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H1b Question – Which job offer has the most RFEs in 2015?

Why is this?  In their educational requirements policy, the USCIS states, “A generalized degree, absent specialized experience, is insufficient” to prove an H1b candidate is educationally qualified for their specialty occupation. For example, the USCIS cites, “Since there must be a close corollary between the required specialized studies and the position, the requirement of a degree of generalized title, such as business administration or liberal arts, without further specification, does not establish eligibility.” When one’s education does not work standing alone, an evaluator must include the candidate’s work experience to meet H1b requirements.  At the same time, the USCIS requires a candidate’s degree to specifically match their specialty occupation.  While employers will hire those with a degree in a field related to their job, the USCIS requires an exact match.  Which degree fits Computer Systems Analyst? Master of Computer Analysis is the ONLY standard degree we have seen that ​has​ not triggered​ an RFE for that job offer​. Some other degrees has “slid by” but we have seen RFEs for all of them.​ A US Bachelor’s of Computer Science Engineering or its equivalent even receives an RFE for being a “generalized” degree.  A bachelor’s degree in Computer Sciences Analysis is an extremely rare degree in the United States, available only at colleges and universities with self-designed degrees. However with work experience you can have that equivalence.​ However, most candidates don’t have a Computer Sciences Analysis self-designed degree from a US school.  A Bachelor’s of Computer Analysis sh​ould be accepted by the USCIS if it is a four-year degree, however​ the BCA from India is a three-year degree. The solution?  An evaluator can add your client’s work experience to his or her education to show an ​equivalence to a US Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Sciences Analysis. Although rare this degree does exist, and more importantly it​ is accepted by the USCIS as fulfilling the requirements for a Computer Systems Analyst. While RFE’s are not the end of the world and can be addressed, they are also seen as red flags.  An RFE for an​ issue like education can draw attention to the small details of your client’s petition, which can lead to even bigger issues.  It is always better to prevent an RFE in the first place than to overturn one later. About the author  Sheila Danzig   ​Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director​ of CCI TheDegreePeople.com a Foreign Credential Evaluation Agency. For a no charge analysis of any difficult cases, RFEs, Denials or NOIDS, please go to http://www.ccifree.com/ or call 800.771.4723.]]>

Change It Up: Your H-1B Transfer Option

job, not a new visa. Once your visa is approved, you can take as much time as you want between ending your current job and beginning your new job. How much time you take and what you do with this time is entirely up to you. Some people take this opportunity to travel or visit family. Others dive right into their new job. You can’t just change jobs without alerting the USCIS. Just like all other visa-related processes, you will have to petition the USCIS for an H-1b transfer. This process takes about 4-8 weeks, but can take more. In this petition, you’ll need to include your last three pay stubs, copies of your immigration paperwork, as well as copies of your educational documents. If your specialized degree is from a country besides the US, you will need to submit a credential evaluation along with your documents to clearly show the value of your education in terms of US academic structures and standards. Don’t submit educational documents without first getting them translated into English and evaluated for US academic equivalence. Don’t stick it out with a job you hate when you can find fulfillment in your dream job. The hard part is over, you’ve got your H-1b visa status. Now make the most of it. Sheila Danzig is the director of Career Consulting International at www.TheDegreePeople.com, a foreign credential evaluation agency. They specialize in difficult cases and RFEs, Denials, NOIDs, 3-year degrees, etc. and offer a free review of all H1B, E2, and I140 education at http://www.ccifree.com/.]]>

