Anand13 said:
I heard that there is a new bill, which passed this year states that, the "While filling Labor for GC, there will be no state approval required any more it will directly go to Federal. Which means now the processing time will be constant, irrespective of the state" is the law implemented? What would be impact of this law on new applicants filling labor? What is the effective date of implementation of this law?
I would appreciate of someone can put a answer the above.
You heard right.....Go through for the complete/full details :
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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.
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