The Department of Labor has proposed to amend its regulations governing the filing and processing of labor certification applications for the permanent employment of foreign nationals in the United States. Currently, the labor certification process is an involved process that requires a coordinated effort between the State Workforce Agencies (SWA), the U.S. Department of Labor, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Throughout the country, backlogs in the SWAs and DOL have caused long delays in processing. In many cases, an application can take as long as three years to clear the DOL!

The DOL's proposed amendment would create a new system for filing and processing these applications and hopefully, speed the process to eliminate backlogs that have existed. Keep in mind that these are PROPOSED rules and have not been approved or implemented by the DOL. Because the DOL must give the public an opportunity to comment, many revisions to this proposal could occur.

The new system would require employers to recruit before filing the applications directly with the DOL. This means that SWA's will no longer monitor the recruitment process. Instead, they simply would provide prevailing wage determinations to employers.
Applications would be "instantly" approved through computer generated approvals, unless selected for audit. The employer would not be required to submit any documentation with its application, but would, however, be expected assemble supporting documentation to be provided in the event the application is selected for audit.

If an application is "randomly" selected for an audit, the employer will be required to submit documentation to verify the information in the application. The DOL will then review it and either:
certify the application; deny the application; or order supervised recruitment.