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Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

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.

Here is Why You, Your Client, or Your Employee Got that RFE Read More »

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals
Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

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.

Don’t Fall into an H1B Education Trap Read More »

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals
Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

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.

The Indian Chartered Accountancy Certificate and PERM Requirements Read More »

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals
Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

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.

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

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals
Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

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:

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

How to Avoid that H1B RFE Read More »

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals
Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

Over the course of the next two months before the H1-b filing date, you will see a lot of articles, blogs, and reports urging you to get your client’s education evaluated for US equivalence. H1-b candidates with degrees from outside of the US are required by CIS to submit a thorough evaluation of their foreign credentials as evidence that their degree is the equivalent of a US bachelor’s degree or higher, AND that their degree specialization matches their job title. But what, exactly, is in a credential evaluation and why does it matter for your client’s H1-b visa approval?

There are three primary components to a credential evaluation:

  1. Institutions of education and attendance dates. An evaluation will indicate which schools and colleges your client attended and for how long, including the profile and accreditations of the schools your client attended. This means elementary school, high school, and post-secondary institutions. The reason for this is because the number of years of education varies from country to country from the time your client entered school as a child. These are all factors in equivalency recommendations.
  1. Diploma, certificate, degree, and transcript equivalents. All of these documents will be included in the evaluation along with their equivalents indicated and explained. The steps of education is important in the evaluation process because many degrees in countries outside of the US are post-secondary degrees BUT the word degree is not in the title. To evaluate these difficult degrees, the stages of education necessary to attain these certifications must be evaluated for post-secondary equivalence.
  1. Recommended US equivalent of your client’s degree. Each credential evaluation will make an equivalence recommendation based on evidence, analysis, expert opinions, CIS precedents, international trade agreements, and even federal case law. Since there are no set standards for foreign degree equivalence evaluation, an evaluator must make a case for their recommendation.

For the H1-B visa, you want an evaluator who can write an accurate recommendation founded in evidence, precedents, expert opinions, and documentation for your client’s degree to be the equivalent of a US bachelor’s degree or higher in the field that matches your client’s job title. Not all evaluation agencies will write the detailed evaluation it takes to truly explain and assess the value of your client’s foreign degree. Many evaluation agencies simply pull conservative equivalencies from standardized equivalency databases. However, there are NO set foreign equivalency standards and every candidate’s education is different.

When you hire a credential evaluator for your client’s H1-B evaluation, make sure he or she is well-versed in the specific educational requirements of the H1-B visa. This means when you call, you will be asked about your client’s specific visa, and your clients specific job. Both of these variables factor heavily into the evaluation the right evaluator will write for your client’s education.

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.

What’s in an H1-B Credential Evaluation and Why Does it Matter? Read More »

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals
Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

Wrong.

And getting more and more wrong as CIS trends grow increasingly complex with regards to candidates’ education. As the IT industry grows, requiring more highly skilled workers to fill the increasing number of jobs that US citizens cannot fill, IT companies that can afford to hire H1B workers are doing so. While the number of H1B jobs in the United States has skyrocketed, the number of annual visas available has not. At the same time, tightened educational requirements are part of CIS’s attempt to mitigate visa fraud. CIS trends fluctuate from year to year, and even a perfectly filed petition for an over-qualified candidate can receive an RFE. Understanding these educational requirements and how to meet them – and sometimes how to meet them in creative ways – will help your client get their visa approved without CIS ever issuing an RFE.

Candidate’s Degree Must be a US Bachelor’s Degree or Its Equivalent

This requirement is not as straightforward as it sounds. If your client has a four-year Bachelor’s degree from a US college or university, go ahead and file. All other degrees need to be reviewed by a credential evaluator. Foreign degrees need a credential evaluation because educational systems vary from country to country, and the academic value of a bachelor’s degree from one place does not necessarily equate because it’s called a bachelor’s degree. In the same way, a foreign certification or licensure may actually be the equivalent of a US bachelor’s degree even though it doesn’t call itself a degree. For example, one situation that triggers a lot of RFE’s is when a candidate has an Indian Chartered Accountancy certification. This is actually the equivalent of a US Bachelor’s degree in accounting, but the same certification in Canada is not. The Canadian Chartered Accountancy certification is a professional license, but not post-secondary education. See how this gets confusing? A credential evaluator can make the necessary equivalency determinations about your client’s education, explain how the equivalency works, and back up with equivalency with evidence.

