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

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

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

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

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

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

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

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

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

    Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

    Hiring on H1b employees is a great option for established companies as well as start-ups. This particular work Visa allows workers to stay with the company and work for up to six years, with opportunities to pursue pathways towards Green Cards and citizenship. Unlike an F1 work visa, H1b employees will have the time to integrate into the companies and organizations they work for, building a long-term, cohesive workplace.

    If you or your client is looking into hiring H1b employees to work for your start-up company, the petition process may be more complex than if your company was established. This is because start-up companies tend to run on tight budgets. You must be able to prove that you can pay your H1b employee prevailing wages for the position, as well as benefits. Your company must be able to do this without cutting into the salaries of other non-H1b employees, and without loosing overall economic viability. Accurately budgeting for your H1b employee is essential, and you must have the evidence to prove it.

    Many companies resort to cutting corners when just starting up. If you hire an H1b employee, you cannot do this. You also must ensure that your H1b employee’s working conditions are up to standard. To do this, you must file a Labor Condition Application and it must be approved by April 1st. Detailed evidence that your company upholds US labor standards is necessary for this application to be approved so you and your employee or client can move forward on the petition process. This will benefit your company in the long run by ensuring that your business is built on a basis of excellence.

    If you hire a foreign worker, you will most certainly be held to higher standards and have those standards enforced more strictly than if you simply hire US-born workers. However, this will ensure that your company get off to a legitimate start and evolve from a strong, solid foundation. There are simply not enough highly skilled workers who are US citizens to meet the growing job demands of the IT industry, and plenty of brilliant minds from other countries who want to work for you. At the same time, with H1b employees on staff, your company will have strong roots in an international perspective and a global focus. As the business world – particularly the IT world – becomes evermore globally oriented, your company will already be structured for this modern, global industry while established companies and other start-ups that don’t hire H1b workers will have to adapt.

    It is well worth the extra attention to the details of the petition process to start up your new business with H1b employees on your staff.

    About the Author

    Sheila Danzig

    Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director of CCI TheDegreePeople.com a Foreign Credentials Evaluation Agency. For a no charge analysis of any difficult case, RFEs, Denials, or NOIDs, please go to http://www.ccifree.com/ or call 800.771.4723. Mention that you saw this in the ILW article and get 72 hour rush service at no charge.

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

    Who is to Blame for Your RFE?

    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’s 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 a PERM incorrectly. Generally, however, the attorney error occurs when the candidate’s education is not reviewed by an education specialist before the PERM is filed. In this case, the candidate’s account of the education is incorrect or does not meet the CIS definition of a degree for that particular Visa. Unless this is the case, don’t file your attorney over an RFE.

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

    There are situations when the RFE is clearly the evaluator’s fault because the evaluation was incorrect. For example, when a non-accredited PGD is listed as accredited, CIS jumps on that inaccuracy to issue an RFE.

    However, every evaluation is different, and evaluations for different Visas must be written very differently. When an evaluator writes an evaluation for any particular visa, he or she must know both the Visa regulations AND current CIS trends. The evaluator may have done the job properly but the equivalence does not work for the particular Visa. For example, someone with a four-year degree in electrical engineering can have an evaluation written perfectly showing equivalence for a US bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, and then receive an RFE because his or her job is in the field of computer software analysis. This sort of mismatch triggered an onslaught of RFE’s this year. The evaluator did a good job, but the evaluation was not correct for the purposes of the Visa. In this case, you may have likely found the write evaluator, he or she just wrote the wrong evaluation correctly. To avoid this, make sure you order your evaluation from an agency that knows education regulations for each Visa. If you advise an evaluation agency that you need an evaluation for an H1B visa and they don’t ask about the job offer, find a new agency. The degree must precisely fit the field of employ for this Visa and the evaluator needs to know this information so they can evaluate an equivalency to the proper degree. If you are not asked about the job offer, the agency simply does not understand what is required of H1B Visa candidates.

    If you have already paid an evaluator and a mistake was made, I suggest you go back to that evaluator to try to address your RFE. However, if the evaluation agency did not make sure that the evaluation was written for the particular Visa it was ordered for, that may just be how they operate. They may just be writing standard evaluations and not be authorized to make the conversions necessary to prove equivalence between fields or across educational system structures. You cannot expect an agency to do something they don’t claim to do. The evaluation agency you want is one that will look at the education, as well as the visa requirements and current CIS trends.

    When is it CIS’s fault?

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

    When is it the Candidate’s Fault?

    Candidates make mistakes. They have been known to insist that their high school documents are college level. They have also been known to provide poorly translated documents, or even fraudulently translated documents. Often but not always, a good evaluator can pick up on these problems before starting in on the evaluation, but not all evaluation agencies will review a candidate’s case before accepting payment and writing it. To be sure that no problems arise further down the road that can trigger an RFE, we always review all of the documents before accepting a credential evaluation order. Before we have seen all of the education documents, a resume, and the RFE or Denial if one has been issued, we have no way to discuss any given candidate’s case. We want to discover any issues in the documents right away in order to eliminate the vast majority of client confusion and misinformation.

