4 Problematic RFEs You and Your Client Need to Know About
- Degree does not match the job.
- Three-Year Bachelor’s Degree
- Difficult Degrees
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Credential Evaluation
EB2 – Know if the Education Works Before You File
Before you, your client, or your employee file for EB2 visa status, make sure that the education meets the requirements for this particular visa. Filing for EB2 instead of EB3 is preferential to beneficiaries because the turnaround waiting time for EB3 can take as long as a decade. However, if your education – or your client’s or employee’s education – does not meet EB2 requirements in the first place, time and effort is wasted anyway. These visas require advanced degrees or their equivalencies, and education requirements on the PERM are very specific when it comes to equivalencies.
There are also situations where you, your employee, or your client may have the right education; it just needs to be evaluated in the proper manner to meet CIS requirements for the EB2 visa. This is where many petitions are met with RFEs. The education must exactly match PERM education requirements. One common cause for an RFE stems from the requirement that a Bachelor’s degree equivalency must be a SINGLE SOURCE. Unlike educational requirements for other work visas, your Bachelor’s degree equivalency cannot combine work experience with your degree. This especially becomes a problem for beneficiaries with three-year Bachelor’s degrees. CIS does, however, accept a Bachelor’s degree equivalency from performing a conversion of years of progressive work experience into college credit hours. When you have a credential evaluator look at your education, or the education or your client or employee, have him or her also take a look at your client’s work experience to see if this conversion can be substituted for their Bachelor’s degree to meet PERM requirements.
There are situations where a beneficiary’s education simply does not – even with a detailed credential evaluation – meet EB2 requirements. For example, it is not uncommon for beneficiaries to claim that their high school diploma is a college degree, either because they are lying or by mistake.
When educational documents are translated, the value of the degree can get lost in translation because there is simply no English equivalent to express the degree your client has earned. Bad translations are the cause of much confusion when it comes to meeting educational requirements. You may not catch these translations, but experienced credential evaluators can because they have detailed knowledge of educational structures across cultures. In the case of a bad translation, you, your employee, or your client may actually be qualified for EB2 status. Or they may not be. Do not proceed to file without making absolutely sure.
Some foreign degrees that do not call themselves degrees – such as the Indian Chartered Accountancy Certificate – are actually postsecondary education that meet PERM requirements for a Bachelor’s degree equivalency. Other similar certificates and titles are not actually degrees, such as the Canadian Chartered Accountancy Certificate, or the US CPA certification. It is not always obvious which degree is actually a degree until you get that RFE. The way to determine whether or not your education actually meets the requirements for a postsecondary degree can be determined in the educational steps required to obtain that license or certificate, and the jobs that license or certificate qualifies you, your employee, or your client to work.
Before you file, take your educational documents and work experience to a credential evaluator with experience working with difficult cases and RFEs for a review of your client’s case. Sometimes, your background simply does not fit the educational criteria for this visa. Sometimes, your education will work if the evaluation is carried out properly, in detail, with references to precedents, federal case law, and international trade agreements. The right evaluator for this situation understands the nuances of EB2 visa requirements, as well as CIS trends. For a free assessment of your education, or your employee or client’s education, visit us at www.ccifree.com/.
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Here is Why You, Your Client, or Your Employee Got that RFE
H1B season is over. Guess what’s next. RFE season. If USCIS continues the pattern of the past few years, we will soon be inundated with RFEs. In recent years, over one in every four H1B petitions are met with an RFE.
In the common case that you, your employee, or your client receives an RFE, don’t panic. This is not desirable, but it’s not the end of the world. Take this as an opportunity to build the case and clear up any questions CIS may have. The first step to answering these questions is to identify what the missing information is, and then figure out how to provide it. Understanding who is at fault for the RFE is an important part of this process NOT because anyone needs to be punished, but rather to understand where the case can be strengthened to meet the standards of CIS and how this can be done.
