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The Top 3 Reasons for Education H1-B RFEs
Every year, we see more and more education RFEs on H1-B visas. In the recent past, maybe 4% tops of all H1-B petitions were met with RFE’s. Now, around 25% of all of these petitions are met with RFEs. Issues with a candidate’s education are very common reasons USCIS will issue an RFE.
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.
How to Bridge the Fatal Gaps Between Your Degree and Your H1B Job
When evaluating a candidate for a job position that requires a specialized degree, employers will almost always consider a candidate with a degree in a related field qualified. Until about five or six years ago, USCIS would also accept a degree in a related field as sufficient qualification to approve an H1B visa. This is no longer the case and H1B candidates are running into trouble in the form of RFE’s and Denials. Employers hire H1B candidates, but CIS does not approve their visas. The same goes for candidates with generalized degrees. Even though these candidates continue to get hired, their Visa petitions hit a brick wall. The percentage of H1B petitions that are met with RFE’s and Denials climbs higher every year for this reason.
If your job offer is for accountancy but your degree is in economics, CIS will raise a red flag. If you have a generalized degree and are hired for any job that meets the specialization standards of an H1B Visa job, CIS will raise a red flag.
CIS requirements clearly state, “USCIS precedent decisions have confirmed that a generalized degree in business administration, absent specialized experience, is insufficient to qualify an alien beneficiary in a specialty occupation […] a petitioner with a business administration degree must establish a particular area and occupation in the field of business administration in which he is engaged.”
CIS states, “A generalized degree, absent specialized experience, is insufficient.”
Does this mean H1B candidates with degrees in fields that don’t exactly match but are related to their field of employ are out of luck? Absolutely not.
Even though your education alone cannot prove that you have the specialized skills and knowledge necessary to qualify for your H1B job, your education combined with work experience can. Employers hire candidates with related degrees because they have gained the specialized skills and knowledge they need for the job by directly working in the field. To prove specialization with a related or generalized degree, you need an evaluation of your education and work experience from a professor authorized to grant college credit for your work experience. ONLY a professor authorized to do this can write the evaluation you need to get your H1B Visa approved.
Authorized professors can convert years of progressive work experience into college credit to bridge the gaps between your job and your degree. Your work experience must be in the exact field of you H1B job. To qualify as progressive work experience, the nature of the work must have required you to take on progressively more work and responsibilities representing your progressively growing specialized knowledge base and skill set.
Don’t wait for an RFE or Denial to get your degree and work experience evaluated. While an RFE or Denial is not the end of the world, it is a big red flag to CIS that will trigger a close scrutiny of your petition. Minor errors and glitches that would have otherwise gone unnoticed will be unearthed because attention has been drawn to your petition. With hundreds of thousands of H1B Visa petitions to mire through, CIS uses red flags to make the hard decision of who gets their Visa approved and who does not for the set amount of annual Visa slots. Make the decision to approve your Visa easy by making your specialized knowledge and skill set clear with a credential evaluation from a professor authorized to convert work experience into college credit.
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 H1B RFE?
As foreign credential evaluators who specialize in handling RFEs and denials, we are constantly evaluating USCIS policy and trends. Just like last year and the year before, this year we have seen more H1B RFEs than we ever have in the past. When CIS issues an RFE, much concern and angst arises. A lot is at stake with Visa approval, so getting to this point in the process only to find more is being asked of you is a lot to stomach. Employers look to the attorneys, attorneys look to evaluators, and candidates panic.
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 these facts and receive an approval.
When is it the Candidate’s Fault?
Yes, you make mistakes too. Candidates have been known to insist that their high school documents are college level or that unaccredited education is accredited. They have also been known to provide poorly translated documents, or even fraudulently translated documents. Generally, 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 your education documents, a resume, and the RFE or Denial if one has been issued, we have no way to discuss your case. We want to discover any issues in the documents right away in order to eliminate the vast majority of the confusion and misinformation you may experience down the road.
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 know what they generally do and what they have done in the past, which helps a great deal. CIS can be a wildcard, and no one can guarantee what they are going to do. When this happens, all you can do is carefully read the RFE with your team, understand what is being asked of whom and who can provide the requested evidence, and then do your best to beat it.
