PERM Approvals
Posted Jun 03, 2005
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At a May 23, 2005 American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) meeting in the District of Columbia, U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) officials announced that they had begun approving PERM labor certifications earlier that very day. According to the DOL, the first approval was issued from the Chicago PERM processing center on May 23, 2005. The Atlanta PERM center followed with its first approval/s the following day.
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This report of the first PERM approvals has been confirmed by some pleased attorneys. The cases are being processed well within the stated processing timeframes; a significant relief and improvement over the initial experiences with the PERM system. For approximately the first month of PERM, cases were not making it through the decision matrix in order to receive a substantive decision. Those filing cases encountered a variety of problems, causing them to be rejected or denied within minutes of filing, without undergoing a substantive review. The DOL, through William Carlson, Chief, Foreign Labor Certification Unit for the DOL, has acknowledged that there were glitches in the system that needed to be rectified.
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According to DOL, since the PERM system began, March 28, 2005, approximately 15,000 employers have registered to file labor certification cases through the PERM system. As of the May 23rd meeting, a total of 3700 individual cases were in the system, either as saved draft applications or in other various stages. DOL acknowledges, however, that some of these could be duplicates. We at The Law Office of Sheela Murthy will keep MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers updated on PERM details as they become available.