Last Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White’s ruling dismissed changes the administration announced in October 2020 to the H-1B visa program, which included salary requirements on firms that employed skilled workers from overseas and placed new limits on specialty occupations.
As a result, the Department of Labor (DOL) issued guidance on how the agency would comply with the federal court orders. The guidance states that DOL will revert back to the government’s Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) wage data in use prior to October 8, 2020.
This will require DOL to make technical changes to the Foreign Labor Application Gateway (FLAG) system, which is the system that processes Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) and Prevailing Wage Determinations (PWDs).
DOL has provided the following timelines:
- LCA: Starting December 9, 2020, the FLAG system will accept LCAs using pre-October 8 OES prevailing wage data.
- PWD: Though prevailing wage requests may continue to be filed in the FLAG system, PWD processing is temporarily paused and will resume at approximately 8:30 am Eastern on December 15, 2020 using pre-October 8 OES wage data.
- Redetermination Requests for PWD: Employer may ask DOL to review and reissue PWDs that were issued using the higher wage data from the October 8 rule. Requests for review must be received on or before January 4, 2021, and it is unclear how long a redetermination of a PWD will take.
SW Law Group will keep you apprised of any further developments regarding this matter.