YOUR GREEN CARD LABOR CERTIFICATION

Sindell Law Offices E-Min Newsletter (Vol. 7) - English Article #31



    On September 29, 2004, the Assistant Secretary of the Employment and Training Administration of the Department of Labor issued "FY 2005 Transition Guidance" (the TG). This document marks the biggest change in labor certification practice and policy in a quarter century. Below are key points with comments. The quotes are taken from the FY 2005 Transition Guidance. Please note that the usual process has always been to submit your labor certification to the State Agency for RIR or regular processing, and then it is sent to the region for certification. This memo radically changes the procedures. Over the years we have written about the PERM program and how it will speed up processing of labor certifications to a month from three years. This guidance takes into consideration that PERM may not be published, so the labor department is hinting that PERM may not be a done deal.  
  • The State Workforce Agency is proceeding with plans that assume the final PERM regulation will be published before the end of calendar year 2004 and the new program will be operational within 60 days of publication. The Labor Department seems to believe that we will have a published regulation within 60 days and operations within 60 days thereafter.  
  • IF PERM is not published, the SWA has developed a contingency plan ..First, the Department of Labor will be transferring pending cases to a centralized processing location. They have created two backlog centers, one in Philadelphia, one in Dallas. The centers will address backlogs at the regions (THE DOL) and then attack the SWA backlogs. They expect the temporary centers to complete their work within 2 years, at which point they will be closed. In addition, the DOL (ETA) is establishing two processing centers in Atlanta and Chicago where all permanent labor certifications would be processed, except for the backlogged cases being processed in Dallas and in Philadelphia.
  •  Most SWA labor cert employees will be out of a job within the next several months.
  • If ETA publishes PERM, the SWA will be instructed to stop accepting permanent labor certifications. If ETA doesn't publish perm, the SWA's will accept and process labor certification cases until January 1, 2005. Thereafter, the SWA’s will date stamp and log in the application. After that, they will be forwarded to Atlanta or Chicago for further processing.  
  • ETA believes that the national processing of backlogged permanent labor certification cases using the first-in, first-out (FIFO) principle, regardless of the location where the case was originally filed, is an equitable and fair approach to all applicants. This  basically means that by early next year, the only labor certification applications that will be actively processed will be those from the severely backlogged states such as California, New York, and New Jersey. Labor certification application processing for the majority of states, especially the smaller states, will likely come to a halt for a one or two-year period beginning early next year while the backlogs of the larger states are worked down according to the FIFO rule. The good news is that people from the most backlogged states will see a jump in processing times on their applications. The bad news, those states whose processing times were faster, will slow down.. Then again, if PERM comes on line, there will be the option to refile the application under the PERM regulations.