The Department of State announced today that no more visa numbers would be made available to grant permanent residence (I-485) in the employment-based second preference immigrant visa category for persons born in India or China until possibly October 1, 2008. The reason is that CIS has used such a large block of the worldwide numbers freed up for EB2 cases for persons born in India and China that there is a danger that persons born in other countries will not have EB2 numbers available to them. This situation may last through the end of this fiscal year on September 30, 2008.

Further updates will be provided.

The specter of significant backlogs, which plagued the Department of Labor (DOL) for many years, looms again in the realm of PERM labor certification applications. After eliminating the monstrous backlog filed before March 28, 2005, employers and foreign national workers were promised 45 day adjudications for PERM. With cautious optimism, we tested the waters, transitioning from a paper filing system to an online filing system. During the first few years, DOL mostly kept its promise, the Chicago Department of Labor Office consistenly outperforming the Atlanta Department of Labor Office.