Requesting urgent help - is my lawyer messing with me?

C

chempto

New Member
My I485 case WAC030235XXXX was approved on May 7, 2004. I was thinking of moving to a different job after receiving my GC stamping. My lawyer is the one hired by my company. I was hoping to move to a different company to pursue different career opportunities. I asked the lawyer if there was any problems with changing jobs after the green card stamping. Below is the reply I received:
"There are no restrictions on your employment (as opposed to the same/similar job with adjustment portability). However, do be aware that if you leave your employer shortly after getting your permanent residency, they could seek to revoke the approval on the basis of misrepresentation (lack of intent to be employed by your sponsor on a full-time, permanent basis). These cases are very fact dependent and there is no set minimum time frame. Also, if you plan to apply for US naturalization (citizenship), they will look at your period of employment with your sponsor after the I-485 approval, as that is an issue in naturalization cases."

Does anyone know of anyone who ran into problems because they changed jobs after the GC came through?
 
AC21 is not stupid in any sense. Imagine, without this over half of total I-485 would have failed.

the issue here is "intent". You and employer both "must" have intent to work together permanently. Among other thing, what AC21 says is that your intent to work with your sponsoring employer may be transfered to another employer. But, once you change the employer and get 485 approval, you are now bound to work for the new employer "permanently". Now, there is no fixed definition of "how long is permanent ...?". More importantly, nobody can read the mind of another. therefore, the only way the intent can be shown is by the actions. Now, if you leave the employer right after getting the GC, it is easy to say that you never had the intent, you were simply waiting to get your gc. But, if you can show that you had the intent until the day the gc was approved... then something happened and you had to change the employer (clear and convincing reason, preponderance of evidence) you should be fine. Remember, got a job offer with more salary.... something like this is not a valid reason because this was foreseable that you could get such an offer once you get the gc. Involuntary lay off is fine....
 
Is there actual hard evidence of employment history verification with the Green Card sponsor at the Citizenship stage? Or is it just another urban legend?

chempto, could you get back to your lawyer and ask him/her how exactly the employment history is verified for employment- based Green Card holders at the Citizenship stage? What exactly is needed to prove that you've been employed with the sponsoring employer for "indefinite" time? What if you plan to get your Citizenship in, say, 8 years instead of 5 years?

I would appreciate if you post the response here. It might be not as scary as your lawyer wants to present it. Remember, an immigration attorney hired by the company is bound to the company, so you are told what the company wants you to hear.

***​

After we deal with the Citizenship problem, we are going to move to the more interesting problem - how soon you can actually leave the sponsoring employer.
 
All this "can not leave the employer for atleast 6 months after GC" makes sense in the pre-AC21 era. It just does not make sense if you could change the employer a day before GC gets approved, but not after.

Well, in anycase all this is only if you want to consider for citizenship else you are pretty safe to move around.

Btw, do we have a BCIS memo stating the minimum time an employee needs to work for the employer after getting GC approved ?
 
One of my friend got citizenship couple of years back. The kind of scant information I got from him is that you have to fill up a similar but more exhaustive biometric form that you filled up for I485. In similar fashion you have provide all the employment history/residence right from your H1B time. Nowhere it's going to ask you to prove your "intent" or voluntarily you have to provide any information to show your honest intend of sticking with your sponsoring employer. Now, looking at your employment history and your date of GC approval, they can question your "intend". The it will be your turn to provide sometime to show your "intend". My friend stayed more than two years after his GC approval with his sponsoring employer. So that was not a issue for him. I stayed only 8 months and my attorney feels that's good enough. Whatever way it goes, I don't want to worry about it in next 3 years.
 
mango_pickle said:
Btw, do we have a BCIS memo stating the minimum time an employee needs to work for the employer after getting GC approved ?
Click to expand...

As the chempo's laywer said "there are no restrictions on your employment (as opposed to the same/similar job with adjustment portability)". But if USCIS questions your "intend", burden of proof is on yours. Probably you will get citizenship anyway, but you have to shell out some $$$ for your attorney.
 
pralay said:
... In similar fashion you have provide all the employment history/residence right from your H1B time ...
Click to expand...

That is unlikely, unless your friend have gotten his Green Card through marriage to a US Citizen...

I guess this is how the urban legends are born ;)
 
lawyer is rt

sorry ur lawyer is rt, had friend file citizenship was asked for information on employer. had lawyer.
 
Better to stay atleast 6 months with employer to prove intent, after which you can shift.

Totally disagree with mango_pickle's assessment of AC21 Vs. post GC job changes. I think the best time to change your job is always before GC approval under AC21. AC21 unfortunately DOES NOT cover post GC approval conditions, and it is like saying "Tom is older than Alice, so Mary should also be older than Alice, because Tom and Mary are siblings".

I don't think your lawyer is pulling your chain as far as intent is concerned. But I doubt the company can/or will file for denial of GC. All they can do is lodge a complain if you left on a bad note. And when the time comes for citizenship of renewal of GC, it might be flagged. But then again, it is a big 'IF'!
 
It is only up to you , lawyers will say stick minimum 6 months. You might be asked to prove the intend or might not. OR make your company fire you will be best thing can happen for u .
 
140, your siblings statement doesn't make sense either, just like BCIS's doesn't. It was like a BCIS statement!

But I got what you were trying to say!
 
mango_pickle,

Ouch! That hurt, being compared to INS. What I was trying to shoot for, was that AC21 and changing jobs after GC are siblings in the sense that both deal with the same thing. But just because AC21 allows you to change jobs before GC does not signify that you can change jobs after GC on the basis of AC21.

Sorry for the extremely convoluted logic, blame it on the number of problems I have seen on it in the near past worded in those terms! :)
 
My personal opinion (I have no cases to compare against) is that if and when CIS manages to adjudicate 485s within the 6-month period (as has been indicated is the eventual hope), then it's not unreasonable to say that an employee needs to stay with their employer for a given length of time to prove that there was always a bona fide intent to work for that company. Otherwise, you would get a lot of people who would take any job and try to get a GC, knowing they only had to stay 6 months with the employer, and then would leave, defeating the purpose of employment-based immigration.

However, with the current situation, where it's taking years to get a GC approved, I think that if a person was challenged at the citizenship stage about why they left a company shortly after getting their GC, they could make a pretty strong argument that they had always intended to work for the company for an indefinite period of time but after three, four, or five years, they were ready to move on (this is natural everywhere these days).

As everyone here says, "I am not a lawyer", so please don't accept my thoughts as legal advice -- just my personal musings on the matter.
 
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