Need Help?
Message Sheila D, Executive Director with any questions
9544450107

Credential Evaluation

Computer Systems Analyst: The H1b Job that gets the Most RFEs

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

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.

Computer Systems Analyst: The H1b Job that gets the Most RFEs Read More »

How A Credential Evaluator Can Help With Difficult Degrees

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

Education RFEs are on the rise because a Bachelor’s degree equivalence must be a single source, and qualified candidates with three-year degrees and degrees that do not actually have the word “degree” in them are running into trouble. Complex education requirements for EB2 Visa candidates have left many lawyers wondering if it’s even worth the time to take on clients with difficult degrees. 

The answer is not to turn away candidates with difficult degrees. Many countries have three-year bachelor degree structures and degrees without the word “degree” in the title, and more and more skilled workers are coming from these countries with these difficult degrees to work the jobs the US economy needs for a prosperous and competitive economy. The answer is for lawyers to work with credential evaluators to find creative solutions to USCIS education hang-ups. A credential evaluator on your team can make the difference between a Denial and an Approval. 

Because we specialize in RFEs and Denials at TheDegreePeople.com, we see more of them than anyone else in the field. As a result, we are in the best position to analyze CIS, understand what they are looking for, and spot trends when they emerge. Have an evaluator review your client’s education and work experience to see if they can meet CIS educational equivalency requirements within their specific equivalency parameters. There are three main ways in which an evaluator can be helpful to you as a lawyer. 

First, a skilled credential evaluator has a complex understanding of international education and the academic content and educational stages of different degrees from different countries. With this understanding, an evaluator can look at your client’s education and already know its academic value in the United States. 

Second, they have access to equivalence references beyond the standard equivalency database that translation agencies and other agencies that are not actually credential evaluation agencies use. The standard equivalence database actually uses the most conservative equivalencies, so working with a credential evaluator will give you and your client more options and flexibility. 

Third, skilled credential evaluators know CIS trends, federal case law, and international trade organization agreements that can support your client’s case. In these three ways, a credential evaluator can help you and your client find creative solutions in dealing with difficult degrees. With more RFEs issued every year, we have noticed some trends. There are three main education problems that get overlooked when filing the initial Visa petition that trigger RFEs. 

All of these problems can be rectified or avoided in the first place by working with a credential evaluator who understands CIS trends and federal case law. The first problem is combining education and work experience to draw a US Bachelor’s degree equivalency. When an evaluation combines work experience and college credit for an EB2 petition, best-case scenario is it will trigger an RFE. This is because in this particular Visa, CIS requires the Bachelor’s degree be a single source. There are two ways credential evaluators have been able to address this issue. 

The first option is to combine a three-year Bachelor’s degree with a one-year PGD or a two-year Master’s Degree, accompanied by an expert opinion letter. Since the Bachelor’s degree is the Master’s or PGD prerequisite, it is still a single source. The second option is to convert five years of post-education work experience into the equivalence of a US Master’s degree by citing federal case law. We have seen success with this second method even if the education major does not match PERM requirements, or the PERM states combining a Bachelor’s degree and plus five years of work experience is unacceptable. There are never any guarantees with CIS, but at TheDegreePeople, we have experienced a 95% success rate with these methods. 

The second big RFE trigger for both EB2 and other Visas requiring a US bachelor’s degree or higher is the Indian three-year degree. With other Visas, an evaluator can combine three years of progressive work experience to account for the fourth year of college education, but this will not work for the EB2. If your client has an Indian three-year degree, an evaluator can help you account for that final year without combining work experience. The way this works is we look at the number of classroom contact hours in your client’s major and use the internationally recognized Carnegie Unit conversion to convert classroom hours into college credit hours. Fifteen classroom contact hours equates to one college credit hour. 

A US four-year Bachelor’s degree is comprised of at least 120 credit hours. The Indian three-year degree has even more classroom contact hours – and therefore, even more college credit hours – than the US four-year Bachelor’s degree. Working with a credential evaluator with the authority to make these conversions solves the three-year degree problem. The third major trigger of education RFEs is degrees that do not call themselves degrees. In many countries, professional certifications and degrees that actually are post-secondary degrees do not have the word “degree” in the title. 

