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H1B Alert: Don’t Submit the Right Evaluation for the Wrong Visa
If you or your client or employee has a degree from outside of the United States, or a degree that is generalized, incomplete, or doesn’t exactly match the specialty occupation, you need to submit a credential evaluation with the H1B petition to prove that the beneficiary meets H1B educational requirements.
However, not all evaluations will do the job. The right evaluation for you or your client or employee needs to take into consideration H1B requirements – as different visas have different regulations for combining education – as well as the beneficiary’s education, work experience, and job, and CIS approval trends.
It’s important to make sure you choose the right evaluation agency to work with because the industry is not well-regulated by a central governing body, so you could end up with an agency that is not up to quality standards. You could also choose an agency that writes a perfectly accurate evaluation that does not work for your client or employee’s situation. Not all agencies know how to work with visa cases.
When you contact a credential evaluation agency to write your evaluation, or your client or employee’s evaluation, here are three questions to keep in mind:
- Did they ask about the visa?
- Did they ask about the job?
- Do they work with H1B cases and their RFEs on a regular basis?
The right evaluation agency for you case, or your client or employee’s case is the one that asks about the visa and the job, and works regularly with H1B cases and H1B RFE cases.
We follow CIS approval trends, and work regularly with H1B cases and their RFEs. We know what triggers common RFEs, and we know how to prevent them. For a free review of your case, or your client or employee’s case, visit evaluationcredentials.com.
CASE STUDY: The Biggest Nightmare RFE Out There
You’ve heard of the Nightmare RFE and the Double Employment Issue RFE. Get ready, because this is about to be terrifying:
This RFE season is the harshest we’ve seen yet. Now, CIS is combining these RFEs. Candidates are now having to defend against requests for evidence regarding every facet of their education AND employment issues. The Nightmare on its own is virtually impossible to answer given the time and evidence demanded. Now, it’s even worse. We could call it the Triple RFE, but the best way to approach it is as one, single, consolidated RFE.
Here’s how:
Go back to the basics. The Nightmare RFE cannot be answered by its own guidelines. Instead, at TheDegreePeople.com, we go back to the original H1B requirements and meet them impeccably. This requires a detailed credential evaluation that may include expert opinion letters, work experience conversions, citing federal case law, international education and labor agreements, and CIS precedent decisions to show that your client meets the educational requirements of both the H1B visa, and their job.
At the same time, we need to address the employment issues. These issues have had to do with whether or not the job in question is adequately specialized to meet H1B requirements. The issue arises when the job indicated on the employer’s Labor Conditions Application doesn’t meet the duties of the job indicated on the H1B petition exactly, and when the employer indicates Wage Level 1 for the H1B job. CIS contests that the job doesn’t match, and also that just because a job is at Wage Level 1 it is not specialized to the point of requiring a US Bachelor’s Degree or higher or its foreign equivalent. An expert opinion letter is needed in these cases that explains the situation, alongside documentation clearly spelling out the specialized responsibilities involved in the job. In many cases, employees start at Wage Level 1 because they are fresh out of college without much work experience, and while their job is adequately specialized, it still requires a lot of guidance and supervision.
You don’t have to address all three issues presented in the biggest Nightmare RFE out there with three separate responses. At TheDegreePeople.com, we have been able to successfully answer every one of these horrid RFEs in one fell swoop with a creative approach and an expert opinion letter that addresses both employment issues. If you’re staring down this terrifying RFE, simply go to ccifree.com/ and let us review your case for free.
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.