BES's and NPC's
10/20/2004: DOL National Processing Centers and Backlog Elimination Centers Operation Guidance
AILA has released the DOL Memo of September 29, 2004 to give guidance to the State labor certification offices (SWA) on the changes of operation of permanent labor certification application in connection with the launch and operation of the Backlog Elimination Centers (BEC) in Philadelphia and Dallas and the National Processing Centers (NPC) for the PERM in Chicago and Atlanta. The Memo indicates that the BEC has gone into operation since the beginning of the FY 2005, October 1, 2004, and the NPC will go into operation by the end of the year, December 31, 2004. The Memo indicates that these new national processing system of the permanent labor certification applications will be in place regardless of the PERM Program which is currently stalled at the White House for the OMB Review.
Timeline-Cutoff Date: (1) If the PERM regulation is released by the White House and published by the DOL, the current labor certification system including RIR will be ceased "60 day" from the date of the release of the regulation. Should this happen, the labor departments will not accept old labor certification applications and the state offices will be phased out when it comes to processing of the permanent labor certification applications from the date. This timeline implies that assuming that the PERM regulation will be released right after the national election, unless the employers are ready to file RIR applications within the next two months or so after completing the recruitment, it will be too late for them to file the applications under the labor certification system. (2) If the PERM regulation collapses due to the disagreement by the White House, the DOL will continue to operate the permanent labor certification system under the existing rule but under the completely different processing system as follows. The cut-off date is January 1, 2005.
New Permanent Labor Certification Processing System: Permanent labor certification will be totally converted into a "national processing" system effective January 1, 2005 and the state offices will be phased out as of January 1, 2005 in a manner which is described below. Conversion into the national processing system will bring about a steeper change than the simple change of processing agency in that the permanent labor certification applications will be processed under the "uniform" national queue regardless of the locations and under the rule of the "FIFO" ( First In First Out) regardless of the locations. Accordingly, the NPCs and BECs will process the cases in the order of the priority date of each application no matter where the case was filed. This change will result in some big consequencesto the labor certification waiters: The oldest backlog cases will be processed first regardless of the locations. This inevitably forces the DOL (NPC and BEC) to focus on the cases which are pending in certain locations such as San Francisco and big 10 states where there are a huge number of backlog cases going back to years and years. The big losers will be people in those states who enjoyed prompt processing until now (mostly small states) such as New Hemphshire, Vermont, Maine, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, etc. Since the labor certification will be processed under a uniform "national" processing schedule on a FIFO basis, the people in these states will witness negative changes in the processing times.
Processing Changes and Timelines: The current Regions and State Offices will be gradually phased out as follows:
The State offices will cease to take a new permanent labor certification applications effective January 1, 2005 regardless of the PERM program.
Until January 1, 2005, the State Offices will take new cases under the existing labor certification regulation.
If the State Offices complete processing of certain cases and are ready for forwarding to the current Regional Offices for certification before the end of the year, they are required to forward the completed cases to the current Regional Certifying Officers as they did it in the past.
If the State Offices opened the cases but were unable to complete processing of the opened cases by December 31, 2004, they are required to continue and complete processing of such cases and forward such cases for certification not to the Regional Certifying Officer but to one of the NPC in Chicago or Atlanta.
If the State Offices have cases which were received but unopened or processed, such cases are required to be transferred to the BECs in Philadelphia and Dallas under the following schedules:
10/1/04: Large number of oldest cases will be transferred to the BEC from San Francisco.
Early October - End of October 2004: The oldest cases from other Regions and States will be transferred to the BEC.
January - March 2005: Rest of the backlog cases will be transferred to the BEC (Philadelphia, Dallas) or the Regional Offices in New York, Boston, San Francisco.
Under the schedules, only "unopened" cases are allowed to be transferred to the BEC. Consequently, "opened" cases will be kept being processed by the State Offices even after March 2005.
The new system is equitable and admirable in the sense that it totally eliminates inequity and unfairness that have existed until now depending on where an immigrant goes through the labor certification process. It will, however, be taken by some people in certain states as a shock. Life changes.
