About Prevailing Wage ?

[susi_babu]

Hi Guru,
My attorney is going to file my LC next week. He said he got some delay in getting the SWA wages. Iam not sure what it is ? I have read in one of the thread that USCIS/DOL will be checking whether Prevailing wages are paid to the employee at the LC stage. My question, Is Both Prevailing wage and SWA are the same ? Second, If DOL has given the SWA, is it mandatory that my employer should pay the DOL said amount to me?. Actually i am on Hourly billing rate. Both attorney or my employer did not disclose the SWA to me, In this stage can i approach my employer regarding this ?

Thanks for your advise in advance.
--Susi

 

[st4rguitar]

There have been a lot of issues with prevailing wage validity dates not being long enough (i.e. 90 days for most) to complete the recruitment. What more than likely happened is that the company didn't return the recruitment documents to the attorney's office in time, so the attorney was probably forced to obtain a new prevailing wage (most states take an average of 2 weeks, some more). The SWA is the State Work Agency. The DOL is the Department of Labor. The terms are used interchangeably.
Your employer is NOT required to pay you the amount on the Prevailing Wage until after your I-485 petition is approved. The attorney/employer are not required to tell you what the PW is. In most cases, you will be making more than it anyway.