DOL Issues FY2005 Transition Guidance

The Department of Labor (DOL) issued a memorandum discussing the reengineering of the foreign labor certification (LC) programs.  The memo discusses PERM and its impact on the agency’s process and also a contingency plan if PERM is not implemented in early 2005.

Background on PERM

The Program Electronic Review Management system (PERM) is expected to be a process which combines traits of Regular LC and RIR LCs.  The purpose of PERM is to create a better automated and more expeditious process that will help alleviate the tremendous backlog of pending labor certification applications that have accumulated in major jurisdictions.

            Under PERM’s recruitment proposal, employers would be required to publish the job advertisement in the newspaper and/or trade journals, where appropriate, and place a job order with the State Workforce Agency (SWA).  For positions that would be included on the DOL’s list of professional occupations, employers would have to conduct at least three additional forms of recruitment.  Acceptable forms of recruitment would include: attending job fairs; on-campus recruitment; utilization of private employment firms; recruitment from professional or trade organizations; and advertisement of the job on the employer’s external website or on a job search website.

According to the proposed rule, once the application was completed and the recruitment period ended, the employer would file an online application with the regional DOL office (without including any supporting documentation of the unavailability of U.S. workers.).  The application would then be entered into a computer system that checks for completeness and whether there are any issues that would “flag” the application for additional examination.  DOL would select these “flags” that indicate “problematic” applications needing supervised recruitment or audit.  In order to test the system, certain applications would be randomly audited.  If selected for an audit, the employer would be sent a letter requesting documentation to support its attestations.  Following an audit, a case would either be approved or denied.  If no “flags” were raised, certification of the attestation could be expected in 21 days.