Can I use my F1 days as past work experience?

[junk2k6]

My atty (from office) kinda made me believe that my masters work at school under F1 can be considered as work and submitted PERM accordingly. As of now, I am on H1B but I am expecting to apply for I140 before the end of the year. I have sent my attys letter (that states I was a full tiem employee as a research assistant/graduate teaching assistant for a said time period) to my grad school advisor for a signature. Now my advisor questiong me that I was a student and so it may not be possible to declare me as an employee. I work in exactly similar type of things that I have played around in my MS days. So, can that be counted as valid "expereince" instead of "employment"?

Thanks in advance for your inputs.

 

[ismile]

Yes you can. I have read in this forum and doing myself the same that if you have worked lets say two years while you were student say 20hr/week, then it will be considered 1 year of experience and could be considered in I-140 if that work has soem relation to your job/labor position you are applying for. For example, teaching assitant does not have much job duties similar to a software engineer etc.

BTW, you are employee of that department who is paying you for those hours. I know i paid the tax and everything for all those Graudate Assitant positions and got W-2 as well.

This is just my opinion from what I understood from reading different ppl experiences here.