DOL to Release Instructions for Conversions to RIR (12/13/06)

At present, employers with pending traditional labor certification applications may opt to convert their cases to Reduction in Recruitment (RIR) so long as the Department of Labor (DOL) has not issued recruitment instructions on the case. The fear has been that an employer might go though the time and expense of recruitment to convert to the RIR system, only to find that recruitment instructions had been issued and the recruitment efforts were now useless.

In an effort to encourage conversation to RIR, the DOL has announced that it will be creating a “safe period” of time during which employers may convert their pending traditional labor certification applications to Reduction in Recruitment (RIR). Employers will be able to notify the DOL that they plan to submit a conversion request, and then will have a specified amount of time to actually submit the conversion request including the evidence of recruitment. During this safe period of time, the employer will be protected to go ahead and conduct its recruitment without concern about receiving the recruitment instructions and thus having the conducted recruitment in vain. It is important to note that the “safe period” will not be long, as the DOL does not want to stop the recruiting order process on its backlog reduction efforts for long.

The DOL announcement, with more specific instructions, is expected to come during the week of December 18, with the window of opportunity for notifying DOL starting to run immediately. Again, the specifics of this window are not known at this time, but as soon as the announcement is released, we will provide an update.

In the interim, if you have any questions, we encourage you to contact your DLGPA attorney directly or our firm at contact@dlgpa.com.