Filing for PERM with first employer, straight out of college, some questions.

[niebula]

A little background: I got my bachelors in Computer Science from a U.S. university. as an international student under the F-1 visa. After graduating, I used the OPT option from the F-1 student visa to work for employer A, as an entry-level new college grad Software Engineer. After my OPT was done, employer A sponsored me for H1-B. After 1.5 years on H1-B, my employer is ready to begin the PERM process for me.

I've been in contact with a lawyer who works with my employer. This lawyer is telling me that in order to prove that there are no sufficient qualified U.S. workers, I must present a list of skills for my job that I gained BEFORE joining the company. Here lies the issue. Since this is my first job ever, there are a lot of skills which I learned DURING this job. The lawyer thinks it will be difficult for me to get the PERM approved because of this.

My question is, shouldn't immigration take into account that my first year at this company was on a student visa, and was considered an entry-level position? Is the point to prove you had the listed skills before you got the H1-B, or before you were employed by the company who's sponsoring you?

Has anyone been in my situation before? What do you suggest?

Thanks!

[Ikang3]

Same situation

I am also curious as to how to overcome this step. OP's situation is almost the same as I am but I am currently under DACA. My employer wants to go forward with sponsoring me but the company lawyer's are having a hard time figuring out what to do about my job posting description.

I'm sure there is a way to get by this step and just have my job posting go through but I am not sure. I am actually very nervous about this step. From my knowledge, even anyone that has no experience in work can get green card from employer. I just don't get why this immigration lawyer is being a pain in the ***....

[scientist2016]

Some clarification here: The rule is that in the job ad (for PERM process) the employer cannot require any skills that would be obtained exclusively by being an employee/intern at the employer, and hence rule out any outside candidates. In otherwords let us say you get a skill in machine learning from your current employer, you can claim it as pert of your expertise. But if this skill can be only acquired from the employer (and hence you have an unfair advantage towards filling the job posting compared to an outside candidate) the employer cannot put that down as a requirement. As you can see this rules makes perfect sense, or else there would be no point to the job posting and PERM process, since otherwise every employer would specify a very narrow set of internal requirements that only the current employee will satisfy.

On the otherhand let us say you learnt a programming language as part of your current job, that employer is very much allowed to post a job ad requiring the prospective candidates to be proficient in that language (provided it is something everyone and anyone can learn) and you will certainly qualify for it.