The Foreign Labor Application Gateway, commonly known as FLAG, is the centralized hub for all immigration-related processes concerning employment-based applications, including PERM processing. FLAG serves as a comprehensive platform for submitting and managing prevailing wage requests, Labor Condition Applications (LCAs), and other essential immigration documentation.

FLAG recently updated its processing times and unfortunately, they remain lengthy and arduous.

Prevailing wage requests.

As of July 1, 2024, the Department of Labor (DOL) is adjudicating prevailing wage requests for PERM cases with a receipt date of December 2023. This would suggest that wage requests may start taking up to 7 months. However, at the time of writing this article, our office received two prevailing wage determinations that were filed in February 2024, meaning that processing times may be slightly better than the official estimates. Although obviously this could change at any time and employers should be prepared for longer wait times.

PERM processing times.

DOL is adjudicating PERMs filed in June 2023 and audited cases, in December 2022.

The average number of days to process PERM cases is listed as 388 days, approximately 13 months. Whereas audited cases take 493 days, closer to 17 months. These processing times are in line with what our office has been seeing over the last 6-12 months.

Although processing times remain somewhat the same, we remain hopeful for improvements in the future.

If you have any questions regarding the above, please do not hesitate to contact PLG Partner Chris Prescott at cprescott@patellegal.com.