WorldCity Business Magazine

New era in immigration law begins with a PERM

by Deirdre Nero and Philip Guo

It isn’t just about hair any more. Nowadays, when you hear the term “PERM” especially if you are among a group of foreigners, business owners, or lawyers what they are likely referring to is “Program Electronic Review Management”, the new electronic method of submitting a Labor Certification application for the permanent employment of a foreign worker. Labor Certification is the first step in obtaining a Green Card based on employment, and has been around in various incarnations for many years.

The PERM system, which made its debut on March 28, 2005, was created to enact new rules promulgated by the Department of Labor last December. PERM signifies the beginning of a new era in Immigration Law as yet another once-paper-heavy process turns hightech. Internet and computer savvy people of the world rejoice.

There are many skeptics in the legal community who are bemoaning the virtual shortcomings of this new system and methodology, which is not beyond reason considering the infamous reputation of the Labor Certification process and the Immigration service as a whole. But PERM already has some fans, among them the authors, who are cautiously optimistic because of the promised speed and ease that the PERM system is designed to provide. In fact, the Department of Labor was so bold as to promise decisions on PERM applications in 60-90 days. “Impossible!” cried the immigration lawyers, “a Labor Certification under the old system took years.”

As immigration lawyers around the country with enough courage to brave the new electronic frontier of PERM began filing the applications, horror stories of automatic denials spread like wildfire. The community waited.and waited. Nobody heard anything about approvals, just denial after denial after denial. But then, on May 23, 2005, the impossible happened. The approvals began to arrive in the anxious (and perhaps nervously sweaty) hands of the lawyers. It was true: an approved Labor Certification in less than 90 days.

The authors will let you in on a secret: it is all in the meticulous preparation of the online application.

Not only must you know how to work a computer with sufficient ease, but you must be sure that all the requirements for the pre-filing recruitment of potential U.S. workers is done in the exact manner prescribed in the new law.

We set out to conquer this new system and take it apart from top to bottom so we could then put everything together in the correct order and formulation. We dissected, poked, prodded, and prepared trial runs on the system to learn it well before anything was at stake when we clicked the mouse.

After this preparation, all we needed was a client brave enough to be our guinea pig in this PERM experiment. Luckily, one such individual (who has since been followed by dozens of others) stepped forward. With the help of a cooperative and computer literate employer, both of which are essential to the PERM process, we embarked on the unknown.

We waitedand on June 1, 2005 the PERM was approved. Ours became one of the first in the state of Florida and the entire country to be approved. Now, after only two months of suspense, our brave client can immediately begin the process of applying for her Green Card.

This new process is not without its problems, among the most glaring of which is the need for the employer to be computer savvy, which seems like an odd new form of discrimination. Nonetheless, the program is very promising and likely to improve as the technical glitches get ironed out. In fact, some of the early problems have already been identified and either fixed or explained to users.

PERM is here to stay. Maybe those computer classes you have been meaning to enroll in for the last three years are finally going to pay off.