Sometimes the credential evaluator is at fault. Not every credential evaluator has the specialized understanding of international education, H1b visa requirements, and CIS trends needed to write yours, your employee, or your client’s H1b credential evaluation. Some document translation agencies are now offering evaluation services as well as a one-stop shop. This is dangerous because credential evaluation is highly nuanced and translation agencies are not qualified to do this in the same way you would never go to a credential evaluation agency for a translation. The evaluator you need has in-depth knowledge of international education, and asks you right away what kind of visa the evaluation is for, and what yours, your employee, or your client’s job is. The right evaluator will review yours, your employee, or your client’s education for free and consult with your team on how to best proceed.
Sometimes it’s the candidate’s fault. H1b candidates make mistakes. It is not uncommon for a beneficiary to insist that their high school documents are college level documents, or that their college or university is accredited when – while the education is rigorous and legitimate – their school is not actually accredited. Regardless of what the candidate says – or what you believe – about their education – even if they are right – have the education reviewed by a credential evaluator to make sure no glaring mistakes are made when you respond to the RFE.
Sometimes it’s that attorney’s fault. While it is a rare occurrence, attorneys sometimes do file the H1b petition incorrectly. If this is the case, it is important to recognize this mistake, carefully read over the RFE to discern what must be done, and work with your team to do what you can to rectify the situation.
Sometimes CIS is at fault. CIS is a massive government bureaucracy with hundreds of thousands of H1b petitions to deal with. The fact of the matter is, everything in yours, your employee, or your client’s H1b petition could be correct, accounted for, and filed properly, and could still be met with an RFE. The other fact of the matter is, even if this is the case, you still need to respond to the RFE. This is a frustrating situation, but fortunately, when it is CIS’ fault it is typically an easy fix. Work together as a team – including the candidate, the employer, the attorney, and the credential evaluator – to identify what evidence needs to be provided to address the RFE. Even though the situation is frustrating because someone at CIS did not do their job correctly, be polite. The petition depends on it.
Sometimes it’s no one’s fault. CIS trends change, and in the past seven or so years, we have seen these trends change very quickly especially with regards to education. When it comes to petitions with generalized degrees or a degree in a related but not exactly matching field as the H1b job, what would have been approved in the not-too-distant past now triggers an RFE. The best way to mitigate the wildcard of changing CIS trends is to work with a credential evaluation agency that follows CIS trends, knows what has worked in the past, and understands how CIS trends tend to change. If you, your employee, or your client receives an RFE anyway, read it carefully with your team, understand what is being asked of whom and why, and provide the required evidence to answer CIS’ underlying questions and concerns.
Understand where the ball was dropped – if at all – and then devise a plan of action. Working with a credential evaluator who works with a lot of clients with RFEs, NOIDs, Denials, and difficult cases is a great way to get a sense of what exactly CIS is asking in their RFE, and how to answer their questions even if you cannot provide the exact documentation requested. Difficult RFEs – for example, the Nightmare RFE which is technically impossible to answer – are trying to answer very specific questions that are not always obvious by what the RFE asks you to provide in terms of evidence. An evaluator with experience answering these kinds of RFEs understands the underlying questions and how to answer them in ways that are possible for you, and acceptable to CIS.
About the Author
Sheila Danzig
Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director of TheDegreePeople.com a Foreign Credentials Evaluation Agency. For a no charge analysis of any difficult case, RFE, Denial, or NOID, please go to http://www.ccifree.com/ or call 800.771.4723.
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What USCIS Needs to Know about Your Client’s Indian Three-Year Degree
Current US educational trends clearly show that the amount of time it takes to complete a degree is not an accurate reflection of its actual academic content. More and more US college students are taking over four years to complete their four-year bachelor’s degrees, opting to take time off or take fewer classes at a time. However, when it comes to H1-b educational trends, USCIS is obsessed with the “four-year” aspect of the US four-year bachelor’s degree required equivalency. For this reason, H1-b candidates with three-year bachelor’s degrees from India have trouble getting their visas approved.
As an immigration attorney, it is important to first understand the truth behind misconceptions about the Indian three-year degree, and then understand how to address these misconceptions to USCIS in a way that takes their trends into account. Regardless of the actual value of your client’s education, it must be communicated in such a way that is in harmony with CIS requirements and educational trends.
