your job, if on the face of their resume, they don’t have all the unique skills and requirements that are laid out in that job description that was posted, we can disqualify them.

But if it’s the case that they are potentially having those skills and meeting the basic entry requirements, you will, as employer, have to interview that individual. But there are some ways around, what do we do if somebody else qualifies, comes forward? And what the most popular way for dealing with that is actually posting a job for more than one position.

So if somebody else qualified does come forward, then at least you can hire that person and the foreign national you have in mind. But guys, I’ll tell you, this happens very rarely. If a job is more specialized and more technical, and if you’re in a region that maybe does not have a whole glut of folks with that kind of background, it’s very unlikely somebody will come forward. And furthermore, you know, if you’re HR, if you’re a business owner and you’re listening to this, you know how hard it is to recruit for a position.

And if the foreign national who is working for you in various immigration statuses was the person that you ended up hiring because you had such a hard time hiring for this role, you can expect that you’ll kind of coast through this process just fine.

So after recruitment is done, what we then do is we submit something called a request for a labor certification to the Department of Labor, and we ask basically here for them to give their blessing that this is a position that really only this person is qualified for. Nobody else You did all these recruitment activities, nobody else came forward.

These are the credentials of the person. This is what the job requires. Everything matches up perfectly. At the end of this process, Department of Labor will say, “Yep, here’s your labor certification,” essentially saying, this person is the only qualified person for the role. That is the longest and hardest of the steps.

It’s right now taking about 2 years. And when we move on to the next step, we are now interfacing with Immigration, specifically US Citizenship and Immigration Service. And here, what we are doing is we are showing them the results of the labor tests that we did in step one, and we’re saying, “Hey, the Department of Labor is cool with this. Here’s this person’s credentials. Here’s what the, what the Department of Labor has already signed off on. Please now certify, too, that this person is indeed eligible for permanent residence.” But that’s not the end of the process.

What will happen is when that case gets approved by USCIS, again, that’s USCIS signifying we’ve approved the fact that you deserve a green card. But an approval at this step does not render- The physical issuance of the green card.

That is in step 3. Now, in terms of timelines, with this second step where we’re submitting the immigrant petition to USCIS, asking them to qualify this person as being eligible for a green card, right now the government is inordinately fast-processing these right now. It is about 2 months that the government is taking. Most times, historically, it takes about a year or longer.

Either way, if processing time is increased, you can always submit these cases through the premium processing service for this step only, where we can ask the government to provide a determination in 15 business days. Now, so beat the labor market test, you got the approval for the I-140, the immigrant petition. The government said, “Yes, you deserve a green card.” What’s next?

Well, the answer to that depends on whether that person is located inside the United States or outside the United States. 99 percent of the time, they’re gonna be inside the United States, and we’ll talk in a second about the different implications that holding different underlying visa status has on this whole process.

But first, let’s move to that step 3. In step 3, we are asking the government to now physically issue the green card for that person, and green card, you guys, is just a fancy way of saying permanent residence. It’s an It, it refers to the actual card that it the government will issue when the permanent residency application has been approved, and historically, it was green, but it’s been through all different iterations of colors in the time since.

Now, this step typically involves us filing something called an Adjustment of Status with US Citizenship and Immigration Service, the same agency that processed our case in step 2. And in this filing, we are including a number of government forms, and we’re including civil documents, passports, birth certificates. We’re including proof that an individual has been maintaining status in the US, recent pay stubs.

Also, if the person for whom you are filing for permanent residency has dependents, spouse, children under the age of 21, here is where they are now finally asking for their benefit. Their applications will be submitted at the same time as the primary to ask for the physical issuance of the green card. They are not involved in any other aspect for the first 2 steps, with exception to the fact that some biographical details about them will be listed in step 2 on the relevant government form.

Now, when it comes to the Adjustment of Status, when we’re asking the government to physically issue the green card, and we’re submitting this package to the government, we also have the opportunity to ask for something called Advanced Parole, which is just a fancy term for travel authorization, and we’re asking for an EAD card or a work authorization, an employment authorization document so that these, the, the so that the government, with these applications, will grant that person the interim ability to work in the United States and to leave the country while the case is pending.

A little bit more information on that here. If you already have underlying work authorization, and it’s not going to be expiring anytime soon, it doesn’t really matter. You don’t really need this interim grant of work authorization.

But if there are dependents who need work authorization, this is where they can apply for that also. But also, maybe if you want to have another gig, you want to work 2 jobs, maybe you want that work authorization. And then finally, God forbid, you lose your job while this case is pending, this does grant you, potentially, we’ll get back to this, the opportunity to work while you figure out your next steps. Now, advance parole is the travel authorization.

