CASE: H-1B Visa Petition
PETITIONER: Capital Investment Company in Georgia
BENEFICIARY: Lithuanian International Compliance Manager
Our client is a Capital Investment Company in Georgia which owns local and international travel clubs and sells memberships. They contacted our office in late April of 2012 to seek legal assistance for its foreign beneficiary’s H-1B visa petition.
The beneficiary is Lithuanian and obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in International Law in Lithuania. She has worked for different companies in the United States on an H-1B visa and got an offer from our client. The proffered position for the Beneficiary was for an International 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 International Law/Relations or its equivalent.
Upon retention, our firm prepared and eventually filed the H-1B visa petition with various supporting documents on May 1, 2012 via premium processing. However, the USCIS Vermont Service Center issued a Request for Evidence (RFE) on July 13, 2012.
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 15 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 October 1, 2012. Our client’s H-1B application was approved 15 days later on October 15, 2012. Now the Beneficiary can work for the Petitioner on an H-1B status until March 31, 2015.
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