Philadelphia Regional DOL Tracker

Tomshu,

Since you had the opportunity to ask these questions from i guess few months ago and have called more than one person can you clarify few things..

1. They have been saying that letters will go out next week, and we have waited almost months... Is this the correct reading of the situation or they did had end of October as the probable time frame for sending out the letters. (Yesterday I was told sometime next week the letters will go out and the 45 day wait starts)

2 What is the deal with training the new employees. We have been hearing that since last year. Have they trained or have they not yet.

3. If I heard it right the lady told that there were 10,000 cases? Do you know anything

4. The most important, your take (on info based from Phily DOL employee) when will it start and how long will it take to approve the 10,000 cases.

Thanks in advance,
a
 
I second vk2003. If akela does not mind it, lets appoint him as the only person calling BRC and talking to the lady. He can ask all the Qs and build a rapport with the lady. Too many people asking same Qs may annoy them. if Tomshu is using the same contact, we should continue with him as he has been great at getting information for all of us. I am fine with either of them.
Thanks a ton to both Akela and Tomshu.


vk2003 said:
First of all, Thanks to Akela and Tomshu for giving us such terrific updates!

I have an urgent plea to make to those of you who have the BRC phone number - let us make an effort on this forum to co-ordinate the phone calls. Right now, we have a very small window into the BRC's operations thanks to one or two people who are answering the phone over there. If too many people start calling, we are probably going to lose that window and that will lead to many more weeks/months spent in limbo wondering about what is hapenning to our application. I for one, plan to read the weekly update that volunteers (Tomshu, Akela etc) are providing on this forum, and I hope that this will work out for the rest of you as well.

Hope I have not offended anybody.

Best Regards,
VK
VA - Mar 2002, Philly Nov 2003
Click to expand...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Totally agree. I will put both of my hands up for this.

We can put a question list here and let these folks who have contacts asking the questions and post the answers.
It's better to get some answers than no answers at all.

dcmetro22042 said:
I second vk2003. If akela does not mind it, lets appoint him as the only person calling BRC and talking to the lady. He can ask all the Qs and build a rapport with the lady. Too many people asking same Qs may annoy them. if Tomshu is using the same contact, we should continue with him as he has been great at getting information for all of us. I am fine with either of them.
Thanks a ton to both Akela and Tomshu.
Click to expand...
 
Totally agree. I will put both of my hands and legs up for this.
Beam said:
We can put a question list here and let these folks who have contacts asking the questions and post the answers.
It's better to get some answers than no answers at all.
Click to expand...
 
akela said:
Tomshu,

Since you had the opportunity to ask these questions from i guess few months ago and have called more than one person can you clarify few things..

1. They have been saying that letters will go out next week, and we have waited almost months... Is this the correct reading of the situation or they did had end of October as the probable time frame for sending out the letters. (Yesterday I was told sometime next week the letters will go out and the 45 day wait starts)

By the middle of Nov. some lawyers should start to receive those letters.

2 What is the deal with training the new employees. We have been hearing that since last year. Have they trained or have they not yet.

The training process will occur once starting sending letters.

3. If I heard it right the lady told that there were 10,000 cases? Do you know anything

Phil DOL itself has about 10,000 cases, as I posted before.

4. The most important, your take (on info based from Phily DOL employee) when will it start and how long will it take to approve the 10,000 cases.


Should not be VERY long, as the BRC is not setup for Phil DOL cases only.

Thanks in advance,
a
Click to expand...
 
What about the phone number to check case status?

Is there still going to be an antomatic line to check case status?
 
Does anybody know or could guess by the memo regarding new changes after the BRC Center opens up, what would be considered Backlog Cases, it will not be fair to send all the cases from 2003 to the backlog center and work on current 2004 cases, that will again be a disadvantage for us.
Or they will send current LC cases to backlog centers, since the priority would be to work on the old cases first?
 
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:

@ Processing Changes and Timelines: The current Regions and State Offices
will be gradually phased out as follows:

1- The State offices will cease to take a new permanent labor certification
applications effective January 1, 2005 regardless of the PERM program.

2- Until January 1, 2005, the State Offices will take new cases under the
existing labor certification regulation.

