USCIS Accepts H-1b Petitions with

Pending LCAs

USCIS Accepts H-1b Petitions with Pending LCAs - USCIS has announced that it will, for 120 days,  accept H-1b petitions without certified Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) in recognition of the Department of Labor’s (DOL) failure to timely adjudicate them. DOL regulations state that LCAs should be adjudicated within 7 business days of submission, but the new iCERT portal has been rife with problems, and adjudications often take longer. The USCIS Ombudsman recommended earlier this month that USCIS accept uncertified LCAs in recognition of the problem.

From November 4, 2009, through March 4, 2010, USCIS will accept H-1b Petitions filed with Labor Condition Applications that have been pending for at least 7 calendar days.  Petitioners must include the DOL’s email confirming receipt of the LCA as evidence of filing, and will have to wait for USCIS to issue a Request for Evidence before submitting a certified LCA. 

Although a welcome if modest accommodation for H-1b petitioners, USCIS has still failed to address the full scope of the problem. The greatest cause for LCA delay has been the thousands of erroneous denials based on the DOL’s false determination of mismatches between filers’ Federal Employee Identification Numbers (FEINs) and corporate names. DOL had at one point claimed this was the result of a faulty database supplied by a vendor, and stated that it would input the PERM FEIN data already on hand. This didn’t seem to fix the problem either. DOL has begun to accept employers’ emailed FEIN evidence in anticipation of LCA filing, but this too can add days to the process.

Employers pay USCIS nonrefundable filing fees of up to $2320 for each H-1b petition. That should be plenty of disincentive against filing of speculative petitions accompanied by unapprovable LCAs. Petitioning employers deserve better service given the stiff filing taxes they are compelled to pay.

Back to Top

<<Return