So you have spent years developing your company into the powerhouse that it currently is, and recently you had a job opening that you want to start hiring for. After several hours of discussion and brainstorming your team has decided that it is best to try and hire a foreign national for the position. While this can be a great decision it also means that you will have to deal with PERM advertising, which can be incredibly complicated to navigate. But do not worry because this article is here to break down the basic steps that you have to take in order to follow the letter of the law.
Place the Ad
In the effort to hire an immigrant you need to make sure that you are not stopping an American worker from getting a job or else Uncle Sam will come knocking on your door. One of the ways in which you do this is by placing your job posting in three different areas. One of them is a job order with the state workforce agency, the second method is a Sunday posting in a general circulation newspaper, and the final method is the placement of three ads in a variety of acceptable formats.
Review and Reject
Once the ads have been placed and resumes begin to roll in, the review process begins. This entails looking over all the resumes that you have received for the position, whether from a foreign national or not. Which each resume received it must be documented and reported on in order to provide proof that you were following PERM advertising guidelines. As each resume is read you must decide if they are to be rejected or not, and if they are rejected then the reason for their rejection must be carefully logged by HR as well.
When you can no longer reasonably reject any other applicants then you must begin the interview phase with each of the individuals. Once again these interviews are vigilantly kept track of and reported on. Once an applicant is picked for the job you can go ahead and start with the third step.
Applications
Now it is time to start filling out a ton of forms and applications starting with ETA Form 9089 which is then sent to the Department of Labor. This is where all that information you kept track of during the hiring process comes in handy because you need to give the Department of Labor the potential foreign employee’s information as well as the position information.
With any luck, this is soon approved and your company can begin filing a visa petition with Form I-140 and send it off to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. It is only after this is dealt with that the employee can obtain a green card to work for your company.
