| You can apply for a new green card via the new employer (or any potential employer too). Once you get through to the I-140 stage of your second GC again - provided that the new job is one similar to your previous one - you can use your same place-in-line in the GC as before. The green card application can get stuck in the bureaucratic backlog for any number of reasons - for years. These delays messes up with your peace of mind in ways you can probably imagine. Internet is full of horror stories about these things. This prevents people from changing jobs, or making any long term plans about buying a house etc. It is a long-standing request from many people stuck in GC backlogs to not have them go through the _unpredictable_ re-application process, when they switch jobs. This was hinted as part of President Obama's Executive Action on immigration reform. In a memo[1] dated 11/20/2014, Jeh Johnson (Secretary of Dept. of Homeland Security) stated: As you know, our employment-based immigration system is
afflicted with extremely long waits for immigrant visas, or
"green cards," due to relatively low green card numerical limits
established by Congress 24 years ago in 1990.
...
To correct this problem, I hereby direct USCIS to take several
steps to modernize and improve the immigrant visa process.
But USCIS has not done anything to improve this situation yet. 18 months have passed since Secretary Johnson's original memo, but USCIS has not made any move to grant an EAD to people waiting in long GC backlogs. While everyone rails at politicians, body shops etc, USCIS gets a free pass at continuing their ineptitude.The latest visa bulletin [2] lists India EB2 priority date as 1st Nov 2004. Let me translate that for people not familiar with the jargon - an immigrant from India who is being granted Green Card now applied on 1st Nov 2004 and s/he already had 5 years industry experience then. USCIS rarely wastes an opportunity to remind [3] everyone that it receives very little taxpayer money for immigration services and about 95% of it's budget comes from fees. But this self-financing is made possible by leeching off of thousands of legal immigrants for decades. If they could do their assigned jobs properly - providing EAD for immigrants with approved I-140, recapturing unused green card applications from prior years etc - it would have been a huge relief for many immigrants. [1] Executive Action: Support High-skilled Business and Workers - https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/14_1120... [2] Visa Bulletin July 2016 - https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/bul... [3] USCIS on Twitter - https://twitter.com/USCIS/status/740574919717715968 |