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Who is at Fault for Your RFE?
About one in every four H-1B petitions receive an RFE. The first step to answering an RFE is to understand what CIS is asking, who dropped the ball, and who can provide that information. Just because someone is at fault for your RFE, or your employee or client’s RFE does not mean you should fire them or find someone else. At this stage, it is often unwise to find a new attorney, evaluator, or employer for that matter. Sometimes it’s the candidate’s fault. Sometimes, CIS is at fault. Sometimes it’s no one’s fault. CIS trends change every year and it’s impossible to keep up with all of them. Sometimes, you do need to find someone else for the job.
Regardless, the first step to successfully answering your RFE, or your employee or client’s RFE is to discover why it was issued in the first place and who is to blame. Remain calm, refrain from pointing fingers, and ALWAYS remain solution-oriented through this process.
Sometimes No One is to Blame
In many cases, this is exactly the situation. CIS visa approval trends change every year and it is practically impossible for everyone to keep up on them – even CIS. The best you can do is to work with a team that follows CIS trends as closely as possible and do your best. Working with a credential evaluation agency that specializes in RFEs and difficult cases is advised because they understand what works and what does not. This will not always prevent an RFE, but you’ll know you are in good hands in any case.
Sometimes it’s The Candidate’s Fault
This is a hard but true fact. Oftentimes, a candidate will make a mistake, and if this is your situation, it’s time to eat some humble pie and move forward towards a solution. Candidates, did you make a mistake about the value of your degree, certificate, license or diploma? Did you provide poorly or even fraudulently translated documents? Did you provide poorly evaluated documents? Did you receive your degree from an unaccredited institution? Educational document errors and inconsistencies, as well as mistranslations can be picked up by a skilled credential evaluator, but sometimes that’s not the first agency you work with. Be honest with yourself and your team about your credentials, and find honest, well-trained translation and evaluation agencies to work with from the beginning. At the end of the day, candidates, your petition is your responsibility.
Sometimes it’s The Attorney’s Fault
Attorneys, did you file the petition incorrectly? Sometimes this happens. Find out what went wrong and what you need to do to fix it. At this point, it’s probably not worth it to fire the attorney unless a horrible mistake was made. Oftentimes, when the attorney is at fault it’s for the same reason that candidates may have been at fault: they worked with the wrong translation or evaluation agency and ended up submitting inaccurate documents. These problems can be addressed by working with credible translation and evaluation agencies. Just make sure you work with TWO SEPARATE agencies – one for translation and one for credential evaluation – as these are two highly specialized services that require very different and very specific sets of skills.
Sometimes it’s CIS’s Fault
It’s no secret that CIS makes mistakes. Sometimes an RFE may be factually incorrect. Your petition, or your employee or client’s petition could be absolutely spotless, filed perfectly, and filed on time, and CIS will still issue an RFE. While these RFEs are frustrating, they are also easy fixes because you already have all of the documentation and information you need at your fingertips.
Sometimes Your Evaluator – or the Evaluation itself – is at fault
Maybe it was your evaluator’s error that triggered the RFE. Maybe it was the evaluation that your evaluator wrote but not your evaluator. This may sound confusing, but it’s actually a fairly simple differentiation. The candidate’s visa requires a very specific evaluation to write the equivalency to the US degree that you, your employee, or your client needs to meet H-1B visa requirements, and in the field that matches the H-1B job. If your degree, or your client or employee’s degree was earned outside of the United States, or with a major that is not an exact match to the job, you need an evaluation written that converts years of progressive work experience into college credit to fill in the gaps between the degree and the job, or the degree and the degree CIS requires you, or your client or employee to have.
Not every evaluation agency can provide this. Some do not specialize in immigration and visa evaluations, and some don’t have the authority or cannot provide the evidence needed to back up a work experience conversion. Talk to potential credential evaluation agencies. They may be able to write an accurate evaluation, but it may be the wrong evaluation for the H-1B petition. If an agency does not ask about the job or the visa, look elsewhere. The agency you want is one that specializes in immigration and visa evaluations, and specializes in RFEs and difficult cases.
An RFE is a chance to strengthen your case, or the case of your client or employee. Sit down with your team to find out who – if anyone – dropped the ball, who can solve the problem, and how to best proceed.
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.
