Por / By Robert Fuchs, Esq.
One way to obtain a U.S. lawful permanent resident status
(a green card) is through employment, when an employer files the required Labor Certification (LC) with the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).
An approved LC is a determination by DOL that the employer has proven, after a comprehensive recruitment and interview process, that there are no qualified U.S. workers available and willing to take the offered job.
However, most immigrants are not eligible for this process, even if they have an employer who wants to petition them, because they are illegally present in the U.S.
Most employers do not want to hire someone from overseas who they do not know how well they work, especially with the expensive and complicated labor-based immigration process.
To make matters even worse, the shortage of workers in the U.S. has caused the proffered salary be unfairly inflated due to that same worker shortage.
For many immigrants,
especially Latinos,
employment-based
immigration is
closed off to them.