We received good news that our premium processing of an L-1B application was approved without a request for additional evidence. The employee is currently working for the employer in one of their offices in Europe. He has been working at that office for the past several years, which is more than the required 1 year of employment necessary for the L-1B intra-company transfer.
Because of his specialized knowledge of the company’s product, the company wants to transfer him to the corporate headquarters in the Southern California. Although we were confident that the case was approvable, we were afraid that USCIS might issue a request for additional evidence, which has been a growing trend with the USCIS California Service Center. The California Service Center has been issuing cumbersome and overly broad requests for evidence for L-1B cases in the last few years. We were happily surprised when we received the approval notice.
The employee will schedule his consular interview and we will prepare all the documents. Assuming all goes well at that interview, he will be able to move to the US before April.
If your company is interested in pursuing visas for foreign-born employees, contact The Nunez Firm to schedule a free consultation. If you company plans to pursue multiple L-1 visas, The Nunez Firm can assist in preparing a Blanket L Petition as well. Managing attorney Jay Nunez will personally discuss your company’s employment needs and help you better understand the process involved.
An L-1B alien beneficiary with specialized knowledge should possess a type of specialized or advanced knowledge that is different from that generally found in the particular industry. The knowledge need not be proprietary or unique. Where the alien has specialized knowledge of the company product, the knowledge must be advanced. Note, the advanced knowledge of the beneficiary need not be narrowly held throughout the company. There is no test of the U.S. labor market in determining whether an alien possesses specialized knowledge. Only an examination of the knowledge possessed by the alien is necessary.
A common specialized knowledge theme is that the knowledge the beneficiary possesses, whether it is knowledge of a company product or process, would be difficult to impart to another individual without significant inconvenience to the employer petitioner. The knowledge should be complex to some degree and not generally known. The petitioning employer bears the burden of proof in establishing through the submission of relevant evidence that the alien’s specialized knowledge is distinguished by some uncommon qualification and not generally known by practitioners in the alien’s industry. A petitioning employer’s claim that the alien possesses an advanced level of knowledge must be supported by evidence showing that the knowledge in question is above and beyond elementary knowledge possessed by others.
If your company is considering the L-1 visa petition process, contact The Nunez Firm to schedule a consultation. Managing attorney Jay Nunez will discuss your situation and help determine if the L-1 or another type of employment-based visa is the best option available.