    When is it no one’s fault?

    Sometimes, it really is no one’s fault. CIS trends change. As we have seen especially in the past seven or so years, CIS trends can change very quickly. We can only, at best, know what they generally do and what they have done. CIS can be a wildcard, and for that reason we can never guarantee what they are going to do. When this happens, all you can do is carefully read the RFE, understand what is being asked of whom and who can provide the requested evidence, and do your best.

    Can we draw a usable conclusion?

    Yes. If you have a competent attorney, work with him or her to resolve the RFE. If you used an evaluation agency before receiving an RFE, go back to them. Next time, make sure you are working with an agency that reviews the education and Visa requirements before you order. If that is not their policy, find a new agency. If that is their policy, hear them out. As much as I would like your business, an RFE is really not a reason to jump ship if an evaluation agency’s overall work has been good. Few agencies have passed through the RFE gauntlet this year unscathed, and many of these RFE’s are not the fault of the agency. Or the fault of the attorney. If you receive an RFE, the best solution is to remain calm and deal with it as best you can.

    About the Author

    Sheila Danzig

    Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director of CCI TheDegreePeople.com a Foreign Credentials Evaluation Agency. For a no charge analysis of any difficult case, RFEs, Denials, or NOIDs, please go to http://www.ccifree.com/ or call 800.771.4723. Mention that you saw this in the ILW article and get 72 hour rush service at no charge.

    Who is to Blame for Your RFE? Read More »

    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/.

     ]]>

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

    Don't Panic, April First is Tomorrow

    Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

    But before you send in your petition, you want to ask yourself, “Have I successfully proven that I’m qualified for my H-1B job?”

    To qualify for your H-1B job, and thus your visa, you need to clearly show that you possess the body of specialized knowledge required to perform your job.  That means you have a US bachelor’s degree or higher, or its equivalent, in your field of employ.  If your degree is from a different country, or if your degree is generalized or in a field different from your job, your job of proving your qualification to the USCIS is not done.

    You will need a to submit a detailed evaluation of your credentials along with your transcript from a credential evaluation agency authorized to make the necessary conversions to bridge the gaps in your degree.  You only get one shot at this.

    You have one day.  We can help you.

    At CCI, we have international education experts with the authority to convert classroom contact hours and work experience into college credit hours to fill in any gaps in your resume and clearly show that you are qualified by US educational standards to work your H-1B job.  They are on call around the clock and we have rush delivery options that will get your evaluation into your hands in 12 hours.  All we need are emailed copies of your education documents, work documentation, and your resume.

    Now it not the time to hesitate.  Call us anytime at 1.800.771.4723 or visit us online at http://www.ccifree.com/?CodeBLG/.

    Don't Panic, April First is Tomorrow Read More »

    3 H-1B Details to Remember This Week

    Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

    Several details often get overlooked. The best outcome in these cases is the petitioner will receive an RFE response requesting more information. Worst case scenario, your petition gets rejected outright. Even with an RFE, the USCIS views that particular response as a much-needed red flag to get through the massive pile of petitions they have to go through each year. There are only 65,000 visas available annually and last year the USCIS found themselves rummaging through nearly 200,000 petitions.

    They’re looking for an excuse to reject yours. Don’t give them one.

    Three details to remember before you pop your petition in the mail:

    1. Use a blue pen. You’re going to be submitting original documents and copies of original documents. You’ll have signatures – both of your own and others – from the past and present, sometimes even on the same document. The USCIS worker needs to be able to clearly tell the difference between original signatures and recent signatures. Use a blue pen for new signatures. Make everyone’s life easier.
    2. Double and triple-check for consistency. Is your name spelled the same on every document? If you have a nickname or your name is hard to spell, it’s particularly important that you double and triple-check for this. It’s alarming how many RFE’s are issued simply to check what the petitioner’s name actually is. On the same note, you want to make sure that all of the other information on all of the forms you’ve submitted is consistent.
    3. If you need a credential evaluation, get one! If your degree is from a country that is not the United States, you need a credential evaluation and you need to submit it along with the rest of your petition. The only way to show the person evaluating your petition the value of your foreign degree is with a detailed evaluation from an authorized credential evaluation agency. This is because academic standards and structures vary from country to country, much like currency. The value is not always clear, but someone who understands exchange rates can get you what you need.

    At CCI we have international education experts on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. We have rush delivery services available to get your credential evaluation into your hands when you need it. Call or text us anytime at 1.800.771.4723, send us an email, or visit us online at http://www.ccifree.com/?CodeBLG/ for a consultation. We can figure out what you need to complete your H-1B petition and get it to you in time to file on April First.

    3 H-1B Details to Remember This Week Read More »

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