PhD student - not considered experience?

[citizenk]

Hi guys,
Thank you in advance for any advice.
I have a PhD and I work in industry. Te law firm woking with my employer should aplly for me for GC with EB2. From what I understand, the EB status is given by the job requirements. They requested me to prove 3 yers of experience to qualify for EB2. I was surprized to hear that the experience gained as a grad student working in teaching and research does not count because is not the same job title (sure, is called RA or TA not senior design engineer)... Morever, even if it counted, it is less thna 3 years becuse F1 visa (which I held before) requires payment only for 20h/wek. Obviously the work is more like 60-80h/we and more or les the same as the design engineer, but not officially.
I have a question for you: is the lawyer (actually paralegal) right? if yes, what is the typical way to apply for GC for a phd graduate which does not qualify for EB1?

One more question: what si the typical processigng time for EB2 nowadays if everything goes smooth?
Thaks a lot.

 

[unsure]

Same here. Our lawyer (actually the paralegal) told us that the experience during graduate programs, as it is legally half time, is very hard to prove as real work experience. So she counted only the actual full time work experience, out of school.

Why don't you consider applying through NIW? That is EB2. I have not done it myself (still don't have enough pubs to do it), but I know people that have done it successfully. In this case you will not need labor certification.

My lawyer told us 8 months for the first 2 steps (LC and 140) and then couple more months or couple more years (depending on the category from LC).

Hope this helps