This triggers an RFE. The degree of this variety we see the most RFEs for is the Indian Chartered Accountancy certification. At the same time, there are certifications and licensures that do not have the word “degree” in them that actually are NOT degrees. CIS does not know the difference, but your evaluator does, and your evaluator can help you. An evaluator can draw an equivalence to a US bachelor’s degree by evaluating the educational steps necessary to achieve this professional title to show that it does require the amount of post-secondary education necessary for a Bachelor’s degree. 

For example, Chartered Accountancy is the equivalent of a Bachelor’s degree in India because in order to take the certification exam, the same post-secondary education required for a Bachelor’s degree is required to qualify to take this exam. An evaluator would also cite the legally binding UNESCO instrument that validates Chartered Accountancy as the equivalent of a US Bachelor’s degree in Accounting. The purpose of complex CIS educational requirements is really to ask very specific questions about your client’s education. 

An experienced credential evaluator knows how to answer these questions in correspondence with international education and trade precedents. There is no need for a lawyer to be afraid of difficult cases. Work with an experienced evaluator instead of turning away clients with difficult degrees.

How A Credential Evaluator Can Help With Difficult Degrees Read More »

Chartered Accountancy/CPA Around the Globe – Which ones are equivalent to a Degree?

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

It’s complicated, folks. To date, only the Indian and the UK Chartered Accountancy certification are recognized as degrees. Pakistani and Bangladeshi CA certifications have some government recognition, but the issue is not cut and dry. The rest, including the US CPA, are considered professional certifications, but not degrees.

In India, the CA and the ICWAI have full government degree recognition, and the UK CA is now fully integrated into the degree system. However, not every UK CA you will counts as a degree. Some UK CA qualifications fall outside of degree eligibility, and older UK CA certifications are not recognized in the degree because they were earned before this educational track was integrated into the degree system.

In many cases, accounting is simply regarded as a degree, plain and simple. It depends on the country of the certification’s origin and the stages of education required to earn this certification. Degrees that don’t call themselves degrees are complicated. If your client has a CA, don’t wait for an education RFE. Talk to a credential evaluator and have your client’s education reviewed.

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, RFE, Denial, or NOID, please go to http://www.ccifree.com/? or call 800.771.4723.

Chartered Accountancy/CPA Around the Globe – Which ones are equivalent to a Degree? Read More »

How to Optimize Time Sponsoring 2017 H1B Clients and Employees

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

Science, technology, engineering, and math industries are growing in the United States faster than the US workforce can handle. Silicon Valley is built on US companies bringing the brightest minds from all over the country and all over the world into innovative development environments to keep US companies on the cutting edge of technological advancement. However, the US education system is notoriously bad at teaching advanced math and science skills which has led to the need to bring over more employees from countries that have stronger STEM education programs. Jobs that require highly specialized, advanced skills are being created faster than companies can hire US-born workers to fill them, and without employees to work these jobs, the teams that assemble under these positions do not exist. The H-1B visa program has been the solution to bring over highly skilled workers in STEM industries to keep US companies competitive, and to keep wages and salaries high for both US-born and non-US born STEM industry workers.

For these reasons, most STEM companies in the United States that have the resources to sponsor H-1B visas do. This can cost a company anywhere from $2,500 to 10,000 in legal fees and USCIS fees per H-1B employee. While this cost may sound substantial, it is actually a great investment in a company’s future and is even reasonable on paper when viewed in relation to the salaries of H-1B workers. H-1B visa holders can stay on to work with a company for up to six years, and since this is a visa of dual intent, the employer may decide to sponsor the employee for their Green Card down the road. This is an investment in the expansion of a company, as well as a way for the team to build an international perspective into the framework of how they do business. Money is not the issue that stands in the way. Viable companies budget for investment potential as a business strategy. The issue tends to be time.

