when will someone be eligible to file EAD? I guess the first thing would be PERM/labor certification right? And I heard it takes upto 6 months to a year to get approved. Not sure on that. So my friend didn’t get selected in H1 lottery 2nd time, now he has 1 more lottery but that’s uncertain. So he asked employer to see if they can file GC based on TPS. But they are questioning that GC takes time and TPS is expiring on October. If they start labor certification now they might not have time later to complete it. Since he has one more year of opt, labor certification might get approved on 1 year timeline? Can he apply for Ead after PERM is approved or does it take more time to get EAD?

I told him he can even apply for masters and work on that company on CPT. Would that work?