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Hi Peru
I posted the following article before. I don't know if you've seen it before.
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.
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