Now, here’s an interesting bit on this. If you hold any other work permit, except for L for intracompany transferees or H for specialty occupation workers, while an adjustment of status is pending, you cannot leave the United States. H and L holders are entitled to leave the country during this final step.

The first 2 steps, everyone is good to travel. This step, you got to stay in the United States, unless you hold L or H status and unless you’ve been granted advance parole, this travel authorization. And the reason for this, you guys, is because L and H categories are what we call dual intent categories. That means that somebody can simultaneously be able to possess the intent to both hold this temporary work permit while also having this, this dream of becoming a US green card holder, and they can be loud and proud about it.

They can renew their status while the case is, their, their underlying H’s or L’s while their whole green card application is pending. They can travel internationally while e- everything is pending. But if you hold any other status, if you’re on an E visa, an O, a TN, these categories do not allow you to leave the country until you’ve been given express permission to do so. Leaving the country during this step, if you hold those statuses, will result in an abandonment of your application unless you’ve been granted advance parole.

So enough on that. Now, I want to also talk about this other concept called portability, which is that if you file for a green card, you file for You finally are able to submit your adjustment of status. You went through the testing of the labor market. You got your immigrant petition approved, and now your adjustment of status has been pending. What happens if you lose your job?

Well, fortunately, there is a provision, this portability provision, that says if your adjustment of status has been pending at least 180 days, that’s 6 months, and you have lost your job or you leave your employer, you have the ability to port your job to another employer and so long as it’s in the same or similar field as the position for which you were sponsored for with the PERM, step one, in that situation, you are able to actually not only take that new job, but you also can finish, complete the green card process with that job without having to restart everything all over again.

The only thing that needs to happen is the new employer will submit an additional document to USCIS confirming the nature of the position that you hold for them, and you’ll still be able to get your green card. But that’s only if you have applied for that EAD, which is why I tell every client, no matter how confident you are in your long-term ability to stay in your role with your sponsoring employer, just get the EAD. You never know what life is going to bring you.

So I haven’t mentioned yet, how long is step 3? And the answer is, it depends. I would say, on average, it’s about 6 to 12 months, and things are moving pretty quickly in the last year or 2. Rarely does an adjustment of status case go over a 12-month wait time, but it is born, bound to happen from time to time.

So all in all, what I generally tell my clients is this is going to be a 3year process. But wait, there’s more. Now, most foreign-sponsored individuals in the United States are or most foreign-born individuals who are sponsored in the United States come from India or China. And interestingly, there is a rule that says that not more than one country can account for more than 7% of all allotted green cards on an annual basis.

So because we have such a huge amount of Indian-born and Chinese-born individuals trying to immigrate permanently to the US, individuals born in these countries are going to be subject to rather significant wait times. This includes about 5 years at present for Chinese-born individuals and about 15 years, let’s say, 13 to 15 years for individuals who are born in India.

And this is true even if they obtain a different citizenship down the line. You will always be judged according to where you’re born and according to the wait times for those countries. So what do we do for individuals who, for instance, hold H-1B status, which maxes out at 6 years when somebody is born in India? Well, there is a provision of the law called AC21 that says if you hold H status and you have a- completed the first 2 steps of the green card, but you can’t complete the third steps because we have this huge backlog and the government does not yet allow you to submit an adjustment of status, the government will actually allow you to continue to extend your H-1B status until a green card is available for you.

But you have to complete the first 2 steps of the green card in order for that to happen. Or in some cases, you have to let the first step pend at least a year before you can obtain any kind of relief. But what do you do if you’re in other statuses like L status, which caps at 5 years or 7 years depending on what your position is? That is where I tell my clients, and HR if you are listening, if you have somebody who holds L-1 status that you want to keep on a permanent basis going forward, every single year they hold L-1 status, you should be trying to put them in the H-1B lottery because the provision to auto extend their L status while the green, while we’re waiting for a green card to be available does not exist for L-1 holders.

It only exists for H-1B holders, meaning you, it is in your best interest to switch that person to H-1B as soon as possible for future planning purposes so that they can extend their status and have 0 gaps in employment while we wait for the green card to be issued for them. Now, if you hold other categories like E or TN or O, it’s a little bit more flexible because you can continue to extend those statuses.

There are no caps on those statuses. So yes, for some folks it’s a 3-year process, but for the vast majority of specialized workers in this country, it is going to be a much longer process so buckle up. Now, if you have any other questions on this process, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

It’s a unique situation for most person, but most of the time a PERM application, despite it being a long process, is going to be a successful one as long as you have everything properly prepared. So thanks guys for joining us and I look forward to seeing you next time.