 Thank you, Glen. That was informative, and that was a great segue. I'm Michael Venturet from Akerman Center Fit, and we're going to carry the theme forward to a point where you have an artist that either because they're spending a lot of time here, or because they decided that they really should be making their home here because of the opportunities. And then they need to explore permanent residency, known as a green card. Primarily, there are two paths in this kind of artist and entertainment world that permanent residency would entail. There are other ones, like Glen said, but we don't have the time today to discuss those. So we're going to talk about the two most common ones in this industry. The first one is called the labor certification process, and the second one is called the first press for its Alien of Extraordinary Ability designation, which used to sound a little bit familiar, based on your work. We're going to start with labor certification. It won't take it a little bit slow. Labor certification is a process where if someone is not rising to the level of extraordinary, which we discussed on the old one, we're going to discuss on the next permanent residency process, they kind of fit somewhere in the middle. They need to have an employer, not an agent, an employer, who will sponsor, who is going to demonstrate to the U.S. government, and there will be three government agencies involved here, that this person is highly skilled or professional, and that they are willing to go out and conduct a recruitment campaign for a period of at least 60 days to demonstrate that they have tried to find somebody that is comparable or better than the individual that they are looking to sponsor to come and work for them on an indefinite permanent basis. However, after having gone through the whole process, the results have not yielded anybody as qualified. That in a nutshell is called the labor certification process. Now, this process starts out with the Department of Labor. It has nothing to do with U.S. immigration on the front end. The Department of Labor has been authorized by the immigration regulations to conduct this part of the process. It is very much an employer-driven system on the front end the way recruitment works, and then when it comes to the time of actually filing, the filing is done electronically to what is called the PERM system, program-oriented recommendation system. So what they are looking for is, again, like I said, that within a 30- to 180-day advertising campaign, the employer has attempted in six different mediums to find somebody that is comparable or better. We hold that until the end of this part of the process? Yeah. Of these six mediums, there are three mandatory mediums, and there are three discretionary mediums. The three mandatory ones are each state has a local workforce job day here in Tallahassee. They have one, all right? Typically the state capital would have one. And what you have to do as an employer is post what's called a 30-day ad in that state workforce agency called the SWAW, Employment Portal, and demonstrate that the state, not the federal labor, the federal labor, but the state is attempting on a local level to advertise this position. So that's a mandatory, the state. Another mandatory is a posting, an on-site job posting, all right? And that's literally a copy of the advertisement explaining what it is, what the job is, what the purported salary is going to be, and you post it right on the wall somewhere where employees and other interested parties would be able to see that you are attempting to recruit internally. Another mandatory of the three is your Sunday newspapers, okay? They want you to go to your Sunday Miami Herald or whatever your local newspaper is. That's Sunday edition for two Sundays. They don't have to be consecutive Sundays, but certainly they should be within the timeframe that you're recruiting. All right? Those are your three mandatory ones, okay? A state workforce agency for 30 days, an internal posting that has to be for 10 days, okay? 10 business days, and two Sunday newspapers. Those are your three mandatory ones. Then you have three discretionary ones. There's a laundry list, there's about 12 different mediums that the Department of Labor will accept, anything from job fairs to industry publications, internal employee referral programs, external websites, internal websites, local, maybe weekly newspapers as well. At least three on that discretionary side will also be acceptable, okay? So there are your six recruitment mediums. The other thing they must do is get what's called a prevailing wage determination. This is typically done prior to your recruitment action. A prevailing wage determination is a request, again to the Department of Labor, to provide you with what they deem to be the prevailing wage based on the specificities of this proposed position and the geographical location. Specificities typically are what the position is. Is there any supervisory aspect to this position? What experience, both educationally and or from a training or employment standpoint do you require? You submit it through the online system to the Department of Labor and then they will email you your prevailing wage determination. This wage determination has an expiration date on it. And you have to show that you have either started your first recruitment or that you have filed the whole application for permanent residency prior to the expiration date, okay? And a prevailing wage is not a minimum wage like you have in the labor world. It is a special wage that is designated for this process. And your position has to pay at least prevailing wage. You also have to demonstrate that as a company sponsor, as a petitioner, you have the financial ability to pay that wage. You can't just throw out a job offer and worry about paying them if you can't demonstrate that you have the money at the start of the process. And typically this is shown if you're a larger company with more than 100 employees, you can just demonstrate this with a letter from your CFO. If you're a smaller company, you can show it based on tax returns. Or if the individual is working for you, which is possible through an O1 or another visa potentially, you can show that they've already been working for you temporarily and they're already making that money, okay? So, again, the idea is you want to conduct this recruitment openly and as transparently as possible so that if you were ever challenged, you can demonstrate we were as even-handed as possible. We did not tailor this process to this specific employee, okay? The other thing that you have to do is prepare what's called an audit file and a recruitment report because you don't have to submit any of this information. The Department of Labor may never see it, but you have to have it in the event that you do get