3- 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.

4- 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.

5- 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:

(i) 10/1/04: Large number of oldest cases will be transferred to the BEC from
San Francisco.
(ii) Early October - End of October 2004: The oldest cases from other
Regions and States will be transferred to the BEC.
(iii) 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.
 
orissa,

Where did you find this publication?
Could you, please mention the source.

Thanks

AwardMyGC


orissa said:
@ Processing Changes and Timelines: The current Regions and State Offices
will be gradually phased out as follows:

1- The State offices will cease to take a new permanent labor certification
applications effective January 1, 2005 regardless of the PERM program.

2- Until January 1, 2005, the State Offices will take new cases under the
existing labor certification regulation.

3- 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.

4- 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.

5- 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:

(i) 10/1/04: Large number of oldest cases will be transferred to the BEC from
San Francisco.
(ii) Early October - End of October 2004: The oldest cases from other
Regions and States will be transferred to the BEC.
(iii) 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.
Click to expand...
 
Thanks Orissa!

Reading the first post closely, it does not explicitly say that the BEC will actually start processing Only from Jan 1 regardless of PERM. The assumption then is the the BEC would continue to process Philly cases in the meantime. What I'm not sure about is after Jan 1, will the existing pending cases be lumped together with the nation-wide cases, or does Jan 1 imply the date when any NEW case in the country is sent to BEC to be lumped together with other cases. There's a big difference between the two and we need to get this clarified.

But your second post clarified that matter! So I guess we are ok. Still, it means the the BEC workload is not devoted entirely to Philly DOL cases but is currently shared with cases from San Fran... keep waiting..............

I'm not concerned about PERM personally and I dont think it affects anyone in this thread either since our cases have been rotting in DOL for a long time now :p
 
processing order

Based on the note, the following order should be followed in Philly BEC.

1. Philly reginal cases (FIFO base)
2. Other reginal cases assigned to Philly (FIFO base)
3. State cases from those laziest states (FIFO base)
4. All other state cases (FIFO base)
 
Will the PERM guys go directly for 140-485.

I am asking this because, if they do go 140-485 Q gets bigger and maybe we will see the return of cutoff time before which no one can sign for 485.


rgds,
a
 
skylake said:
Based on the note, the following order should be followed in Philly BEC.

1. Philly reginal cases (FIFO base)
2. Other reginal cases assigned to Philly (FIFO base)
3. State cases from those laziest states (FIFO base)
4. All other state cases (FIFO base)
Click to expand...

As per memo it will be

1. Mix queue of Phily & Other Regional cases (FIFO)
2. Mix queue of States (FIFO)

Once all Done, everything else (New Applications) will go to National Processing Center (Atlanta or Chicago)
 
order

The memo states "The centers will work initially to address the original office backlogs and then begin to handle cases currently backlogged at the SWAs."

Also, the memo states "Work at the blocklog elimination centers will be augmented by case processing occurring in the REMAINING ETA regional offices and the SWAs."

From the statement I read that PHILLY regional cases will be processed first.
 
Called Hotline

Ok guys here it goes,


First the lady was really good and very patient. The good thing is she understands the frustration that we are going through. Anyway,

1.It's highly appreciated if there are fewer phone calls. That lets them do their work more efficiently.
2. There is no definite answer as of today, that who will be process first Phily DOL or all DOL (and FIFO METHOD).
3.As of now only Phily cases are in the center and they are being inputed in the system.

That does not clarify that if tomorrow a bus load of LCs come from a lazy DOL what will happen, will they stop everything and enter them first or continue with DOL processing.

4.There were few glitches with the printer, but printing of letters will start some time 'soon' (next week to couple of weeks).

5. The adjudication speed is, if the cases are certifiable, 20 can be done in a day, else one incomplete case (245i are mostly like that) will take a day.

The reason why Phili DOL went from fast to slow to dead is that they were in a rush to get many certifiable cases out of the door and hold on to problem cases. Then they came back to problem cases and as I said, it takes forever to issue a notice to one of them. The NoF that we are getting are one liner and small, other 245i must be having essays written.

rgds,
a
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top