Category: PERM

New York State Launches a New Platform for SWA Job Orders

Posted by: Park Evaluations

As Park closely monitors State Workforce Agency (SWA) updates, we aim to keep our clients and partners informed about changes impacting recruitment and compliance processes. One important requirement that companies face when hiring foreign employees is posting job openings in the appropriate state-specific SWA portal. These postings ensure that local job seekers have fair access to available opportunities and help employers meet Department of Labor (DOL) recruitment guidelines. While the DOL requires job orders to remain live for 30 consecutive days, each state has its own set of rules and requirements that must be followed. Some require salary ranges, others request benefit details, and some may include occupation-specific instructions. Due to these differences, staying aware of state updates is essential, ...

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Atlanta Journal-Constitution Going Digital

Posted by: Park Evaluations

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the latest major daily newspaper to transition to digital only, with its final print edition scheduled for December 31, 2025. This raises concerns for PERM recruitment in the Atlanta metro area, since current regulations do not allow digital editions to satisfy the requirement for two separate Sunday ads in a newspaper of general circulation. So, what happens now? When a paper announces it is going digital, the Park team immediately begins researching alternative options for every affected area. We contact all available newspapers in each market and confirm their circulation and print schedules to ensure we have accurate options for clients. For example, in Cobb County, Georgia, where the AJC was previously used, we will begin ...

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Schedule A Group II Explained: A Shortcut to Permanent Residency

Posted by: Park Evaluations

By: Shela Ward When it comes to U.S. immigration, most employment-based green card applicants face a big hurdle in proving there aren’t qualified American workers available for the job. The standard PERM labor certification process can be long, complicated, and stressful, involving a time-consuming labor market test. Schedule A Group II is a special category of green cards that provides a shortcut for certain individuals with exceptional ability in the sciences or arts. What is Schedule A Group II? Instead of going through the lengthy recruitment process, Schedule A Group II allows employers to sponsor individuals directly for a green card. To qualify, the individual must receive a job offer for a position requiring their exceptional ability and demonstrate proof of their exceptional ...

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A Historical Look at PERM: How Labor Certification Evolved in the U.S. 

Posted by: Park Evaluations

By: Anna Martins Longo Pereira The PERM labor certification process may feel like a box-checking exercise today, but its history reflects decades of effort by the U.S. government to strike a balance between meeting economic needs and protecting opportunities for U.S. workers. To understand where PERM stands now—and why it matters so much for employment-based immigration—it helps to trace how we got here.  The Early Roots of Labor Certification Labor certification was born out of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952. Section 212(a)(b) required that foreign workers could only be hired when no qualified, willing, and available U.S. worker existed, and that wages would not be undercut. Employers needed to test the U.S. labor market to prove ...

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PERM Audit Triggers and How Park Can Help

Posted by: Park Evaluations

By: Amy Frederickson The Department of Labor randomly selects approximately 30 percent of PERM filings to be audited each fiscal year. In addition to these randomized audits, the department issues targeted audits to more closely evaluate PERM applications that set off alarm bells. Increasing rates of PERM application denials over the past few years underscore that the Department of Labor is not only more frequently rejecting applications outright but also increasing their issuance of audits and intensifying their scrutiny of responses. While several arguments surface as to why PERM denials and audits are increasing, there is a general consensus that this enhanced scrutiny stems from mounting concerns that foreign workers are being unfairly selected for employment over U.S. citizens: a worry that ...

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Navigating Print Sunday Ads for PERM Recruitment: Common Questions and Best Practices

Posted by: Park Evaluations | in , ,

By: Hali Francis For both professional and non-professional positions, print Sunday ads are a required part of the permanent labor certification (PERM) recruitment process. However, meeting this requirement often raises many questions. Below, we’ve compiled some of the most common inquiries, the applicable regulations, and how we at Park Advertising handle these situations. Do the two Sunday ads have to be consecutive? While we at Park Advertising typically run Sunday ads on consecutive weeks, this is not a specific regulatory requirement. The regulation states that an advertisement must be placed on two different Sundays in a newspaper of general circulation in the area of intended employment that is most appropriate for the occupation and is likely to attract qualified U.S. workers [20 CFR ...

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Supervised Recruitment

Posted by: Park Evaluations

By: Jeff Wunsch and Angela Ladisla The Department of Labor periodically requests job ads to be posted using specific media outlets, typically a series of online job boards and trade journals. These cases are referred to as 'supervised recruitment.’ The DOL provides specific instructions regarding the ad text, the media outlets to be used, and the duration/length of the ads. Supervised recruitment is more thorough and requires more attention/monitoring than the standard recruitment process. This requires a draft advertisement of the job opportunity submitted to the DOL within 30 days of posting. We say it is crucial that you must be attentive to every detail (especially the requested start date/posting period) and work closely with the Park Project Manager handling the case. Park ...

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SWA Site Outages

Posted by: Park Evaluations

By: Lauren Ray Anything that interrupts recruitment can be a headache. Our team does their best to lessen the impact of unexpected situations like SWA outages. Through this post, you’ll get a glimpse of how Park deals with these situations. What are SWAs? State Workforce Agency websites are run by each individual state. Job openings are posted and advertised on these platforms. As a part of the PERM process, it is required by the DOL to post on a SWA site for a minimum of 30 days. What does it mean when a SWA site is down? When a SWA site goes down, it means that it is inaccessible. Sometimes the site is down for maintenance, other times they’ve gone down due to cyber attacks ...

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Wage Transparency Information for States that Require Salary in Ad Texts

Posted by: Park Evaluations

By: Rachel von Habsburg Wage transparency is legislation introduced at the state level to ensure fair practice of sharing employee compensation. Posting salaries and how pay decisions are made ensures workplace equity among potential applicants and current employees. The language required varies from state to state, and Park stays up to date on any new pay transparency laws that are enacted. California is a great example of a state that currently enforces wage transparency for open job postings to the public. They require that employers with 15 or more employees must include a pay scale for job postings. Park quality checks all the ad text received by our clients to ensure that they are compliant with these regulations. For example, ...

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Misprinted Ads

Posted by: Park Evaluations

By: Abigail Heffner When Park advises newspapers that an advertisement is ready and approved to run, we send them the approved proof and exact wording of the ad needing to run. We also require that newspaper vendors send us a firm confirmation that the ad has been placed. However, vendor actions are beyond our control, and unfortunately, there are times when an ad runs incorrectly or not at all. This can occur for a few reasons. Sometimes, there is simply human error, and newspaper contacts forget to submit the ad for placement on their end. Other times, there is a separate layout department that makes unapproved changes to make the ad fit on the page. If the ad didn't run at all, ...

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