Four Years of Post-Secondary Education Matter

If your client has a three-year bachelor’s degree – ESPECIALLY if it’s an Indian three-year degree – their education is likely to trigger an RFE if it is not handled correctly. CIS trends require focus on longevity rather than academic content when it comes to years of college or university, so it is you and your client’s responsibility to show that academic content and progressive work experience comprise a fourth year of college credit. How can you do this? There are two options that we have seen work almost every time when it comes to the H1B visa. An evaluator can convert years of progressive work experience into college credit. Progressive experience means that your client’s job required them to expand their knowledgebase and skillset, and take on increasing amounts of work and responsibility. Three years of this nature of work can be converted into one year of college credit. Never submit an H1B petition without an evaluation that accounts for the missing fourth year.

Degree Must Be Specialized and Exactly Matching Candidate’s Job

This is a relatively new requirement that takes many H1B candidates, their employers, and their lawyers by surprise. While it’s common for an employer to hire a candidate with a degree in a field related to the job, CIS will not approve their visa. In the past six or seven years, CIS trends have changed regarding this requirement. In the past, a candidate with a degree in a related field would have the petition approved, now instead they receive an RFE. Your client’s degree major must be an exact match for their field of employ. At the same time, because H1B requirements indicate the job must require specialized knowledge and skills to carry out its duties, candidates with generalized degrees are also running into this problem. If your client is in a mismatched degree situation, your client needs to prove that she does possess the specialized skills and knowledge required to be successful at her job even if it is not directly reflected in her college major.

The way to do this is to prove equivalence to a US bachelor’s degree in her field of employ with a credential evaluation. The way this works is an evaluator can convert years of progressive work experience in her field of employ into college credit hours in that major track with the three years of work to one year of college credit conversion. The evaluation must show that your client has the equivalent of a US four-year bachelor’s degree with the bulk to the equated credit hours in their field. This requires a detailed evaluation with a credential evaluator familiar with CIS educational requirements, as well as precedents of what they will accept and what they will not accept.

If your client as anything but a straightforward US four-year bachelor’s degree, have their education reviewed by a credential evaluator to see what you need to do 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.

H1B Educational Requirements Your Client Needs to Know About to Avoid an RFE Read More »

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals
Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

The date to file your client’s H1-B petition for the 2017 fiscal year is coming up fast. Last year’s trends and the trends of years previous are expected to continue, and that means even more petitions flooding in for the same number of annual visas. That also means more RFE’s that you might have to deal with. An RFE is not the end of the world, and can oftentimes be addressed with success, an RFE is a big red flag on your client’s petition waving to CIS to take a close, scrutinizing look. This can turn up minute details that would otherwise have been overlooked but now count against your client’s likelihood of approval.

CIS has a big job to do and red flags make their job of sorting through hundreds of thousands of petitions easier. Filing an impeccable petition also makes their job easier. While CIS is known to issue an RFE for no apparent reason, most RFE’s can be avoided. That means it’s time to break out your H1-B checklist.

  1. Is your client’s job a specialty occupation?

What does this mean? To CIS, a specialty occupation is a job that requires your client to hold a US bachelor’s degree in the field or higher, or its equivalent to carry out the duties of said job. Their job must require specialized skills and knowledge to perform. How can you prove this? A copy of the ad for your client’s job that includes minimum requirements can be used as evidence, as well as similar postings for similar jobs working for similar companies. If your client’s job requires a bachelor’s degree or higher but similar positions do not, you need to supply more evidence. This means expert opinion letters, which can be useful anyway, as well as evidence that shows the skills needed for this particular job are more advanced due to the unique nature of your client’s particular job.

  1. Does your client’s education meet the requirements for their job?

Once you’ve established that your client’s job is H1-B qualified, it’s time to make sure you’ve proven your client is qualified for his or her H1-B job. This means they have a bachelor’s degree or higher in the required field, as well as the necessary training and work experience the job requires.

