Immigration Council Urges U.S. Department of Labor to Ensure Fairness

Washington, D.C. - Recently, the American Immigration Council and the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) filed an amicus curiae brief in Simply Soup Ltd. d/b/a NY Soup Exchange, ETA Case No. A-08322-06241, 2012-PER-00940, urging the Board of Alien Labor Certification Appeals to reaffirm that due process and fundamental fairness are essential components of the PERM adjudication process.

In this case, the Certifying Officer (CO) denied the employer’s application for failure to comply with the regulation that requires the employer to report certain information about the employer’s efforts to test the U.S. labor market before sponsoring a foreign national. Yet, the record showed that a page was missing from the recruitment report, which meant the CO had not received all of the recruitment information the employer had prepared. Amici asked the Board to affirm that the CO is required to request supplemental documentation, as the PERM regulatory framework already provides, when the CO can determine the employer’s compliance with the documentation requirements from the record, including that the missing information existed at the time the employer filed the PERM application and was part of the supporting documentation for the application. Due process and fundamental fairness are served when the CO decides whether a PERM application is sufficient on the merits instead of ignoring existing evidence.

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