October 2025 Edition of BDV Newsletter

Expert insights to help you navigate your EB-3 journey I Key updates and policy changes you need to know I Live Q&A—get your immigration questions answered!

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From Jon Baselice, Executive Vice President & Head of Government Relations:

I imagine many of you have seen the headlines focusing on the federal government shutdown, which went into effect at midnight on October 1 due to Congress’s failure to pass legislation that would continue to fund the federal government's operations. This shutdown will affect various immigration-related functions across several federal departments. Below is a brief description on how the shutdown will affect different parts of the EB-3 process going forward.

U.S. Department of Labor (DOL)

This is probably the most negatively impacted of the federal departments during a shutdown. DOL operates completely off of federally appropriated dollars and with no federal appropriations in place, the entire department is shutting down. This will impact all immigration-related functions at DOL, including the processing of prevailing wage determinations and the permanent labor certifications for our EB-3 petitions. For the pendency of this shutdown, none of our applications will be processed. More importantly, given the week-long effort of DOL to obtain all of its employees' computers and cell phones, once the government reopens, it will likely take DOL another week to make sure everybody is back up and running with the resources they need to get back to doing their jobs once the government reopens.

To give you an idea of the disruptions here, DOL's Employment and Training Administration (this is the agency under which the Office of Foreign Labor Certification is housed) will be seeing a significant furlough where pre-shutdown, they had 980 full time employees. During the pendency of the shutdown, there will only be 31 full time workers maintaining the agency's operations; the 949 other employees will be furloughed.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

DHS's operations will not be significantly harmed by this shutdown, and as an extension, any of our petitions currently being processed by DHS will also continue along at their current pace. This is due to the fact that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is primarily funded by application fees, which allows their operations to continue without interruption. Similarly, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will also not be impacted, as the vast majority of their workers are deemed "essential," so if any of our clients have employees traveling internationally at this time, they will be able to reenter the U.S., although it is not uncommon to see processing delays to occur at ports of entry during a federal government shutdown, particularly if this one lasts for more than a few weeks. Last, but certainly not least, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) operation of the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) is funded by user fees, thus there should be no disruptions in any dealings that our companies/clients have with SEVP.  

U.S. Department of State (DOS)

The State Department operations that concern our EB-3 clients will continue to function, as visa processing services at consulates abroad are fee funded. In many past shutdowns, there have been minimal disruptions in the processing of visa applications, but the duration of the shutdown can sometimes impact the ability of foreign nationals to obtain visas because the amount of consular fees coming into the post becomes insufficient to maintain operations. For perspective, significant visa processing delays at consulates have not been a problem since the Clinton Administration; as such, we do not expect this to be a problem for our companies at this time.

U.S. Congress

BDV has many clients who we are currently helping to address prolonged processing delays, whether their case is pending before DOL, DHS, or DOS. During a government shutdown, each House member or Senator has the discretion to determine which of his/her staff will be deemed "essential."  We will likely see a decrease in communication with some congressional offices during this time.  

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If you have any questions on the above-referenced material, or anything concerning the government shutdown, please do not hesitate to BDV, and we will be happy to assist.