5 Helpful Tips for Finding a Reliable Credential Evaluator

  • Easy to reach
  • If an agency fails to answer or return your calls, texts, and emails, look elsewhere. Reliable agencies are not only reliable in their expertise, but also in you being able to work with them. If you can’t even rely on an agency to answer your call, you can’t rely on them to write a credible evaluation. Look elsewhere. A reliable agency will be easy to reach in any medium you choose – call, text, or email – any time of the day or night. This is because a good agency understands the time crunch you are under, and that the line of work you are both in is inconvenient in its nature. You work odd hours for your clients and employees in the H1b petition process, and if an agency is reliable, they will too.
    1. Affordable
    This is NOT one of those instances where the more you pay the more you get. A higher price is NOT indicative of a higher quality credential evaluation. Reliable credential evaluation agencies are low-cost because they understand the realities of their clients, and they don’t have to make the most financial mileage out of each customer. Look for an affordable, low-cost agency to work with.
    1. Comfortable to talk to
    Go with your gut. If you don’t feel comfortable in your communication with them, look elsewhere. When you feel comfortable on the phone with an agency, that means they are confident and knowledgeable in what they do. They answer your questions in ways that make you feel safe and satisfied. They are able to meet you where you are and work together with you. Look for an agency that you can have a good, helpful conversation with.
    1. Available
    A reliable agency will make it easy for you to work with them. That means they will have a variety of rush delivery options depending on your needs. They will always be there to answer your questions and address your concerns. If an agency does not offer options or guarantee their follow-through, look elsewhere. A reliable agency will be able to meet the needs of you and your client or employee because they understand the extent of what needs to be done to successfully file an H1b petition.
    1. Great references and testimonials from past clients
    You should be able to easily find references and testimonials from people who have worked with the evaluation agency in the past. Ask if they can provide you with contact information from past clients, and if they cannot do so swiftly, look elsewhere. NEVER order an evaluation from ANY agency without first reading testimonials from past clients. No matter how good an agency looks on their website, on paper, or from what they have to say about themselves, the only way you can be sure they will be reliable for your and your client or employee is by checking into whether or not they have been consistently reliable in practice. Reliable credential evaluation agencies have international education professors and experts on call to write detailed evaluations any time. Find an agency with the authority to convert years of work experience and college classroom contact hours into college credit. These experts and professors are authorized to take a close and thorough look at your client or employee’s education and work experience to get an accurate measure of the value of their specialized skills and knowledge. Sheila Danzig is the director of Career Consulting International at www.TheDegreePeople.com, a foreign credential evaluation agency. They specialize in difficult cases and RFEs, Denials, NOIDs, 3-year degrees, etc. and offer a free review of all H1B, E2, and I140 education at http://www.ccifree.com/.]]>

    3 Reasons Why Your Client or Employee Got an RFE and How to Deal With It

  • Foreign Degree
  • For the same reason you wouldn’t just pay for a pair of shoes in the United States with foreign currency, you shouldn’t just petition the USCIS for a visa with your foreign degree. Why not? Because its value is unclear. Just like it’s the responsibility of the individual to exchange your money at the border, it’s also their responsibility to translate the value of your education across educational system structures. Your client can do this by sending in an evaluation of their foreign credentials along with the initial H1B petition, or if they receive and RFE, order an evaluation. In these evaluations, international education experts will examine the academic content of your client’s educational experience and write an evaluation of its US value equivalence.
    • Right Degree, Wrong Major
    This kind of RFE is surprising many petitioners and their employers because it’s a new standard. Until recently – like most employers – the USCIS would approve applicants whose advanced degree was in a field related to their field of employ. In the past five or six years, these standards have tightened and now the USCIS requires petitioners’ degrees to exactly match their field of employ. If your client has the right degree in the wrong field, you still have options. A detailed credential evaluation can show that your client’s degree in, for example, computer sciences, is the functional equivalent of an engineering degree with a detailed examination of your course content, work experience, and whether or not your client’s degree in engineering would qualify him for admission into a computer sciences master’s degree program.
    • Questionable Evaluator
    Say you foresaw the first two hang-ups and ordered a credential evaluation but were still met with an RFE. Sometimes, RFEs are issued because your client’s credentials were evaluated by an evaluation agency with questionable credentials of their own. It’s of the utmost importance the value of your client’s education be evaluated by international education experts with the knowledge and authority to accurately translate the meaning of the degree. Help your client choose carefully when selecting a credential evaluation agency. The agency should be affordable, easy to reach, and make you and your client feel comfortable when corresponding with them. They should be able to provide you references with grace and ease, have great reviews, and clearly be able to show their experience working with the kind of case you are working with. The best way to address an RFE is to meet all of the evidence requires in the first place. But if your client does get an RFE, don’t panic! While this is an undesirable and beyond inconvenient situation, it is not an NOID, it is not a Denial, and it is nothing out of the ordinary. Take the time to read over your RFE carefully with your client, fully understand what is being asked of them, and help them submit all of the evidence requested in order on time. Sheila Danzig is the director of Career Consulting International at www.TheDegreePeople.com, a foreign credential evaluation agency. They specialize in difficult cases and RFEs, Denials, NOIDs, 3-year degrees, etc. and offer a free review of all H1B, E2, and I140 education at http://www.ccifree.com/.]]>