There are two prominent misconceptions about the education of candidates who hold Indian three-year bachelor’s degrees:
- Candidates do not possess the core knowledge that comes from a US four-year degree.
The Indian three-year bachelor’s degree tends to have a more specialized curriculum while US four-year bachelor’s degree programs require general credits and classes from outside of a student’s major. However, this is changing in universities across India. Many institutions have changed to a choice-based credit system, which allows flexibility for students to take classes outside of their major. At the same time, the core education curriculum required for Indian students to earn a High School Diploma before they even enter college is extensive, rigorous, and well rounded. In most cases, Indian students are coming into college with the core knowledge US bachelor’s degree students must learn in college.
- The missing fourth year means a missing year of academic content.
Debunking this myth is a matter of math. The US four-year bachelor’s degree requires 120 credit hours to graduate. One college credit hour is comprised of fifteen classroom contact hours, meaning fifteen hours spent directly in the classroom. This is 1800 classroom contact hours for a US four-year bachelor’s degree. According to Dr. R. Venkatachalam, former psychology professor at Bharathiar University in India (http://www.emailwire.com/doc/three-year-indian-degree.pdf), a typical Indian three-year degree program has roughly 3,240 classroom contact hours.
Now that you understand the value of your client’s three-year Indian bachelor’s degree, how can you express this to USCIS in a way that they will understand? Regardless of how many classroom contact hours your client’s degree consists of, CIS still requires a progressive work experience evaluation to account for the missing fourth year. This means your client must have three years of work experience in their field of employ that can be converted into one year of college credit in that field. Progressive work experience means your client took on more work and responsibility in this experience, indicating that specialized skills and knowledge were learned and mastered. A credential evaluation agency with the authority to convert progressive work experience into college credit can write the detailed credential evaluation your and your client need to meet H1-b visa requirements in accordance with CIS educational trends. Do not file your client’s H1-b petition without one such credential evaluation or the missing fourth year will come back to haunt you in the form of an RFE or Denial.
About the Author
Sheila Danzig
Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director of 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.
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Don’t Fall into an H1B Education Trap
H1B educational requirements are laden with sneaky traps that can tank your client’s case in a hurry. To avoid these traps, it is essential to be aware of the unique educational requirements of each visa, as well as the educational equivalency requirements, which also vary from visa to visa, and change with USCIS trends. Attorneys should seek the help of credential evaluators who see a lot of RFE’s, Denials, and difficult cases, and have an in-depth understanding of international education as well as CIS trends and visa requirements. This is specialized information you and your client need to know to sidestep the H1B education traps.
Is the university your client’s degree came from government accredited?
For H1B visas, the biggest education trap is the candidate has education from an institution that is not government accredited. Two common examples of this are degrees from NIIT and Aptech. Your client’s education can be legitimate, rigorous, and prepare your client with the education necessary to meet the requirements of the H1B job, but if the institution is not government accredited, CIS won’t accept it.
Is that REALLY a college degree? Or just a high school diploma?
Another common H1B education trap attorneys and their clients fall into is when an attorney listens to a client who insists his high school diploma is a college degree. In most cases, this is an honest mistake that gets taken too far. This particular trap is the result of mistranslations and cross-cultural misunderstanding. Educational systems vary greatly between countries, and different degrees are often called the same name. Meaning gets muddled in both functional and linguistic translation. To qualify for an H1B visa, your client must have at least a US Bachelor’s degree or its foreign equivalent. A high school diploma won’t cut it.
That degree doesn’t mean what you think it does.
Bad translations are a big trap H1B candidates can fall into come filing time. Some degrees do not have direct English translations, and some degrees exist in certain countries but do not actually have a US equivalency. When educational documents get translated, words get mistranslated to skew the meaning of the value of the degree. This leads to a false evaluation following a bad translation. This trap has widened now that some translation agencies are setting up as “one-stop shops” offering both translation and credential evaluation for foreign educational documents. Credential evaluation is a very specialized field requiring highly nuanced knowledge of international education, CIS precedents, international trade agreements, and federal case law. Translation agencies simply reference an equivalency database like EDGE, which only provides the most conservative of equivalencies. Credential evaluation must be done on a case-by-case basis taking all of these aspects into consideration, as well as the specific educational requirements for the particular visa.
