Employment-based Immigrant Visas

Employment-based immigrant visas are divided into five categories: priority workers, members of the profession holding Advanced degrees or persons of Exceptional Ability; skilled Workers, professionals and other Workers, certain special immigrants, and Employment creators

Attorney Maria Vittoria and her team have successfully obtained visas for skilled workers and professionals, such as specialty cooks, health care workers, nurses, teachers, engineers, professors, computer programmers, researchers, plumbers, electricians, and others.

FIRST PREFERENCE: Priority Workers( EB-1)

Priority workers are not subject to labor certification. These include persons of extraordinary ability in sciences, art, education, business or athletics, outstanding professors and researchers, and multinational executives and managers.

SECOND PREFERENCE: Members of the Professions Holding Advanced Degrees or Persons of Exceptional Ability (EB_2)

An applicant must have a job offer and labor certification. USCIS may waive the requirement if doing so would be in the national interest. Certain persons may fall under Schedule A of the labor certification process.

THIRD PREFERENCE: Professionals, Skilled Workers and Other Workers (EB-3).

Professionals are individuals with a baccalaureate degree and members of a profession. Skilled workers must have a full-time permanent job requiring at least two years of training or work experience. Other workers include foreign nationals with less than two years of training and work experience. A labor certification is needed for all third preference categories.

FOURTH PREFERENCE: Special Immigrants (EB-4).

This preference includes religious workers and their accompanying spouses and children and special immigrant juveniles.

FIFTH PREFERENCE: Employment Creation (EB-5)

This program allows for conditional residence for persons who invest $1,000,000 in a new commercial enterprise that employs 10 citizens or those authorized to work full time. The investor must be engaged in the day to day management of the business.

LABOR CERTIFICATION (PERM).

A person is inadmissible if he seeks to enter the U.S. to perform skilled or unskilled labor unless the Secretary of Labor has certified that there aren’t sufficient U.S. workers qualified to perform the job and the labor certification must establish that the alien will not displace or adversely affect U.S. workers, their wages or working conditions.

PRECERTIFICATION – SCHEDULE A

The department of Labor has designated job classifications that will not adversely affect U.S. workers. Schedule A includes nurses and physical therapists and persons of exceptional ability in the sciences and arts and in the performing arts. Under Schedule A the Labor Certification application is filed with the I-140. There is no pre-filing recruitment process.

Do you need legal assistance with an employment-based immigrant visa? Contact Long Beach immigration attorney Maria Vittoria for help with your immigration needs!