I have a MS from a good US university. I am one of the principal software engineers at my company, and I lead the technical development on some of the most critical systems. It is medium size company.
But, I don't do any state of the art research, or highly specialized academic work, or anything worth publishing on academic journals.
How hard is to do the Labor Certification for the EB-2 green card?
It depends. Do other people doing a similar role in the company also have similar qualifications to meet the EB2 criteria?
Generally doing the labor certification isn't hard, just time consuming and a lot of paperwork. 1-2 years is not uncommon even with the new PERM system. After that it depends what country you come from.
The main gotcha is you cannot use your experience of doing the position on your H-1B towards your labor certification application if you are currently employed in the position so you'll have go on your previous experience.
As ever consult a lawyer. This goes double for immigration related stuff.
IANAL, but I think in theory you already qualify. The effort is a little on the employers side. They have to post the job offer publicly in a news paper in the area, and then they have to have a good reason for hiring you. In theory I would say it's just a question of having a good lawyer. But then again those things have to be done ANYWAY if you want a green card.
Classifying the effort as 'little' for any EB based green card is nuts. Especially for an Indian citizen. In order to apply for EB-2 or EB-3 you need to first do a prevailing wage determination (about 2 weeks). Then your employer has to recruit for the position they want to offer you (30 days posted + 30 days quiet period). After this your employer gets to apply for a PERM (this is currently taking 8-9 months to be adjudicated by the DOL). If you're unlucky enough to be audited in your application you can tack another year on to this step.
After your PERM is approved, you get to file for I-140, which takes another 4-6 months. Then you get to wait until your priority date becomes current which depends on your category and country of origin. This could be anywhere from immediate to 10+ years.
Once your PD is current, you get to apply for I-485 which takes anywhere from 2-6 months and includes doctors exams, finger printing and possible interviews by USCIS. Of course while they're processing this there is no guarantee they wont retrogress your priority date and put you back into the waiting game.
Of course all of this starts again if you change employers (but you do get to keep your priority date if you had an approved I-140).
This is terrible, a lot of us are waiting and dont even know if we'll get audited, to make things worst the DOL did not process any perm petitions during the government shutdown. Please see this petition to improve the procesing time: https://www.change.org/petitions/department-of-labor-dol-to-...
You don't even have to be an Indian citizen, merely India-born. I might be a Briton, but in the eyes of USCIS my nationality is classified as "Indian" since I was born there.
But, I don't do any state of the art research, or highly specialized academic work, or anything worth publishing on academic journals.
How hard is to do the Labor Certification for the EB-2 green card?
Edit:grammar