Preparing an H-1B visa petition can take up the better part of a year. It does not have to, but it’s always a good idea to start making hiring decisions early on for companies looking to sponsor H-1B employees. If your company or your client’s company is ready to sponsor H-1B employees for the fiscal year of 2017, all petitions need to be submitted to USCIS on April 1st of 2016. That’s just under four months away. While the technical deadline for H-1B visa petitions is October 1st, there are only 65,000 annual H-1B visas available and literally hundreds of thousands of H-1B candidates applying for them. There is no annual cap for H-1B jobs in the non-profit sector or for government-funded research foundations, but these kinds of jobs do not cover the needs of the private STEM industry companies that need H-1B employees the most. Even companies like Microsoft tend to only get around half of the H-1B visas they petition for. If your company or your client’s company wants H-1B visa workers for 2017, it’s time to get those petitions ready.

At TheDegreePeople.com, we understand that preparing a petition takes time and can become very stressful. Having an advanced degree from a country outside of the United States – particularly from countries like India that have three-year bachelor’s degrees instead of four-year degrees – can cause trouble. If your employee or client has a degree specialized in a field related to but not exactly matching their field of employ, this can also cause trouble. There are many reasons your client or employee’s education can cause confusion when their petition is filed. Everything from mistranslations to confusion about credit hours can trigger an RFE or a Denial for an over-qualified, clearly adept H-1B visa candidate. Making sure your client or employee submits an accurate credential evaluation that meets the requirements of his or her H-1B visa along with the rest of the petition on April 1st is an essential way to save you time NOW and save you more time LATER. Don’t wait for an RFE, Denial, or NOID to address your client or employee’s education.   We offer a variety of low-cost rush delivery options for the last minute, no-cost consultations on your situation, and we can address your complicated cases quickly and successfully.

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/?CodeBLG/ or call 800.771.4723.

How to Optimize Time Sponsoring 2017 H1B Clients and Employees Read More »

What’s Standing Between Your Genius Client or Employee and Their Visa?

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

Hundreds of thousands of highly skilled workers in STEM industries are sought out every year to come work in the United States. The reason being these industries are expanding so quickly and the jobs are becoming more and more complex, requiring technical expertise the United States educational system is notoriously weak at preparing students for. More highly skilled engineers are needed every year than the US workforce alone can provide. For this reason, if companies can afford it, they opt to sponsor employee Visas.

While sponsoring an employee’s work Visa can cost a company anywhere from $2,500-10,000 in legal fees and USCIS fees, it’s not the money that gets in the way of your genius client or employee obtaining his or her Visa. The fact of the matter is, many of the most brilliant minds followed eclectic or non-traditional educational paths to get to where they are. Common Visas for highly skilled workers – the H-1B Visa and the EB2 Visa – requires a candidates’ degree specializations to be an exact match for their job offers. However, it is common for talented engineers to have earned their degrees in related fields or vastly different fields. Some are largely or completely self-taught and have all of the skills and know-how through solo learning, work experience, and other non-traditional training opportunities.

For these reasons, while companies may jump at the opportunity to take these brilliant minds on to become assets to their companies and to US STEM industries, CIS educational requirements for Visas stand in the way.

Does this mean your client or employee with the specialized skills and knowledge to excel at their job cannot get their Visa because their degree doesn’t match?

Of course not!

A credential evaluator with extensive knowledge and experience with international education complexities, as well as CIS trends and federal case law can take a close look at your client or employee’s educational content and work experience. This way, an equivalency can be written to show that your client or employee has the equivalent of the degree necessary in the specialization necessary to qualify for his or her specialty occupation.

However, different work Visas have different requirements for where these educational equivalencies must come from. For example, if your client or employee is petitioning for an H-1B Visa and has a bachelor’s degree that is not an exact match for their field of employ, but has three years of work experience in the field, their education can be combined with the years of progressive work experience to write an equivalency that their degree is in their field of employ. Work experience and education can be combined to bridge that gap. However, if your client or employee is petitioning for an EB2 Visa and runs into that same problem, the evaluator must handle this differently because the particular Visa requires a single source degree.

