Labor Certification System Reengineering and Potential Impact on China EB-2 Visa Numbers in the Future
June 2006 Visa Bulletin shows that the cut-off date for China EB-2 will move upto July 1, 2004. It was January 1, 2004 in May Bulletin. People will remember that the PERM labor certification system started on March 28, 2005 but BEC system started in October 2004. As affected by the transition from the old Regional processing system to BEC and afterwards to PERM system, the State labor certification offices (SWA) in 50 states and the six Regional offices started preparing transfer of files to BECs and practically halted processing of all the labor certification applications as early as August 2004. Besides, there are only limited number of cases of this period have been certified by the BECS, and most of the cases of these priority dates may have yet to be adjudicated by the BECs. Accordingly, statistically, the record may reflect that the number of labor certification applications that had been certified from September 2004 through May or June 2005 must have been extremely small. This raises one interesting question relating to the EB-2 cut-off date for China next several months. Considering the fact that a very small number of Chinese EB-2 can take out the EB-2 visa numbers during the next few months, common sense may dictate that the EB-2 number for China may continuously move ahead impressively even after June 2006, unless the State Department will have some unusual policy issues. Substitution of EB-2 labor certification may affect this process but may not affect the process drastically. This reporter wants to cross his fingers for the Chinese EB-2 professionals!