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NEW ADMINISTRATION COULD DELAY IMPLEMENTATION OF PROPOSED LABOR CERTIFICATION PROGRAM
During the first few days of the new Bush administration, Andrew H. Card, Jr., Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff, issued a memorandum to ensure that regulations issued during the last few weeks of the Clinton administration are approved by the new one.  All federal agencies have been directed to: (1) send no proposed or final regulation to the Federal Register unless and until it is reviewed and approved by a Bush appointee; (2) withdraw regulations that have been sent to the federal register but not yet published; and (3) postpone for 60 days the effective date of regulations that have been published but have not yet taken effect. 

One regulation that will be effected by this is the one that would implement the Department of Labor's PERM program, which will replace the current labor certification process.  The Department of Labor had planned to have the PERM program in place during fiscal year 2001, and had indicated that the regulations were ready for their final clearance for publication. 

A new Assistant Secretary of Labor must now approve these regulations, which have already been delayed repeatedly, for the Employment and Training Administration, a branch of the Labor Department.  This could result in some changes being made to the program, and will certainly cause another delay before the PERM program becomes active. 
Some observers are speculating that the H-1B regulations issued last month were published in anticipation of just such a Bush directive. That may also be why the regulations were set to take effect on January 19th, the day before Bush was sworn into office. The regulations have been widely criticized by many in the business community as being overly restrictive.