At CCI TheDegreePeople.com we work with difficult cases every year. It is not uncommon for one RFE to trigger another, leading to as many as three rounds of RFEs before the H-1B visa is approved. In this case, our client came to us with their second RFE. The first was for a wage level issue, which triggered a specialty occupation issue.
When a job is set at level one wages, sometimes USCIS will wrongly assume that it is entry level. If the passage for the entry level position in the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Outlook Handbook states that employers will usually but not always require the employee to have a minimum of a bachelor’s degree, USCIS will issue a specialty occupation RFE.
At RFE round two, there is already a massive time crunch to get the H-1B employee to work by their start date to prevent workflow hindrances. This RFE needed to be answered right now. Here is what we do in this situation:
The petitioner must provide a detailed breakdown of the duties and responsibilities of the H-1B position, and highlight the skills and knowledge required to adequately perform the tasks of the job. This should emphasize skills attained from completion of an advanced degree. Include the ad for the job which required a bachelor’s degree as a minimum qualification, provide proof of past hiring practices with this minimum educational requirement, and provide ads for the same position in similar companies within the industry.
Along with this additional evidence as to the nature of the specialty occupation, we included an expert opinion letter based on this information provided. At CCI TheDegreePeople.com we work with experts in all H-1B fields who have the credentials USCIS requires to lend weight to their opinion. All of our experts work in the field of the H-1B job – they are NOT instructors in the field – and have held positions of authority in which they have made hiring decisions regarding the positions in question.
We included this additional evidence and documentation along with the expert opinion letter in the RFE response. The visa was approved!
If you are facing a specialty occupation RFE, let us help you get it overturned! Visit www.ccifree.com for a free review of your case and we will respond in 4 hours or less.
Sheila Danzig
Sheila Danzig is the director of CCI TheDegreePeople.com. Sheila specializes in overturning RFEs and Denials for work visas.