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EB2 RFE

Case Studies of Difficult EB2 Education RFEs Answered

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

You must show that you, your employee, or your client holds the correct degree equivalency to meet the education requirements on the PERM within the parameters of what is acceptable – which is complex. A credential evaluation for any degree from outside of the United States, or that does not match the job title on the PERM is essential. EB2 educational requirements are different than other visa requirements when it comes to what can be converted and combined to prove degree equivalency. For example, unlike other visas, an EB2 candidate’s bachelor’s degree must be a single source.

At TheDegreePeople, we specialize in difficult RFEs. Evaluators use strategies like functional equivalencies and close examination of the academic content of candidates’ education to fulfill CIS educational requirements for this visa while adhering to equivalency restrictions on the PERM. Below are two case studies we have seen recently in which EB2 candidates received common but difficult education RFEs.

  1. Client holds an Indian Three-Year Bachelor’s degree.

The client in the previous case study held a four-year engineering degree from India. Most Indian bachelor’s degrees, however, are three-year programs. One of the biggest RFE triggers is having a three-year bachelor’s degree instead of a US four-year bachelor’s degree. CIS sees the missing fourth year and issues an RFE because the missing year is misunderstood as missing academic content. This is what happened to our client.

To address the missing fourth year, we wrote a detailed credential evaluation that examined the academic content of his three-year degree. This was done by breaking down the number of classroom contact hours required for our client to earn his degree, then use the internationally recognized Carnegie unit conversion that measures college credit hours. Fifteen hours in the classroom is converted into one hour of college credit. The US Department of Education defines a credit hour as “an amount of work represented in intended learning outcomes and verified by evidence of student achievement.”

A US four-year bachelor’s degree program requires a minimum of 120 college credit hours to graduate. Our client’s degree required FAR MORE than 120 college credit hours to graduate. We were able to show CIS that the actual academic content of our client’s degree was the equivalency of a US four-year bachelor’s degree and his visa was approved. This is important, because EB2 education requirements insist that the bachelor’s degree be a single source. That means we could not convert years of work experience into college credit to account for the missing year.

  1. Education does not match PERM requirements.

One of the biggest educational triggers for RFEs is that the candidate’s education does not match the job title. Just under a decade ago, a candidate could have a degree in a field related to the job title and the visa would be approved. Today, employers hire employees with related degrees all the time because they understand that with a related degree and the proper work experience the candidate has the knowledge and skills necessary to perform the job. However, in the past six or seven years, CIS has been issuing RFEs for candidates with education that does not exactly match their job title. This was the case with a client who came to us with a difficult RFE.

He had an Indian four-year bachelor’s degree in engineering, and his job was in the field of computer sciences. To address this RFE, we had to show that his bachelor’s degree in engineering was the functional equivalent to a bachelor’s degree in computer sciences. To do this, we had to show that someone with a bachelor’s degree in engineering could be accepted into the same Master’s program in computer sciences, same as someone with a bachelor’s degree in computer sciences to show that the skills and knowledge necessary to learn to earn an engineering degree equipped the candidate to perform the same functions as someone with a degree in computer sciences. We did this by documenting a host of examples of how our client’s bachelor’s degree in engineering would be accepted for admission into Master’s degree programs in computer sciences, and this proved clearly that the skills and knowledge our client learned in order to have earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering enabled him to be successful in a Master’s degree program in computer sciences. This is a functional equivalency – the bachelor’s degree he held in engineering functioned the same as the degree CIS required him to hold. CIS accepted this evaluation and approved his EB2 visa.

At TheDegreePeople, we see difficult EB2 RFEs day in and day out. While there are never any guarantees with CIS, we have found several strategies that work with consistency. For a review of your case, your employee’s case, or your client’s case at no charge or obligation, please go to www.cciFree.com and fill out the form on the website. Send in the requested documents. I will personally get back to you within 24 hours.

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.

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The Indian Chartered Accountancy Certificate and PERM Requirements

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals


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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Your Roadmap to Approval May NOT be in your Client’s RFE

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals


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

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

  • 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.]]>

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    Case Study: EB2 RFE for Education Not Matching PERM Requirement – APPROVED

    Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals


    Many employees are hired because their bachelor’s or master’s degrees in a field related to their occupation is sufficient for their employers to recognize that they have the specialized skills and knowledge to be successful at their jobs. Even though the degree may not precisely fit the field of employ, the knowledge base is there. This is not the case for the USCIS.

    Now, the USCIS has been issuing RFE’s to petitioners whose degree specialization doesn’t exactly match their field of employ. If a foreign degree is deemed to be equivalent to the necessary US degree, if the specialization does not match the field of employ, the USCIS will not recognize that the applicant’s education meets PERM requirements.

    This is what happened to our client. He came to us with an education RFE for this very reason. He held a bachelor’s degree in engineering from abroad, which the USCIS agreed was the equivalent of a US bachelor’s degree in engineering. Unfortunately, to meet the USCIS educational standards for his job, the USCIS required a bachelor’s degree in computer science, not engineering. Although the fields are related to the point of much academic overlap, a bachelor’s degree in engineering was not good enough.

    We were able to provide the evidence requested in his RFE and his EB2 visa was approved. We did this by supplying extensive research and evidence to show how his bachelor’s degree in engineering degree was functionally equivalent to a bachelor’s degree in computer sciences. Had his degree been a three-year degree, our evaluation would have consisted of a close examination of the course content of his degree, as well as converting years of work experience in the computer sciences field into Carnegie Unit credit hours.

    However, since his engineering degree was a four-year degree already, what we needed to do was clearly spell out that our client’s educational experience – both inside and outside of the classroom – had more than equipped him with the specialized skills and knowledge necessary for a successful career in the computer sciences field. Through our examination, we were able to show that his engineering degree was the functional equivalent of a computer sciences degree by giving a host of examples of how his engineering degree would be accepted for admission to a master’s degree program in computer sciences. This clearly proved that the skills and knowledge he gained in his educational experience made him eligible to be successful in a master’s program in his field of employ. The USCIS accepted this and approved his visa.

    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/.

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