On September 29, 2004, the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) informed the State Workforce Agency of their intentions to open additional Backlog Processing Centers in Philadelphia and Dallas. 

All currently unopened and unprocessed permanent labor certification cases were to be sent to the centers in order to assist in clearing the huge backlog the agencies have been experiencing. The plan was set to use a first-in, first-out system so that the oldest cases that were still unprocessed would be processed first. 

In the memorandum sent to the State Workforce Agency on December 3, 2004 by Chief of the Division of Foreign Labor Certification William Carlson, details to the shipping of these unprocessed cases were laid out.  Because the agencies were working on the first-in, first-out system, shipping is scheduled in two shipments.

The first of these shipments is to consist of those backlogged cases whose dates register before 2003 and are unopened and un-processed.  These cases must be sent to the appropriate new backlog centers before Dec. 31, 2004.

The Second shipment is to include all other cases that have not been opened or processed to this date and must be sent to the appropriate center by SWA before March 31 of 2005.

The memorandum also included technical information concerning which new backlog center, Philadelphia or Dallas, State Workforce Agencies in each state should send their cases to as well as detailed instructions on how to organize the backlogged cases, label the boxes, ship the boxes and notify Team Exceed, the agency’s contractor, of shipment.