Immigration Attorney
Services & Fees

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

The Department of Labor’s (“DOL’s”) national office recently announced that it plans to issue guidance in the next couple of weeks on how pending and remanded Reduction in Recruitment (“RIR”) will be processed by DOL regional offices, and how employers should approach new RIR filings.

The DOL also announced that it plans to publish the long-awaited PERM regulations by the end of 2003 with an implementation date of approximately 120 days after the final regulations are published, possibly in March, April or May 2004.

The PERM program, once implemented, will replace traditional and RIR labor certification processing. The DOL plans to schedule approximately four training sessions around the country, prior to the implementation date, and will beta test PERM software during the 120 implementation period.

DOL Headquarters office is moving forward with the creation of two labor certification backlog reduction centers, which will be located in Dallas and Philadelphia. Once the selection of a private contractor is in place (this likely to be finalized by the end of this calendar year), it is expected that the centers will be up and running quickly as the DOL has the necessary software and training materials from its backlog reduction pilot program in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The backlog reduction effort is contingent upon the availability of funds in the 2004 fiscal year budget.

What this means to Employers and Foreign National Employees:

DOL Regional Offices are continuing to issue market re-test letters, and have suspended the automatic remand of RIR cases for traditional processing.

Employers should consider filing a traditional or RIR application prior to implementation of the PERM program as PERM regulations may be very restrictive.

The proposed rule issued in May 2002 to describe how the DOL plans to implement the PERM program may no longer provide a useful guide to PERM implementation, since many of the provisions contained in this proposed rule have apparently been abandoned by the DOL.

We will provide further information regarding labor certification processing as it becomes available.