To avoid falling into an H1B educational trap – which there are more of every year – have a credential evaluator review your client’s education. An experienced evaluator who sees a lot of difficult cases, RFE’s, and Denials knows how to spot bad translations, unaccredited institutions, and degrees that are actually diplomas. An experienced credential evaluator can also consult you and your client on how to best move forward if their education lands square in one such trap. You and your client may have more options available than you think.
About the Author
Sheila Danzig
Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director of 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.
The Indian Chartered Accountancy Certificate and PERM Requirements
In some countries, certain certificates and licenses require post-secondary educational steps or their equivalents and other countries do not. Some professional licenses and certifications are called the same thing in two completely different countries, but the education it takes to earn these verbally identical degrees are completely different. This is one of the many complexities of evaluating foreign degrees for US equivalency. Some certificates and licenses with the same title aren’t degrees at all, nor do their countries of origin label them as such, but sometimes professional certificates and licenses actually ARE degrees but simply don’t have the word “degree” in the title.
Educational value gets muddled in translation. This is why EB2 petitions for candidates with these kinds of certifications and licenses – like the Indian Chartered Accountancy certification – have some of the highest RFE rates. When it comes to the issue of the Indian Chartered Accountancy degree, it’s particularly confusing because Canada has a certificate with the same name. However, while the Indian Chartered Accountancy certificate is the equivalent to a US Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, the Canadian certification with the same name is not. The US CPA is not the equivalent of a Bachelor’s degree either because the educational steps required for this certification don’t include those equivalent to a US bachelor’s degree.
Confused yet? Let’s take a look at how the Indian Chartered Accountancy certificate breaks down to understand its US equivalency. There are two components necessary to an evaluation to show CIS your client meets the PERM educational requirements:
First, for your client to hold a Chartered Accountancy certification in India, he or she must have completed a program of education culminating in taking an exam by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (IACI) and passed the exam. To take the exam, your client must have met the prerequisite of 2.5 years of professional training and passing the PE-II Intermediate exam. To take the PE-II exam, your client must meet the prerequisites of holding an Indian Bachelor’s degree, or having passed the PE-I equivalent. This means in order to hold the certification your client holds, he or she must have earned an Indian Bachelor’s degree or its equivalent, or your client would not have been eligible to even take the PE-II.
Second, the evaluation must cite federal case law. In an AAO decision in 2007, the organization agreed that, “Passage of the ICAI examination and obtaining associate membership in the ICAI is the foreign equivalent to a US Bachelor’s degree in accounting.”
With these two components present in a credential evaluation, your client’s education will meet the PERM requirements with an Indian Chartered Accountancy certification. An evaluation that includes a detailed analysis of both the steps of education required for your client to earn this certification AND federal case law stating ICAI equivalency, it will be clear to CIS that your client holds the equivalent of a US Bachelor’s degree in Accounting.
About the Author
Sheila Danzig
Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director of 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.
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Computer Systems Analyst: The H1b Job that gets the Most RFEs
The problem does not lie within the job, but in the degree. For a candidate to meet H1b visa requirements, their degree must be an exact match for their job title. What degree matches Computer Systems Analyst? While this is a common H1b job, this is NOT a common degree. In fact, a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Systems Analysis is extremely rare in the United States and available ONLY at universities with self-designed degrees. While in India, there is a BCA in Computer Systems Analysis, this degree will not work on its own because it is a three-year degree rather than a US four-year degree. The only degree we have seen NOT trigger an RFE for Computer Systems Analyst is a US Master of Computer Analysis.
It is highly unlikely your client holds one of the extremely rare US Bachelor’s degree in Computer Systems Analysis, or a US Master of Computer Analysis. So what is the right solution for you and your client?
If your client has an Indian BCA in Computer Systems Analysis, a credential evaluator with the authority to convert years of progressive work experience in the field of Computer Systems Analysis into years of college credit in the field that matches your client’s job title. Progressive work experience means that your client took on more and more duties and responsibilities through this work as time went on, indicating that knowledge and skills in the field of employ were developed and put to the test. Your client learned through this work experience and put these new specialized skills and knowledge to practical use in the workplace. An evaluator can convert three years of progressive work experience into one year of college credit in the field of Computer Systems Analysis to account for the missing fourth year.
