How to apply for Green Card without a job offer

It has never been easy to get a job for international students, not to mention how difficult it will be to negotiate with the employers for sponsoring Green Card after getting the job. Some foreign nationals are lucky enough to file under family-based Green Card, but the rest have to go through the long journey. What if there is a way for students to file Green Card application even when they are still in school?

This article will talk about a certain strategy, for people who are or will be qualified for National Interest Waiver, to receive a Green card much earlier than you would expect. The tactics is to use self-sponsored national interest waiver to get an as-early-as-possible priority date so you can have a relatively good spot in the queue. It is much more helpful to the applicants born in India and China than other regions due to the extremely long waiting time. (Please refer to our article about waiting period and priority date)

First of all, let’s talk a little bit about what NIW is. NIW, short for National Interest Waiver, is a sub-category under the second preference EB2 of employment-based immigration. While you might be not familiar with NIW, I am sure that most of the foreign nationals have heard about EB2-PERM which could be said as the most common or popular Green card category for full-time employed foreigners. PERM and NIW are both under EB2 but are different sub-categories. (for information regarding PERM, please see our article about)