audited, which could happen mid-process or even down the road after the person has approved it, okay? The filing is done online on what's called a 9089 electronic application. There's also a manual procedure, okay? Assuming that you have certification and, again, we'll talk about guidelines, they cost four to six months right now in PERM, but I hesitate to pin down any time frame when it comes to the government. The next, like I said, they could audit the file midstream and say, okay, we have reviewed everything that is coming and we'd like to see your recruitment report. We'd like to see a list of the applicants that did come in. We'd like to audit it ourselves and make sure we conduct the process as evenly as possible. They give you 30 days to respond to that. The idea here is it's stuff you should already have in the file, not a big deal to respond to, maybe an issue or two that they want you to tweet. Again, that will put the file on a backlogged queue because now it's in audit review and that adds another four to six months to the already four to six months. Again, guidelines, that's all they are. Okay, so once the application is certified by the Department of Labor, you get a nice document saying it's certified, you then have 180 days to take that certification and prepare a petition for the USCIS so that they can adjudicate it and finalize the approvability of this person to be coming over as a permanent resident. Okay? There is a premium processing program for that as well for the I-140 petition where you would pay 12.25. However, that does not mean that they're all set and they have their bring card. There's a few variables that are involved in that. One of them is the issue of priority dates. All right? Just because you are approved, it doesn't mean that there is an immediate immigrant visa available for you. Often, there are too many visa applications that go through the process in one year and that year's quota becomes retrogressed and overextended essentially. So you may still have two or three years to wait before you get that final bring card in hand sometimes even longer. Okay? Through this labor certification program. All right? Certain countries are even more oversubscribed like India and China and the Philippines. Okay? Yeah. So if your priority date is current, then you can apply for the final process to adjust that approved petition to a green card. And that would be available for the beneficiary, the alien of the foreign national terminology and any family members that are determined to be immediate relatives. That is a spouse and or any children under 21 years old. They don't have to do anything more than to get to this last stage of the process and they tag along the whole family to get green cards. Okay? And again, a foreign national can be sponsored for this permanent residency process, the labor certification, even if they're already in the United States with a temporary work visa such as a normal. All right? So if you find there's that scenario like Glen was talking about where they keep renewing and renewing, then you say, you know what, you got another three years. Let's go through this process and upgrade you when you get to the end of this permanent residency. Okay? And that upgrade to permanent residency could happen through a process called adjustment of status if they're already in the country or it could happen through a process called consular processing if they're outside of the country. Okay? We're going to talk more about those details at the end of the next section. You have about ten minutes. Okay. So we talked about the labor certification process which is by far the most cumbersome way of procuring permanent residency, but sometimes you just don't have any options. The preferred way in this industry is through the green card version of an alien of extraordinary ability. Okay? In the green card world, there are preference categories. Okay? There is EB, which means employment-based. One, two, three, four, and five. The highest level is EB-1. The good news is that an alien of extraordinary ability, same as the alien of extraordinary ability that qualifies for no one, may be eligible for the highest preference of a green card category as well. Under the regulations, for this first preference category, they may not even need to sponsor. The legal theory is that someone who is so extraordinary in their field will be in high demand from the moment that they come into the United States and have permanent residency. So I like that whole labor certification process where, yeah, you may be in demand, okay, specific to this employer, but we don't know other ones, because at the end of the day, they just want to make sure you're going to come here and you're not going to be a public charge. Somebody at this level, they're like, this guy, this person is so extraordinary, they can write their own ticket, okay? So the EB-1 is a great opportunity for someone who rises to that real high extraordinary level, and while the ribs are parallel to the O-1 in some way, the threshold really is scrutinized much higher, okay? To basically be sponsored or conduct self-sponsorship and kind of write their own ticket. Now, the idea over here is to show that they either won a major internationally recognized award, again, like we discussed them, you got a Grammy, you have a Pulitzer, you're in, all right, done. Or you have the three out of the 10 categories that are shown below. And again, with some discretion, if you don't meet the three, exactly. So again, similar to what we discussed with the O-1, national awards, memberships of very, very exclusive peer groups where you have to reach a third certain threshold, published material about you, the before national, in major media markets, again, the more and the clearer and the more recognizable, the better, because you're going to have somebody sitting there in an immigration service center, like we discussed earlier, that is not that familiar with anything outside of that small world of major metropolitan markets, okay? If the individual has been asked to judge in their field, if they've innovated something, again, more so on the scientific side, but certainly on the artistic side, this could happen, scholarly articles, exhibitions, if they command a high salary. And high salary, I think, at this level, Glenn is pretty much something that shouldn't be an issue. They will be able to command a high salary if they're at this level of international employment, okay? And commercial success, again, in the performing arts, it's interesting to see the rents still have stuff like the sets, compact discs, okay? So if you reach that threshold, all you simply do is file your application that I 140 immigrant petition with the immigration service, and they could approve you fairly quickly. There is a premium processing program