CASE: H-1B Visa Petition (Change of Employer)
PETITIONER: Environmental Engineering Consulting Firm
BENEFICIARY: Principal Consulting Environmental / Water Engineer
Our client is an Environmental Engineering Consulting Company in Fairfax, VA. They contacted our office in late November 2013 to seek legal assistance from our office for their foreign employee. The beneficiary is from India and obtained his Bachelor’s degree and Master’s Degree in Civil / Environmental Engineering from Stanford.
The proffered position for the Beneficiary is a Principal Consulting Environmental / Water Engineer which qualifies as a specialty occupation. This proffered position is clearly a “specialty occupation” because the minimum requirements for this position are a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil / Environmental Engineering or its equivalent.
The foreign beneficiary in this case already had his H-1B visa from his previous employer which was in a similar industry. However, his H-1B status was not expired yet, and he wanted to extend his H-1B status on a change of employer basis.
Once retained, our office promptly filed the H-1B visa petition with various supporting documents on December 12, 2013 via premium processing service. Since this petition was based on a change of employer, this petition was exempted from the annual H-1B cap. Thus, we could file prior to April 1. There were no Requests for Evidence during the processing of the H-1B. Eventually, our client’s H-1B Petition was approved on December 27, 2013. Now the Beneficiary can work for his Petitioner-Employer as an H-1B visa holder.