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Specialty Occupation Denials Need to Be Challenged in Court

The American Immigration Council has filed a lawsuit against United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. The lawsuit, which challenges the often-arbitrary decisions in regards to the “specialty occupation” classification for H-1B petitioners (Entegris Professional Solutions, Inc. v. USCIS 12/19/18), seeks to vacate an H-1B extension denial received by the petitioning company, Entegris Professional Services, Inc.  The petioner had filed three previous successful H-1B applications for the same employee, under the same or similar position, and her most recent extension was denied on the grounds that the beneficiary’s position as a business intelligence analyst was not a specialty occupation. The plaintiff calls for the denial to be overturned as an “arbitrary and capricious” decision, which is “contrary to law”.

As a note of caution, we encourage all companies who wish to file an H-1B on behalf of a potential employee to exercise discretion when choosing a job classification for their beneficiary. Though many job classifications have overlapping codes, the classifications for systems analysts’ positions have received continual resistance from USCIS of late.