  1. Is the value of your client’s education clear to CIS?

If your client’s degree is from a country outside of the United States, it will need to be evaluated for US equivalence. Anything besides a very straightforward US bachelor’s degree needs a credential evaluation. Never submit an H1-B petition with a foreign degree without a detailed credential evaluation. This is an increasingly common RFE trigger. The Indian and other three-year Bachelor’s degrees commonly trigger RFE’s because of the missing fourth year. A credential evaluator can convert years of progressive work experience in your client’s field of employ into college credit to account for the missing year. Progressive means that the candidate’s work required them to take on more responsibilities and develop their knowledge base and skill set to meet the increasing demands of the work. Three years of progressive experience in the field can be equated to one year of college credit. All that is needed is a well-documented evaluation to prove it.

Another common problem that trigger RFE’s for even the most qualified candidate’s petition is that they have a degree that doesn’t call itself a degree. Many countries have degrees that require postsecondary education and the necessary stages of education to meet Bachelor’s degree requirements, but don’t actually have the word “degree” in the title. These certifications also require a credential evaluation because while in some countries these are degree equivalencies, in other countries they are not. Because this is not clear and straightforward, without a credential evaluation CIS will not have enough evidence to approve your client’s petition.

  1. Do your client and his or her employee have an employer-employee relationship?

What is an employer-employee relationship? To establish that your client and his or her employer have this kind of relationship, the employer must be able to hire, fire, promote, pay, and otherwise control the work that the employee does. To prove that this is the case, submit a copy of the employment contract, and other documentation that clearly displays the nature of your client’s work.

  1. Does your client’s degree match his or her field of employ?

Just six or seven years ago, H1-B candidates were able to get their visas approved with a degree in a field related to their job. Now, CIS requires an exact match. Employers hire employees for specialized positions with bachelor’s degrees in related fields all the time. CIS, however, does not approve their visas. Instead, they get RFEs. If your client’s bachelor’s degree is generalized or in a field related to but not an exact match for his or her job, have a credential evaluator review their educational documents. Oftentimes, a detailed evaluation that takes work experience into account to draw an equivalency to a degree in the matching field.  Years of progressive work experience in the field can be counted towards this matching degree specialization with the three years of experience to one year of college credit conversion. This can both work to account for the missing fourth year in three-year Bachelor’s degrees, AND to write an equivalency for a specialized degree in your client’s exact field of employ.

Before you file, sit down with your client, your client’s employer, and your credential evaluator and go through these questions. Ask, is this true? Then ask, have we provided the evidence necessary to clearly prove to CIS that this is true? Don’t ever file without doing everything you can to make sure you and your client got the petition right the first time. There’s no need to wait for 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.

H1-B Checklist to Avoid an RFE in 2016 Read More »

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals
Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals


But whose fault is it REALLY and why does it matter whose fault it is anyway?

True, sometimes it is the attorney or evaluators fault, but sometimes it is CIS’s fault.

Sometimes it is the fault of the evaluation but not the evaluator.

Sometimes it is CIS’s fault.

Sometimes it is the candidate’s fault.

Sometimes it is no one’s fault at all.

It matters because there is absolutely no reason to get a new attorney or a new evaluator at this stage of the process if the RFE was not their fault.

The first step to successfully responding to an RFE is to understand what is being asked for, and of whom is it being asked, and which party can provide the necessary evidence.  Knowing who is at fault for the RFE is a big part of understanding how to move forward.

When is it the attorney’s fault?

Very rarely, an attorney will file an application incorrectly.  Generally, however, the attorney error occurs when the candidate’s education is not reviewed by an education specialist before the application is filed.  In this case, the candidate’s account of their education and experience is incorrect or does not meet the CIS requirements for the H1-B.  Unless this is the case, don’t fire your attorney over an RFE.

When is it the evaluator’s fault, and how can it be the fault of the evaluation but NOT the person who wrote the evaluation?

There are situations when the RFE is clearly the evaluator’s fault because the evaluation was done incorrectly.  For example, when a non-accredited PGD is listed as accredited, CIS jumps on that inaccuracy to issue an RFE.   This rarely happens, because most evaluators are highly trained in spotting unaccredited education.

