Degree Equivalence issues with DOL - Bachelor's degree instead of Master's degree for PERM

charlesmenguy

New Member
Hi everyone,

This is my first post here, and I am pretty desperate on finding a solution to my problem.

I came in the US about 3 years ago, initially through a H-3 Visa for an internship, and then got a full-time job and was offered a H1-b Visa. Everything went pretty smoothly until I started the procedure with my employer to get a green card.

One thing I hadn't noticed when I got my H1-b is that the equivalence from the Trustforte corporation for my diploma to a US education was decided as a Bachelor's degree. This is absolutely wrong because I got a Master's degree at my school in France, my school is an "Engineering school" as we call it in France and is affiliated with the standard European organism who certifies this is higher education and equivalent of a Master's degree. Even my degree itself states in big bold letters "Master's degree".

So when I saw that as we started the green card process, we decided to ask for another evaluation to get the right equivalence, but for some reason the DOL returned with the same Bachelor's degree equivalence.

This is a bit of an issue because initially we were planning to do the PERM with a Master's degree requirement for my position (which it is and I have all qualifications for) which would have let us file as EB-2, but because of that we can't and have to downgrade to a wrong Bachelor's degree requirement and so file as EB-3.

We have already started the EB-3 process, but I find this totally unfair because I have a real Master's degree, did many years of studies to get it, and now the DOL doesn't even want to recognize that.

I'm not even sure what to say anymore if I am asked for my degree if I register for something, should I say the truth and say that I have a Master's degree, or should I use the wrong DOL version and say that I have a Bachelor's degree?

What are my options? I would really like to get this through to the end and make sure that justice is done.
 
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