Do you or does your employee or client have the right education to qualify for EB2? Find out before you file! If it’s too late, consider the RFE a second chance to strengthen your case.
A common RFE for this visa is that the education does not match the job on the PERM. But what if you or your employee or client DOES have a post-graduate degree in their field? Turns out, oftentimes a candidate will have post-graduate degree from an unaccredited institution. CIS only accepts degrees from accredited institutions. There are many unaccredited STEM industry programs that offer high-quality education and prepare graduates for jobs requiring highly specialized skills. However, unless these institutions are government accredited, CIS cannot approve these applicants’ visas with the education alone.
To make matters more complex for the EB2 classification, candidates may have a US bachelor’s degree or its equivalency in a field that does not match their EB2 job, and a post-graduate degree from an unaccredited institution that matches the job on the PERM. However, since the post-graduate degree is from an unaccredited institution, candidates are left with only a bachelor’s degree in an unrelated field. That’s when CIS issues an RFE.
The first step to overturning this RFE is to avoid it in the first place. Go to ccifree.com and attach your or your employee or client’s education and resume, and tell us the EB2 job and we will let you know if the education will work or not within 24 hours, along with a full analysis of your options. If you or your employee or client has education from an unaccredited institution, you need to know about that before you file because it will NOT go unnoticed by CIS when they review the petition.
If it’s too late and you’ve already received an RFE, simply go to ccifree.com and attach the candidate’s resume and educational documents, along with the job title. We will get back to you within 24 hours with a full pre-evaluation and analysis of your options.
There is federal case law that allows work experience to be used to meet EB2 educational requirements. It is highly complex and requires very detailed credential evaluation including a lot of documentation, analysis, and CIS handholding.
About the Author
Sheila Danzig
Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director at TheDegreePeople.com, a Foreign Credentials Evaluation Agency. For a free analysis of any difficult case, RFE, Denial, or NOID, please go to http://ccifree.com/ or call 800.771.4723.