Press Room

Attorney's Corner

The need for an expedited and efficient labor certification process is of utmost importance to business, immigrant workers and public policy. Currently, between the SWAS and the Department of Labor, it is taking an estimated three years to adjudicate a labor petition.

The delay is extremely harmful to the business. The labor certification process is premised on the assumption that there is a shortage of US workers and that the immigrant will be paid the prevailing wage. Because a shortage of US workers exists, under the labor certification process, companies are permitted to contract immigrant workers and sponsor them for permanent residency.

It is difficult to phanthom how a three year processing period could help business fill the gap of shortage of US workers. In fact, from the time the US company petitions the foreign worker to work in the United States until the time the labor department approves the petition, the business would have undergone various business cycles, including periods of growth and downsizing.

Business owners need a degree of predictibility in creating their human resources strategy. A faster and leaner process for adjudication of labor certifications will provide the predictibility desired in the business world.

The immigrant benefits from the backlog reduction as well. A faster and leaner backlog reduction process will permit the immigrant and his or her family to make the appropiate plans to come to the United States. Under what could easily be labeled as a "three year wait" program, immigrants interested in working in the United States will search for jobs in other competitive economies around the world. A faster adjudication process will permit the immigrant and the family members to plan accordingly to come to the United States.

The government has a strong interest in faster adjudication of the labor certification process. Part of the labor certification process is to test the local labor market and determine the availaibility of US workers. In this global and information-based economy, business cycles tend to be of shorter time span. Thus, if the company tests the local labor market in the first year of starting the labor certification process, it cannot be guaranteed that three years later, the local labor economy will possess the same indicators.

The faster adjudication of labor certifications will reflect more accurately the economic trends of the labor market.

The backlog reduction program is an integral part of testing the labor market as close to real time as possible. The PERM regulations, when enacted, will provide a more accurate picture of the local labor market and will make labor certification processing even faster.