Can we draw a usable conclusion?
Yes. The entire team should review the RFE. Your attorney, your employer, your evaluator, and, of course, you should review the RFE. An evaluator with extensive experience with RFEs could be familiar with the RFE and know how they have been resolved. 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 evaluation agency that reviews the education and Visa requirements and gives you all of your options before you order. If that is not their policy, it might be best to try a new agency. Remember that few agencies have passed through the RFE gauntlet this year unscathed, and many of these RFEs are not the fault of the agency, or the fault of the attorney or employer or you. Do your homework before you file because avoiding RFEs is far superior to resolving them.
About the Author
Sheila Danzig
Sheila Danzig is a foreign credentials evaluation expert and international education expert. 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.
5 Signs You’ve Found a Good Credential Evaluation Agency
More and more RFE’s are being issued inquiring into the credibility of credential evaluation agencies. Even if you’ve submitted an evaluation of your foreign degree along with the rest of your H1b petition, the USCIS may have questions about how reliable the agency that made the conversions is, and whether or not they actually have the authority to make the conversions they did.
Not all evaluation agencies have international education experts and professors on hand to write the detailed evaluation you need to prove the value of your education in terms of US standards. Not all agencies are authorized to convert classroom contact hours and years of work experience into the college credit you need to bridge the gaps between the US academic system structure and that of the country in which you earned your degree.
Just like any other kind of business, agency, or professional, some credential evaluation agencies are quality and reliable while others are not. Here are five signs that you’ve found a good one:
- They answer when you call…or text, or email. A good agency will always be there to answer your communication in whatever medium you prefer. A great agency is ALWAYS available because they know the time crunches involved in the petition process.
- They have satisfied customers. NEVER order an evaluation without asking for past client references and following up on them. Search for and read reviews and read client testimonials. If past customers are satisfied, chances are you will be too.
- They offer you options. Reliable agencies have a wide range of options. This is because experience working with visa applicants has taught them the last minute really does mean the last minute when it comes to getting your petition in, or your RFE answered. They should offer a variety of rush delivery options at reasonable rates.
- They’re inexpensive. This is NOT one of those things where you get what you pay for. In fact, an expensive evaluation is a big red flag. Reliable agencies don’t have to squeeze as much cash as they can out of every client they get. Furthermore, reliable agencies understand how costly it is to petition for an H1b visa and their prices will reflect an understanding of and respect for your budget. Save your money and get a credible evaluation.
- They are a pleasure to talk to. A good conversation – whether it be over the phone, or by text or email – is a great indicator that you have found a good credential evaluation agency. This is because it shows that you are comfortable working with them, they are able to answer your questions to your satisfaction, and that they are confident in the work they do.
If you see these five signs when you research which agency to order your evaluation from, you have likely found a reliable credential evaluator who can write you the evaluation you need to get your visa approved.
How to Avoid the RFE Explosion
In the past six or so years, we’ve seen an explosion in Requests for Evidence in response to H1B petitions. Just less than a decade ago only about 4% of all H1B petitions were met with RFE’s while today we’re seeing 25%. One of the main reasons this is happening is because the USCIS is getting flooded with more H1B petitions than they know what to do with every year. With the growing number of STEM industry jobs requiring highly skilled workers, US companies are hiring foreign workers and applying for as many H1B visas as they can. The rate of acceptance is low. Even companies like Microsoft will only be approved for around half of the petitions they submit.
Another reason for the increased number of RFE’s is because the USCIS and your boss have different standards by which to judge your qualifications. While most employers will hire workers with degrees in the fields related to their job, the USCIS won’t approve their visas. The USCIS has recently tightened its standards to only accept applicants whose degree matches their field of employ exactly. Because these standards are new and because they differ from your employer to the government, many of these petitions are now met with RFE’s or worse.
Don’t panic if this is the situation you’re in. You can fix this before it even becomes a problem. All you have to do is submit a credential evaluation along with your educational documents written by an evaluator with the authority to convert work experience into college credit hours. That way, your work experience in the field can be counted towards your degree specialized in the field of your job. Not all credential evaluation agencies have evaluators on hand with this authority, so be sure to check before ordering your evaluation.
