Application for Permanent Employment Certification (ETA Form 9089)

Instructions for Recent Changes to Electronic Data Entry

November 14, 2006

Employers seeking to hire foreign workers to work permanently in the United States (U.S.) have the option of filing an ETA Form 9089 electronically or by mail to the United States Department of Labor (DOL).  The DOL Employment and Training Administration’s Office of Foreign Labor Certification (OFLC) strongly recommends that employers file electronically.  Electronic filing, by its nature, is faster and will ensure employers provide all required information, since an electronic application can not be submitted if the required fields are not completed.

The OFLC recently upgraded the electronic data entry process as part of its efforts to continuously improve customer service and ensure greater accuracy in permanent labor certification applications submitted for processing.  The information collection items and data entry workflow of the ETA Form 9089 has not changed in any way.  The electronic application still has 12 steps through which the customer must navigate to complete the form.  However, the Permanent On-Line System (www.plc.doleta.gov) will now display Warning messages when one or more validation edits are triggered, and provide customers with the opportunity to correct typographical errors or inadvertent omissions in the application before it is submitted for processing.

For example, if the employer, when completing section I. recruitment information, part c, enters a Monday date (e.g., 09/25/2006) for the date of first advertisement in a newspaper of general circulation, the Permanent On-Line System will display the following warning message at the end of data entry for section I:

When customers receive this message, please use the directions below to help reconcile this and any other validation edit errors that may during the course of completing the ETA Form 9089.

Directions on How to Correct Typographical Errors

1. In order to make modifications to the ETA Form 9089 data and to fix the validation error (in this example, section I-10), click the button.Because this particular typographical error occurred on the first page of section I, which is a multi-page data entry section, the customer should hit the button in order to get back to Step of the ETA Form 9089. At this point, the customer can make the modification to the data and click the button(s) again to advance to the next section.If there is still an error, you will see another Warning message displayed on the screen.
2. If you’d like to continue without making changes to the ETA Form 9089 data, the customer should click the button.In this example, taking this action will allow the customer to advance to Step without modifying the data.However, the warning message will be retained by the system and may result in the application being denied after submission to the DOL.

Important Reminder: When working on a section of the ETA Form 9089 that contain multiple steps (e.g., section H is Steps and ), the customer will not receive the Warning message(s) until the end of that section.That is, a typographical error made on Step of section H will not be displayed as a Warning message until you try to navigate from Step of section H to Step of section I. The customer should click on the button, initially, and then the button in order to get back to the appropriate step of the ETA Form 9089.If you see the Warning screen again, please click on the button, since you are trying to continue navigating back to Step of the ETA Form 9089, and the system should send to Step where you can make the appropriate changes.