While an RFE is not the end of the world, it is a big red flag that triggers a close scrutiny of your client’s petition and increases chances of rejection. An evaluator who specializes in RFEs and difficult cases understands CIS trends and knows common triggers for RFEs, as well as how to address these triggers when they arise and how to avoid them in the first place. Before you file your client’s H1b petition, get in touch with a credential evaluation agency that specializes in RFEs and difficult cases. Have them review your client’s case.
About the Author
Sheila Danzig
Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director of 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.
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Your Roadmap to Approval May NOT be in your Client’s RFE
In other words…USCIS is not your friend.
Against a backdrop of increased pressure and limited resources, the RFE your client receives in response to his or her petition is not always as unique and specific as it may appear to be. The number of petitions submitted for the same number of visas has forced CIS workers evaluating petitions to get sloppy when a decision is not entirely straightforward.
In fact, USCIS has adopted an approach to writing RFEs and Denials wherein instead of writing an RFE tailored to the actual petition, they use boilerplate text from an adjudicator’s manual. Readers unfamiliar with this CIS trend may think that the RFE lays out the guidelines and advice for how to respond to it. In practice, this is not the case. The boilerplate text has been chosen after the fact, as justification for a decision that has already been made to deny your client’s petition. Following the guidelines indicated in this kind of RFE will not actually give you and your client correct insight into what is needed for your client’s individual petition.
Boilerplate text RFE’s can he hard to identify, especially to the untrained eye, and even more difficult to respond to successfully. In order to overturn this RFE, it is necessary to construct a response that transcends what CIS can just throw more boilerplate text at. To do this, you must submit a response that must be referred to an expert at CIS with the capacity to review petitions on a case-by-case basis. In essence, you can’t respond successfully to a boilerplate RFE with a boilerplate response.
If your client’s petition received an RFE for an education situation, contact an expert credential evaluator. For difficult cases, RFEs, and Denials, you need an expert who understands CIS trends, federal case law, CIS precedents, and the intricacies of the visa requirements who can write a detailed evaluation that must be deferred to someone who can actually give your client’s petition the adjudication it deserves.
About the Author
Sheila Danzig
Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director of TheDegreePeople.com a Foreign Credentials Evaluation Agency. For a no charge analysis of any difficult case, RFE, Denial, or NOID, please go to http://www.ccifree.com/ or call 800.771.4723.
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How to Avoid that H1B RFE
A Request for Information (RFE) is a tool CIS uses to make a clear decision on whether or not to approve your client’s visa. If they don’t feel enough evidence was provided in the initial petition to make a decision, they will issue an RFE indicating what further evidence they need. When they request this evidence, there are specific questions they are looking for documentation to answer. These questions aren’t typically indicated outright, so lawyers, employers, and evaluators must read between the lines. Some RFE’s – such as the dreaded Nightmare RFE – are technically impossible to answer. The fact of the matter is, sometimes CIS issues RFE’s that are literally impossible to answer. When this occurs, you must find a way to answer the questions they seek to answer with the evidence requested, even if you can’t provide the precise evidence they request. A skilled credential evaluator with insight into CIS trends, H1B visa requirements, and international education can help you answer these RFE’s. At TheDegreePeople, our international education experts have been able to answer around 95% of all of the Nightmare RFE’s that come across our desks.
However, the best trick to answer such an RFE is to avoid it in the first place. There’s no need to suffer the stress of an RFE – even if it is possible to answer it. An RFE is a red flag on your client’s petition that will instigate a close look at the petition that can uncover missed details that would otherwise go unnoticed. This will make the RFE more complex and harder to answer. CIS has only 65,000 H1B visas available annually, plus an additional 20,000 H1B visas for candidates with advanced degrees. While this may seem like a lot of visas, with over 200,000 petitions estimated to be submitted in the first five days of CIS accepting petitions, CIS is looking for any excuse to make their decisions easier. Make their job easier by submitting an impeccable petition the first time.
