SUMMARY OF FINAL RULES FOR CONVERSION OF LABOR CERTIFICATION APPLICATIONS TO RIR REQUESTS

SUMMARY OF FINAL RULES FOR CONVERSION OF LABOR CERTIFICATION APPLICATIONS TO REDUCTION IN RECRUITMENT REQUESTS

With a view to reducing the huge backlog of labor certification (LC) applications presently with the State Employment Security Agencies (SESA), the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) of the Department of Labor, (DOL) has amended its regulations to permit employers to request, in certain circumstances, that LC applications filed on or before August 3^rd, 2001, be processed as a reduction in recruitment (RIR) request. In other words, cases that were not originally filed as RIR cases and which met with the appropriate criteria, can now be removed from the SESA’s processing queues and processed as RIR cases, without losing their original filing/priority date.

This regulatory change does not affect any of the substantive requirements for getting an RIR application certified nor does it materially affect any of the existing protections afforded to U.S. workers.
An employer may request an RIR conversion until the point that the SESA has placed the job order pursuant to section 656.21(f)(1) (20C.F.R.)
The date of the job orders placement shall be determinative in evaluating whether an RIR conversion request may be granted.
Where the employer has already commenced the mandated recruiting, an RIR request will not be entertained and all potential U.S. applicants must be considered based on those recruitment efforts.
If changes or corrections are needed in the application, SESA should resolve any item that needs to be corrected, by notifying the employer prior to transmitting the application to the certifying officer, and such applications may also be converted to RIR processing.

When a written request for conversion is received by the SESA, it will be added to the case file and the application will be removed from the regular LC queue and placed in the RIR queue. The Labor Department will waive its own lengthy procedures involving supervised recruitment and the application will be processed much more quickly by following the expedited RIR process.

This request must be accompanied by documentary evidence of good faith recruitment conducted within 6 months immediately preceding the date of the request.
Amendments, such as a change in address or salary, can be handled in the same manner that they currently are, i.e. by making the amendments directly on the form and initialing the changes or by submitting new application forms, as the case may be.
There will be no expedited processing of these conversion applications and they will be processed by regional offices in the order in which they are received.
There are no rules regarding notification to the petitioner with respect to the request for RIR conversion. But generally all requests will be granted and only where the occupation is on ‘schedule B’ (occupations specifically precluded from consideration under RIR processing) or the request is not timely, would the conversion request be denied.
The option to request that a LC application be converted to RIR processing applies only to applications that were initially filed on or before August 3^rd, 2001 (the date of the publication of the final rules.)

To conclude, the ETA has stressed that this proposed amendment is ‘simply a housekeeping rule’ to cope with the backlogs and thereby permit otherwise eligible applications to be processed as RIR applications even though they do not meet the current procedural requirement that the recruitment must have been conducted prior to filing the application. Instead of making the employer withdraw the original application and re-file it as an RIR, the employer can now convert it to RIR processing while at the same time allowing them to retain their original, all-important filing/priority date.

Click here to read details on Conversion Regulations For Reduction in Recruitment(RIR) Process Submitted by U.S. Department of Labor.

The information in this article is of a general nature and may not apply to any specific or particular circumstance. It is not to be construed as legal advice and does not establish an attorney-client relationship between The Law Offices of Cyrus S Nallaseth and the viewer.