Success Stories From 2009

A beneficiary had two three-year bachelor degrees from India and consequently his I-140 petition was denied on the grounds that the beneficiary did not have a four-year bachelor's degree. We were retained after the denial. Our firm was successful in appealing and winning in less than one month. Of course, this case had unique facts. We cannot assume that all three-year degree cases will go trough this smoothly.

We were hired to respond to an RFE. Client filed an EB2 I-140, where the PERM Petition required a Bachelor's and 5 years of experience. The client received an RFE in which USCIS argued the Beneficiary's degree, a Bachelor's in Commerce from India, equates to a 3-year degree and cannot be considered for an EB2 case. The Beneficiary possessed a four year Bachelor's Degree, however, this was not clearly established on his Degree. The client obtained his BS in Commerce before India switched to a standard 3-year program for his particular degree. Based on research from our office about Indian degrees and supporting documentation from the client, we obtained I-140 Approval for the client in category EB2.

We were called upon to correct a situation. USCIS sent an RFE stating that the degree and field of study did not match with the labor certification requirements. The I-140 beneficiary had a degree in agricultural science. The employer's requirement in the labor certification was a BS degree in Computer Science, Engineering, and Mathematics.

We filed an ETA 9089 (PERM) Petition by mail in July 2008, as the advertisements were expiring and DOL had a delay in registering the company's PERM account. A denial was issued on the grounds that the advertisements and prevailing wage were expired when the case was received for processing. Further inspection noted a typographical error by DOL in the year the case was received. Our office was able to correct this matter without going through the normal process of filing a Motion to Reconsider, therefore saving the client hundreds of dollars in legal fees and a year or more processing time for MTR's with the DOL. 

We filed a Labor Certification with SWA CT (State Workforce Agency, Connecticut) in May 2003. Upon checking the status in February 2005, our office was informed that the case was closed, as we had not responded to a request sent by the SWA via fax. 

We informed SWA that our office had not received the request. The case analyst of SWA told us that he had a confirmation of the fax transmittal.

In our conversation with the SWA, we tried to convince the case analyst, that had we received the RFE we would most certainly have responded to it in a timely manner. The urgent nature of the case would have compelled us to file the response at the earliest as 6 years limit on our client’s H-1B was approaching fast.

The case analyst suggested our office to send a request in writing.  The case manager from our office who was working on the case provided an affidavit to the effect that our office had not received any requests from the SWA.  We also requested that our case be re-opened and the new RFE be mailed to us. 

Upon checking the status after a month we were informed that the decision of the SWA was still the same and the case was closed.  SWA then suggested that we should re-file the case under PERM.  

This matter was then given to Rajiv to handle, who encouraged us to follow it through further and not just accept the SWA response.  In his view, their response was legally incorrect.  He spoke with the supervisor at SWA CT, who informed us that they do not have the authority to re-open the case in these circumstances. He then spoke to the responsible senior officer at US Department of Labor (USDOL).  Finally, the supervisor at USDOL asked us to forward her the affidavit together with the documents that we had originally mailed to SWA.