Not all evaluation agencies know how to write the evaluation your client or employee needs for his or her particular Visa. When you call in to see if you want to work with any given agency, make sure that they are aware of CIS trends as well as the different educational requirements for different Visas. For example, if you let an agency know that your employee needs an evaluation for an H-1B Visa, they should quickly ask what the job offer is. If they don’t, look elsewhere. You want an evaluation agency that will tailor the evaluation to fit the needs of your client or employee’s unique situation and Visa. In essence, the evaluation must be as complex and unique as the genius it’s written for.

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, RFE, Denial, or NOID, please go to http://www.ccifree.com or call 800.771.4723.

What’s Standing Between Your Genius Client or Employee and Their Visa? Read More »

It’s Easier to Prevent an EB2 RFE than to Overturn One

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

With only 40,040 annual EB2 Visas available and more and more candidates vying for them, you need to make sure USCIS gets your EB2 Visa petition. Alongside increased demand for these Visas for highly skilled workers, we have been seeing more and more RFE’s issued every year.

While an RFE is by no means a rejection of your Visa petition, it is a big red flag that will trigger a scrutinizing look at your petition that can turn up minor glitches that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. Additionally, while many RFE’s are straightforward and reasonable to answer, we are seeing more and more complicated RFE’s that take some strategy and specialized insight into international education and federal case law to address.

How can you avoid an RFE on your EB2 Visa petition? Here are three key factors to keep in mind unique to this Visa:

  1. Your education must match the education requirement on the PERM. If your education is not a match, it will trigger an RFE or Denial. If your degree does not match the education requirement, you need a credential evaluation. If your degree is anything other than a straightforward four-year bachelor’s degree from the United States, you need a credential evaluation, and you need to submit it with the rest of your petition and documentation.
  1. Your bachelor’s degree MUST be a single source degree. This is where this first factor can get tricky. With other Visas like the H1B Visa, CIS allows candidates’ evaluators to combine work experience with years of college to equate to a bachelor’s degree. This is NOT the case with EB2, the bachelor’s degree must be from a single source degree. To work around this, you must find an evaluator well-versed in federal case law that allows for using five years of work experience to show equivalence to a US Master’s Degree. At CCI we can do this, and it takes a LOT of research, evidence, and documentation.
  1. Beware of mistranslations. If your transcripts and educational documents needed to be translated into English, the value of your degree may have been inadvertently changed in translation. One common mistranslation is Baccalaureate to Bachelor’s degree, and these degrees are NOT the same. Similarly, the Russian specialist degree is often mistranslated as well. The kandidat naouk is generally the equivalent to a US doctorate, but cannot be TRANSLATED as a doctorate degree.

John Kersey, international education expert, explains, “In international education, the same term may mean entirely different things. Most bachelor’s degrees in Pakistan, for example, are only two years long and are comparable to a United States associate’s degree, not a bachelor’s degree, which requires three to four years of study. The European Master degree typically represents four years of postsecondary education, and is thus comparable to a United States bachelor’s degree, rather than a Master’s degree, which requires five to six years of postsecondary study.”

Some translation firms are now offering evaluation services as well which has compounded the problem. International credential evaluation is highly nuanced and complex, not to mention translation firms do not know the particular degree requirements of each Visa and how that must impact the way the degree is evaluated.

The solution? A skilled credential evaluator with expertise in international education can pick up on mistranslations. Be sure to let your evaluator know that your educational documents were translated and find a credential evaluation agency with evaluators who at minimum hold a degree in higher education that includes significant study in international education systems. These evaluators will be able to pick up on mistranslations and have a nuanced understanding of which equivalencies are seen as valid in the eyes of CIS, as well as universities and colleges. Find an evaluation agency with evaluators well-versed in federal case law who can evaluate your work experience into the degree you need to meet the educational requirements on the PERM.

Get it right the first time. Don’t make CIS ask again, and don’t give them an excuse to pick your petition apart. These are tricky factors to keep in mind, but now that you know about them, you now have to tools to avoid an RFE.

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.

It’s Easier to Prevent an EB2 RFE than to Overturn One Read More »

It’s Easier to Prevent an RFE than to Overturn One

Credential Evaluation, Visa Approvals


st, 2016. That means CIS does not have to issue an RFE to get the information they need out of you to make an informed decision. Preventing an RFE is much easier than answering one.

