Philadelphia Regional DOL Tracker

Really Disappointing...

Pineapple said:
Someone for another thread posted this... just copy/pasted this info..

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



01/11/2005: Report from Chicago: Status of Backlog Reduction Work and Anticipated Processing Times

....

:confused: The timing of actual adjudication of cases will depend on two factors: One is the volume of conversion cases after the launch of PERM program on 03/28/2005. The larger the conversions are in number, the smaller the total numbers for the BPC will end up. The second factor is the timing of completion of shipment and data entry. DOL anticipates that it is not going to be for a while that the BPCs actually adjudicate and decide any cases. The entire backlog cases are predicted to be removed not in 24 months but from 24 month to 30 months from 03/28/2005. People should keep patience.
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Really disappointing if this is true...we may have to wait for few more days to confirm this one.

If they are going to sort whole 300,000 applications first then why did they enter Philly, SFO and Dallas first?
 
Pineapple said:
01/11/2005: Report from Chicago: Status of Backlog Reduction Work and Anticipated Processing Times

The Backlog Processing Centers (BPC) must complete several stages of activities before they can adjudicate any cases. The first step is to receive the backlog cases from the former Regions and SWAs in 50 states. The second step is to perform data entry and development of national database system for establishment of national "queue" for Traditional Cases and RIR pursuant to the policy of processing of First In First Out (FIFO) order. Once the development of national database system is completed, they will be ready to adjudicate the backlog applications. At this time, the BPCs are at the stage of receiving shipments from the states and the Regions. As soon as they receive the shipments, the contractors start making data entry to the national database.
The shipments are undertaken per the DOL Transitional Guidelines (TG). Those cases which were received before 01/01/2002 were scheduled to be shipped to the BPC by 12/31/2004 and remaining cases are scheduled to be shipped to the BPC by March 31, 2005. The shipments include only "unopened" cases. For the opened cases, the DOL has sent out instructions to the SWAs to complete the entire opened backlog cases by 03/31/2005.
The first shipment was made from San Francisco Region. Total 20,000 oldest cases. 10,000 cases were shipped to the Dallas BPC and 10,000 cases were shipped to the Philadelphia BPC. These cases have been data-entried and part of the inquiry letters have been sent out to the employers and their attorneys. The BPCs have also received 24,000 cases from 17 states as of the end of the year, and expects to receive altogether 100,000 within January 2005.
As for the backlog cases in the Regional Offices, total is tallied at 55,000 nationwide. These cases need to establish the national queue for FIFO processing.
The backlog reduction cases are handled by the two BPCs and the two satellite centers in San Francisco Regional Office and the Boston-New York Regional Office. These two Regional Offices cannot actively perform the backlog reduction work because they are not hooked upto the national database system. They are scheduled to be hooked upto the national database system along the way. These satellite centers will participate in the backlog reduction work for one year and will be phased out.
The timing of actual adjudication of cases will depend on two factors: One is the volume of conversion cases after the launch of PERM program on 03/28/2005. The larger the conversions are in number, the smaller the total numbers for the BPC will end up. The second factor is the timing of completion of shipment and data entry. DOL anticipates that it is not going to be for a while that the BPCs actually adjudicate and decide any cases. The entire backlog cases are predicted to be removed not in 24 months but from 24 month to 30 months from 03/28/2005. People should keep patience.
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This actually confirmed the worst scenario. I suggested it was going to happen that way out of frustration for the last few days. All the cases from Philly and Dallas Regional Offices have been screwed tremendously because these two offices were preparing for the BEC while other offices were certifying cases. And as I said before, they will not able to finish the whole thing in 30 months. What a waste of young lives!
 
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Very disappointing!

Pineapple's posting is quite a shocker! The whole purpose of a queue should be to efficiently certify an application and not keep rearranging queues until its perfect and then start certifying. It is half-implemention of FIFO...only the FI part is being taken care of cuz noone is getting out of the queue.
 
Pineapple said:
Someone for another thread posted this... just copy/pasted this info..

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


01/11/2005: Report from Chicago: 45 - 60 Day Processing Time for PERM Does not Apply to Conversion Cases

Another disappointing news for the conversion case is the processing times for such cases. DOL confirms that the processing time for conversion cases will be much longer than non-conversion PERM applications. DOL did not disclose the anticipated specific processing times for the conversion cases. It just stated that the processing times will be shorter than the current backlog cases waiting times, meaning it can be within two years or so. Uh?!

01/11/2005: Report from Chicago: No Parallel Applications Permitted Without Losing Priority Date

When people refile a PERM application without dislosing the pending application, the National Processing Centers will access the database at the BPCs to see whether any cases are
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What the *&%$

Looks like we are being forced to convert our cases to PERM.
 
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One Question

01/11/2005: Report from Chicago: No Parallel Applications Permitted Without Losing Priority Date

When people refile a PERM application without dislosing the pending application, the National Processing Centers will access the database at the BPCs to see whether any cases are pending for the employer and the employee. Accordingly, parallel filing of PERM application and non-PERM application will be blocked by the DOL. Such policy will enhance the risk of conversion and a fewer employers may attempt conversion fiing.

==========================================================

Does that mean we can file PERM with new employer? And still continue regular RIR queue with current employer?
 
