Is your education or experience sufficient for the H-1B visa?

If you have an employer who is planning to petition for you to move to California and work through an H-1B visa, there are certain requirement that you must meet before you can be approved. While some of these are straightforward, there are others that may need to be determined by an adjudicator. According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, whether your degree earned in another country or your work experience is comparable to a U.S. bachelor’s degree is one such issue.

Although it is not a guarantee of acceptance, it may help your case if you are able to have a university expert who can officially grant college credits evaluate your professional work experience or training. Documentation that provides specifics on how they correspond is particularly helpful. There may also be an organization that can perform a similar evaluation, but an adjudicator is less likely to consider an assessment from this type of source as positively.

When converting professional experience into the equivalent education, effective documentation may be more difficult to produce. For example, you may use information provided by former employers as proof of your work history. But, these must be very specific for the adjudicator to be able to determine whether the job duties qualify as appropriately professional. Not only that, you need three years of such experience for each corresponding year of education. Most U.S. bachelor’s degree programs take four years to complete.

This information is provided to give you an idea of what an adjudicator may look for when evaluating whether your education and experience in another country can be counted equal to a U.S. bachelor’s degree. It is general in nature, and should not be interpreted as legal advice.