An RFE is a tool CIS uses to make the right decision about your petition. When they cannot make a decision based on the evidence you provided, they request more. While this is not the end of the world, and can actually be utilized as an opportunity to strengthen your case, an RFE is a red flag. A red flag is another tool CIS uses to streamline the massive amount of work they have to do to cut 233,000 petitions into 65,000 Visas. If you receive an RFE, that means a glaring omission of evidence has drawn CIS’s close attention to your petition, and it will now be picked apart. Minor errors that would have otherwise gone unnoticed will come to light.

At the same time, answering an RFE is not necessarily a straight-forward process. To successfully answer an RFE, you need to sit down with your lawyer, your employer, and your evaluator to see exactly what is being asked of you and how to go about answering it. Some RFE’s are realistically impossible to answer. The “Nightmare” RFE is one of these, and we’ve been seeing more of them every year. While these can be answered, it requires strategy that only an evaluation agency with international education and federal case law experts on hand to work on your case. At CCI, we have been able to get around 95% of all of the Nightmare RFE’s we work on overturned, but these RFE’s cause a lot of unnecessary stress to H1B candidates and can be easily avoided.

How can you avoid an RFE in the first place?

  1. Triple-check your answers on all of your documents and forms for consistency. Inconsistent answers – even if they are small mistakes – can trigger an RFE.
  1. Prove that your H1B job is a specialty occupation requiring a US bachelor’s degree or its equivalence or higher. You can do this by showing the ad for your job, documentation that similar jobs for similar companies require a bachelor’s degree or higher, and with an expert letter.
  1. Clearly show that your degree is a US bachelor’s degree or higher or its equivalent. If your degree is from outside of the US, you will need to have your education evaluated by an authorized credential evaluation agency. If you have a three-year degree, you will need to find an agency with the authority and expertise to convert classroom contact hours and years of work experience into college credit hours to account for the missing fourth year.
  1. Your degree must be specialized. This means if you have a liberal arts degree, or a generalized degree, CIS will not accept this as proof that you actually possess the specialized skills and knowledge necessary to be qualified for your H1B job. If you have a generalized degree, you need to talk to a credential evaluation agency that will take a close look at your course content and your work experience, and make the proper conversions to college credit hours to show equivalence to a specialized degree.
  1. Your degree must EXACTLY fit your job offer. This means that even though your employer hired you because your degree in a related field and your experience working in the field was enough to prove to them you have the specialized skills and experience necessary to be successful in your new job, CIS needs more. If your degree is not an EXACT fit for your job, you need a credential evaluation from an evaluator who can take a close look at the course content of your degree and make the necessary conversions, and who can also convert your years of work experience in the field into college credit to show equivalency to the exact degree CIS requires you to have.

Don’t wait for the opportunity to overturn an RFE. Remember, an RFE is a big red flag waving high over your petition. The best way to address an RFE is to avoid it. Don’t give CIS an excuse to nit pick your petition. Tell them everything they need to know to make an informed decision on your petition the first time.

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.]]>

It’s Easier to Prevent an RFE than to Overturn One Read More »

The Top 3 Reasons for Education H1-B RFEs

Credential Evaluation, Visa Approvals


Why are there so many education RFEs?

Reason #1 – The candidate’s education equivalence does not match the job offer.

Reason #2 – See Reason #1.

Reason #3 – See Reasons #1 and #2.

Aren’t there any other reasons CIS would call a candidate’s education into question? Not really. There are small issues where CIS requests additional or more complete education documentation, but 90% of the RFEs are about the education equivalence not matching the title of the job offer. Education RFEs are very common because while employers will hire employees with degrees in related fields, CIS requires an H1-B employee’s degree to be an exact match for their job.

Many evaluation agencies write standard evaluations of foreign credentials without taking particular Visa requirements, federal case law, and CIS trends into account. In these situations, you will likely have an accurate evaluation, but your degree still will not match your job offer. This is an example of a good evaluator writing the wrong evaluation.

