iCERT portal scheduled to reopen Monday

The Labor Department‘s iCERT portal posted an update Thursday evening regarding the current system outage.

Key points:

• The iCERT portal is scheduled to reopen at 2 p.m. EST Monday.
• According to a conference call the Labor Department held on Friday, those seeking services other than H-2B applicants should refrain from using the system until 3 p.m. to regulate demand. If the system goes down again Monday, a back-up plan will be discussed.
• The PERM labor certification system was not affected by the outage and remains operational.

Background: The outage began Jan. 1, the first day of the semi-annual filing period for H-2B temporary labor certifications, and was caused by a spike in demand for H-2B certifications. Thursday’s announcement indicated that the agency is currently testing the system to process a record number of applications and has made 50 servers available.

BAL Analysis: Employers should anticipate delays even after the system reopens and works through the large number of applications. The outage affects employers filing H-1B, H-1B1 and E-3 nonimmigrant petitions for which the labor condition application (LCA) is a prerequisite and PERM labor certification cases in which a prevailing wage determination is required.

This alert has been provided by the BAL U.S. Practice group. For additional information, please contact berryapplemanleiden@bal.com.

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