Practice Alert: Final Notice of OFLC Legacy Permanent Online System Decommissioning
The DOL Liaison Committee provides reminders after OFLC posted an alert regarding the decommission the legacy Permanent Online System on 12/1/24. Stakeholders must access and download documents by 11/30/24. After this date, all submissions should be emailed to the PLC Help Desk.
The AILA DOL Liaison Committee (Committee) met with the DOL’s Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC) before the AILA PERM Conference on September 27, 2024. During the meeting, the Committee discussed the decommissioning of the legacy PERM system.
As indicated in the reminder below, which is posted in an Important Announcement on the FLAG website, the OFLC website, and the Home Page of the legacy PERM system website, OFLC confirmed that it will be decommissioning the legacy PERM system on December 1, 2024, and it will not be extending the decommissioning date. OFLC indicated that a supermajority of the cases still pending in the legacy system are cases with appeals pending at the Board of Alien Labor Certification (BALCA). After the legacy system is decommissioned, employers (or their representatives) will need to contact the PERM Help Desk (not the FLAG Technical Help Desk) with any status inquiries or to supplement a pending case with additional documents or information. OFLC indicated that it will still send emails to employers (and their representatives) when there is a case update, such as a certification or denial. If an employer has a PERM appeal pending with BALCA, the Committee would encourage employers (and their representatives) to track the status of the appeal on the DOL’s Office of Administrative Law Judge's website. When BALCA issues a decision, the employer (or its representative) may then want to contact the PERM HelpDesk to ensure that OFLC is processing the case based on the BALCA decision.
OFLC also indicated to the Committee that it strongly encourages employers and their representatives to review their legacy PERM accounts prior to December 1, 2024, and to download any data that they may need in the future. After December 1, 2024, when the legacy system is decommissioned, employers or their representatives will not be able to contact the PERM HelpDesk to obtain data from their legacy system accounts. Instead, the employer or their representative will have to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with DOL. OFLC could not predict how long it would take for DOL to respond to such a FOIA request but did indicate that there would be a significant delay in the employer receiving the requested data from DOL.