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Across the United States, hospitals and school districts continue to struggle with persistent staffing shortages. Whether in nursing, food services, teaching or custodial roles, employers report high turnover and limited pipelines. While budget constraints and burnout are key factors, there’s a legal pathway that many overlook: employment-based immigration sponsorship, specifically through the Program Electronic Review Management labor certification process.
PERM is the federal process that enables U.S. employers to petition for foreign workers to receive lawful permanent residency. Though often associated with large tech or finance companies, the process is equally available to public institutions and nonprofits. Many administrators simply don’t realize that they can sponsor the very people already showing up for work each day.
Public institutions can use this — and should
U.S. Department of Labor data shows more than 100,000 PERM applications were filed in FY 2023, with education and health care among the top five sectors. Yet public institutions remain underrepresented in these filings. Most petitions are still submitted by large private employers, despite widespread staffing instability in public-facing roles.
That’s a gap attorney Hillary Walsh sees every day. As the founder of New Frontier Immigration Law, Walsh leads a team that specializes in helping employers, particularly schools and hospitals, navigate immigration sponsorship. “These institutions are sitting on a retention strategy they’re not using,” she says. “It’s not just about high-skilled tech workers. It’s your paraeducators, your nurses, your custodial staff.”
New Frontier has handled hundreds of sponsorship cases for employers seeking to retain immigrant employees with Temporary Protected Status, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or other temporary statuses. Many of these workers are already essential to their institutions but face legal precarity.
Misunderstood process, missed opportunities
The PERM process involves certifying that no qualified U.S. workers are available for a given position — a requirement often already documented during standard recruitment for roles that go unfilled. Once approved by the Department of Labor, the employer can proceed to file for permanent residency on the worker’s behalf.
A 2023 report found that immigrants make up more than 25% of direct care workers and over 15% of K-12 support staff nationally. Despite this, fewer than 1 in 10 public institutions pursue sponsorship.
Part of the hesitation is procedural. Some employers are unaware they can initiate a petition without waiting for the employee to request it. Others assume legal fees or paperwork will be prohibitive. But according to Walsh, “The process is often simpler than districts expect and certainly less disruptive than losing a trained, trusted employee and starting over.”
Sponsorship as a strategy, not a favor
Rather than treating immigration petitions as exceptional or rare, more employers are beginning to view them as an integrated part of workforce planning. In a competitive labor market, the ability to offer legal stability can be a compelling recruitment and retention tool — especially for bilingual or bicultural workers who face ongoing uncertainty about their legal status.
Hospitals in states like California and New York have already begun using PERM filings to hold onto nurses who are critical to multilingual patient care. School districts serving immigrant communities are starting to recognize that sponsoring a teacher aide or food service worker can create ripple effects of trust and morale.
Walsh puts it plainly: “When a superintendent or CEO steps up to petition for someone on their team, it changes lives, but it also solves a real operational problem. Turnover drops. People stay. That’s not charity, it’s strategic management.”
A recruiting advantage with long-term benefits
Employers that sponsor immigrant workers often find themselves attracting new applicants who value legal pathways to permanence. In fields such as nursing, early education, and special education, where shortages have persisted for over a decade, this can offer a crucial edge.
New Frontier Immigration Law has seen increased interest from employers who once considered immigration sponsorship out of reach. “These aren’t abstract legal concepts,” says Walsh. “They’re tools that let you keep the people who are already part of your institution’s story.”
Taking the first step
The PERM process isn’t appropriate for every employee or every role. But for CEOs, HR leaders and superintendents who are already grappling with persistent vacancies and community trust gaps, it offers a lawful, proactive way to build a future-ready team.
With the right legal guidance, it becomes less about bureaucracy and more about long-term planning. As institutions look ahead to the next hiring cycle, they may want to ask who they are at risk of losing and what it would take to keep them.
