Expediated Green Card Procedures

Eva Luna reffered to them over here, and we thought a better forum to discuss them would be GQ. So come on, what are they then? Inqusitive minds want to know.

In a nutshell:

First of all, IANAL, although I do draft immigration petitions for a living. They are, however, all reviewed by lawyers at various stages of the game. This outline is EXTREMELY general, and is not a substitute for qualified legal advice applied to an individual’s specific situation, yadda yadda.

Most of the time, to get an employment-based green card, you need to prove to the satisfaction of your state labor authorities, then the Federal labor authorities, and finally the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (the Agency Formerly Known as INS) that after your prospective employer’s exhaustive search, there is no U.S. worker qualified and willing to accept your position, although the company is offering the prevailing wage for the position and location. This process, depending on the jurisdiction, can take anywhere from a few months to more than three years. And that’s just Step 1; then you have two additional BCIS steps. Total, bare minimum processing time through the green card stage would run at least 2-3 years, and maybe 5-6, depending on which strategy choices you make and how much of a pain your state Labor Dept. is.

One way around this painful Step 1 process (called labor certification) is to prove that you are an Outstanding Researcher. So, to borrow a paragraph from an Outstanding Researcher petition I drafted recently:

“Pursuant to INA [Immigration and Nationality Act] Section 203(b)(1)(B), the requirements for classification as a Priority Worker, Outstanding Researcher, require that the employer’s petition include the following:

A. Evidence that the researcher is recognized internationally as outstanding in the specific academic area. Such evidence shall consist of at least two of the following:

  1. Documentation of the alien’s receipt of major prizes or awards for outstanding achievement in the academic field;

  2. Documentation of the alien’s membership in associations in the academic field which require outstanding achievements of their members;

  3. Published material in professional publications written by others about the alien’s work in the academic field;

  4. Evidence of the alien’s participation either individually or on a panel, as the judge of the work of others in the same or an allied academic field;

  5. Evidence of the alien’s original scientific or scholarly research contributions to the academic field; or

  6. Evidence of the alien’s authorship of scholarly books or articles (in scholarly journals with international circulation) in the academic field.

B. Evidence that the alien has at least three years of experience in teaching and/or research in the academic field; and

C. An offer of employment or tenure-track teaching or research position with a qualifying United States educational or research institution.”

Basically, this means you have to gather letters of recommendation from colleagues all over the word about how amazing you are and how you are one of the best and brightest in your field, every scientific piece of work you’ve ever produced, every conference presentation, every award you’ve received along with documentation on the significance of the award, and proof of every time your work has been cited by others (in context, of course). And don’t forget proof of every time you’ve been asked to review someone else’s work, especially for a peer-reviewed journal.

Yes, it sucks to put all that stuff together in coherent form; the petitions are usually several inches thick by the time we file them. And boy, do I love wading through 200 pages of, say, journal articles in polymer engineering and trying to distill all that stuff into something a high school-educated layman at the BCIS can understand.

If this isn’t all painful enough, let me know, and I’ll see what I can dig up on the criteria for the Extraordinary Ability petition, which are even more painful. (Basically, a Nobel Prize ought to get you a green card, but nothing else is a shoo-in for that category.) Does your brain hurt yet? Well, if you’re an astrophysicist, probably not.

Yes, my brain hurt now. :slight_smile: So basically, if I want a job in the States, I have to prove that I’m absolutely amazing at what I do?

Blimey - that’s a tough one.

Nah. To get a job, you just have to prove that you have the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree and are going to work at a job that requires a bachelor’s degree in the same field. (That’s an H-1B visa; I can explain that too, if you want.)

An H-1B will give you 3 years in the U.S., plus one three-year extension. But to get an employment-based green card, you either need to prove that a) nobody who is already permanently authorized to work in the U.S. is willing and able to do your job (takes forever to go through the process), or b) that you’re so amazing at what you do that the government should just give you the green card without torturring you first.

Really, in highly specialized fields, it’s not as painful as it sounds. Many things are possible with a little creativity. If you make the field narrow enough, it becomes easier to be one of the top people in it.

Aaah. So I should be OK then, should I decide to move for work, and in what I’m doing, there’s currently about 10 of us, worldwide working on it :smiley: