Peru, got the following article a day ago. I don't know if read it already... anyhow, enjoy...

1. Highlights of PERM Meeting in Chicago - Jan 2005

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) held its first PERM training meeting
in Chicago, Illinois on January 11, 2005. To ensure that we stay
abreast of the latest information on PERM, we sent an attorney from The Law
Office of Sheela Murthy, P.C. to the session. This valuable information
is the latest available on backlog reduction and PERM. It should help
MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers in making their plans.

Update on Backlog Elimination Centers

The meeting began with a Backlog Elimination Center (BEC) update. There
are the two BECs in Philadelphia, PA and Dallas, TX, as well as two
"satellite" backlog centers - New York, NY (with Boston, MA) and San
Francisco, CA. The two satellites will stay open for approximately another
year. The oldest cases from the regional offices are at the BECs. Open
cases at the regions are not moving to the BECs. Each BEC has
approximately 200 contract staff members. The federal staff moved to the BECs
from the regional offices will make all final case decisions.

San Francisco had the largest volume of backlog cases, so 10,000 of
their cases went to Dallas and 10,000 to Philadelphia. The DOL is using
UPS for backlog shipments. The contract staff from Exceed Corporation is
responsible for getting all of the cases moved to their proper
locations. The current expectation is that there are an additional 200,000
cases from the states beyond those moved from the regions.

As of January 4, 2005, only 17 states had sent their backlogged cases
that were due on December 31, 2004. This is approximately 24,000 cases.
Larger states are slower because they have more cases to box.

Procedures at BECs

BEC operations have been making progress each day. There are many
challenges because of the large volume of cases. There is a brand new
software system that has glitches and a largely new staff that needs
training. To date, they have sent approximately 26,000 "45-day letters." These
are letters to potential employers essentially verifying whether or not
the employer wishes to pursue the case. Of these, 11,000 had
potentially unnecessary questions about the existence of the company because of
the insufficient database that was in use. They now have other databases
and they will continue to send out these 45-day letters. The DOL
requests that the 11,000 letters also be answered, as this is more efficient
than their having to send out revised letters.

When the BEC gets a case, it goes through data entry and then the
45-day letter is issued. When the response is received, the case is put into
one of the 2 processing streams (RIR or Regular), and those streams are
adjusted for FIFO (first-in / first-out order) on a routine basis.
Information is in the process of being set up for a public system. Right
now, the Boston and New York regional offices are the only locations with
accurate information available to the public. The initial data entry
that precedes issuance of the 45-day letter is under consideration for
possibly being abbreviated so that the files may more quickly be
identified as having arrived at the BECs. A national database is being
implemented so that it will be possible to call one BEC and get information
about the location of the file, regardless of which BEC has the file.

Efforts are currently focused on data entry. It does not appear that
cases are being processed as yet. The next step will be to share the BEC
software with New York / Boston and San Francisco, once more of the
programmatic problems have been worked out.

The DOL expects backlog procedures to be fully defined by the PERM
start date of March 28, 2005. Anything filed prior to PERM will be
considered a part of the backlog. Backlog elimination is estimated to take
approximately 24 to 30 months once PERM has begun. This, in part, depends
upon the number of people re-filing under PERM.

Expect DOL Transitional Guidances

The DOL expects to release two more guidances on transitional
procedures in the near future. The first will guide the states on procedures
once PERM has been implemented. This is expected to be published in the
next month. The second notice will outline which states will use the
Atlanta National Processing Center (NPC) and which will use the Chicago NPC
for PERM. Both guidances will appear in the Federal Register.

Temporary programs, like the H2B program, will move to Atlanta, GA and
Chicago, IL so that BECs will be able to focus on backlogs. This
transition has not been completed yet. DOL will issue guidance on handling
non-PERM cases received after March 28, 2005 (postmarked before March 28,
2005, etc).

What Triggers an Audit under PERM?

Under PERM, there are certain programmatic "flags" that will trigger
DOL case audits. Audits will be triggered by responses on the forms. The
DOL is using technology to detect anything odd, down to whether the
phone number provided for a company is a cell phone number.

Processing Timeframes under PERM

Most PERM cases are expected to be completed in 45 to 60 days, but this
processing time will not apply to those cases that are submitted by
mail. The system will assign a date to an eFiling automatically. Paper
filings will be date stamped.

Previous RIR or Regular Cases Re-Filed as PERM

The DOL will be posting information on the conversion to PERM of cases
previously filed under the regular LC or RIR programs. Re-filed
applications may take longer to process than other PERM cases that are filed
on the new ETA Form 9089. The time will depend upon how many of these
are received and where the original case files are located. Most likely,
they are going to have a relationship between the BEC database and the
PERM database to use technology as much as possible to check whether
the filings are identical - a requirement for retaining the original
priority date. DOL expects that re-filing a case should still result in a
faster labor certification processing than if the case is left at the
BEC and not re-filed. With priority date retrogression preventing EB3
cases from reaching the I-485 stage, this faster processing may not result
in any net gain in overall green card processing time for those
nationals from India, mainland China, and the Philippines affected by the EB3
retrogression of dates. For a detailed analysis of this topic, see our
January 21, 2005 MurthyBulletin article, PERM and EB3 Candidates – File
Regular LC Now!, available on MurthyDotCom.