The H-1B Green Card Planning Checklist: What to Do in Each Year of Your Six
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By Rj, founder of GreenCardTracker
Most H-1B workers think about the green card in one of two moments: the week they arrive, when it feels far away, and the month their sixth year starts, when it suddenly feels urgent. The trouble is that almost every decision that decides how smoothly the green card goes has to be made in between.
The H-1B gives you six years. The employment-based green card process (PERM, then Form I-140, then Form I-485) routinely takes longer than that, and for anyone born in India or China it takes much longer. What keeps you in status while you wait is a set of rules from the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-first Century Act (AC21), and those rules only work if specific filings exist by specific dates.
This checklist walks through the six years in order: what should be done, by whom, and why the timing matters.
Before you start: know which line you are in
Two facts shape everything below.
Your country of birth, not your citizenship, sets your queue. Employment-based green cards are capped each year, and no single country can use more than 7% of them. The State Department's monthly Visa Bulletin publishes a cut-off date for each category and country. Your place in line is your priority date, and you can only file the final step once that date is earlier than the cut-off.
Here is where the final action dates stood in the November 2026 Visa Bulletin:
Category | Most countries | China | India |
EB-2 | April 1, 2025 | October 1, 2021 | November 1, 2013 |
EB-3 | June 15, 2024 | January 22, 2022 | January 22, 2014 |
For most of the world, that is a wait of a year or two after the priority date. For China it is several years. For India it is more than a decade, and for someone filing today, realistically longer.
Your employer owns most of the process. PERM labor certification and the I-140 are filed by the employer, and federal rules (20 CFR 656.12) bar employers from passing PERM costs on to you. That makes the green card a negotiation as much as a filing. The earlier you raise it, the more leverage you have.
Year 1: ask the question in writing
You do not need to start anything in year one, but you do need to know the answer to one question: does this employer sponsor green cards, and when?
Ask HR or your manager for the company's green card policy. Many large employers start PERM after a set tenure (often 12 to 18 months) or after a performance review.
Get the answer in writing if you can. Policies change, and "we usually start in year two" is worth more as an email than as a hallway conversation.
Check how the employer has paid people in your role. Every H-1B employer files a Labor Condition Application with the Department of Labor, and DOL publishes them. Your employer's past filings show the wage levels it uses for your job title, which is a preview of the prevailing-wage fight your PERM case will have.
Year 2: get PERM moving
PERM is the slowest and most fragile stage, and in 2026 it is slower than it has been in years:
Prevailing wage determination (PWD): the employer asks the Department of Labor what the role must pay. This currently takes around five to seven months.
Recruitment: the employer advertises the position and documents that no able, willing and qualified U.S. worker applied. Expect two to three months plus a required waiting period.
ETA-9089 filing: the Department of Labor's review currently runs well over a year, and longer if the case is audited.
End to end, PERM is commonly 18 months to two years. Your priority date is the day DOL accepts the PERM filing, so every month of delay here is a month added to your place in line, permanently.
If your employer has not started PERM by the end of year two, ask why, and ask for a date.
Year 3: protect your priority date
After PERM is certified, the employer has 180 days to file Form I-140. Two decisions matter here.
EB-2 or EB-3. EB-2 requires a job that needs a master's degree (or a bachelor's plus five years of progressive experience). EB-3 requires a bachelor's degree or two years of experience. For backlogged countries the two lines move at different speeds, and sometimes leapfrog each other, so the choice is strategic, not just a matter of which one you qualify for.
Premium processing. For $2,965 (the fee since March 1, 2026), USCIS decides the I-140 in 15 business days instead of roughly six months. It does not speed up anything else, but a fast I-140 approval starts two clocks you want running as early as possible:
The 180-day clock. Once the I-140 has been approved for 180 days, the employer withdrawing it no longer takes your priority date away. If you change jobs, a new employer's I-140 can keep your original date.
The three-year extension clock. An approved I-140, combined with a priority date that is not yet current, lets you extend H-1B status in three-year increments beyond the six-year limit (AC21 §104(c)).
An approved I-140 also lets an H-4 spouse apply for an H-4 EAD, which is often the single biggest quality-of-life improvement for a family in the backlog.
Year 4: build the parallel track
By year four, if you were born in India or China, the employer-sponsored case is in motion but the green card itself may be a decade or more away. This is the year to ask whether a self-petitioned category could run alongside it:
EB-2 National Interest Waiver (NIW) does not need an employer or PERM. You must hold an advanced degree or show exceptional ability, and meet the three-part test from Matter of Dhanasar: an endeavor of substantial merit and national importance, being well positioned to advance it, and a showing that waiving the job offer benefits the U.S.
EB-1A (extraordinary ability) also needs no employer. It has a higher evidence bar, but EB-1 queues are much shorter than EB-2 and EB-3 for India and China.
Be realistic about the NIW. Approval rates fell sharply through 2025 as USCIS scrutinized the "well positioned" and "balance" prongs more closely. Petitions that win now tend to show concrete, documented impact, and independent evidence of it, rather than strong claims about future work.
Holding two cases at once is legal and common. If both are approved, you keep the earliest priority date.
Year 5: the deadline most people miss
This is the year that catches people out.
AC21 §106(a) allows one-year H-1B extensions past the six-year cap, but only if a PERM application or I-140 was filed at least 365 days before you reach the six-year limit. If your PERM was filed late, there may be no extension available when year six ends, even though the case is pending.
So in year five, confirm three things:
PERM (or the I-140) was filed more than a year before your six-year end date. Ask for the filing receipt date, not the start date of the process.
You have a copy of the I-140 approval notice (Form I-797), or know its expected date.
You know your H-1B "max out" date, adjusted for any time spent outside the U.S. Days abroad can be "recaptured" and added back.
Year 6 and beyond: extensions, portability, and the final step
If the I-140 is approved and your priority date is not current, the three-year extensions carry you forward, potentially for years. When your date becomes current under the chart USCIS designates that month, you file Form I-485 ($1,440) to adjust status inside the U.S., usually together with an EAD (I-765) and advance parole (I-131) application.
Two final rules give you room to move:
Once the I-485 has been pending 180 days, AC21 portability lets you change to a same or similar job with a new employer without restarting the case.
If you are laid off, you have a grace period of up to 60 days to find a new sponsor or change status. An I-140 approved for 180 days or more keeps your priority date for the next employer's filing.
The short version
Year | What should be true by the end of it |
1 | You know your employer's green card policy, in writing |
2 | PERM has started (PWD filed) |
3 | PERM certified, I-140 filed (premium if possible) |
4 | I-140 approved; NIW or EB-1A evaluated as a parallel track |
5 | Confirmed PERM/I-140 filed 365+ days before your six-year limit |
6+ | Extensions in hand; I-485 filed as soon as your date is current |
None of this makes the backlog shorter. What it does is make sure the backlog is the only thing standing between you and a green card, not a missed deadline in year five.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Talk to an immigration attorney about your specific case.
About the author: Rj runs GreenCardTracker, a free site that turns each month's Visa Bulletin into estimated wait times by category and country, with the history of how each cut-off date has moved.