Well, you might get lucky and slide through, right? So why not just wait for an RFE to submit the education evaluation that CIS wants? Luck HAS worked reasonably well up until just recently. Some petitions did manage to slide by, but in the past two years we started seeing the “Nightmare” RFE begin to increase. If your degree or your degree evaluation does not match your job offer, you will likely run into problems with CIS, and the “Nightmare” RFE is a problem you never want to have to face. This is an extremely complicated RFE that is literally impossible to answer. While no one knows what triggers these particular RFEs, we DO know that they almost always occur when the candidate’s education does not match the job offer.

Send in a credential evaluation that takes your work experience and course content into account to fill in the gaps between your degree and your job offer before you have to do it the hard way. A simple work experience evaluation can prevent this “Nightmare” experience.

If it’s too late and you have already received a “Nightmare” RFE – also known as the “Kitchen Sink” RFE because absolutely everything is in it but the kitchen sink – we can help you. While this RFE cannot actually be met as written, we have developed a systematic approach to addressing this RFE that has worked 95% of the time.

To learn more about the Nightmare RFE, check out my article http://discuss.ilw.com/content.php?4449-Article-You-Can-Beat-The-Nightmare-RFE-for-H1B-By-Sheila-Danzig. You CAN beat the “Nightmare” RFE, but why do it if you don’t have to? Don’t risk this “Nightmare” scenario. Get your credentials evaluated by an evaluation agency with the authority to convert work experience in your field of employ into college credit. Some agencies simply do not write these kinds of evaluations. When you talk to them on the phone, tell them that you need an education evaluation for an H1-B Visa petition. If they don’t ask about your job offer, look elsewhere. You need an evaluator knowledgeable about international education as well as CIS trends.

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.]]>

The Top 3 Reasons for Education H1-B RFEs Read More »

Using Chartered Accountancy Certificate for EB2

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals


One common occurrence in which this is the case is the Chartered Accountancy certification from India. With an evaluation and a detailed expert opinion letter, the Indian Chartered Accountancy Certificate can be shown equivalent to a US Bachelor’s degree. While this certification is evaluated to be the equivalent of a US bachelor’s degree with a major in Accounting, the Chartered Accountancy certification from Canada is not. Similar certifications in different countries evaluate to different equivalencies in terms of the value of US education. How can this be?

The answer is not determined by which evaluator you go to, and will not change from one agency to the next. The equivalency answer is based on equivalencies in the home countries of the holders of these certificates. In India, the Chartered Accountancy certification is the result of post-secondary education and passing examinations that have prerequisites of post-secondary education. The Canadian Chartered Accountancy certification is a professional certification, but not post-secondary education. How does one discern the difference between what is post-secondary education and what is not? The way to evaluate these certifications – or, in the case of the Indian Chartered Accountancy certification, degrees that don’t call themselves degrees – is to look at the stages of education required to complete that certification, and the post-graduate education and professions that certification meets the prerequisite standards of.

It looks like this:

To hold an Indian Chartered Accountancy certification, a person must have completed a program of education that culminates in the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (IACI) formal examination. To take this examination, a candidate must have passed the PE-II Intermediate examination and have 2.5 years of practical training. To take the PE-II, an Indian bachelor’s degree or the equivalent of the PE-I is necessary. Therefore, if a candidate holds an Indian Chartered Accountancy certification, the education required to get there is the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree.

In 2007, the AAO agreed in their decision that states, “Passage of the ICAI final examination and obtaining associate membership in the ICAI is the foreign equivalent to a US bachelor’s degree in Accounting.”

Even difficult degrees – and degrees that don’t call themselves degrees – can be understood when broken down into the steps and prerequisites necessary to obtain them.

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.

 ]]>

Using Chartered Accountancy Certificate for EB2 Read More »

The Matter of Shah and Why it Should NOT Matter

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

What does the Matter of Shah have to do with any of this?

