Major immigration law firm under scrutiny

updated 9:17 p.m. ET June 24, 2008

WASHINGTON - The nation's largest immigration law firm is under federal scrutiny over whether it helped major U.S. corporations disqualify American job applicants and give thousands of high-paying positions to immigrants.

The unprecedented Labor Department inquiry centers on Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy — a New York firm at the forefront of a political effort to ease hiring of skilled foreign workers.

The Labor Department is auditing all pending applications for legal immigrant workers the firm has filed on behalf of its corporate clients.

Fragomen's prestigious client roster includes General Electric Co., IBM Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Intel Corp. and Bank of America Corp., according to company publications and trade journals. The firm also represents The Associated Press on immigration issues.

The inquiry focuses on what advice the law firm gave its corporate clients. There was no indication the companies themselves are under scrutiny.

Improper advice may have been given
The Labor Department said that Fragomen may have improperly advised clients to contact a Fragomen attorney before hiring "apparently qualified" U.S. workers. The agency said lawyers can advise employers on how to follow the law in hiring immigrants but can't dissuade them from deciding a U.S. worker is qualified.

The audit focuses on what is known as the permanent foreign labor certification, or PERM, process. Companies normally use it to permanently hire legal immigrants who have been working for them on temporary visas. It essentially allows companies to sponsor workers for green cards, the first step to U.S. citizenship.

Before applying, companies must recruit and try to find a qualified U.S. worker for the same job. If they do, they can't hire the foreigner.

Fragomen said its lawyers have complied with the law and rejected the idea that lawyers can't give critical legal advice about the complicated process for permanently hiring legal immigrants.

"We do not tell our clients whom to hire or not to hire," the firm said in a statement, adding that it is negotiating with the Labor Department to end the audit.

The Fragomen statement also says that if the Labor Department interpretation of regulations is correct, it will bar "employers from getting the critical legal advice they need to navigate and comply with this complex regulatory process."

Thousands of applications may be part of audit
It's unclear exactly how many of Fragomen's applications the Labor Department is auditing as a part of the inquiry that was announced in early June, but the number is easily in the thousands.

With more than 200 attorneys, Fragomen is overwhelmingly the biggest player in an industry where firms with several dozen immigration attorneys are considered large firms.

In 2004, the last year the Labor Department made such information about law firms public, Fragomen lawyers filed more than 3,600 labor certifications — more than twice as many as its largest competitor.

The firm's managing director has also said Fragomen represents about half of the Fortune 100 companies. Last year, Fortune 100 companies submitted more than 5,300 applications. The jobs listed in the applications pay an average of $80,000. And the largest group of applicants were from India.

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