Comment by solutionyogi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by solutionyogi | Hacker News Reader

Good news but won't apply to a lot of H4 visa holders.

It's only applicable to those folks who have been on H1B over 6 years OR have an approved I-140.

For those who don't know, employment based green card has three stages

1. Labor Certification (PERM)

2. Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker - I-140 - This stage checks whether the company filing your petition is legitimate and there is no fraud.

3. Application to register permanent residence - I-485. This stage checks whether the person applying has a good character, is not criminal etc. etc.

Getting through 1st and 2nd stage takes 1 to 3 years. It's the 3rd stage which has a long wait, mainly for people from India or China.

See: http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/law-and-policy...

As per that link, USCIS is processing cases of folks who applied in 2007 (for EB2) and 2004 (for EB3).

This is definitely a huge relief for those folks who have decided to apply for permanent residency and have been stuck in stage 3 for many years.

P.S.: I know about this because I am from India and went through a grueling 10 year immigration process to get my green card.

It's only applicable to those folks who have been on H1B over 6 years and have applied for permanent residency.

I read it as over 6 years or applied for permanent residency:

""" Eligible individuals include certain H-4 dependent spouses of H-1B nonimmigrants who:

- Are the principal beneficiaries of an approved Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker; or

- Have been granted H-1B status under sections 106(a) and (b) of the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-first Century Act of 2000 as amended by the 21st Century Department of Justice Appropriations Authorization Act. The Act permits H-1B nonimmigrants seeking lawful permanent residence to work and remain in the United States beyond the six-year limit on their H-1B status. """

The only way an H-1B can stay beyond six years is if they have applied for permanent residency.

Yes, but the converse is not true - you can apply for permanent residency having stayed for less than six years.

Its not that bad in the recent years. I applied for my labor in aug 2012 (step 1), it was approved in less than 3 months. later applied for I140 (step 2), it was too approved in less than 4 months. Since I have an approved I140, my wife (an H4 holder) can apply for EAD under this new rule. Also the rule states that its either approved I140 OR H1B over 6 years.

You got lucky.

Right now the average processing time for PERM is 8 months (235 days): http://dolstats.com/ and it used to be worse (government shutdown). Also preparing PERM takes some time and it can't be speeded up. So it can take well over a year just to get PERM and it doesn't take it account risk that you will have to start over for any reason (e.g. change jobs, change in company legal or organizational structure, HR got busy, someone involved in the process like manager change jobs).

PERM fixed the labor certification bottleneck, but the adjustment of status bottleneck is where people now get caught up, especially those in EB3 and/or coming from a high demand country (China, India, and Mexico).

Without a real fix to the immigration system that will remain the bottleneck for over 90% of employment based applications.

"USCIS estimates the number of individuals eligible to apply for employment authorization under this rule could be as high as 179,600 in the first year and 55,000 annually in subsequent years."

http://www.uscis.gov/news/dhs-extends-eligibility-employment...

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