Building Your Immigration Practice: Should You Write a Book?
I’m Sheila Danzig, international education expert and executive director at TheDegreePeople, a foreign credential evaluation agency. I also run a strong marketing division, and I want to share with you my expertise to help you build your immigration law practice so you can help more clients get approved for the Visas they deserve. I usually write about the Visa process and how to avoid or resolve RFEs, Denials, and NOIDs. Today, let’s talk about how to build your practice.
For any kind of consultant, there are few better career decisions than writing a book. Now is the time to write the book on immigration law. Publish a non-fiction book, do it right, and watch the opportunities present themselves as you build your audience, write your book, and promote what you’ve written. Note the “do it right” part. Simply writing a book will not make you an overnight success. When you commit to writing a book, you commit to being an author. In this case, when you commit to your book, you agree to make its topic the central focus of your immigration law practice for at least the next few years.
Before you commit to being an author, here are three questions you need to ask yourself:
- Do I REALLY want to put myself and my ideas out there for all to see? This means taking a public stand and being held accountable to the words you write. You will never be able to please everyone, and you won’t be able to sit down with everyone who reads your book and explain yourself. However, if you invite your readers to get in touch with you with any questions they may have regarding what you’ve written, you’ve taken a massive step towards building your business.
- Do I have a book concept that REALLY inspires me? Ask yourself, is there anything you know enough about that will drive you to set aside time to work on your book even when you’re busy? Is this concept so compelling to you that you are willing to make it a central focus of your law practice for the next few years? Are you inspired by the topic to the extent that you are willing to pass up short-term opportunities to focus on the long-term goal of getting your book out there? Writing a book is a process, and if you’re not inspired by the concept you won’t have the energy to complete this process.
- Do you REALLY want to be a writer? When you commit to writing a book, you commit to being an author. This means doing things that authors do like giving talks and webinars, maintaining a blog, publishing articles, and, of course, actually writing your book. However, you don’t technically have to be a writer to be an author. If you have all of the expertise and information but writing isn’t really your passion or practice, you can hire a ghostwriter to help you.
If you are committed to putting your ideas out there, have a topic you are passionate and inspired by, and you want to be a writer (or at least hire one to help you), then the answer is YES! You should absolutely write a book. Being a published author will build your business and launch your career to new levels of success.
Now that you’ve decided to write a book, the next step is to write, right?
Wrong.
The next step is the step that will give you that initial bump in business growth, and here’s why.
When you approach a publisher with your non-fiction book concept, your publisher already knows that in today’s market a non-fiction book on average sells less than 250 copies each year, and less than 2,000 copies in its lifetime. One thing you cannot count on your publishing company to do is to help you market your book. This is something that now falls mostly on the author. That means even if your content is amazing, it’s very unlikely the publishing company will profit much from it. That’s why when you pitch your story, you need to show two things:
- You have an audience ready to buy your book.
- You have a marketing plan to promote your book when it comes out.
Even if you decide to self-publish, these are the first two things you need to be thinking about. Fortunately, these are also the first two things you need to be thinking about to build your business. Even if you don’t end up writing a book, preparing to write a book will build your business in ways you would have otherwise missed out on. To build your audience, you need to show that your ideas are compelling, unique, and helpful to the people affected by your law practice and your book concept.
Write articles on the topic of your book. Maintain a blog with many of your postings focusing on the concept of your book. Blog about your writing process and include excerpts of what you’ve written. Give talks and host webinars on the topic of your book and your law practice. You can even attend conferences regarding your book topic, including writer’s conferences where you can glean ideas about how to best get your book out there. These are great opportunities to network with journals and other publications to get your articles published in.
If you are not already taking these steps to build your business, you should be doing them anyway. Writing a book has short-term and long-term benefits for business growth. Making a commitment to your concept and your book gives your business marketing strategy focus and momentum. Then, getting your book published and out there opens up even more doors for you and your law practice.
You can learn exactly what to do to build your audience base, devise an effective marketing strategy for your book, and write the non-fiction book that will skyrocket your practice to new levels of success in my book Invisible Marketing for Attorneys. You can download this book for free at www.ccifree.com from the link on the left side of the page. This is also the website to visit for a free review of any H1B, E3, TN, or I-140 case.
About the Author
Sheila Danzig
Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director of TheDegreePeople, 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.