If you seek a green card through employment, the first step is for your employer to file a Labor Certification Application with the Department of Labor. Through this process, the Department of Labor certifies to the Citizenship and Immigration Services that there are no qualified U.S. workers available and willing to accept the job at the current wage for the intended job.

As part of the labor certification process, the employer must first advertise the job and conduct interviews. If any qualified U.S. workers are identified, you won’t be certified. Hart Immigration will work closely with the employer to ensure that the recruitment process is conducted per the Department of Labor’s strict guidelines.

Under the new Permanent Electronic Recruitment Program Electronic Review Management System or PERM, initiated in 2005, labor certification processing is supposed to take 60 days compared to 4-5 years under the previous system. The processing of professional and nonprofessional positions is different. Professional positions require a bachelor’s degree or higher and require considerably greater recruitment efforts than nonprofessionals.

After the Department of Labor issues the Labor Certification, Hart Immigration will work with the employer to file the visa petition. If the quota is current, we will simultaneously file for the employee’s green card. If the quota is not current, through our case management software, we will be watching the visa bulletin so that the employee’s application for the green card may be filed at the earliest opportunity.

It is highly advisable that an attorney be retained from the very beginning of the process. There are many pitfalls throughout the 3 steps – #1 Labor Certification, #2 Petition and #3 Green card application. You do not want to go through this process only to find out that the petition or the green card will fail unless certain preparatory steps are first undertaken. Hart Immigration is a firm who is knowledgeable with the processing of all three steps. Before we start on this exciting journey, we will elicit all of the information necessary to ensure a successful result.