Category: Green Cards

On July 31, 2020, USCIS announced a final rule adjusting fees for many immigration and naturalization benefits. USCIS conducted a comprehensive biennial fee review and determined that current fees do not recover the cost of providing adjudication and naturalization services. This final rule will apply to all applications and petitions postmarked on or after October 2.  One […]

On July 29, 2020 a federal judge for the Southern District of New York issued two rulings that put a temporary freeze on the Public Charge Rule, as implemented by the Trump Administration on February 24, 2020, while a national health emergency is in place. What is the Public Charge Rule? The Public Charge Rule […]

In an employment-based green card case based on a PERM labor certification, there are two possible categories: EB2 and EB3. Some of you watching might know that the difference between these two categories is significant, boiling mostly down to concerns with processing times. The EB-2 or EB-3 category impacts the timing of the applicant’s ability […]

In PERM green card cases, you might often hear the term “priority date.”  So what exactly is that, and how does it relate to the Visa Bulletin? Well, the number of employment-based green cards issued each year is limited to a statutory threshold. Since there are more people who apply than the number of immigrant visas […]

What are PERM Labor Certifications? A permanent labor certification (hereinafter “PERM” or “PERM Labor Certificate”) is issued by the Department of Labor (“DOL”) which allows a U.S. employer to hire a foreign worker to work permanently in the United States.  In most instances, the U.S. employer must submit a labor certification application to the DOL’s […]

The PERM green card process is quite a time-consuming and expensive investment that requires technical review and thoughtful strategizing at the outset. The full PERM process itself before filing an I-140 petition takes months, typically at least six to eight at a minimum.  When working with my clients, we spend a good amount of time […]

At the I-140 stage of filing a PERM green card, employees must prove that they gained the required work experience and skills noted on the certified PERM.  How do they do it? With work experience and employment confirmation letters from their former employers. USCIS is pretty nit-picky with these letters. The best kind of evidence is […]

PERM is an electronically-filed, attestation-based application filed with the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) by an employer who wishes to sponsor a foreign national for an employment-based green card. The PERM exists as a way for the DOL to help make sure that employers are not using the immigration system to take jobs from U.S. […]

To combat fraud by employers utilizing the PERM process, the Department of Labor (DOL) will sometimes audit the case.  There are two types of audits that can occur during processing: A random audit may occur by unplanned chance as a DOL mechanism to ensure that the electronic PERM system is not being abused by employers. A targeted audit occurs when […]

When a U.S. employer sponsors a foreign worker for a green card through the PERM process, the employer is required to undertake numerous tasks to prove to the Department of Labor that the foreign worker will not displace any American worker by taking the permanent job being offered to them. In all PERM cases, there […]