PERM Approvals! The dam has broken

We received five PERM approvals today for cases filed in early November - less than five months!
The Department of Labor has published a six month goal for processing cases not subject to audit.  Hopefully this is a sign that they are beginning to meet that goal.

On the other hand, we received another approval last week for a case we had filed more than two years ago.  There was an audit request in that case - and we responded 23 months ago.   There is no sign yet that cases in the audit line are moving more quickly.

Prevailing Wage Delays...

A PERM application can't be filed without a prevailing wage determination ("PWD"), and as of January, 2010, the Department of Labor has centralized PWD requests at a single location.  We are beginning to see the results.  A PWD which might have taken a few days from a State Department of Labor now takes close to 60 days.  And DOL, in response to complaints, has said that 60 days is just what we can expect.

Making matters worse, attorneys are seeing errors in PWD, and correction of errors just adds to the processing time.