Wildes & Weinberg Conducts Workshop on New Department of Labor iCERT Portal
Wildes & Weinberg continually strives to keep abreast of all developments that may affect its clients and invests substantial time and resources into the training and development of its staff.
To that end, we recently conducted an in-house workshop on the new Department of Labor iCERT Portal.
The iCERT portal is a new website being phased in by the Department of Labor for the filing of on-line applications. It is presently available for the filing of Labor Condition Applications (a prerequisite to the filing of an H-1B visa petition) and later in the year is expected to be expanded to include filing of PERM applications for alien labor certifications.
The workshop was conducted by Dave Lazaar, our in-house Department of Labor expert, and Paul Viola, our data and systems manager. Dave and Paul spent several weeks reviewing the new system, developing the best approach to its utilization by our staff and determining the implications it may have on our clients.
With regard to Labor Condition Applications, while the new system does not in any way give the Department of Labor more authority in initiating LCA audits, it could potentially provide them with much more information in tracking an employer’s patterns and practices once an audit has begun. With that in mind, we have determined it is necessary to redouble our efforts with regard to working with our clients to ensure that they employ a consistent, thoughtful approach to both filing LCAs and maintaining the necessary Public Access Files.
We plan to conduct another thorough review and workshop once the PERM module of the iCERT portal becomes available later in the year.
Dave Lazaar discusses the iCERT system with our attorneys and paralegals