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The government shutdown has many immigrants concerned. There’s good news and bad news, depending upon the type and processing stage of your application.
USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Service) will continue to accept and process all applications as well as remain open for customer service calls. The only program unavailable during the government shutdown is E-Verify for employment verification. Therefore, your pending applications will continue processing within the usual timeframes. And you may continue to submit any new applications; however, filing new applications that require DOL approvals before filing (see below) might be delayed.
DOL (Department of Labor) will neither accept nor process any applications or related materials (such as audit responses), it receives, including Labor Condition Applications (LCA), Applications for Prevailing Wage Determination, Applications for Temporary Employment Certification, or Applications for Permanent Employment Certification. The iCERT Visa Portal System, used for many immigration functions, would become inactivated and users will not be able to access the system.
The DOL shutdown is important to many visa and green card applicants because:
- LCA are required for H-1B and H-2B petitions; therefore, filing new H-1B and H-2B petitions will be delayed because of the unavailability of the LCA processing.
- Prevailing wage determinations are required for labor certification applications and typically take two months to process; therefore, new labor certification applications will be delayed.
- PERM labor certification applications, both new and pending, will experience processing delay.
Badmus Law Firm will continue to monitor this situation and provide further updates as needed.
This information is provided as an educational service by Badmus Law Firm. If you have questions about immigration rules that affect you, you are invited to call us at 214-393-4917 or click here to schedule a consultation.