US permanent residency via PERM Labor Certification is one of the few practice areas in business-related Immigration at this time that has not come under attack by the Trump administration.

Our firm has been through all three of the Department of Labor programs: The traditional method, Reduction in Recruitment (RIR) and PERM. Our depth of expertise is extensive as is shown by our perfect record of approvals over the years. The three parties involved (the employee, the employer and the attorney) all have a distinct role to play in this labor-intensive, highly detailed process that sets the strategy and the roadmap to obtaining a green-card.

The Department of Labor announced last week that it will be suspending the processing of prevailing wage determinations (PWDs) for most case types,  including PERM labor certifications and H-1B cases – while it complies with a federal court order that requires them to reissue some 4,000 PWDs for the H-2B temporary non-agricultural visa program. The suspension will mean that some employers may be delayed in their ability to commence recruitment on or file PERM labor certification applications.  DOL has not indicated when it will resume issuing non-H-2B PWDs, but because its H-2B workload is considerable, it may not return to full-scale PWD processing for several months.

Though the suspension involves several immigration case types, PERM applications, by far, are the most severely affected due to the time-sensitivity given that the results of an employer’s labor certification recruitment are valid for just 180 days. If a request for a prevailing wage determination is delayed and an employer has commenced the recruitment phase prior to receiving the PWD, an employer’s recruitment could expire, meaning that the entire recruitment process would have to be redone before a PERM application could be filed. The effect on H-1B petitions is far less because employers can use the OFLC Wage Data Center or other independent surveys to determine the prevailing wage for an H-1B position.

DOL’s official timeframe for processing prevailing wage requests had been 60 days, but they had been turning them around in about 30 days.   It appears that the suspension is affecting PWRs filed as early as the beginning of June 2011.

Action Item for Employers: If you require a PERM Labor Certification Application be filed in order to continue employment for your H-1B visa holders who are approaching the 6-year maximum period of stay, you cannot start these cases early enough.  Please discuss strategy and planning with your immigration professional right away, or give our office a call to discuss your case concerns.  We will keep you updated as developments occur.

1) Prevailing Wage Determinations:   The Department of Labor (DOL) advised today that a prevailing wage determination (PWD) obtained for an H-1B case can be used for a PERM case (and vice versa) if it is still valid and for the same job opportunity.  The announcement was made in the AILA/DOL Stakeholder Telephone Conference of 6/22/10 that can be viewed on the AILA website.  This will be extremely useful and will eliminate the long wait time in obtaining a PWD for DOL National for a PERM case when all information in re the job and its requirements remain identical.

2)  Current H-1B Cap Count as of 6/18/2010:  22,900 cases have been received under the general H-1B cap.  9,700 cases have been received against the advanced US degree cap of 20,000.

3)  CBP Releases Port of Entry Contact information:   http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/toolbox/contacts/ports/

4)  iCERT now posts PERM Processing Times: http://icert.doleta.gov/#fragment-2

5)  Life Along the Mexico-US Border Photo Essay:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/interactives/mexicoborder/

6)  DHS Releases Fact Sheet on  Southwest Border “Next Steps”

7)  E-Verify no longer voluntary for Utah Employers:

We will cover these topics and many more in greater detail in our free July newsletter.  If you haven’t signed up to receive it, you can do so here

The DOL has designated a centralized Washington, DC location to handle Prevailing Wage Requests (PWRs) for all case types as of January 1, 2010.

PWRs for PERM, H-1Bs, H-1B1s (Chile and Singapore), H-2Bs and E-3s (for Australians) will be prepared on the PWR form that DOL rolled out for the H-2B program, form ETA-9141.  DOL has not yet offered an electronic version of this form so there isn’t any way to submit it online, neither are they accepting faxes.  If you subscribe to an immigration forms program, such as INSZoom, you can access a fillable version there.

All PWRs are to be mailed to the OFLC’s NPWHC in Washington, DC. at:  US Department of Labor-ETA, National Prevailing Wage and Helpdesk Center, Attn:  PWD Requests, 1341 G Street, NW, Suite 201, Washington, DC  20005-3142.

Here is AILA’s advance copy of the Federal Register Posting.

We’ll see how this centralized process goes.  To roll out a new system without electronic submission doesn’t make much sense.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

The Department of Labor will be centralizingi prevailing wage processing.  The agency is scheduled to open its prevailing wage center in Washington, DC to begin centralized processing of PERM, H-1B, H-1B1 and E-3 NIV programs as of January 1, 2010.

Prevailing Wage Requests will be submitted to the National Center rather than to the State Workforce Agencies (SWAs).

The processing times from state to state vary widely at the present time and the determinations are not always consistent.  We’re not sure what to expect with the new program.  At the onset there will probably be longer processing  times, though DOL is assuring that this should result in more consistent prevailing wage determinations over time.

We link to this document:

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/7499686/AILA-Open-Forum—Dept-of-Labor