Of course, nothing can be assumed with the BEC, but it seems that they'll wait until march end to receive all the applications from everywhere else... then a few more months to enter all the data, send letters, enter replies etc.. which means they wont be adjudicating anything until .. guess.. July??

Also, it depends if they first seperate out cases already in Regional when they start adjudicating, and further seperate our RIR and non-RIR.. if not.. just forget abt labor/gc etc... :(
 
tomshu said:
I asked the Phil DOL again, points:

1/. They've stopped printing letters for one week already.
2/. They will resume printing and sending out letters tomorrow. So next week we may start to see some people start to receive those so-called LOVE letters.
3/. Not all the computers have PRINT function, so currently only those computers which CAN print letters will print out letters to send out.
4/. They are trying to fix the problem, though. :(
5/. A new case number will be assigned to every application. The old case number is not usefull any more.
6/. They say it could take up to two months to send out all the 13,000 cases in the system. Be patient!!! :mad:
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It sounds fishy.
 
Very disappointing.

Based on the current Philly BEC processing time (took more than 4 months for 10,000 cases). It looks like they are going to take more than one year to enter data, issue letters and get responses for the 100,000 cases they are going to receive by 03/31/2005. I think we can forget about labor approval in 2005??:mad: :mad:
 
Heart breaking Man...

You are right..they will take one year to send the letters and since it is long time they received the confirmations...probably they would like to send the re-confirmation letters and so on...

don't know what these lawyers are doing...Philly and Dallas cases are screwed up big time in process of setting up BPCs (note the change in terminology)...

I strongly feel sending letters randomly is intentional so that they cannot start adjudicating the cases.
 
Update from lawyer

I checked thru' HR with my lawyer. My lawyer checked with other lawyers in maryland. Only a small percentage of their clients have received letters. She expects letters to come in the next two months (her guess).
 
BEC letters are nothing but piece of scrap paper, if they are not going to start the approvals who cares about the letters. :mad:
 
Not true. Until you receive the letter from BEC and reply to it, your case will not be processed. So the sooner you get it, the better for you.
 
I agree, but still according to today's news there will not be any approval till they form a new queue and sort it by date. So you get letter today or in 2 months it makes little difference.
 
Change is a bad thing for such lazy bureaucrat like DOL. Any changes would bring more confustion. paperwork, extra steps to the process. The BEC centers so far have served only to delay the process tremenously. If there hadn't been such initiative, even at the snail pace the Philly Regional office was working, many of us here would have gone beyond this point by now ( I mean gotten our cases certified and moved on to next step).
 
Apathy of lawyers

I'm started wondering why one goes for a GC through a lawyer at all. Aren't lawyers supposed to "represent" us and demand answers on our behalf. Otherwise, what is the difference between us and them if they are also mute watchers of the show. Everybody's lawyer (including mine) is taking guesses instead of talking to DOL and "demanding" an answer if the DOL is obliged to give an answer to a legal representative (now I'm not sure about this obligation)...phew
 
I agree. But, the more the delay is, the more business an attorney gets in terms of H1B extensions. Also, they won't risk much of their time talking to DOL.
 
The reason BEC is sending letters is to confirm if the applicant still needs to be adjudicated. I wonder what percent will reply asking for adjudication. If the percent is low it should speed up processing.

It would be a good idea to take a poll from the BEC tracker list to see how many on the list are still actively waiting for their LC as originally applied. Maybe we can put a column on tracker and see how many folks put a tick mark to indicate if they are active. May not be perfect but we will get a rough idea.
 
garp said:
The reason BEC is sending letters is to confirm if the applicant still needs to be adjudicated. I wonder what percent will reply asking for adjudication. If the percent is low it should speed up processing.

It would be a good idea to take a poll from the BEC tracker list to see how many on the list are still actively waiting for their LC as originally applied. Maybe we can put a column on tracker and see how many folks put a tick mark to indicate if they are active. May not be perfect but we will get a rough idea.
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I think you can safely say that if folks have taken the bother to find out from their lawyer/employer if the letter has been received; Are regularly here to know that we are recording this information in the tracker; and have bothered to post a reply indicating their information - you can safely assume they want to continue....I'll be amazed if you get anything other than a 100% positive response apart from those so frustrated with this recent news that they decide to convert.

Not trying to stop creative thinking but I think your idea is just a distraction for us......and for the record YES I DO STILL WANT TO CONTINUE! :D
 
No letter yet

Just got a reply from the lawyer. Not letter for me yet.

RIR EB3
State: VA
PD 07/2002
RD 04/2004
 
stueym said:
I think you can safely say that if folks have taken the bother to find out from their lawyer/employer if the letter has been received; Are regularly here to know that we are recording this information in the tracker; and have bothered to post a reply indicating their information - you can safely assume they want to continue....I'll be amazed if you get anything other than a 100% positive response apart from those so frustrated with this recent news that they decide to convert.

Not trying to stop creative thinking but I think your idea is just a distraction for us......and for the record YES I DO STILL WANT TO CONTINUE! :D
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If that were true, then this whole BEC letter process is an exercise in futility for the DOL. While their process is inefficient and very very slow, the premise would have been on sound analysis - the economic downturn saw a lot of folks lose jobs plus the frustrating pace of DOL certification would have caused folks to find other alternatives ie move to other states. I cannot imagine that users on this tracker list were immune to all these changes.

Note that a number of us on the list are from 2001 - lot of water under the bridge for us folks...
 
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