Attorneys, employers and foreign nationals have experienced inexplicable delays and erroneous denials of Labor Condition Applications (LCA) based on the Department of Labor's inability to verify that a particular Federal Employer Identification Number (FEIN) matches the corporate name used by the prospective employer on the LCA.  When verification data is sent to the DOL, it takes an additional waiting period to obtain LCA approval.  LCA approvals must be obtained before an H-1B petition can be filed.

DOL announced it has incorporated the PERM labor certification employer verification database into the iCERT System so that if an employer has had its existence verified in a prior PERM labor certification process, the FEIN information should be in the iCERT database.

In another improvement, assuming the employer and FN have several extra days, an employer not previously in iCERT can submit FEIN verification data to the Chicago "LCA Business Verification Team" at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it in advance of filing an LCA to speed up the FEIN verification process.

Attorneys have questioned why the DOL cannot check the same databases which attorneys check to make certain the corporate name matches the FEIN number and the corporate existence check.