Employment-Based Permanent Residency (PERM)

International employees in the U.S. on H-1B visas are eligible to be sponsored for certain categories of Legal Permanent Residency by Loyola. “Sponsorship” means the sponsoring department at Loyola will conduct a PERM Recruitment and file a Foreign Labor Certification with the Department of Labor. It also means that the department is required to pay all associated legal and filing fees of the PERM Recruitment step.  

While there are a variety of employment-based (EB) categories that are eligible for employment-sponsorship, Loyola will support PERM sponsorship for the EB-2 and EB-3 categories. Loyola does not currently support sponsorship of the EB-1 or “Extraordinary Individuals/Outstanding Professors.” The only exception is if the department’s funding is external to Loyola (e.g. an independently-funded lab). Loyola will also not be able to support the “Special Handling” PERM process that is available to higher education institutions. Sponsoring departments are welcome to discuss the available options to them with Faculty Administration and ISSS.

ISSS refers those interested in this process to Zulkie Partners, Loyola's outside counsel on immigration matters. Once the process has been initiated by the sponsoring department, ISSS will connect them to Zulkie. Zulkie will then work with the department to determine which PERM process is most appropriate for them and the beneficiary.

The PERM process should be started no later than the end of the employee’s third year in H-1B status. If the host department and employee would like to begin sooner, they should consult Faculty Administration.  

Please contact International Scholar Coordinator, Abby Mensing (amensing@luc.edu), to request the PERM Request Form and begin the process.