Jamaica, NY Immigration Law Firms & Lawyers

To obtain a green card through your work, you need to be sponsored by a U.S. employer. An immigrant petition can be filed immediately. However, the processing of it takes time that might exceed the duration of your OPT. Usually, employer loses interest in a foreign worker if the worker must leave the U.S. and wait for an immigrant visa for a couple of years. So you need to maintain legal status and permission to work while you wait for the petition's approval. First, if you are in one of the STEM fields, you can extend your OPT by 24 months. The STEM specialties are: o Computer Science Applications o Biological and Biomedical Sciences o Actuarial Science o Mathematics and Statistics o Engineering o Military Technologies o Engineering Technologies o Physical Sciences o Science Technologies o Medical Scientist If your degree is in one of the STEM specialties, you can file for an extension any time before your current OPT expires. Second, your employer can file an application for H-1B visa. If granted, H-1B will give you up to 10 years in the U.S. while your immigrant petition is being processed. The problem with it is that you can apply for an H-1B visa only once a year, in April, and cannot be sure that it will be granted because there is a limited number of such visas, and they are allotted to eligible applicants by a lottery. You might want to talk to an immigration attorney as soon as possible. Success of your case can turn on, literally, a few days: you need to have a result before your OPT work permit expires; and the time it will take depends on your specialty and the category in which your petition will be filed, and on your country of citizenship (employment-based immigrant visas are allocated on quotas, evenly to all countries regardless of the number of applicants from each country; so the waiting time for citizens of China, India, Mexico, Philippines, and Central American countries is different from the other applicants in the same categories). The sooner you start the process, the better your chances of completing it before you have to leave the U.S.

The only way to speed up the process is to do everything correctly. After your priority date becomes current, you should allow approximately 6 months to finalize the process.