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| Effective January 1, 2010 the Department of Labor is going over to a new system for determining prevailing wages for PERM and H1B purposes. No longer will individual state workforce agencies provide this information. As of the first of the year, everything will be consolidated into the DOL’s national office in Washington, D.C. Initially, and for an indefinite interval, all prevailing wage requests (PWR) must be submitted in writing and mailed to the DOL office in Washington. The DOL will then issue a prevailing wage determination (PWD) and mail it back to the employer or the employer’s attorney. The notice of final rulemaking (Federal Register, Vol. 74, No. 232, Friday, December 4, 2009, Page 63796) states that this system will become mandatory on January 1, 2010. It will be the sole method for obtaining formal PWDs for PERM applications and H1B petitions. The DOL rule states that they intend to covert this to an electronic system at some point in the future, but they do not even provide an estimate as to when that might happen. Given the recent disaster involving labor condition application (LCA) e-filing, and the subsequent indefinite postponement of the incorporation of PERM filings into that same system, this is not surprising. The instructions for filing the new PWR form may be found at http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/pdf/ETA_Form_9141_General_Instructions.pdf, while the form itself may be downloaded at http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/pdf/ETA_Form_9141.pdf. Forms must be mailed or sent by courier to: U.S. Department of Labor-ETA National Prevailing Wage and Helpdesk Center Attn: PWD Request 1341 G Street, NW., Suite 201 Washington, DC 20005–3142 The final rule does not make any provision for sending PWRs by fax or e-mail. Employers and employees should expect delays as the DOL transitions to this new program. File PWRs well in advance of the time that they are needed. We have set up a thread in the Immigration-Information Discussion Forum to discuss this article. To post or read comments, please go to this link: http://www.immigration-information.com/forums/i-140-petitions/9703-discussion-thread-for-article-the-new-dol-prevailing-wage-request-determination-syst.html#post38534 |
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