Permanent Workers

Employment-Based Visas

Approximately 140,000 immigrant visas are available each fiscal year for aliens (and their spouses and children) who seek to immigrate based on their job skills. These employment-based immigrant visas are allocated among 5 preference categories that are summarized in the chart below. If you have the right combination of skills, education, and/or work experience and are otherwise eligible, you may be able to live permanently in the United States.

Some immigrant visa preference categories require you to have a permanent job offer from a U.S. employer. This employer will be considered your sponsor/petitioner and will file an immigrant petition with USCIS on your behalf. If no job offer is required, you may file a petition on your own behalf.

For more information, see Employment-Based Adjustment of Status FAQs.

Labor Certification

For the second and third preference categories (see chart below), before the U.S. employer can file an immigrant petition with USCIS, the employer must generally obtain a labor certification from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). The labor certification verifies the following:

• There are insufficient available, qualified, able, and willing U.S. workers to fill the position being offered at the prevailing wage rate or higher; and
• Hiring a foreign worker will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers.

In these cases, the immigrant petition must include a signed Form ETA-9089, Application for Permanent Employment Certification, approved by DOL, or, for labor certification applications filed on or after June 1, 2023, using DOL’s Foreign Labor Application Gateway (FLAG) system, an approved and signed Form ETA-9089, Final Determination – Permanent Employment Certification Approval (Final Determination).

For certain occupations, referred to as Schedule A occupations, a DOL-approved labor certification is not required because DOL has already determined there are not sufficient U.S. workers for those occupations. Currently, DOL has designated 2 groups of occupations under Schedule A. Group I includes professional nurses and physical therapists. Group II includes beneficiaries with exceptional ability in the sciences or arts (including college and university teachers) and immigrants of exceptional ability in the performing arts. Immigrant petitions for these occupations must be accompanied by a completed, uncertified Form ETA-9089, including all applicable appendices, a signed Final Determination, and a valid prevailing wage determination tracking number in Section E, Item 1 of the Form ETA-9089 (application for Schedule A designation).

In addition, for the second preference category, an immigrant petition may request a waiver of the job offer, and thus the labor certification requirement, because it is in the national interest of the United States. National interest waiver petitions must be accompanied by a completed Form ETA-9089, Appendix A and a signed Form ETA-9089, Final Determination.

For more information on labor certifications and the Schedule A and national interest waiver exceptions, see the Second Preference EB-2 and Third Preference EB-3 webpages.