The green card priority date (also known as 绿卡排期 in Chinese) normally is applied to EB-2 and EB-3 (employment-based green card application). Lots of blogs pay more attention to this category because this is the main category Chinese/Indian need to wait for a long time before they can actually start the application process, such as mitbbs eb23, green card legal EB2/EB3. The Employment Based Green Card (EB2/EB3) application process includes the following three phases:
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PERM phase:
This phase can take at least 6 months or even years. PERM is issued to employers. Your employer/company needs to place job advertisements on multiple public platforms such as newspapers and recruitment websites, and prove to DOL (the Department of Labor) that it is currently unable to recruit American employees, thus obtaining permission to hire foreign workers. There is no expedited route for PERM application.
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I-140 Phase
Once the PERM has been approved by the Department of Labor (Certify), your employer/company can submit an I-140 application to USCIS. According to the data, in early 2016, USCIS generally takes about 6 to 8 months to complete the I-140 approval. If you apply for PP Premium Processing, you can shorten it to 15 working days. It should be noted that the PERM is valid for 180 days after approval. The I-140 must be submitted before the PERM expires, otherwise everything must be repeated. The cost of the I-140 to the expedited process is $1225.
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I-485 Phase
After the I-140 is approved, you will get the priority date of your Case. Because mainland China and India apply for a large number of green cards, applicants from both countries will have to wait for the so-called green card priority date. The I-485 application can only be submitted if it is the applicant’s priority date. The I-485 was approved and the green card was ready. According to the 2016 data, the approval time for I-485 is about 8 months, but since the applicant has spent several years waiting for the green card to be scheduled first, the whole application has become very long. The PD date is usually the date your PERM is submitted to the Department of Labor, provided that the PERM is approved. There is no urgent way to apply for green card application.