The Department of Labor is proposing to amend its regulations governing the filing and processing of labor certification applications for the permanent employment of aliens in the United States to implement a new system for filing and processing such applications. The proposed rule would also amend the regulations governing the employer's wage obligation under the H-1B program. The new system would require employers to conduct recruitment before filing their applications directly with an ETA application processing center on application forms designed for automated screening and processing. State Workforce Agencies (SWA's) would provide prevailing wage determinations to employers. Employers would be required to place a job order with the SWA which would be processed the same as any other job order placed by employers. SWA's would no longer be the intake point for submission of applications and would not be involved in processing the applications as they are now in the present system. The combination of prefiling recruitment, automated processing of applications, and elimination of the role of the SWA's in the processing of applications will yield a large reduction in the average time needed to process labor certification applications and are expected to eliminate the need to periodically institute special, resource intensive efforts to reduce backlogs which have been a recurring problem.
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