Decoding CASE NUMBER, CASE RECEIVED DATE and PRIORITY DATE

The application Case Number will be shared to you by your Company Attorney or your Employer HR.

• PWD Case number starts with T-XXXXX-XXXXXX
• PERM Case number start with A-XXXXX-XXXXXX

The PERM Case number and the PWD case number would be the same except the first letter schema....goes by calendar year and day when the PERM application is initially drafted (Please note: not filed date). So, lets say If the case number is  A-18123-XXXXXX,

• A - its PERM Application Case number
• 18 - the year when the Case was initiated, initially drafted.      
• 123 - the day of the year, when the case was initially drafted. So, it means the above case is drafted on May03, 2018(Thursday) using this Epoch Day converter [Click]
• XXXXXXX - DOL updates unique number as it receives the applications.

Most of the time the Attorney may file the PERM Case the same day the PERM application is initiated or drafted. So, by checking the case number we can know when our Perm Case was filled, if it is filed the same day the CASE_RECEIVED DATE by the DOL will match with Case number. 

But there may be chances where the Attorney may have drafted the PERM cases 2 to 3 days earlier in advance and then filing the PERM application. In this scenario the CASE_RECEIVED Date and the PERM case number will not match and will not be part of the case number. In most cases there will be a difference of 1 or 2 days between CASE_RECEIVED Date and PERM case number, as the attorney would take a day or two to file each application.

Also, sometimes there is the old school way where the Attorney files the PERM certification through normal postal service by Mail. In these cases, the CASE_RECEIVED Date or the Priority date will be earlier than the specific PERM Case number, the PERM case number will show later dates.

CASE_RECEIVED DATE and PRIORITY DATE are same. The Date of filing of the PERM Cases to Department of Labor.

CASE RECEIVED DATE/ PRIORITY DATE are the important factor to check the PERM processing time in US department of Labor website. The DOL iCert website shows the currently processing cases of particular month(The month when they received the applications).

Ill have another post sometime just to brief out how to check the status of PERM Case number.