Labor Substitution Cases Wrongly Rejected
Posted Aug 10, 2007
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Following the elimination of labor certification (LC) substitution, effective July 16, 2007, there have been numerous reports from members of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) regarding rejections of timely-filed I-140 petitions with requests for LC substitutions and amendments. These cases have been wrongly rejected due to a missing original labor certification, even though the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) already has the original from a prior I-140 filing from the same employer, in another file at the USCIS. There is a solution proposed to overcome this problem, as explained below in the case of the Texas Service Center (TSC).
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USCIS Suggests Procedures for Refiling
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In order to avoid a subsequent I-140 petition rejection, the TSC recommends that petitioners refile petitions rejected in error, by packing two envelopes, with this notation on the inner envelope:

DO NOT OPEN IN THE MAILROOM
ATTN : MORRIS WHITACRE

TSC asks that a copy of the rejection notice be included with the resubmission, so that they can track and resolve the problem. It is also necessary to include proof of a timely original filing of the I-140 labor certification substitution request for such cases. That is, it is necessary to prove that the labor substitution request was made prior to the law terminating the acceptance of those requests, and then wrongly rejected, in order to request processing of the LC substitution case after the deadline has passed.
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Background Articles on LC Substitution Elimination Regulation
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As regular readers of MurthyDotCom and the MurthyBulletin know, the termination of labor certification substitution cases effective July 16, 2007 has been reported in many articles available on MurthyDotCom, including our July 12, 2007 article Labor Substitutions May Reach USCIS on July 16, 2007.