Here are five things to keep in mind to avoid an RFE:
- Make sure the information is consistent across all of the documents and forms.
Don’t ever submit an H1B petition without double-checking every form and document for consistency and accuracy. This means spelling of names, dates of jobs and education, names of employers and schools, and locations of these jobs and schools. Everything must be consistent. CIS is on the lookout for visa fraud. Inaccurate or inconsistent answers are big red flags that can arouse suspicion even though your client and his or her employer is legitimate.
- Your client’s job must be a specialty occupation.
This means your client’s job must require a US bachelor’s degree or higher or its equivalent. To show this, you need to prove that not only does your client’s particular job require a degree to perform, but that similar jobs in similar companies in the same industry also require an advanced degree. This shows that the skills and knowledge needed to successfully carry out the duties of your client’s job requires an advanced degree.
- Your client must possess a US bachelor’s degree or higher or its equivalent.
Unless your client has a very straightforward bachelor’s degree or higher from a US college or university, you will need to get your client’s credentials evaluated by an authorized foreign credentials evaluator. Some degrees are more complex than others because many countries have certifications and licenses that are actually degrees, even though the word degree is not in the title. Professional licenses like the Indian Chartered Accountancy license require the equivalence of the same post-secondary education required for a bachelor’s degree. However, Canadian Chartered Accountancy does not require education that equates to post-secondary education. Another example of a difficult education situation is the Indian three-year bachelor’s degree. While it has the same – if not greater – amount of classroom contact hours as the US four-year bachelor’s degree, you need to account for the extra year of education for CIS to consider the Indian three-year bachelor’s degree as equivalent to the US four-year degree. To do this, a credential evaluator with the authority to convert years of progressive work experience in your client’s field of employ into years of college credit must write an evaluation with the equivalency of three years of work experience to one year of college credit documented and accounted for to account for the missing fourth year.
- Your client’s degree must be an exact match for the job offer.
Until less than a decade ago, an H1B candidate with a degree in a field related to their job title would get their visa approved without an RFE. Now we are seeing RFE’s for degrees that are not an exact match for the job offer. While employers will hire employees with degrees in related fields, CIS will not approve their visas. CIS requires your candidate have the specialized skills and knowledge required for their H1B job. While candidates with related degrees may possess these skills – particularly if they are hired for the job – your client needs to prove this to CIS with a degree match. If your client’s degree is not an exact match for his or her job offer, have a credential evaluator review your client’s education and employment history. An evaluation can be written converting years of progressive work experience into college credit in the major that matches your client’s job. Classroom contact hours in coursework in the matching field can also be evaluated and counted towards a major in that field.
- Your client’s degree must be specialized.
Since the H1B visa is for specialized occupations, your candidate must have a degree that reflects having learned and mastered specialized skills and knowledge. A generalized degree – such as a liberal arts degree with no specific field of specialization – is not adequate to show a candidate possesses such knowledge. If your client has a generalized degree but was still hired for an H1B occupation, clearly his or her employer can see that your client has the specialized skills and knowledge necessary to excel at the job. Now you have to provide CIS with evidence that this is the case. Have a credential evaluator review your client’s transcripts and resume to see what conversions can be made to write an equivalency to a specialized degree that matches the H1B job offer.
The H1B visa requirements are very detailed and specific, especially when it comes to your client’s education. H1B trends change as this visa becomes more and more sought after with higher demand for highly skilled workers in STEM industries that the US workforce can supply. Before you submit, have a credential evaluator look over your client’s transcripts, educational documents, and work experience to see if an evaluation is needed, and if so, what must be done.
About the Author
Sheila Danzig
Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director at TheDegreePeople.com, a Foreign Credentials Evaluation Agency. For a free analysis of any difficult case, RFE, Denial, or NOID, please go to http://ccifree.com/ or call 800.771.4723.
