Information on 3 year degree from www.immigration-law.com
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Q-87 (06-05-2006): My question is related to the previous Q&A 86. I am also an Indian professional who earned a bachelor degree in science which is a three-year program. I earned more courses and the foreign credential evaluation agency has given me a report of "equivalent to a U.S. bachelor's degree." I had 12 years of education before I was admitted to the Bachelor of Scienece program in India. Indian education system in part adopts the British education system. The three-year Bachelor of Science degree in Britain is evaluated by the foreign credential evaluation and the universities in the U.S. as equivalent to a U.S. bachelor's degree. Because of this background, some graduation programs in the U.S. universities accepted the Indian BS degree satifying the requirement for admission to the graduate program. Additionally, some Service Centers accepted such three-year Indian BS degree being equivalent to the U.S. bachelor's degree. In this regard, the Indian single BS degree should satisfy the regulatory requirement. Why is the Indian BS degree rejected by the USCIS?
A-87: Indeed there were some commercial foreign credential evaluation businesses that advertised such credential evaluations. In a very few cases, the Service Centers were confused and accepted such evaluation. Lately such evaluation is generally rejected by the agencies, particularly after the release of a recent memorandum by the USCIS HQ. The memorandum distinguished the European three-year BS degree program from the Indian three-year BS degree program in that the admission to the European BS degree program generally requires 13 years of education before admission to the BS degree program. Obviously such education system allows additional specialty programs in the BS degree program, which make it closer to the U.S. BS degree program. Accordingly, the memorandum clarified that such European three-year degree would continuously be accepted as U.S. bachelor degree equivalency. Accordingly the holders of similar bachelor's degree in Britain and India will be treated different in the EB-2 green card proceedings. Some disagrees to the USCIS views which is enunciated in the said memorandum, but until the memorandum is struck down or the USCIS HQ revisits the issue, the immigrants are stuck with the standards in the memorandum.
Q-86 (06-04-2006): I am an Indian Financial Manager working for a large corporation in Los Angeles. The news on the comprehensive immigration reform legislation frustrates me very much and I will have to live with the current situation of employment-based immigration proceeding. Considering the visa retrogression, I will have to file EB-2 PERM application. I earned a three-year business degree and two-year post-graduate diploma in business administration in India. A foreign credential evaluation agency gave me the credential evaluation report for the purpose of H-1B filing that my credential is equivalent to a bachelor's degree in business plus a master's degree in business. I have eight years of work experience as a financial manager in India before I joined this company in LA. The employer is thinking about requiring a MBA equivalent or Bachelor in Business equivalent plus five years of work experience as a financial manager in the PERM application. I suppose this will do for the EB-2 track in the immigration petition once the PERM application is approved. Any comment?
A-86: The USCIS launched the bi-specialization program effective April 1, 2006. Under this program, all the I-140 petitions are filed with the Nebraska Service Center and these I-140 petitions are divided between the NSC and TSC half and half. Accordingly, even if your job is located in LA, your I-140 petition will be ended up with either NSC or TSC, meaning that the chance of your I-140 petition being adjudicated by the NSC under their standards is at least 50:50. The NSC standards on these issues are known to be most restrictive and narrow and have produced massive I-140 denials for Indians in the past. They religiously follow the non-binding precedent decision of the USCIS appeal unit of AAO. Thus NSC has been taking a position that for the purpose of EB-2 petition, Master's degree requirement must be proven by the alien with a single bachelor's degree and a single master's degree. Combination of two or three different educational degrees have generally been rejected by the NSC. The AAO decision is based on the specific language in the regulation that EB-2 requires an advanced degree or "a" bachelor's degree plus five years of progressive experience. The decision did not accept combination or multiple-degree equivalency evaluation. This leads to the second question of requiring bachelor's degree plus five years of work experience in the labor certification application. For the purpose of EB-3, the NSC accepts "bachelor's degree" or "equivalent credential by combination of multiple degrees or combination of a degree and work experience" inasmuch as the labor certification application specifically stated that the employer would accept such equivalency in lieu of a bachelor's degree. Besides, even if the employer did not state that the employer would accept such equivalent combination, the employer could still get approval of EB-3 I-140 petition inasmuch as the I-140 petition stated that the petition was for a position of "professional or skilled worker." Since EB-3 is qualified by either a professional "or" skilled worker, from the perspectives of the alien, it did not matter whether one got EB-3 I-140 petition either through a professional position or skilled position. Both professional and skilled worker also belong to the same EB-3 category for the purpose of the immigrant visa number allocation. However, this does not work with the EB-2 situation. Even if the employer stated in the labor certification application such, the NSC will not take such application for EB-2 category for the purpose of I-140 petition. Since a job in the labor certification application should require a bachelor's or equivalent foreign degree plus five years of progressive experience to make it a EB-2, combinational of multiple degrees for a bachelor's degree equivalency or combination of degree and experience, no matter whether the employer stated in the application that it would accept such combination, will be rejected by the NSC. AILA has repeatedly asked the USCIS HQ to address this issue but no memorandum has been released by the USCIS HQ on this critical issue thus far. VSC started adopting the NSC's narrow view recently, but this does not matter any more as VSC has no jurisdiction over the I-140 petitions. TSC has been taking a liberal view on this issue. TSC is also taking a liberal view on the employer's financial ability to pay the proffered wage issue which the NSC also took a very narrow view and has denied en masse I-140 petitions on this issue as well. Because of these differences, some people started tracking down so-called "TSC-day" vs "NSC-day" and timed the filing of I-140 petitions such that the case is handled by the TSC. At this time, once the I-140 petitions are received at the NSC, it splits the files every other day. Accordingly, if this is NSC-day, then all the I-140 petitions which are received on that day are handled by itself and all the I-140 petitions which are received the next day are shipped to the TSC. Wise guys and gals were successful in figuring out the NSC-day and the TSC-day. But no one knows how long this arrangement will last. Additionally, these Service Centers can adopt different policies and making TSC standards tougher than that of NSC! The best policy is to try to meet the narrower standards and views of the NSC as best as you can to get the I-140 petition approved. In the instant case, the chance of getting EB-2 I-140 approval for your credential background is not too promising if this case is handled by the NSC.
