STATUS AND EFFECTIVE DATE OF THE PERM REGULATION

[ 02/25 02:58 来源：美国中文在线 ]

1.1 What is the status of the PERM regulation?

The final PERM regulation has now been published in the Federal Register. This brings the new labor certification system one step closer to implementation. The Program Electronic Review Management system, commonly known as PERM, is an attestation and audit structure under which recruitment takes place prior to the filing of the application for labor certification; the system is intended to provide relief from the enormous labor certification backlogs that have accumulated in major jurisdictions.

1.2 When will PERM take effect?

The regulation will take effect on March 28, 2005, ninety days after publication. The new prevailing wage laws will take effect several weeks earlier, on March 8, 2005.

1.3 On a very basic level, what is PERM and how will it change things?

PERM is an attestation and audit process whereby employers seeking permanent labor certification conduct advertising and recruitment prior to filing the labor certification application. Once the regulation takes effect, labor certification applications will be filed online at a dedicated DOL website or will be sent by mail to one of two national processing centers. Cases will be filed using a new application form, as discussed below, which will contain both basic labor certification and prevailing wage information. It is expected that applications will take an estimated 45 to 60 days to adjudicate. However, some cases will be selected for auditing by Department of Labor personnel, either randomly or because responses to certain questions on the application trigger a need for additional information or supervised recruitment. When a case is selected for audit, processing times will likely exceed the 45- to 60-day estimate.

1.4 Should employers do anything differently now?

Now that the PERM regulation has been published, employers may wish to begin advance preparation for the implementation of the new system and conduct recruitment with an eye toward filing new cases as PERM cases, as well as possibly re-filing pending cases as PERM cases. Under the current system, employers proceed through the labor certification process using either the traditional filing method, under which the employer’s recruitment process is supervised by the Department of Labor, or the reduction in recruitment (RIR) method, a process under which the labor certification application is adjudicated using results from recruitment already carried out by the employer. PERM will replace these two filing methods with one new standardized system.

Given the visa backlog situation and other factors, it may still be advisable to move ahead on filing cases via traditional or RIR processing because of specific timing and eligibility issues such as visa number retrogression in the third employment-based visa preference category, possible “age-out” situations for dependants nearing the age of twenty-one, and uncertainties regarding the effect of PERM re-filings on extensions of H-1B classification past the sixth year. Though the final PERM regulation is less restrictive in some respects than the proposed version of the rule, some eligibility criteria have been tightened. One area that we are examining more closely is a change to the exceptions to the prohibition on using experience gained with the same employer. While the proposed rule would have created an absolute prohibition on using experience gained with the same employer, the final rule permits some exceptions that, though similar to the current exceptions, appear to be more narrowly drawn. This is discussed in more detail below.