The decision to this matter, made in 1977, is the most widely cited reason the USCIS and their evaluation board gives for issuing an RFE or rejecting a visa petition outright.  In this decision, it was determined that the candidate, who held a three-year Indian bachelor’s degree with chemistry as a special subject from Gujarat University and a two-year MBA from the University of Detroit was not academically qualified for a job in the United States as a chemist.  The candidate had never been employed in the field of chemistry, which also weighed into the decision in the Matter of Shah.

To this day – almost 40 years later – this decision is given as grounds to bar countless qualified candidates from the visas they deserve based on a three-year degree not being equivalent to a US four-year degree.  Is this decision solid grounds for denial?

No.  Here is why:

First, the board that made the decision in the Matter of Shah never actually made a complete analysis of the candidate’s education.  The decision was based on analysis of just the second year of the candidate’s three-year undergraduate transcripts.  With only one year to consider, the board had no way of discerning the actual academic content of the candidate’s degree.  That would require looking at the total number of classroom contact hours and academic rigor of all three years of the candidate’s undergraduate study.  This means that they actual academic value of the candidate’s education was never actually taken into accurate consideration in this decision.  In the verbatim of the board’s decision, it was even stated that a US four-year bachelor’s degree requires “usually” four years of study.  “Usually” means that sometimes it is more and sometimes it is less.  The US four-year degree requires a minimum of 1800 classroom contact hours to graduate.

Former Professor of Physics at the University of Mumbai, Gulab Vaswani reports, “Every three-year bachelor’s degree program in India has more than 2000 contact hours with some having more than 3000.”

At the same time, the board never analyzed the proportion of the candidate’s study devoted to chemistry.  Therefore, the decision that the candidate did not meet the academic qualifications for the job of chemist was also misinformed.

Which leads right into the second reason the Matter of Shah should not matter.

The candidate had earned a three-year degree from an accredited university with chemistry as a special subject.  The word “Special” was never determined in the board’s decision.  Credential evaluators across the country have found time and again that a “special” subject in an Indian three-year degree is the academic equivalent of a “major” subject in a US four-year degree.  This means that the special subject has equal to or more credit hours than that same subject as a major in a US four-year undergraduate program.  Therefore, the candidate did in fact major in chemistry in the Matter of Shah.

Even though the board did not recognize the value of the candidate’s undergraduate degree, the University of Detroit certainly did.  In fact, the university admitted the candidate into their MBA program based on the three-year Indian bachelor’s degree being the equivalent of the US four-year bachelor’s degree necessary to gain entrance into that very program.  The fact that the candidate went on to successfully complete the two-year MBA program goes to show that the Indian three-year degree with chemistry as a special subject really did qualify the candidate for the graduate program.

Finally, the last reason I will go into for why the Matter of Shah should not be grounds for denying anyone’s visa is that in making the decision, the board overturned a previous ruling.  This ruling was made by the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and can be found in Appendix 5-F, pages 34-37 of the Immigrant Inspector’s Handbook.  In this ruling, the department stated that a B.S. degree in chemistry from the candidate’s university, Gujarat University, is the equivalent of a United States B.S. degree.

The Matter of Shah has its foundation in four errors:

  1. Incomplete evaluation of the academic content of the candidate’s degree.
  2. Failing to translate the term “Special” into US academic context.
  3. Ignoring the University of Detroit’s decision to admit the candidate into their graduate program based on the academic value of the candidate’s three-year Indian bachelor’s degree, as well as the candidate’s successful completion of the MBA.
  4. Overturning a previous ruling that determined that the candidate’s exact degree was the equivalent of a US four-year bachelor’s degree.

The Matter of Shah should not serve as a roadblock to Visa approval.  Unfortunately, almost forty years later, it still does.  If your client or employee received an RFE about their three-year bachelor’s degree, you need to provide a credential evaluation that includes a refutation of the Matter of Shah.  As you can see, refuting the Matter of Shah as grounds for a decision about the value of a three-year Indian bachelor’s degree or specialization is not difficult to do in a credential evaluation.  However, the evaluator you select must be well versed in USCIS and immigration precedents, and be able to provide the documentation that highlights these points of refutation.

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

The Matter of Shah and Why it Should NOT Matter Read More »

Scroll to Top