INFORMATION CENTER

  Immigrant Visas   Employment-Based Sponsorship

Besides adjustment of status application (which is getting your interview in the U.S.), an applicant may elect to return home for an interview with US Embassy in his/her home country. The main advantage of consular processing is that an applicant generally receives an interview notice faster through consular processing as opposed to the adjustment of status application (vary from country to country however).

The drawback is that there is little or no due process protection at the consular interview. Plus, the consular processing is easily affected by the events of international development. More importantly, applicants who return home for consular processing may face three and ten years bar, if they have been accruing unlawful presence since their arrival in the United States. Lastly, consular processing offers no protection to those applicants who loss their sponsorship before the interview. If an applicant loses their job because of layoff, his/her entire green card process will be in jeopardy, whereas if an I-485 applicant loses his/her job after the I-485 application has been pending for over 180 days, s/he may still continue the green card sponsorship so long as the applicant finds a job in the same or similar occupation.

To file for consular processing, an applicant should declare that interest with the CIS at the time of filing the I-140 visa petition. Once the I-140 visa petition is approved, the CIS will forward the entire visa petition file to the National Visa Center (NVC) , which is part of the State Department for further processing. NVC will send a packet of materials, including OF-169 and OF-230I forms, to the applicant or its representative.

Once the designated embassy receives the OF-169 and OF-230I completed and signed, and Embassy will schedule a consular interview for the applicant. At which time, the applicant must complete additional documents before attending the interview. The employer must provide a notarized offer of employment to the Embassy

• Alien of Extraordinary Ability (EB1)
• Outstanding Professor or Researcher (EB1)
• Multinational Executive or Manager (EB1)
• National Interest Waiver (EB2)
• Schedule A Occupations: Professional Nurses, Physical Therapists, etc.
• Immigrant Investor (EB5)