FY2017 H-1B Predictions and Requirements
The past decade has seen a significant annual increase in H-1b petitions, and this year the trend is projected to continue. Experts estimate that more than 200,000 H-1b petitions will be filed this year before CIS closes its doors after the mandatory five days of accepting petitions. For cap-subjected H-1b jobs, there are only 65,000 visas available for candidates with US bachelor’s degrees or it’s equivalent or higher, and an additional 20,000 H-1b visas with candidates with US master’s degrees or its equivalent or higher available. There will most definitely be a lottery, and that means you and your client need to have your petition ready, spotless, and filed on April First of this year.
But what does a spotless petition look like?
Your client’s petition must meet H-1b requirements as well as current CIS trends to be approved. CIS has been issuing more and more RFE’s every year, up from around 4% less than a decade ago to 25% in recent years as responses to H-1b petitions. That means your client has a one in four chance of receiving an RFE that the two of you will have to address. Your client doesn’t have to be a statistic so long as you clearly show that your client and his or her job and employer meet H-1b requirements in adherence to current CIS trends.
What are the H-1b requirements and how do trends affect how to properly evidence these requirements?
- Your client’s job must be a specialty occupation. This means that to perform the duties of the job, your client must hold a US bachelor’s degree or higher or its equivalent in a related field. In recent years however, CIS has issued RFE’s for degrees that do not exactly match candidates’ job titles. If your client’s major is not an exact match for his or her job title, you need to find a credential evaluation agency that can take a close look at your client’s education to count classroom contact hours in classes matching your client’s job towards a degree equivalency. The evaluator can also convert years of progressive work experience in the field to years of college credit in the major of your client’s job offer. To show that your client’s job is a specialty occupation, you need to provide evidence that your client’s employer requires this degree for this job, and that similar positions in similar companies also require an advanced degree. If this is not the case, you need to provide evidence as to why your client’s particular job is so specifically complex as to require an advanced degree to carry out its duties.
- Your client must hold a US bachelor’s degree or higher or its equivalent. H-1b visas are for specialty occupations that require a bachelor’s degree or higher to perform. If your client has a US bachelor’s degree or higher or its equivalent, and the degree matches the job, all you have to do is submit the educational documents with the petition. However, if your client’s degree is from a different country – particularly a country with a three-year bachelor’s degree – you need to have your client’s education evaluated for US equivalence. This is because educational systems vary from country to country, and CIS must clearly see the value of your client’s education in terms of US educational value. Some post-secondary degrees from other countries are the equivalent of US bachelor’s degrees even though the word “degree” is not in the title. Others are not. A detailed evaluation from a credential evaluator with expert understanding of international education is needed to meet this requirement. For three-year degrees, a progressive work experience conversion is needed to fill in the missing fourth year. Although three-year degrees, like the Indian three-year degree, have the same if not more number of classroom contact hours as a US four-year degree, CIS does not accept this equivalency on face without a detailed credential evaluation.
- There must be an employer-employee relationship. This means that your client’s employer can hire, fire, promote, pay, and otherwise control the work your client does. You can show this by submitting a copy of the employee contract or providing other documentation regarding your client’s job.
- Your client must be paid the prevailing wage for his or her job. Prevailing wage is determined based on the job, the company, the geographic location, and other factors. To prove that your client will be paid the prevailing wage for his or her job, you need to provide evidence that states common salaries for your client’s occupation in similar companies in similar locations, as well as proof that your client’s employer will be paying that wage. At the same time, you also have to show that your client’s employer is economically viable to pay your client the prevailing wage without affecting the salaries of other employees, operating costs, or other aspects of the business.
Before you file your client’s H-1b petition, have a credential evaluator review his or her education to make sure all your ducks are in a row. If you submit a petition without an evaluation where one is needed, you can expect an RFE. While an RFE is not the end of the world, it is a big red flag on your client’s petition, and will trigger CIS to comb over the petition and find misplaced details that would otherwise have gone by unnoticed. CIS has a big job to do when it comes to cap-subject H-1b visa selection. Make their job easier by making sure your client’s visa is easy to approve, not by giving them a big red flag to look at.
Sheila Danzig
Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director of TheDegreePeople.com a Foreign Credentials Evaluation Agency. For a no charge analysis of any difficult case, RFE, Denial, or NOID, please go to http://www.ccifree.com/ or call 800.771.4723.