Employer-Sponsored Green Card: 7 Red Flags to Check Before You Sign

An employer-sponsored green card runs on three government filings, and you can check whether your employer has ever completed any of them before you commit to waiting on one. PERM labor certification goes to the Department of Labor, then Form I-140 and Form I-485 go to USCIS. Each filing leaves a public record.

That record is what separates an employer who sponsors from an employer who says they sponsor. The seven signals below are ordered by when you are likely to run into them, starting before you accept an offer and ending with layoff risk after your case is underway.

1. The employer has no certified PERM or LCA filings in government disclosure data

Start with the filing history. The Department of Labor's Office of Foreign Labor Certification publishes every certified PERM and LCA by employer, and USCIS runs the H-1B Employer Data Hub covering petitions back to FY2009.

Use a three-year window. A company with no certified PERM in the last three years has never run a recruitment test or filed Form ETA-9089.

Recency matters more than volume. Forty certifications that all predate 2022 tell you less than a dozen certified in the last twelve months.

2. The employer has no written green card policy

Ask HR for the policy document before you countersign. Most employers that sponsor have one, and it typically sets a tenure trigger, a performance condition, and who pays what at each stage.

A common structure is sponsorship starting after twelve months of employment and satisfactory performance. An employer with no written policy and no willingness to put terms in an email is not being cautious, it is telling you the decision has never been made.

What is not lawful is a clause that tries to recoup PERM-stage costs from you. A policy that does is either badly drafted or written by someone who has not run a PERM case, and both are reasons to ask who the immigration counsel is.

3. The employer asks you to cover attorney fees, filing fees, or recruitment advertising costs

If a hiring manager suggests you will "cover the attorney" or take a lower salary "because of the sponsorship expense," the request itself is the violation, not a negotiating position.

Department of Labor rules prohibit employers from receiving payment of any kind for PERM-related activity, including attorney fees. Payment covers wage concessions, salary deductions, kickbacks, and in-kind arrangements. Fee-shifting is grounds for PERM denial, revocation, and employer debarment.

You can still pay an attorney you retain separately to represent only you, and you can pay your own I-485 filing costs. Those sit outside the employer's PERM-stage obligations.

4. The employer is stalling PERM past H-1B year four

If you are on H-1B and PERM has not started by the end of year four, ask for a written start date now. Year four is the safe target because of how extensions past the six-year limit work.

Extensions in one-year increments become available once 365 days have passed since your PERM or I-140 was filed. Filing late in year five can still clear that bar, but it leaves no room for a withdrawn recruitment cycle, an audit, or a refiling. Filing after your sixth year begins leaves nothing at all.

Your PERM filing date becomes your priority date, so every month of delay costs you queue position you cannot recover.

If you were born in India or China and your category is backlogged, three-year extensions become available once your I-140 is approved and a visa number is unavailable in your category. No PERM means no I-140, which means no three-year extension.

5. The employer appears on a Department of Labor enforcement list

Check the employer against the Department of Labor's H-1B enforcement listings, which include a public list of companies caught abusing the visa programs. This is the only check on this list that gives you a straight yes or no.

If the company is on the list, it is banned from filing any new green card or H-1B paperwork until the ban lifts. Bans last a year at minimum.

A company only lands on the list after the Department of Labor has investigated and found it broke the rules. An open investigation is not enough, so a name on this list means the case is closed and decided. Companies found to have broken the rules deliberately can also be audited at random for the next five years.

The same government files show you applications the employer started and then pulled, next to the ones that went through. A lot of pulled applications is worth asking about, but on its own it proves nothing. Companies pull cases routinely when an employee resigns, a salary changes, or a form has to be filed again.

6. The employer stops paying you between assignments or places you at a client site it does not control

Write down who assigns your work day to day, and start looking the week an unpaid gap is first mentioned to you.

If you are on H-1B, your employer has to pay your full salary even when there is no project to put you on. Going unpaid between assignments is one of the specific practices the Department of Labor is targeting right now. It announced Project Firewall in September 2025 to go after it, and companies that get caught face back pay, fines, and a ban on future filings.

Being placed at a client's site creates a related problem. If the client is the one assigning and managing your work, USCIS can question whether your employer is really your employer, which puts your current visa and your green card case at risk together.

7. The employer is laying people off while your case is in progress

Two warning signs show up before layoffs reach your team. Companies have to give public notice before large layoffs, so check your state's layoff notice tracker. A jump in green card cases the employer has pulled is the other. While you are there, ask HR for the receipt notice proving your Form I-140 was filed at all.

Then there are two separate 180-day deadlines that decide what survives a layoff, and they get mixed up constantly. One decides whether you keep your place in the green card line. The other decides whether you can take your case to a new employer.

If your employer cancels your approved I-140 within 180 days of the approval date, USCIS can wipe out the approval and your place in line along with it. Once the approval has stood longer than 180 days, cancelling it no longer costs you that place.

Finding employers with a sponsorship history

Every red flag above costs you the same thing if you miss it, which is years spent waiting on an employer that was never going to file. Starting from employers that already have a sponsorship record takes that risk off the table at the application stage.

Migrate Mate builds its listings from government disclosure data, so every employer on the board has a verified history of sponsoring work visas before the job ever appears. That takes the filing history check off your list.

You can filter by visa type, and every listing includes verified direct contact for the hiring manager, so you can ask about green card timing before you interview instead of after you sign.

Frequently Asked Questions