August 2004 *

Labor Certification Backlog Reduction Becomes a Reality.

Despite promises of imminent implementation, the new super-fast labor certification procedure (PERM) appears to be on hold, perhaps for several months because of election-year politics.

However, the Department of Labor (DOL) has taken steps to begin what it hopes will be faster processing of traditional and RIR labor certification cases that have already been filed. On July 21, 2004, the DOL published a regulation that will create “Backlog Reduction Centers”, and it has already begun the process of staffing those Centers. Both the state job office and the regional Department of Labor office will send pending cases to the new Backlog Reduction Centers for processing.

Currently regular labor certification applications are backlogged over three years (i.e., an application filed three years ago has not yet been processed), and RIR (reduction in recruitment) applications are backlogged over two years in most states. The reason for these backlogs was a law passed in late 2000 that provided relief to undocumented workers who filed a labor certification by April 30, 2001. In response to that law, state job offices received 240,000 applications in the month of April 2001 alone, whereas before that less than 100,000 applications were filed per year. Most state job offices are still working on the April 2001 cases at a rate that would take several years to work through the backlog.

The DOL expects the Backlog Reduction Centers to change this picture, and we may finally get some action on pending cases that have been languishing for so long.

The Federal Register page that contains the new regulation can be found at http://frwebgate3.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate.cgi?WAISdocID=7405297743+0+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve.

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