Before the USCIS has to ask you about your education, spell it out clearly for them and avoid a pesky RFE.
Degree Mill Empire Busted
Axact, a highly respected company based in Pakistan with over 2,000 employees was recently exposed as a prolific degree mill empire with 370 fake university and college websites. What is a degree mill? A degree mill sells fraudulent academic degrees and diplomas. People will buy fake degrees and the paperwork that goes along with it to falsely show that they earned a degree. Sometimes the fake degrees will come from schools that are completely fabricated. Other times, a real school’s name will be used but the degree and transcripts will be false.
Most people who patronize these sites purchase fraudulent degrees on purpose. However, sometimes people are duped by the websites of fake schools these mills use to churn out degrees. Websites for these schools are purposefully misleading, touting names like “Columbiana University” or “Barkley University.” People seeking international education or to study abroad are particularly at risk for falling victim to this fraud. On the same note, companies that tend to hire foreign workers are also at heightened risk of hiring people with fake degrees because there are so many schools in so many countries with different educational systems and customs.
The solution is NOT to just stop hiring foreign workers or to never live abroad for school. There are too many opportunities in the increasingly global job market to shut yourself and your business off from opportunity just to protect yourself from the possibility of falling victim to degree mills. Going to school abroad will give you an international perspective that will give you a competitive edge in the job market. You will learn new languages and cultures. Hiring foreign workers will allow your company to gain an international and multicultural perspective, and give you the ability to choose from the best and brightest potential hires from around the world.
So how can you protect yourself and your business from hiring people with false credentials?
First, make sure the college or university the alleged degree was earned at actually exists. If it does exist, double check to make sure the program the degree was earned in actually exists. If either the school or the program doesn’t exist, the degree can’t be real.
Second, take a detailed look at the timeframes expressed in your potential hire’s application. If they completed a bachelor’s degree BEFORE their high school degree, you may have a fake on your hands.
Building Your H-1B Visa Team
The road to getting your H-1B visa approved is a multi-step process involving three government bureaucracies, your employer and you. The reason for the many steps and different agencies is to ensure the information you submit is consistent. If you submit one petition with different information than another, or with information differing from a transcript, resume, or other required document, it raises a big red flag. For this reason, you and your employer need to work together and be very organized. Make copies of each of the petitions you submit and cross reference them before filing subsequent petitions. Triple-check your answers before filing to make sure all of the information matches. Even misspellings can be met with an RFE you will then have to deal with.
Your H-1B process is a team effort between you and your employer. You will not be a direct part of every step of the process, but it’s important for you to know what’s going on so you can do your part to get all of the documentation and evidence together on time.
After you are approved for hire for your specialty occupation, your employer must submit a Labor Conditions Application to the Department of Labor to prove they meet standard working conditions and can pay you prevailing wages and benefits. This application is for your safety. If they don’t meet labor standards, you don’t want to be working for them anyway. If they can’t pay you fairly for your work, you don’t want to be working for them anyway. If the company isn’t economically viable, you don’t want to be working for them anyway.
Once this application is approved, you and your employer must arrange and file an I-129 petition with the Department of Homeland Security. This petition must provide evidence to prove that your job is a specialty occupation requiring a US bachelor’s degree or its equivalent or higher to carry out the tasks of the job. To do this, your employer has to show that industry standards require a specialized degree as a minimum qualification for your job. That means similar companies have the same requirements of employees filling similar positions. Along with this evidence, you also must prove you meet these requirements by submitting your transcripts and diplomas. If your specialized degree is from outside of the United States, you will have to take an extra step to prove the value of your education in terms of US standards by submitted a detailed evaluation of your credentials from an authorized credential evaluation agency. This evaluation will clearly show the academic content and value of your degree in terms of US education standards.
Once your I-129 is approved, you can start in on your H-1B petition with the Department of State. This final petition must clearly prove that you, your employer, and your job meet all of the H-1B visa requirements.
A detail-oriented team effort is required to get your visa approved. Work together with your employer, always keep the lines of communication open, and ALWAYS check over your petitions thoroughly before filing.