Federal Court Affirms USCIS Denial of H-1B Visa for Financial and Operations Analyst
July 19th, 2012 by Brian D. Zuccaro
In the court case, Palace Wine & Spirits, Inc. v. USCIS, which was not handled by our office, a liquor sales and business acquisition company with seventeen employees filed an H-1B visa petition in order to employ an individual in a part-time “Operations and Finance Analyst” position.
USCIS denied the H-1B petition finding that the position of “Financial and Operations Analyst” did not qualify as a “specialty occupation.” In assessing the first criteria for a specialty occupation, USCIS referred to the Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) to determine whether the position required a bachelor’s degree in a specialty field. USCIS stated that “while the Handbook reports that a bachelor’s degree is usually the minimum educational requirement for many operations research analyst jobs, a bachelor’s degree alone is not sufficient for all positions in the occupational category to be recognized as specialty occupations.” USCIS similarly found that the position did not meet the remaining three criteria for an H-1B specialty occupation.
In reviewing the case, the court concluded that USCIS’s determination that the Operations and Finance Analyst position was not a “specialty occupation” was reasonably supported by the evidence. This case is illustrative of the potential problems for petitions seeking H-1B status for positions where the OOH does not unambiguously state require a degree in a specialty field. When looking at the types of degrees the OOH finds appropriate for this type of position, it is difficult to ascertain why USCIS did not think this position required “a specialty-occupation level of education.” I think the real reasoning behind this case is USCIS’ frequent reluctance to approve H-1B petitions for small businesses, which the agency believes generally cannot support or truly have a need for H-1B caliber employees.
