The United States Department of Labor is preparing to rewrite the rules employers must follow before sponsoring foreign workers for permanent residency, after its proposed overhaul of the Permanent Labor Certification programme, known as PERM, cleared White House review. The Office of Management and Budget completed its review on October 23, about six weeks after the department submitted the proposal on September 14. The rule now awaits publication in the Federal Register, where its full text will be made public for the first time.
The PERM regulations in force today took effect in 2005 and have not been comprehensively revised since. According to an advisory issued on October 26 by the immigration law firm Fragomen, the proposal covers three areas: the minimum recruitment standards employers must meet when testing the American labour market, sponsorship rules where US workers have been laid off, and compliance with federal non-discrimination requirements. Beyond the department’s brief summary, the details remain confidential. Employers and immigration lawyers will only be able to measure the scale of the changes once the text is published.
Under PERM, an employer must show that no qualified, willing and available American worker can fill a position before sponsoring a foreign national for a green card. That means first obtaining a prevailing wage determination from the department, then advertising the job, considering local applicants and documenting the outcome. The certification is the gateway for most applicants in the EB-2 category, meant for professionals with advanced degrees, and the EB-3 category, which covers skilled workers and professionals.
Those two categories carry considerable weight in the system. US law provides about 140,000 employment-based green cards a year, with roughly 28.6 per cent, or about 40,000, allocated to each of EB-2 and EB-3. No single country may take more than seven per cent of the total, and demand routinely outstrips supply, leaving applicants from countries such as India and China in queues that stretch for years.
The process is already slow. Department of Labor figures show the average analyst review of a PERM application took 501 days for decisions issued in March 2026, before falling to 336 days for decisions issued in August. That excludes the months spent on wage determinations and recruitment, as well as the separate petition stage at US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Any new recruitment or documentation requirements could lengthen those timelines, although the actual effect cannot be assessed until the proposal is published.
Publication will open a public comment window of 30 or 60 days, during which employers, lawyers, businesses and other stakeholders may respond. The department must then consider the submissions before issuing a final rule with a specific implementation date. Until then, the existing PERM rules remain in force and cases already in the system continue under them.
For Nigerian professionals, the proposal arrives after a difficult year for US immigration applicants. Presidential Proclamation 10998, in force since January 1, 2026, placed Nigeria under a partial entry suspension that covers immigrant visas, subject to limited exceptions. Nigeria was also among 75 countries whose immigrant visa processing the State Department paused from January 21 on public charge grounds, a policy US District Judge Jeannette Vargas struck down on August 21.
The relief from that ruling proved limited. Within days, the State Department paused immigrant visa appointments worldwide while consular officers underwent training on applicant screening, and it has yet to announce when the pause will end. In a September 9 court filing, the department said about 43,000 applications were covered by the order on the 75-country policy.
Many Nigerian professionals seeking US residency use routes that bypass PERM entirely, such as the EB-2 National Interest Waiver and the EB-1 category for people of extraordinary ability. Those applicants would not be directly affected by the proposed rule. Nigerians already working in the US on H-1B visas and relying on employer sponsorship, however, would fall squarely within its scope once a final rule takes effect.