DOL/OFLC Stakeholders meeting was held on January 06, 2012 in Washington, DC. DOL has provided statistical updates on PERM and H-1B LCA programs.
PERM -
For the first quarter of 2012, DOL has received 13,000 cases, of which
9,400 cases have been certified, 2,400 cases have been denied and 600
cases have been withdrawn. Further, as of January 03, 2012, DOL has 21,000
cases pending with them. Of these 21,000 cases, 50% are pending analyst
review, 33% are in audit, 10% are on appeal, 4% are in Supervised Recruitment
and 3% in “front end” sponsorship verification. DOL is currently
processing regular PERM applications filed on October 2011, PERM audits
received on April 2011, PERM applications on appeal (RFR) received on
April 2010 and is current on Government Error queue. About 44-45% of the
audited PERMs are approved, 55-56% of audited PERMs are denied. Currently,
DOL has about 7,000 PERM cases in audit review. Of the total Supervised
Recruitment, 25% are approved, 60% are denied and 12% are withdrawn.
DOL is targeting to complete all PERM processes within 180 days and is
taking measures to improve timeline at the Atlanta Processing Center to
meet this goal.
LCA (H-1B) –
In the first quarter of 2012, there are 83,000 H-1B LCAs filed with DOL.
DOL processes 99% of the LCAs in seven days of receipt. New employer’s
filing LCA with the DOL for the first time need to get their Federal Employers
Identification Number (FEIN) verified by DOL. The turnaround time for
DOL on FEIN verification is 24-48 hours. FEIN verifications used to be
done using the ERISA database. In July, 2011, DOL had switched to a new
vendor, Experian’s larger database (about 16 million listings) with
better coverage. This switch had temporarily resulted in some employer
FEINs not being recognized and requiring employers to submit new company
documents. About 7% of LCAs are denied for FEIN and PWD tracking number
issues. DOL believes that the switch has resulted in a significant reduction
in FEIN verification issues.
Technology Updates –
DOL will implement technical enhancements to icert in about three months
which will include the following:
• Prevailing wage requests (ETA 9141) will have more mandatory fields
(withwarning pop-ups) to reduce errors (and RFIs); applicants will be
able to attach supporting documents (such as wage surveys) to submitted
PWRs in iCERT); Center Director reviews will be able to be made directly
in the iCERT portal.
• The new Form ETA 9089 (aka, new PERM “module”) design
phase for iCERT implementation was completed in December 2011, and now
DOL is turning to develop the resource plans. DOL expects to have an update
on moving PERM into iCERT by the next stakeholders meeting. In terms of
the “resource” plan, DOL is assessing the costs of implementing
the iCERT PERM module against their funding and budget