However, every evaluation is different, and evaluations for different Visas must be written very differently.  When an evaluator writes an evaluation for any particular visa, he or she needs to know both the Visa regulations AND current CIS trends.  Not every evaluation agency is aware of the Visa regulations. The evaluator may have provided the evaluation ordered by the client, only to find that the equivalence does not work for the particular Visa.  For example, if you have a four-year degree in electrical engineering, you can receive an evaluation written correctly showing an equivalency to a US bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, but then receive an RFE anyway because your job is in the field of computer software analysis.  This sort of mismatch triggered an onslaught of RFEs this year.  The evaluator did a good job, but the evaluation was not correct for the purposes of the Visa.  In this case, you may have likely found the right evaluator, but he or she provided you with the wrong evaluation even though they acted in good faith.  To avoid this, make sure you order your evaluation from an agency that knows education regulations for each Visa.  If you advise an evaluation agency that you need an evaluation for an H1-B visa and they don’t ask about the job offer, find a new agency.  The degree must precisely fit the field of employment for this Visa and the evaluator needs to know this information so they can evaluate an equivalency to the proper degree.  If you are not asked about the job offer, the agency does not look at the Visa regulations and is not right for this job.

If you have already paid an evaluator and a mistake was made, I suggest you go back to that evaluator to try to address your RFE.  However, if the evaluation agency did not make sure that the evaluation was written for the particular Visa it was ordered for, that may just be how they operate. There is nothing wrong with that unless they lead you to believe that they evaluate for immigration and meet Visa requirements as part of their service.  They may just be writing standard evaluations and not be authorized to make the conversions from work experience to education, which is necessary to prove equivalency between fields or across educational system structures.  You cannot expect an agency to do something they don’t claim to do.  So the evaluation agency you want and need is one that will look at the education, as well as the visa requirements and current CIS trends.

When is it CIS’s fault?

Government bureaucracies make mistakes and some RFEs are simply factually incorrect.  Everything in a petition could be done correctly and you can still receive an RFE.  Often when CIS is at fault, the RFE will state that an accredited university is not accredited, or that a qualified evaluator is not qualified.  While these RFEs are frustrating, they are usually also easy fixes.  With the help of your evaluator, you can easily provide]]>

Who is to Blame for Your H1B RFE? Read More »

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals
Immigration

Economists across the United States are almost entirely unified in agreement that granting citizenship to undocumented immigrants will significantly improve the US economy within five years.  However, the longer we wait, the smaller the positive impact this will have.  The sooner undocumented immigrants are granted citizenship, the more the benefits to the US economy are maximized.  This is because these undocumented immigrants will make higher wages, pay higher taxes, and use their higher earnings to stimulate the US economy, and the sooner this ball gets rolling the better.

It is estimated that granting citizenship to undocumented immigrants will generate 1.4 trillion dollars in economic growth and 184 billion dollars in tax revenue.  Within five years of being granted citizenship, undocumented immigrants are estimated to see a 25.1% rise in their annual incomes.  This extra money will ripple through the US economy.  This is because not only is more money going into the pockets of these workers, but also with citizenship they can spend this money freely without concern of it being traced back to its illegal origins.  They can purchase a wider variety of products in the United States, and with their higher incomes, they can purchase more of it.  Not to mention, their incomes could be taxed, and at higher rates than they would have been with 25.1% less annual income.

While granting citizenship to undocumented immigrants will absolutely benefit the US economy in a short amount of time, economists warn that this change ALONE is not enough to create a massive resurgence in the US economy.  However, immigration is the answer in the form of granting citizenship to undocumented immigrants as well as expanding programs that bring highly skilled workers to the United States to work under H1-B visa status for high salaries for the growing STEM industries.  STEM industries are expanding faster than the US workforce can fill the jobs that require highly adept math, science, and engineering skills.  These are the big money industries that the US needs to stay competitive in the international marketplace as well as stimulate economic growth in a struggling economy.

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/?CodeBLG or call 800.771.4723.

Granting Citizenship and Expanding the H1B Program Can Improve the Economy Read More »

Immigration
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