Status of Labor Certifications at the BPCs : mid-Oct to mid-Nov 2005
Posted Nov 25, 2005
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At The Law Office of Sheela Murthy, we continue to track labor certification case approvals received at our firm from the Backlog Processing Centers (BPCs). Our most recent MurthyBulletin article tracking approvals, dated October 21, 2005, is Status of Labor Certifications at the BPCs : mid-Sep to mid-Oct 2005, available on MurthyDotCom. Unfortunately, the trend that we saw from October 19 through November 18, 2005, was that fewer cases were approved, compared to the two preceding months. We had only twelve cases approved by the BPC during the October 19 through November 18 timeframe.
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This is a marked decrease from the 29 approvals we obtained between September 19 and October 18, 2005. It is also a drop from the 20 approvals we received in the 30 days prior to September 19, 2005. New York is one state that was added to our list of states of original filing for which we have received approvals. We have heard of other New York case approvals as well.
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It is impossible to confirm whether our cases are representative of the universe of labor certification cases at the BPCs since no data has been released by the BPCs on this matter. We believe, however, that the trends that we see are based on a reasonable sample. We do know that, at The Law Office of Sheela Murthy, we represent clients throughout all regions of the U.S. and in most states. Our clients represent a wide range of occupations, but are primarily in professional, highly-skilled occupations. The vast majority of our BPC cases were filed using the RIR process, with the exception of some cases that were filed close to the March 28, 2005 deadline for the pre-PERM filings. All the cases for which we have received approvals from the BPCs in the last two months are RIR cases.

Conclusion
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It is disappointing not see as many approvals from the BPCs as we did when we first began receiving labor certification approvals. We hope that this is not a trend. It is particularly disconcerting since it is expected that productivity will decrease during the holiday season, but we would not have predicted such a drop this early. More of the approvals came from the Texas BPC than from the Pennsylvania BPC. We know that many people, both employers and employees, have long awaited progress on their labor certification cases. We will continue to monitor these cases and will share any BPC updates with MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers.