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U.S. Permanent Residence Sponsorship

Dartmouth offers permanent residence sponsorship to international tenured and tenure-track faculty.

OVIS assists sponsoring schools, departments and their qualifying international employees with the employment-based permanent residence process. We will consider sponsorship requests on behalf of senior researchers and senior professional staff on a case-by-case basis.

All Dartmouth-sponsored employment-based permanent residence cases must be approved by and coordinated through OVIS. For more information about permanent residence sponsorship, please contact us.

Overview

Individuals with lawful permanent residence (green card) status in the U.S. are permitted to live and work here on a permanent basis. Becoming a lawful permanent resident of the U.S. does not jeopardize home country citizenship status.

In general, lawful permanent residents have the same rights and privileges of U.S. citizens, but there are several important exceptions, including the right to vote.

Departure from the U.S. for lengthy periods of time can jeopardize permanent residence status, as can the commission of certain crimes.

Individuals holding lawful permanent residence status may become eligible for U.S. citizenship.

A limited number of "green cards" are available each fiscal year. These green cards are issued using a quota-based system. When the numbers are exhausted, backlogs develop in the availability of green cards. The U.S. Department of State publishes a monthly Visa Bulletin containing information on green card availability and backlogs.

The Labor Certification Process

The PERM Program is a Department of Labor (DOL) process requiring employers to conduct a good faith test of the U.S. labor market to determine whether there are any minimally qualified, willing and available U.S. workers for the offered position. DOL requires the employer to conduct advertising and recruitment before filing the labor certification application on behalf of a non-U.S. citizen employee.

In addition to the labor market test, the employer must attest that the employment of the non-U.S. citizen will have no adverse effects on the wages and working conditions of similarly-employed U.S. workers.

For tenure track or tenured faculty, DOL has created a separate labor certification process known as Special Handling. For non-faculty positions, the standard labor certification process must be followed.

For more information regarding Dartmouth's internal process for permanent residence sponsorship, please contact OVIS. Requests to sponsor non-faculty positions must be submitted by the individual school or department to OVIS using the U.S. Permanent Residence Sponsorship School/Department Request Form.