Certification BACKLOG Reduction

[nadeemrasheed]

Hi everyone, I have been reading different forums on this web site for a while and finlay decided to subscribe to this service. There is sea of information available related to any Green Card process and I would like to thank Mr. Rajiv S. Khanna for providing us with this platform of communcation and also thanks to all the members for keep adding the valuable information.

I am starting this new thread by the title of Certification BACKLOG Reduction so the forum members can read the on going news related to BACKLOG reduction offices in PA & TX. So please post any backlog related news on this thread.

Thanks

 

[nadeemrasheed]

I found this info from Chicago Regional DOL Thread... posted by clx-dude

July 20, 2004 -- On July 21, 2004, the Department of Labor (DOL) will publish an interim rule that authorizes a plan to reduce the current backlog of pending permanent labor certification cases. The rule, which takes effect on August 20, 2004, gives the agency's Division of Foreign Labor Certification the discretion to direct State Workforce Agencies (SWAs) and DOL Regional Offices to transfer pending labor certification cases to processing centers in Philadelphia and Dallas, with the goal of clearing the backlog of 310,000 cases in two years. DOL has not yet released the details of the plan, but is expected to issue a directive to SWAs and regional offices with specific information on backlog reduction priorities and case selection. The rule makes clear that the reduction plan will operate independently of the Program Electronic Review Management (PERM) program, which is not expected to be finalized until later this year.
Background

Before an employment-based immigrant petition may be approved on behalf of a foreign national seeking to work permanently in the United States, the Department of Labor must certify that there are no U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified and available for the job opening and that employment of the foreign national will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers. The certification process is undertaken by State Workforce Agencies and Department of Labor Regional Offices.

Under current procedures, an employer who seeks to permanently employ and immigrant foreign national in the United States must file Form ETA-750, the Application for Alien Employment Certification, with the State Workforce Agency serving the area of intended employment. The SWA performs a number of functions related to the application, including setting its place in the processing queue (the priority date), determining the prevailing wage for the position, and listing the job opening in the state's employment recruitment system. Based on the results of recruitment for the job opening, the SWA makes an initial determination as to whether there are able, willing and qualified U.S. workers available to take the job. If no U.S. workers are available, the SWA forwards the labor certification application, recruitment results and prevailing wage information to the appropriate DOL Regional Office, where the materials are reviewed and a determination is made as to whether to issue the labor certification based on the employer's compliance with program regulations. If the regional office determines that there are no able, willing, qualified and available U.S. workers and that employment of the foreign national will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers, a permanent labor certification is issued.

The backlog reduction centers are expected to centralize these processes and consolidate functions now performed separately by the SWAs and DOL regions. The new rule provides few details on the specifics of the plan, but the Foreign Labor Certification Division will later issue a directive with details on how SWAs and DOL regions should identify cases for backlog processing and where the cases should be sent. In the past, DOL officials have stated that the Dallas and Philadelphia centers will deal first with cases from their respective local regions and will address heavily backlogged regions such as New York and California later on in the process, but backlog priorities will not be known with certainty until the agency issues its specific directives to the SWAs and regional offices.

The permanent labor certification program's significant case backlogs are in large part attributable to the extension of Section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which permitted certain foreign nationals who entered the United States without inspection, engaged in unlawful employment or otherwise failed to maintain status to adjust status to permanent resident if a labor certification was filed on their behalf with an SWA on or before April 30, 2001. DOL estimates that more than 230,000 applications were filed to meet this deadline, nearly two and a half times more applications than were customarily filed in an entire year.

 

[nadeemrasheed]

Centralized Processing of Labor Certifications: PERM vs. Backlog Reduction Center

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Posted by mvinays


As the DOL moves step by step from the local/regional processing system to national/centralized processing systems, the labor certification process will witness uniformity and consistency in processing time, application of standards, and adjudications. Accordingly the current variance of practice, processing times, standards and adjudication among the 50 states and six regions (10 practical regions including the subregions of New York, San Francisco, Denver, and Kansas City) will gradually disappear and influence of human factors and idiosyncrecies will also be drastically reduced. This drastic change will be more noticeable in the PERM program in that the electronic system will play a much bigger role in this system than Backlog Reduction Center system in that the PERM application will introduce certain machine readable features in the form and machine will read and determine the eligibility of the application to a greater extent leaving the tasks of human analysts and certifying officers to de minimus. In the Backlog Reduction Center, it is likely that the two centers, Philadelphia and Dallas, will take over the cases on file at the state offices and regional offices and complete the whole labor certification for each individual application from the start to the finish. Accordingly, unlike the PERM program, the analysts and leaders of the each Reduction Center will play a bigger role in processing and adjudication.

Supposedly, the Backlog Reduction Centers are mandated to process and adjudicate the backlog applications under the current rules and standards. As everyone knows, the labor certification offices in states and regions run de facto 50 different rules, standards, and practices under the current system, producing the winners and losers among the immigrants depending on the location of the jobs. These 50 practices and policies run on a wide spectrum from the most conservative offices to the most liberal states. Obviously the current winners and losers will be profoundly affected by the directions and policies of the Backlog Reduction Centers depending on how liberal or conservice each Center will be. This is indeed a big open question. Reduction of backlog does not necessarily imply that it will come with increased rate of approval depending on their policies and directions. The processing times will be definitely reduced, but it is an unknown territory when it comes to the rate of denials. One just pray that the rate at least stays with the current trend.

As we reported earlier, the two Backlog Reduction Centers will be mostly manned by the contractors and the DOL has already selected the contractor to run these two centers. The sources indicate that each of these two centers in Philadelphia and Dallas will have approximately 60 analysts with the total manpower of from 80 to 100 people. As the state offices gradually phase out of the permanent labor cerification process, some of the analysts at the current state labor certification offices and regional offices may be absorbed into either the PERM Centers (Chicago and Atlanta) or these two Backlog Reduction Centers as the employees of the private contractors. Along the way, the two Backlog Reduction Centers will develop their own uniqueness and different directions and policies just like those which we are witnessing among the Service Centers in the USCIS. But two are better than five or 50 different idiosyncrecies.

The centralized labor certification systems grant a monstrous power to the Chief of Forein Labor Certification Division or National Certifying Officer at the DOL HQ. The nature of future directions and idiosyncrecies of the centralized processing centers for the PERM and Backlog Reduction Centers is expected to be molded into the new reengineered labor certification systems by the HQ in the forms of Directives and Memorandums. We just hope that the policies and directions be not molded into a restrictive and conservative shell leading to rise of the rate of denials. We also hope that most of 300,000 backlog cases be not only adjudicated swiftly but also liberally so that the 300,000 souls soon see the bright light at the end of tunnel in the near future.

Source: http://www.immigration-law.com
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