CASE: EB-2 Green Card Approval Based on Approved I-140 (EB-2)
EMPLOYER: Korean Church
BENEFICIARY: Korean Education Pastor
LOCATION: Cleveland, OH
Our client is a Korean church in Cleveland, Ohio which was willing to petition a Korean beneficiary for an Education Pastor position – second-preference petition (I-140). Our client’s prospective employee has a master’s degree in Divinity. After talking to our client, our firm concluded that this employer can petition him as an Education Pastor. Second preference petitions for Koreans are current, which means that if a PERM Labor Certification for a second preference position gets approved, the I-140 and I-485 could be filed simultaneously. Based on our client’s prospective employee’s educational, professional and working backgrounds, our office determined that he is clearly eligible for EB-2 classification for his I-140 petition. Our client eventually retained us in October 2015.
Prior to filing PERM, our firm prepared the prevailing wage request, job order, advertisements, internal job posting, recruitment report, and all other steps which are important pre-PERM filing. Take note that PERM could be filed at least 60 days from the job posting date or 30 days from the last ad. On October 6, 2015, the prevailing wage request was filed. After we obtained foreign degree evaluation report, our office filed the job order on January 12, 2016. On April 8, 2016, we promptly filed PERM. Eventually, on July 19, 2016, the PERM Labor Certification was approved – an EB2 position for the Korean beneficiary.
We then proceeded with the I-140 Petition filing. We submitted the “ability to pay” letter for the I-140 petition application. We included the job offer letter, employer’s audited balance sheet (since the church is tax-exemption entity), and other necessary supporting documents. The I-140 Petition was filed on October 17, 2016 via premium processing service. Eventually, on October 25, 2016, the I-140 EB-2 Petition for our Korean client was approved without any Request for Evidence (RFE).
Once the I-140 petition was approved, our client retained our office again for his I-485 adjustment of status application. Our office filed an I-485 adjustment of status application for our client on November 8, 2016. Everything went smoothly and the receipt notices and fingerprint appointment came on time.
Eventually, on June 30, 2017, the USCIS Nebraska Service Center approved our client’s adjustment of status application. Now, he finally is a green card holder.