CASE: H-1B Visa Petition
PETITIONER: Nursing Care Company in Ohio
BENEFICIARY: Cambodian Compliance Manager
Our client is a Nursing Care Company in Ohio that works with individuals and doctors to design home care plans to meet their needs. They contacted our office in the middle of March 2013 to seek legal assistance for its foreign beneficiary’s H-1B visa petition.
The beneficiary is a Cambodian who obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Law in Cambodia, and also an LLM from George Washington University. The proffered position for the Beneficiary was for a Compliance Manager which we argued qualified as a specialty occupation. We argued that the minimum requirement for this position is a Bachelor’s Degree in Law or its equivalent.
Upon retention, our firm prepared and eventually filed the H-1B visa petition with various supporting documents on April 1, 2013 via regular processing. The USCIS Vermont Service Center issued a Request for Evidence (RFE) on May 23, 2013.
The USCIS argued that the offered position does not qualify as a “specialty occupation.” They claimed that the business was new and that a Bachelor’s degree was not required for this position. They claimed that the beneficiary’s position is not specialized and complex enough to be qualified as a specialty occupation as the law requires.
In response to the RFE, our office argued in an 6-page response brief with 10 exhibits that the nature of the specific duties are so specialized and complex that knowledge required to perform the duties is usually associated with the attainment of a Bachelor’s degree. Moreover, we argued that the degree requirement is common to the industry in parallel positions among similar organizations.
Our office filed the response to the USCIS Vermont Service Center on June 12, 2013. Our client’s H-1B application was approved on September 17, 2013. Now the Beneficiary can work for the Petitioner on an H-1B status until September 23, 2016.