PERM - Labor Certification Sample Cases

We filed a Labor Certification with SWA CT (State Workforce Agency, Connecticut) in May 2003. Upon checking the status in February 2005, our office was informed that the case was closed, as we had not responded to a request sent by the SWA via fax. 

We informed SWA that our office had not received the request. The case analyst of SWA told us that he had a confirmation of the fax transmittal.

In our conversation with the SWA, we tried to convince the case analyst, that had we received the RFE we would most certainly have responded to it in a timely manner. The urgent nature of the case would have compelled us to file the response at the earliest as 6 years limit on our client’s H-1B was approaching fast.

The case analyst suggested our office to send a request in writing.  The case manager from our office who was working on the case provided an affidavit to the effect that our office had not received any requests from the SWA.  We also requested that our case be re-opened and the new RFE be mailed to us. 

Upon checking the status after a month we were informed that the decision of the SWA was still the same and the case was closed.  SWA then suggested that we should re-file the case under PERM.  

This matter was then given to Rajiv to handle, who encouraged us to follow it through further and not just accept the SWA response.  In his view, their response was legally incorrect.  He spoke with the supervisor at SWA CT, who informed us that they do not have the authority to re-open the case in these circumstances. He then spoke to the responsible senior officer at US Department of Labor (USDOL).  Finally, the supervisor at USDOL asked us to forward her the affidavit together with the documents that we had originally mailed to SWA.