People decline offers, absorb pay cuts and stay years too long in jobs they have outgrown, because they believe changing employers restarts the green-card queue. For somebody whose adjustment application has been pending long enough, one sentence of statute says otherwise. It is short enough to read yourself, and it is quoted in full below.
The provision reads: a petition for an individual whose application for adjustment of status has been filed and REMAINED UNADJUDICATED FOR 180 DAYS OR MORE shall remain valid with respect to a new job if the individual changes jobs or employers, if the new job is in the SAME OR A SIMILAR OCCUPATIONAL CLASSIFICATION as the job for which the petition was filed. Two conditions and one consequence: the petition survives the job change.
The one hundred and eighty days are counted from the filing of the ADJUSTMENT OF STATUS application, and they are days it remained UNADJUDICATED. This is two distinctions in one line, and both are commonly got wrong: it is not the immigrant petition's filing date, and it is not the approval date of anything. Somebody whose adjustment application has been sitting for years has long since crossed this line and frequently does not know it.
What the statute does is keep the PETITION valid across the change. It is not a permission slip, it does not decide whether the new job qualifies, and it does not settle what happens to a nonimmigrant status running alongside the adjustment application. Those are separate questions with separate answers, and the fact that this sentence is short is exactly why it should not be read as covering more than it says.
The second condition is a comparison between two jobs, and the statute gives no formula for it. In practice it turns on duties, on the occupational classification codes used in the underlying labour certification, and on how far the wage and seniority have moved. A promotion into management is the classic hard case. Nothing on this page decides it, and anyone relying on portability for a move should have an attorney compare the two descriptions BEFORE resigning, not after.
This page tells you whether the door is open. It does not tell you that a particular job fits through it. The statute's second condition — that the new job be in the same or a similar occupational classification — is a comparison of duties, of the classification codes in the underlying labour certification, and of how far the role has moved; a promotion into management is the classic hard case. That comparison is an attorney's, and it is worth paying for before resigning rather than after.
We already computed the public version — it is complete and stays free. Keep the filing date where you will find it and the Square counts the days for you: Join DesiSquare and the Square remembers your dates, re-runs this when the rules change, and puts a credentialed human one message away.