I am pleased to announce that I have joined the Immigration Practice Group of Fowler White Boggs, PA, a statewide firm in Florida, with offices in Tampa, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Fort Meyers and Fort Lauderdale. Founded in 1943, the firm maintains its main office in Tampa. The site may be found at www.fowlerwhite.com

The Leader of the Immigration Practice Group is William J. Flynn, who is located in the Tampa office: http://www.fowlerwhite.com/who-70.html

The firm provides a wide range of immigration services, with an emphasis on employment based applications, including applications for permanent residence or temporary work visas.

Applicants may apply under five preference categories.

The first preference includes persons of extraordinary ability, outstanding professor or researcher, and multinational executives and managers. These persons do not require a PERM form (approval from Department of Labor to work in the US). There are usually no backlogs in availability of visas for first preference applicants.

The second preference includes persons with advanced degrees (Master's Degree or higher, or a Bachelor's Degree and at least five years of progressive experience) or persons of exceptional ability. A PERM form is required for these persons, unless the applicant receives a National Interest Waiver or qualifies for pre-certification under Schedule A of the US Department of Labor. There may be a backlog for applicants from certain oversubscribed countries such as China and India.

The third preference includes persons who have a minimum of two years experience, training or post-secondary education. These applicants require a PERM form, and availability of visas may be backlogged.

The fourth preference is for Special Immigrants, a category which includes ministers of religion and religious workers. Due to the strict requirements for this preference category, some applicants may prefer to apply under categories 1-3 above, if qualified.

The fifth preference is for investors who will create job opportunities for 10 or more US workers. This category requires an investment of $500,000.00 to $1,000,000.00.

The firm endeavors to place all clients in the highest category possible, so as to eliminate unnecessary backlogs and delay in processing. Since applications and petitions under the preference categories are not mutually exclusive, It is possible to apply for more than one type at a time.

In addition to applicants for permanent residency, Fowler White Boggs also provides services to persons who wish to work temporarily in the US. Work visas are currently available for temporary visitors, multinational transferees, persons with university degrees, as well as trainees and interns, athletes and artists, journalists, traders or investors, unskilled agricultural or other kind of labor, and religious workers.

I will look forward to collaborating with my colleagues on PERM and other matters, as in the past. I may be reached at the Fort Lauderdale Office: 954-772-7600. A bulletin was recently posted on the Fowler White Boggs website: http://www.fowlerwhite.com/when-press-Joel-Stewart-Immigration-Lawyer.html

It's no secret that O*Net is a constantly changing database, with new interpretations appearing almost every day of the week!

Those of you who research occupations on the O*Net for PERM applications have probably noticed that the Job Zone Levels, title, descriptions, and even the occupations themselves are subject to sudden and unannounced changes.

The result is may be a series of inconsistencies. For example, if you select an occupation for recruitment, by the time your recruitment is completed, the O*Net information may have changed.

No only may the O*Net information change (Job Zone Level, SVP, "normal" requirements in the US, etc.), but one colleague reports that a SWA assigned an O*Net number for an occupation in connection with a prevailing wage request.

However, when the recruitment was completed, the Certifying Officer denied the application, because when the CO looked at the O*Net occupation, it had disappeared from the internet!

The CO, of course, is not responsible for the placement or removal of O*Net numbers on the internet.

My colleague was told to refile the case with a corrected number and prevailing wage, however, the application would be outside the 180 day period for advertising. Everything would have to be done from the beginning.

To protect yourself, you should always print out the page from the internet with the date and time appearing on the bottom of the page.

This advice also applies to printouts of 30-day job orders from the internet. The State Workforce Agencies are prone to modify the job orders, add or subtract information, or even to cancel them prior to the 30-day period requested.

The DOL will not sympathize with an employer whose job order does not meet the letter of the law, even if it was not the fault of the employer.

The DOL recommends printing out internet data with the start date and end date of the event.

For example, if the Employer has advertised the position on a website, or given Notice of the filing of the application on its internal web, the first and last day should be kept as proof.

Although most employers keep only the first and last day, a very careful employer may print out each and every day. This would be 30 days for the job order with the SWA, 10 days for the internal web posting, and all dates for which internet ads may have appeared.

The internet ads would be used normally for professional positions, which require additional recruitment. Remember that the basic recruitment is two Sunday ads plus a 30-day job order with the SWA. The professional positions, however, require three additional forms of recruitment, which may include internet ads.

The most popular internet ads are placed with newspapers, as they offer electronic internet ads in a package which also includes an ad in the paper form of the newspaper. Such advertisements count for the basic newspaper ad (on Sunday) and also for the additional professional recruitment.