A major computer crash at the Alien Labor Certification Unit within the US Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration. The crash happened during the week of September 28th and shut down all processing nationwide of H-1B Labor Condition Applications, H-2A petitions, H-2B petitions, and permanent residency labor certification applications.

According to the DOL, the Unit's database crashed shortly after a key employee quit his position for a better job offer. No replacement had yet been hired and no one could be found immediately who had the knowledge to repair the problem.

The problem was fixed within a few days for all areas except the large Regions 2, 5 and 9. These regions account for as much as half of the nationwide workload for cases mentioned above. The shutdown for these regions is believed to be continuing.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association submitted a letter of protest to the ETA on October 21st protesting the continued shutdown noting that it is having a highly detrimental effect on the public.

H-1B Labor Condition Applications must, by law, be processed within 7 days. The backlog in Region 2, for example, are now almost a month. AILA noted that "At a time of great change to the H-1B program, the Department's lack of movement on the accumulated applications is appalling."

AILA has demanded to know DOL's action plan to address the problem. It has suggested manually approving the cases or outsourcing them to the other DOL regions where services are functioning. It is also requesting DOL authorize overtime and the use of contract labor to clear up the growing backlog.