Where the first years go: the labour certification stage

People counting the wait for an employment-based green card usually count the visa queue, because the Visa Bulletin makes it visible. The queue is only the back half. In front of it sits the labour certification stage, and it is entirely in the hands of your sponsoring employer and the US Department of Labor.

What happens in it

The employer first obtains a prevailing wage determination — the Department of Labor's statement of what the job must pay in that location. Then the employer runs a prescribed recruitment campaign to test whether qualified US workers are available. Only if that test is satisfied can the employer file the labour certification application, and only when it is approved can the immigrant petition follow.

Your priority date is set when the labour certification application is filed. That is the moment you join the queue in the Visa Bulletin — so everything before it is time spent before your place in line even exists.

How long it takes

We do not publish a figure here, and you should be careful with anyone who does. The Department of Labor posts its own current average processing times, updated monthly, along with the month it is currently working through. That page is free, authoritative and takes ten seconds to read; a number quoted second-hand is out of date the month after it is written.

What is safe to say is that this stage has been substantially backlogged for years, that both the prevailing wage step and the certification step have their own separate waits, and that any timeline offered to you which ignores this stage is not a real timeline.

What it means for you

Practically: patience in a stage where there is nothing for you to do, and suspicion of anyone selling speed in it. There is no premium processing for labour certification, no fee that moves you up, and nothing an applicant can pay to shorten it.

There is one thing worth knowing about money. The regulations require the employer to bear the costs of the recruitment and the labour certification, and prohibit passing them to the worker. If you are asked to fund advertising or the labour certification attorney, that is the point to stop and ask questions.