EB-3 Green Card for Skilled Workers, Professionals, and Other Workers

The job must be permanent and full time, and not seasonal. Relevant post-secondary education can count toward training for skilled workers. Common EB-3 jobs include registered nurses, engineers and accountants with a bachelor's degree, trades, manufacturing, and year-round hospitality and food processing work.

A US employer must sponsor you. You cannot self-petition in EB-3. In most cases the employer first gets a PERM labor certification from the Department of Labor (DOL), which proves no qualified US worker is available and sets the wage. Our PERM guide walks through it, and employers can read our PERM page for employers.

The employer must pay PERM costs itself and show it can pay the offered wage. Registered nurses and physical therapists are Schedule A jobs, so the employer skips recruitment and files directly with USCIS. Healthcare employers can see hiring healthcare workers from abroad.

Seasonal and temporary jobs use the H-2A and H-2B visas instead, which are not green cards.

EB-3 gets 28.6% of employment-based green cards, about 40,000 a year, plus unused EB-1 and EB-2 numbers. The "other workers" subgroup is capped at 10,000 a year, so it often has its own, slower date. No country can use more than 7% of the combined total.

Your priority date is normally the date DOL received the PERM application.

People from India and China sometimes switch between EB-2 and EB-3 when one moves faster, keeping the earlier priority date. See Visa Bulletin and the Visa Bulletin tracker.

• Adjustment of status (Form I-485) if you are in the US and your priority date is current.
• Consular processing (DS-260 through the National Visa Center, then a consulate interview) if you are abroad.

Many EB-3 workers, including most nurses and other workers, are abroad and finish through a consulate, so the interview freeze hits this category hard. Workers in the US on H-1B or L-1 can adjust status, but the 2026 memo adds discretion.

The 2026 adjustment of status memo. On May 21, 2026, USCIS issued a policy memo (PM-602-0199) that treats adjustment of status as a discretionary benefit. USCIS said that people who are in the US on a temporary visa and want a green card should expect to apply from their home country, except in extraordinary circumstances. The memo applies to pending and new Form I-485 filings. Meeting the legal requirements is now treated as the minimum: officers weigh your whole record, including whether you used your visa for its stated purpose. Legal challenges were expected, so check the current position before you file.

The 2026 interview freeze. Since August 25, 2026, the State Department has paused scheduling of immigrant visa interviews worldwide while consular officers train on public charge screening. No restart date had been announced as of September 22, 2026. Track it on our immigrant visa pause page.

Travel ban. Nationals of the 39 countries covered by the travel ban (Proclamation 10998, in effect since January 1, 2026) generally cannot receive immigrant visas abroad, and USCIS has held many pending applications from those countries for extra review.

Public charge. A new public charge rule took effect on September 18, 2026. It replaces the 2022 rule with a broader "totality of the circumstances" test of whether you are likely to rely on government support.

Government fees as of September 2026, from the USCIS fee schedule:

Check the USCIS fee calculator before you pay. Lawyer fees are extra.

Be wary of recruiters who charge workers large fees for a job offer. Read our guide to immigration scams.

The EB-3 process has three waiting periods: PERM at the Department of Labor, the I-140 at USCIS, and the wait for your priority date to become current. PERM often takes the longest of the first two; DOL posts its current processing times on its FLAG site. With premium processing, USCIS must act on the I-140 within 15 business days. For standard I-140 and I-485 times, see USCIS processing times.

For people born in India or China, the visa bulletin wait usually dwarfs everything else. In 2026, the consular interview freeze and the adjustment of status memo add further delay that is hard to predict, so treat any single end-to-end estimate with caution.

Your spouse and unmarried children under 21 can come as derivatives on your priority date. Each files their own I-485 or DS-260. In long backlogs, a child can turn 21 before the date is current; the Child Status Protection Act (CSPA) may help, but not always.