available for this level as well. Okay, so now we have either been approved by the immigration service because we went to labor certification, our priority date is firm, or we got through extraordinary ability and we have an approved I 140. What next? We go back to activating that final permanent residency. Okay? Think of it this way. Just because the I 140 immigrant petition was approved and you've been deemed to be a qualified employee for labor certification, extraordinary ability, and that's nice and all, but they want to make sure that there's nothing that prevents you from coming into the United States and becoming a permanent resident. The idea is, in a nutshell, if you've had any kind of criminal background, if you've had any serious problems or violations with immigration, if you have anything medical or communicable that could be problematic, then they need you to take care of that or you still won't be able to get your green card. So the idea is, the I 140 shows approvability to get that permanent residency. Okay? So how is that process conducted? The activation. Okay? If you are in the United States, you do what's called adjustment status. This is a series of applications that you would file with the Immigration Service Center. You would conduct medical tests here. You would be called for fingerprints and biometric screening in the United States. And the nice part is that while it's pending, you are considered legal. Let's say your 01 has already run out and your final green card application hasn't been approved yet. That's okay. You're still considered legal. And as an added bonus, while you're in that process of adjusting your status, they will give you and all family members that are eligible a work permit and a travel permit called an advanced parole. So for the most part, you can have a quasi-normal life and you can work and the spouse can work, the kids can work, social security numbers can work. So that's a great benefit of the adjustment of status process. Consular processing has also been popular because it's deemed to be quicker. You just get called, you apply, you go to your home country, at your home consulate, you get all of the fingerprinting done and the medicals done and you come in with your green card. Again, it really has become six to one half dozen of the other. If you have your person that's gone back and forth, a lot of consular processing is probably the best bet because they're really not residing here. If they're already in the United States on some kind of a long-term or a long-term temporary visa, adjustment of status is probably the best bet because they've already been settled here. They have a home here, their family's here and it's just kind of a ramp up in the United States. Do you have any questions at all? I know you have questions. In the consular processing, there seems to be a subjective element because when you're saying whether you can substitute one person from another, a US citizen is a foreign national, especially in this area in which you're talking about artistic people, there's a huge subjective element. I'm not sure. Substituting a consular processing? Save the second violinist. You want to get a consular processing? Is this on the green card side? Yes. Okay, I'm not sure where substitution comes in. Substituting, you advertise for the US nationals. You're talking about the labor certification process. The US nationals, but I still want to take the alien. Okay. And I'm saying it seems to me a very discretionary criteria, especially when you're talking about acts. You're right. Here's the idea behind per labor certification. It probably is very, very discretionary from that standpoint. But no one is going to be in a better position than the actual employer slash petitioner themselves to make that call, because they know their industry and they know what they're looking for. Moreover, even though they're not supposed to take this into consideration, but of course, they've known this person. And if they're about to undertake a process which is going to take years sometimes, and a significant investment in advertising costs, legal fees and filing fees to the government, they're going to be pretty sure that this person is really the best candidate but for anything better that walks in the door. And we certainly have seen that happen from time to time. And as the lawyers it's our job to explain to the employer they'll say, look, I got this guy, this candidate that came in, they're really good. Well, you want to hire them, are they your ideal person? Well, no, I really like this guy better, but maybe I want to hire them as well. You may still be able to hire them for something that would be a similar position or another position, but in terms of the substitution element, typically that discretion has already been taken into consideration at that point. Is that clear? It's really, no one is going to go into this process because aside from a financial investment, there is also an investment from the standpoint of you as a company are putting yourself out there to three different agencies. The Department of Labor is scrutinizing at least twice immigration, which is homeland security, and then if you go to Consular Processing, that's the Department of State. So I think that's really the practical reality of labor certification. Glenn, do you have anything to add? I've never done the substitutions. It's my memory that they eliminate the Department of Labor. It used to be if you had an improved labor certification application, which means you've shown you couldn't find a qualified U.S. worker that you could later substitute. Let's say you had an alien in mind. Yeah, but I don't know was that your question? I thought that was the question, that I had one alien in mind when I did my labor certification now all of a sudden I have somebody else in mind and I don't believe you can do that anymore. I didn't follow it because I never had the need to do it, but I'm pretty sure five to six years ago eliminated it. Back in 2007 they eliminated it, but it used to be if you had a labor certification that was approved you could use it at any time for any qualified foreign national. There wasn't even that six month at 180 day U.S. file with U.S. CIS rule. So yes, there was a time when actual foreign let's say it fell through with your original foreign national. Man, I went through this whole process now the guy got a better job offer he left. If you have another foreign national that met the criteria because this is not available anymore you could plug them in there and they can substitute. But I think you're alluding to if you have an American that has applied through labor certification how do you treat them with a question mark? I'm sorry. That seems likely to happen. Yeah, but it's been gone since 2007. Any questions? Well, thank you both. Okay.