    3 More Reasons to Get Your H1B Visa

  • Part-time employment option.
  • You can get an H1B visa for a part time job. So long as your job still requires a bachelor’s degree or higher, you can still get H1B visa status and enjoy the freedoms and protections that come along with it. This is a great option for students coming to the United States for education but cannot afford it without also working part time.
    1. Dual Intent
    Unlike travel visas and other short-term work visas, when you apply for an H1B visa, you don’t have to prove that you intend to return to your country of origin. Many visas require you to prove that you don’t intend to stay in the United States once your visa expires. This means you have to have a certain amount of money in your bank account, strong ties and responsibilities in your country of origin, and other indicators that would prove you don’t tend to stay. With an H1B visa, you don’t have to prove any of this to get approved. In fact, many people intend to use their H1B visa as a gateway to US naturalization and citizenship, and that’s just fine.
    1. Gateway to a Green Card
    A common trajectory for H1B visa holders is obtaining their Green Card. The initial H1B visa is for three years, then visa holders can apply for another three-year extension. After that, employers will often decide to sponsor visa holders for a Green Card so they can continue to live in the United States and work for their company. Since H1B visas allow for families to come and live with the H1B visa holders, this is a great way to introduce and integrate families into a permanent life in the United States. An H1B visa is the perfect visa for long-term intentions. Whether you’ve decided you want to ultimately get Green Card sponsorship, or if you’re not sure where your career path will ultimately take you, the H1B visa offers a unique freedom and flexibility for you and your family. Sheila Danzig is the director of Career Consulting International at www.TheDegreePeople.com, a foreign credential evaluation agency. They specialize in difficult cases and RFEs, Denials, NOIDs, 3-year degrees, etc. and offer a free review of all H1B, E2, and I140 education at http://www.ccifree.com/.]]>

    Challenges and Benefits of Hiring H1B Employees to Your Start-Up Staff

    st. Detailed evidence that your company upholds US labor standards is necessary for this application to be approved so you and your employee or client can move forward on the petition process. This will benefit your company in the long run by ensuring that your business is built on a basis of excellence. If you hire a foreign worker, you will most certainly be held to higher standards and have those standards enforced more strictly than if you simply hire US-born workers. However, this will ensure that your company get off to a legitimate start and evolve from a strong, solid foundation. There are simply not enough highly skilled workers who are US citizens to meet the growing job demands of the IT industry, and plenty of brilliant minds from other countries who want to work for you. At the same time, with H1b employees on staff, your company will have strong roots in an international perspective and a global focus. As the business world – particularly the IT world – becomes evermore globally oriented, your company will already be structured for this modern, global industry while established companies and other start-ups that don’t hire H1b workers will have to adapt. It is well worth the extra attention to the details of the petition process to start up your new business with H1b employees on your staff. About the Author Sheila Danzig Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director of CCI TheDegreePeople.com a Foreign Credentials Evaluation Agency. For a no charge analysis of any difficult case, RFEs, Denials, or NOIDs, please go to http://www.ccifree.com/ or call 800.771.4723. Mention that you saw this in the ILW article and get 72 hour rush service at no charge.  ]]>

    Don’t Wait for that Education RFE

    http://discuss.ilw.com/content.php?4449-Article-You-Can-Beat-The-Nightmare-RFE-for-H1B-By-Sheila-Danzig. An RFE – as I have been told by countless attorneys – is also a big red flag. You can respond to an RFE, but it is still a red flag that the initial petition was filed improperly and without sufficient evidence. These red flags are shortcuts CIS uses to simplify the huge amount of work to be done regarding Visas every year. There are better ways to make CIS’s job easier. Don’t wait for an RFE to submit a foreign credential evaluation. Include all of the necessary evidence to prove your client or employee’s eligibility for their job and their Visa the first time, without CIS having to ask you for it. Even though this does not increase your chances in the lottery, it certainly does wonders for chances of approval after the lottery. About the Author Sheila Danzig Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director of CCI TheDegreePeople.com a Foreign Credentials Evaluation Agency. For a no charge analysis of any difficult case, RFEs, Denials, or NOIDs, please go to http://www.ccifree.com/ or call 800.771.4723. Mention that you saw this in the ILW article and get 72 hour rush service at no charge.  ]]>

    Who is to Blame for Your RFE?

