Employment-Based Green Cards (EB-1/2/3)

They are the principal employment-based paths to U.S. permanent residence. EB-1 covers individuals with extraordinary ability, outstanding professors and researchers, and certain multinational managers and executives. EB-2 covers professionals holding advanced degrees or persons of exceptional ability, and includes the national-interest waiver. EB-3 covers skilled workers, professionals, and certain other workers. Each category carries its own eligibility test and evidentiary burden, and choosing the right one for the role and the candidate is the first decision that shapes the case.

Most EB-2 and EB-3 cases do, and the prevailing-wage determination, the recruitment and the Department of Labor's own review all come before the I-140 can be filed. Three groups skip it: EB-1 in all three of its forms, the EB-2 national-interest waiver, and Schedule A occupations such as professional nurses and physical therapists, whose uncertified application goes straight to USCIS with the petition. Where certification is required, the certified form is valid for 180 days and the petition must be filed inside that window.

Most employment-based green cards are employer-sponsored: a U.S. employer files the immigrant petition on behalf of the foreign national and, where required, demonstrates the ability to pay the offered wage. Certain categories, such as the EB-1 extraordinary-ability path and the EB-2 national-interest waiver, allow a qualifying individual to self-petition. We counsel both sponsoring employers and individual beneficiaries and structure the filing accordingly.

The whole sequence, with one partner accountable for it. We choose the category, run the prevailing-wage and recruitment stages, and file the labor certification; then the I-140 with its ability-to-pay evidence and, when a visa number is available, the I-485 or the consular case for the worker and family. The dates we hold are the ones that end cases: the 180-day life of a certified PERM, the 30-to-180-day recruitment window, and the 180 days of a pending I-485 after which the worker may change employers under portability. The work runs in English or Spanish.

Two clocks run in sequence. The first is procedural: the prevailing-wage determination and recruitment, the Department of Labor's review of the application, and USCIS adjudication of the I-140, which premium processing shortens to 15 business days for most categories and 45 for multinational managers and national-interest waivers. The second is the visa queue. Each category receives a fixed share of the 140,000 or more employment-based visas available each year, and no country may take more than seven percent of the preference total, so a worker born in an oversubscribed country waits for the priority date to become current while a colleague born elsewhere files the I-485 at once. The offer letter should be written with both clocks in view.

Defects in the employer's file, mostly. On the PERM side: an advertisement that leaves out the worksite or a travel requirement, a job requirement above what the occupation normally carries with no business-necessity showing, or experience the beneficiary gained in the same position with the same employer. Any of these invites an audit, and an audit can lead to supervised recruitment. On the I-140 side: tax returns that do not show the ability to pay the proffered wage from the priority date, a three-year foreign degree that does not evaluate to a U.S. bachelor's, or a petition filed after the certification's 180 days ran out.