Progress on Status of the PERM Program
Posted Jan 30, 2004

The President signed into law the legislation that includes the Department of Labor (DOL) budget on January 23, 2004. As we reported in our January 16, 2004 MurthyBulletin article, PERM and Backlog Reduction tied to 2004 Budget, the DOL budget is significant for the PERM program, as the budget is necessary to move PERM forward. The PERM program will completely change the labor certification process through use of online processing and greatly expedited procedures. [Those interested in PERM can find articles on the subject in the PERM Section of MurthyDotCom.]

Because the DOL budget now has been passed, we expect that the DOL will submit the PERM regulation to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The OMB must clear the regulation before it can be published in the Federal Register. The OMB process can take up to 90 days. The regulation will be effective 120 days after publication in the Federal Register. Therefore, those people who are closely following PERM will have to wait for the DOL to send the regulation to OMB, the OMB to process the regulation, and the Federal Register to publish the regulation.

We note that those with pending labor certifications may also benefit from the DOL budget, if the backlog reduction plan goes into effect. This program, designed to clear out the backlog of labor certification cases, was also on hold awaiting the budget.

As PERM is within six months to a year of becoming reality, those who want to file for labor certification using current procedures need to take action very soon. To pre-advertise and use the RIR procedure, the case generally must begin four to six months in advance of filing. It is always better to allow more than the minimum time. Once PERM is put into place, the existing labor certification procedures will no longer be available for new cases.

We will continue to follow this important issue and update our MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers with any new developments.