    When is it the attorney’s fault? Very rarely, an attorney will file a PERM incorrectly. Generally, however, the attorney error occurs when the candidate’s education is not reviewed by an education specialist before the PERM is filed. In this case, the candidate’s account of the education is incorrect or does not meet the CIS definition of a degree for that particular Visa. Unless this is the case, don’t file your attorney over an RFE. When is it the evaluator’s fault and how can it be the fault of the evaluation but NOT the person who wrote it? There are situations when the RFE is clearly the evaluator’s fault because the evaluation was incorrect. For example, when a non-accredited PGD is listed as accredited, CIS jumps on that inaccuracy to issue an RFE. However, every evaluation is different, and evaluations for different Visas must be written very differently. When an evaluator writes an evaluation for any particular visa, he or she must know both the Visa regulations AND current CIS trends. The evaluator may have done the job properly but the equivalence does not work for the particular Visa. For example, someone with a four-year degree in electrical engineering can have an evaluation written perfectly showing equivalence for a US bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, and then receive an RFE because his or her job is in the field of computer software analysis. This sort of mismatch triggered an onslaught of RFE’s this year. The evaluator did a good job, but the evaluation was not correct for the purposes of the Visa. In this case, you may have likely found the write evaluator, he or she just wrote the wrong evaluation correctly. To avoid this, make sure you order your evaluation from an agency that knows education regulations for each Visa. If you advise an evaluation agency that you need an evaluation for an H1B visa and they don’t ask about the job offer, find a new agency. The degree must precisely fit the field of employ for this Visa and the evaluator needs to know this information so they can evaluate an equivalency to the proper degree. If you are not asked about the job offer, the agency simply does not understand what is required of H1B Visa candidates. If you have already paid an evaluator and a mistake was made, I suggest you go back to that evaluator to try to address your RFE. However, if the evaluation agency did not make sure that the evaluation was written for the particular Visa it was ordered for, that may just be how they operate. They may just be writing standard evaluations and not be authorized to make the conversions necessary to prove equivalence between fields or across educational system structures. You cannot expect an agency to do something they don’t claim to do. The evaluation agency you want is one that will look at the education, as well as the visa requirements and current CIS trends. When is it CIS’s fault? Government bureaucracies make mistakes and some RFE’s are simply factually incorrect. Everything in a petition could be done correctly and you can still receive an RFE. Often when CIS is at fault, the RFE will state that an accredited university is not accredited, or that a qualified evaluator is not qualified. While these RFE’s are frustrating, they are also easy fixes. With the help of your evaluator, you can easily provide these facts and receive an approval. When is it the Candidate’s Fault? Candidates make mistakes. They have been known to insist that their high school documents are college level. They have also been known to provide poorly translated documents, or even fraudulently translated documents. Often but not always, a good evaluator can pick up on these problems before starting in on the evaluation, but not all evaluation agencies will review a candidate’s case before accepting payment and writing it. To be sure that no problems arise further down the road that can trigger an RFE, we always review all of the documents before accepting a credential evaluation order. Before we have seen all of the education documents, a resume, and the RFE or Denial if one has been issued, we have no way to discuss any given candidate’s case. We want to discover any issues in the documents right away in order to eliminate the vast majority of client confusion and misinformation. When is it no one’s fault? Sometimes, it really is no one’s fault. CIS trends change. As we have seen especially in the past seven or so years, CIS trends can change very quickly. We can only, at best, know what they generally do and what they have done. CIS can be a wildcard, and for that reason we can never guarantee what they are going to do. When this happens, all you can do is carefully read the RFE, understand what is being asked of whom and who can provide the requested evidence, and do your best. Can we draw a usable conclusion? Yes. If you have a competent attorney, work with him or her to resolve the RFE. If you used an evaluation agency before receiving an RFE, go back to them. Next time, make sure you are working with an agency that reviews the education and Visa requirements before you order. If that is not their policy, find a new agency. If that is their policy, hear them out. As much as I would like your business, an RFE is really not a reason to jump ship if an evaluation agency’s overall work has been good. Few agencies have passed through the RFE gauntlet this year unscathed, and many of these RFE’s are not the fault of the agency. Or the fault of the attorney. If you receive an RFE, the best solution is to remain calm and deal with it as best you can. About the Author Sheila Danzig Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director of CCI TheDegreePeople.com a Foreign Credentials Evaluation Agency. For a no charge analysis of any difficult case, RFEs, Denials, or NOIDs, please go to http://www.ccifree.com/ or call 800.771.4723. Mention that you saw this in the ILW article and get 72 hour rush service at no charge.]]>

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