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Question:

In a prior ILW.COM conference re PERM a few months ago, one of the panelists said that he was not doing new non-identical PERM filings in the situation where the company had filed a labor cert under RIR or nonRIR and it was still pending. The attorney (it was either Angelo or Ron) suggested that the DOL would treat the second filing (the PERM application) as a new filing and administratively close the RIR or nonRIR filing. Is there any risk that this could happen?

Answer by Edward Litwin:

The Department of Labor has no regulatory authority to administratively close an RIR or non-RIR filing. They only have such authority where the filing is identical and it is requested that the original priority date be kept. My assumption is, however, that the Department of Labor will continue to do what was the past practice in many regions, that is, refuse to process both cases and ask the employer/attorney to withdraw one of them. If, however, as rumored, the PERM computers and the BRC computers are not talking, there is a good chance that the PERM processing centers will not know of the previous filing.