CASE: EB-2 I-140
EMPLOYER: Baptist Church
BENEFICIARY: Korean Assistant Pastor
LOCATION: Cary, NC
Our client is a Baptist church in Cary, NC who is willing to petition an Assistant Pastor position for a second-preference petition (I-140). Our client’s prospective employee has a master’s degree in Theology. We advised that they can petition him as an Assistant 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 and work background, our office determined that he is clearly eligible for EB-2 classification for his I-140 petition. Our client eventually retained us in on September 6, 2018.
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 April 5, 2019, the prevailing wage request was filed. Then, our office filed the job order on January 6, 2020. On June 18, 2020, we promptly filed PERM. Eventually, on December 22, 2020, 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 tax records, and other necessary supporting documents. The I-140 Petition was filed on March 29, 2021, via premium processing. On April 8, 2021, the I-140 EB-2 Petition for our Korean client was approved without any Request for Evidence (RFE).