Thanks to www.immigration-law.com
02/25/2005: DOL Transition Guidance for Labor Certification Applications, February 2005
On February 16, 2005, the DOL Deputy Secretary issued the transition guidance for the labor certification application, and the DOL Region V (Chicago) issued its own transition guidance to the SWAs in its jurisdiction on February 18, 2005 as follows:
HQ Transition Guidance
(
http://www.doleta.gov/regions/reg05/documents/WDL007-05-att.pdf)
Region V Transition Guidance
(
http://www.doleta.gov/regions/reg05/documents/WDL007-05.cfm)
There are all sorts of rumors and confusions in the immigration community on the actual operation of the Backlog Processing Centers in Philadelphia and and Dallas. We want to clarify the following two points:
These Guidances made it clear that the DOL had changed its initial policy reflected in the first Transition Guidance of Bill Carlson, Chief of Foreign Labr Certificaion Division that the cases which were received after January 1, 2005 would be processed by the National Processing Centers. Under the Transition Guidance of the Deputy Secretary, currently all the cases which were received after January 1, 2005 have been shipped and forwarded by the SWAs to the Backlog Processing Centers after the date stamping.
The deadline for filing of current labor certification application under the current law is March 27, 2005 and any cases received by the SWAs after March 27, 2005 will be rejected and returned to the applicants. Some applicants may wish to file the applications, particularly RIR, before the DOL launchs the new system of PERM on March 28, 2005. The TG reminds the last minute filers that the deadline is determined not by the actual physical receipt but by "postmark." Accordingly, in the event that the RIR applications cannot be filed in person or by delivery services sufficiently ahead of time, they should make it sure that it is filed at the Postal Services with the postmark of March 27, 2005.
The name of the new backlog processing offices is one other area which the immigration legal community and immigrant community are confused. For that matter, the DOL itself was confused. It used Backlog Elimination Center, Backlog Reduction Center, and Backlog Processing Center inter-mixedly. It also happened with the USCIS when there was reorganization and BCIS and USCIS were used inter-mixedly by the community as well as the government itself. By now, people should know that the official name of the offices is neither Backlog Elimination Center nor Backlog Reduction Center but
Backlog Processing Center.
