Our client, a database engineer, received I-140 approval in the EB-3 category following a comprehensive PERM labor certification process. EB-3 with PERM is the workhorse permanent-residence pathway for skilled workers who don't meet the higher EB-2 educational or experience thresholds, or whose specific case fact-pattern makes EB-3 the cleaner filing. For technology roles in particular, the category remains highly relevant because the underlying labor-market conditions — and the specific job duties' qualifying-degree requirements — sometimes align more cleanly with EB-3 than with EB-2.
PERM (Program Electronic Review Management) labor certification is a Department of Labor process where the sponsoring employer must demonstrate that no qualified, willing, and available US worker exists for the position at the prevailing wage. The process requires advertising the position through specific recruitment steps (Sunday newspaper ads, state workforce agency posting, internal posting, three additional steps), reviewing all applicants for genuine qualification, documenting the recruitment results, and filing the ETA Form 9089. PERM typically takes 6–18 months from initial filing through certification, depending on Department of Labor processing times and any audit selection.
The choice between EB-2 and EB-3 for a skilled-worker petition isn't always obvious. EB-2 requires either an advanced degree (master's or higher) or a bachelor's plus five years of progressive experience in the specialty. EB-3 requires a bachelor's degree (no experience minimum beyond what the position itself requires) or two years of training/experience for the "skilled worker" subcategory. For database engineering roles where the position description maps cleanly to a bachelor's-plus-experience requirement and the candidate's profile fits that frame, EB-3 can produce a faster PERM certification (less risk of audit on the experience-equivalence framing) and similar-or-better visa-bulletin movement depending on the country of birth.
If you're sponsoring a skilled-worker green-card filing for a database engineer or comparable technology role, the EB-2 vs EB-3 decision should be made deliberately at PERM-prep time, not assumed in favor of EB-2 by default. Three factors typically govern: the position's actual minimum requirements (which the employer's own job documentation establishes), the candidate's credentials (and how cleanly they map to those requirements), and the country-of-birth visa-bulletin trajectory (which sometimes favors EB-3 over EB-2 for high-demand countries). Done well, PERM-to-I-140 produces a permanent-residence path that survives the layered policy environment around H-1B and other status-conditional categories.