Immigration Law

Lawsuit Filed Against DOL

By Joel Stewart

In the next chapter of the DOL - Fragomen controversy, the firm of Fragomen, Delrey, Bernsen & Loewy, P.A., has filed a suit against DOL to prevent interference with its attorney-client relationship.

in actual fact, the DOL, in its attempts to bring order into the Labor Certification chaos, has over-stepped its bounds by creating a chilling effect in the attorney client relationship between Fragomen and its clients.

As has been written previously in this blog, the DOL prohibits attorneys from interviewing or considering US workers for employment. Nobody disagrees with this. However, the PERM process is so complicated, and requires so much technical understanding, that an attorney really needs to be involved in almost every stage and detail, short of interviewing and considering the applicants.

Fragomen and DOL have issued public statements which have clarified the question of attorney representation to some extent, but it may be that a lawsuit is really the only way for an objective, judicial determination.

Until clear guidelines are issued, all attorneys and employers are at peril in preparing, processing and filing applications for alien labor certification.

Fragomen also alleges that current policies are ultra-vires, since they contradict published regulations. That, no doubt, is true, and clarification of the regulations is long over-due.

Full post as published by Joel Stewart's Blog on August 10, 2008 (boomark / email).