B-1 APPROVAL FOR JUNIOR MANAGER TO REPRESENT ENTIRE INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION

• Nationality: China
• Case: B-1, Business Nonimmigrant visa
• Industry: E-Commerce/Retail
• Position: Sales Manager
• Challenges:
  1. Lin is 25 years old, working on her first job after graduation. Young age and lack of work experience work against B-1 approvals.
  2. Lin is a junior sales manager, not the best position to convince the consular officer that she is sent to represent her company.
  3. Non-immigrant visa applications require the applicant to show ties to the home country. Ms. Lin did not grow up in a financially established family, and lacked financial resources to prove her financial ties to China.
  4. Lin is young, unmarried, and not even dating. Her family members are limited to her parents. To a consular officer, this is a red flag indicating immigrant intent for having a lack of family ties.
  5. Coming out of a humble family background, Ms. Lin’s lack of international travel would concern consular officers. Ms. Lin could have stayed in the U.S., and the officers would not want to risk that by approving her visa.
  6. Lin’s senior managers self-petitioned for their B-1 visas but failed. With a history of denials for the employer, Ms. Lin’s application might be affected.
  7. Lin had no experience in consular interviews. Tsang & Associates scheduled multiple interview trainings and consultations for Ms. Lin to succeed.

BACKGROUND

Youth is often portrayed as an advantage. Young people have more time, more energy, more fire. However, there are definitely trials and tribulations that the young must go through, and in the case of trying to get a B-1 visa from USCIS, being young can raise many eyebrows. Imagine working hard to get top-flight grades, graduating from a great university, finding an excellent company, and working your way through the ranks to a managerial level only to find that you are likely not going to get to the next step in your career simply because you are too young.

When companies outside of the U.S. want to send a short-term representative to the U.S. for a business conference or negotiations, a B-1 visa is a good option. B-1 visas are designed for members of a company who have the authority make decisions on behalf of the company in business events. Often when we imagine such people, we don’t tend think of a young lady being in that position. That was, however, the case for Ms. Lin. She had worked hard through the ranks to sales manager among her company. Her company wishes to send a team of senior managers to the U.S. for a business conference, but all of their self-prepared applications were denied. Left with a junior sales manager, Ms. Lin became a prime candidate to come to the U.S. to represent their business.

Securing a B-1 visa for her was a sticking point. Her company had tried several times to get a B-1 visa for several other most senior managers and had been denied. After they were denied, the company’s hopes rested on Ms. Lin’s shoulder, but they were aware that their past failures and her youth worked against them. How would she be taken seriously, how would she get approved where other older, more experienced manager had been denied? It was this worry that led the company to contact our offices.

KEYS TO SUCCESS

We were aware of the challenges that faced Ms. Lin and her company. Not only was she young, but she does not have much possessions in China and she had never been to the U.S. She has a small family, and she was single and unmarried. In short, she didn’t have a lot of ties to her homeland, so any caseworker that might be reviewing her circumstances may conclude that she would have an intent to stay in the U.S., which is not a feature of the B-1 visa.

“We argued that just because she is young does not mean she’s incapable. She studied international business. She managed a website for her company that contributed to a major portion of the company’s sales revenue. And we needed all of that just to show that she was capable despite her youth. If her bosses want to give her the benefit of increasing her worth to company by coming to the U.S., it would be wrong for us to deny her of those benefits.” – Attorney Joseph Tsang

Beyond her lack of ties to China, the main difficultly of the case was proving that her youth was not a liability to her or her company. The company was reasonable to be worried that her lack of years would work against her. We had to collect documentation to show why she should be considered as a valued manager for her company who may rightfully represent her company internationally. As it turns out, her hard work with the company was more than justified. She had created a sales report system for the company that streamlined their processes. She had managed websites for both the Chinese and American branches of the company. It was a profitable company, one that generated millions in revenue, and they estimated that her work alone was responsible for tens of thousands of dollars of income. She was not only a promising young person in management, but she had the experience of working at the highest levels of effectiveness and efficiency for her company.

To show that she did not intend to stay in the United States, we argued that the whole point of her coming to the U.S. was to further increase her value to her company. Her time in the U.S. would allow her to gather the experience necessary to be promoted to the next level of management, an opportunity waiting for her in this company in China. Thus, by violating B-1 regulations and staying in the U.S. would defeat the purpose of everything she has worked for. We also argued that if executives of the profitable company wanted to promote her, to give her this opportunity to grow, it would be quintessentially strange to deny her the chance to prove herself at this level.

OUTCOME

With the arguments that we were able to put forth, Ms. Lin was approved for a B-1 visa in December 2018. She was a junior manager, but she was the only manager in the company who is able to take the opportunity to be here in the U.S., and her company now has the leadership it wanted in place here in the U.S. to attend its scheduled business conference and meetings.

*Name has been changed to protect client identity