An approved I-140 feels like the finish line, but it is closer to a numbered ticket. It establishes a priority date and a sponsoring employer’s offer of permanent employment — your place in the queue — not a green card. The condition people forget is that the job offer behind it has to still be live when it counts. Brian Burke, an attorney at Shihab Burke, LLC, in Dublin, Ohio, framed it as the bargain at the center of every employment-based case in his June 2026 broadcast “Employment-Based Adjustment of Status: A Survival Guide.”
The first checkpoint is the day the I-485 is filed.
mic What the Attorney Says
“When you’re filing the I-485, you must have a valid offer of employment from the employer that’s originally on your I-140.”
This is where long priority-date waits trip people up. Burke’s hypothetical: an approved I-140 from Company A, years of waiting, a move to Company B and then Company C, and then the date finally becomes current — but only Company A ever filed an I-140. Companies B and C cannot hand you an adjustment based on Company A’s petition. The case is still salvageable, but only if Company A is willing to re-extend the original offer in the role its petition described.
mic What the Attorney Says
“When you’re ready to file for adjustment of status, you must have the offer of employment from a company that actually wants you.”
Filing is not the last checkpoint. Because an I-485 can sit for years — some applicants who filed in October 2020 were still waiting in mid-2026 — the offer has to remain available throughout the pendency, not just on the filing date.
mic What the Attorney Says
“At any time while your adjustment of status is pending, you need to have confirmation available that your offer of permanent employment is still available.”
The mechanism that lets the offer move to a new employer is portability under INA § 204(j) — 8 U.S.C. § 1154(j). Once the I-485 has been pending for more than 180 days, the applicant can take a new permanent job at a different employer and keep the case alive, confirming the new offer through Form I-485 Supplement J.
mic What the Attorney Says
“Once your I-485 has been pending for more than 180 days, you are allowed to essentially seek a new permanent offer of employment from another company that’s not your original I-140 holder. The big requirement there is it must be in the same or similar occupation.”
The “same or similar occupational classification” requirement is the catch: a software developer I-140 ports to another software role, not to an unrelated job. And portability is not the same tool as transferring the underlying basis of the case — for example, an applicant who filed in EB-2 and wants to claim an earlier EB-3 priority date generally has to go back to the employer that holds the EB-3 I-140, which becomes hard once they are several jobs removed from it. Each path still demands a live, employer-backed offer; portability just changes which employer can supply it.
The practical takeaway is to treat the job offer as a living document for the entire life of the case. Confirm it is intact at filing, keep it confirmable while the case is pending for years, and weigh every job change against it — the same kind of fall-back analysis that governs filing-order decisions when OPT, H-1B, and a pending adjustment are all in play.
Sources
- 8 U.S.C. § 1154(j) — Job Flexibility / Portability for Long-Pending Petitions (Cornell LII) open_in_new
- USCIS — Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Workers open_in_new
- USCIS — Form I-485 Supplement J, Confirmation of Bona Fide Job Offer or Request for Job Portability open_in_new
- USCIS — Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status open_in_new
- Shihab Burke, LLC — "Employment-Based Adjustment of Status: A Survival Guide" (June 2026 broadcast) open_in_new