Small Company Applied for 2 similar H-1B Positions at the Same Time

Year: 2020
Nationality: Chinese
Applicant (U.S. employer): Import/Export Trading Company
Beneficiaries (expatriate employees): Jimmy, Lily
Position: Data Analyst, Operation Research Analyst

Timeline:
06/2020 H-1B petition filed
06/2020 Immigration Office Receipt
07/2020 First application successfully approved with no addendum
09/2020 Second application successfully approved with no addendum

 Difficulties:
– Both beneficiaries were petitioning for H-1B positions in the data analysis category, and the U.S. employer was a small start-up company with only 10 employees, making it more difficult to justify petitioning for 2 similar H-1B positions at the same time.
– The two beneficiaries have very similar academic backgrounds and possess similar intellectual skills.
– Simultaneous filing of H-1B petitions by two beneficiaries .
– Both beneficiaries are at the lowest Level I salary level.
– The company has been affected by COVID-19, with a lot of personnel changes and unstable structure.

BACKGROUND
Jimmy and Lily joined this import/export trading company in 2019, starting as interns. The company is less than 5 years old and is in dire need of graduates with relevant majors to explain how to optimize its operations. both Jimmy and Lily are doing excellent work, so the company decided to apply for both of them for H-1B this year. however, the overlapping academic backgrounds of the two beneficiaries and the highly similar positions they are applying for make it much more difficult.

In addition, the employer is small, still in the early stages of development, with only 10 employees, but is applying for 2 new H-1B positions at the same time, which is another major challenge to justify and necessitate. After consulting with various parties, the U.S. employer finally decided to engage Tsang & Associates, PLC to handle the visa application.

KEYS TO SUCCESS
1. Distinguish beneficiary backgrounds from an employer operational perspective
Since both beneficiaries belonged to the same company and submitted their applications at the same time, we had to highlight the differences in their backgrounds, taking into account the internal and external needs of the company’s development. After a thorough analysis, the Tsang & Associates, PLC team constructed a logical application logic from the perspective of the employer’s operations, ensuring that the distinction between the job content and the need for “one without the other” was reflected in both applications.

Multi-perspective differentiation of positions.
1. Job Description: Although both Jimmy and Lily’s positions are related to data analysis, their work focuses are very different: Operations Analyst focuses on internal management, while Data Analyst is responsible for external operations. Therefore, we created several pages of specific responsibilities for each position to ensure that the two positions were clearly distinguishable from each other.
2. Academic background: Jimmy and Lily’s university courses were similar, so it was again necessary to distinguish between their academic backgrounds. Tsang & Associates, PLC, by presenting the results of each beneficiary’s work, noted that while the two beneficiaries had expertise in the same field, they did not overlap in their specific data analysis skills. In addition, their work results further demonstrate the industry’s high threshold, which requires sophisticated application of data analysis skills.

2: Demonstrate that the positions of the two beneficiaries are essential to the company’s growth
Another difficulty with this application was the relative lack of hardware for U.S. employers, so the application materials had to demonstrate that hiring Jimmy and Lily would play a key role in the company’s growth.

After numerous discussions with the U.S. employer and the two beneficiaries, Tsang & Associates, PLC decided to use the available materials flexibly, emphasizing the company’s growth rate and business plan by amplifying the proportion of the company’s soft strengths and growth prospects in the application materials. We provided dozens of pages of supporting materials such as expansion plans, marketing investments, and client growth ratios, demonstrating that Jimmy and Lily’s positions, one internal and one external, were essential to the overall growth of the firm.

OUTCOME
Tsang & Associates, PLC filed Jimmy’s and Lily’s H-1B petitions in June 2020, and first received good news in July that Jimmy was approved without a supplemental petition, and then in September that Lily was also approved directly.

The U.S. employer and the two employees were thrilled, if not incredulous, to learn of the good news, and were prepared for a difficult retroactive filing. They were very impressed and grateful to Tsang & Associates, PLC for their professional approach to the petition, which resulted in the approval of both H-1Bs and the retention of talent for the company.

Jimmy and Lily’s case is unique in that it is common for large companies to file multiple H-1B petitions for the same position at the same time because the company is large enough to support it. However, for small start-up companies, the risk of filing is much higher.

However, many small companies have more operational and managerial needs, so applying a model case to a difficult case is not impossible. What is important is how to give a convincing and reasonable explanation based on the company’s background to bring the case back to life.

*To protect customer privacy, customer names are pseudonyms.