dismissed EB-3 Case: Technical Recruiting

U.S. Citizenship 
and Immigration 
Services 
In Re: 11211985 
Appeal of Nebraska Service Center Decision 
Form 1-140, Immigrant Petition for Professional 
Non-Precedent Decision of the 
Administrative Appeals Office 
Date: SEPT. 2, 2020 
The Petitioner seeks to employ the Beneficiary as a senior manager technical recruiter. It requests 
classification of the Beneficiary under the third-preference, immigrant classification for professional 
workers. Immigration and Nationality Act (the Act) section 203(b)(3)(A)(ii), 8 U.S.C. 
§ 1153(b)(3)(A)(ii). This employment-based, "EB-3" category allows a U.S. employer to sponsor a 
professional with a baccalaureate degree for lawful permanent resident status. 
The Director of the Nebraska Service Center denied the petition, concluding that the record did not 
establish that the Beneficiary met the minimum education and skill requirements for the offered 
position. 
In these proceedings, it is the Petitioner's burden to establish eligibility for the requested benefit. 
Section 291 of the Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1361. Upon de nova review, we will dismiss the appeal. 
I. EMPLOYMENT-BASED IMMIGRATION 
Employment-based immigration generally follows a three-step process. To permanently fill a position 
in the United States with a foreign worker, a prospective employer must first obtain certification from 
the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). See section 212(a)(5) of the Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(5). DOL 
approval signifies that insufficient U.S. workers are able, willing , qualified, and available for a position. 
Id. Labor certification also indicates that the employment of a foreign national will not harm wages and 
working conditions of U.S. workers with similar jobs. Id. 
If DOL approves a position, an employer must next submit the certified labor application with an 
immigrant visa petition to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). See section 204 of 
the Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1154. Among other things, USCIS considers whether a beneficiary meets the 
requirements of a certified position and a requested immigrant visa classification. If USCIS approves 
the petition, a foreign national may finally apply for an immigrant visa abroad or, if eligible, 
adjustment of status in the United States. See section 245 of the Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1255. 
II. ANALYSIS 
A petitioner must establish a beneficiary's possession of all DOL-certified job requirements of an 
offered position by a petition's priority date.1 See Matter of Wing's Tea House, 16 l&N Dec. 158, 160 
(Acting Reg'I Comm'r 1977). In evaluating a beneficiary's qualifications, USCIS must examine the 
job-offer portion of an accompanying labor certification to determine a position's minimum 
requirements. USCIS may neither ignore a certification term, nor impose additional 
requirements. See, e.g., Madany v. Smith, 696 F.2d 1008, 1015 (D.C. Cir. 1983). 
Here, the accompanying labor certification states the minimum requirements of the offered position 
of senior manager technical recruiter as a U.S. bachelor's degree, or a foreign equivalent degree, in 
computer information systems, and 12 months of experience in the offered job. No alternate field of 
study is accepted. Experience in an alternate occupation is not accepted. Section H.14 of the 
certification, "Specific skills or other requirements," also states that the job requires "experience with 
but not limited to MySQL, SNS, EC2, CloudFront CON, AWS, JIRA, Route 53, Auto Scaling, Oracle, 
SAS and SQL Server." 
Section J of the labor certification states that the Beneficiary's highest level of education relevant to 
the job offered is a bachelor's degree in business administration froml I University in India, 
completed in 2007. As evidence of this credential the Petitioner submitted copies of a degree of 
bachelor of science and marks memorandum issued to the Beneficiary b~ I University 
in 2005, and a degree of master of business administration and consolidated grade sheet issued to the 
Beneficiary b~ IIJniversity in 2007. 
Section J also claims that the Beneficiary gained 12 months of employment experience, including 
experience with the specific skills listed in Part H.14, during his employment withl I I ]as a talent acquisition specialist from September 2007 to April 2009. 
The Director found that the record lacked evidence that the Beneficiary possessed the requisite degree 
in computer information systems, the only field allowed by the terms of the labor certification, or that 
the Beneficiary gained the requisite expertise with the software applications and skills specified on the 
labor certification. The Director concluded that the Petitioner had not established that the Beneficiary 
qualified for the offered position and denied the petition. 
A Minimum Education Requirement 
The Petitioner submitted two academic equivalency evaluations from The Trustforte Corporation, 
dated 2016 and 2019. Both evaluations assert that the Beneficiary's post-secondary studies atD 
I !University were equivalent to three years of academic studies toward a bachelor of 
business administration degree at an accredited U.S. college or university, and that these studies, 
combined with his advanced bachelor's- and graduate-level studies atl I University, were 
equivalent to a bachelor of business administration from an accredited U.S. college or university. The 
2019 evaluation states, "the nature of the courses and credit hours involved indicate that [the 
1 This petition's priority date is February 22, 2019, the date the DOL received the labor certification application for 
processing. See 8 C.F.R. § 204.5(d) (explaining how to determine a petition's priority date). 
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Beneficiary] attained the equivalent of a four-year Bachelor Business Administration Degree from an 
accredited U.S. college or university." 
The Director found that the record established "that the Beneficiary has attained a level of education 
comparable to a bachelor of business administration in the United States." The issue on appeal is 
whether the Beneficiary meets the minimum requirements of the labor certification, as completed by 
the Petitioner and certified by the DOL, where the labor certification requires a bachelor's degree, or 
foreign equivalent degree, in computer information systems, and does not allow for an alternate field 
of study. 
In order to determine what a job opportunity requires, we must examine "the language of the labor 
certification job requirements." Madany v. Smith, 696 F.2d at 1015. USCIS must examine the 
certified job offer exactly as it is completed by the prospective employer. See Rosedale Linden Park 
Company v. Smith, 595 F. Supp. 829, 833 (D.D.C. 1984). Our interpretation of the job's requirements 
must involve reading and applying the plain language of the labor certification application form. Id. 
at 834. 
In this case, the accompanying labor certification states that the only field of study acceptable for the 
offered position is computer information systems. The Petitioner could have indicated on the labor 
certification in section H.7 that an alternate field of study is acceptable, but it did not. Further, the 
Petitioner did not elaborate on, or qualify, the required field of study in section H.14. Thus, based on 
the plain language of the labor certification, the Beneficiary does not qualify for the offered position 
based on his foreign equivalent degree in business administration. See, e.g., Estrada-Hernandez v. 
Holder, 108 F. Supp. 3d 936, 947 (S.D. Cal. 2015) (holding that we reasonably interpret a job's 
requirements based on the plain language of a labor certification) (citations omitted). 
On appeal, the Petitioner asks that we examine the Beneficiary's educational accomplishments 
comprehensively to find that his underlying post-secondary studies are in the field of computer 
information systems, and that the natural progression for the Beneficiary's career is graduate studies in 
business administration. In support of this, the Petitioner submits printouts from the U.S. Bureau of 
Labor Statistics website summarizing the occupation of computer information systems managers, 
highlighting that individuals in this occupation "help determine the information technology goals of 
an organization and are responsible for implementing computer systems to meet those goals." 
But the offered position is not a computer information systems manager, it is a senior manager 
technical recruiter. Further, the two evaluations of the Beneficiary's credentials in the record that the 
Petitioner submitted state that the Beneficiary's underlying post-secondary studies equate to three 
years of study toward a bachelor of business administration degree. Neither of the evaluations 
submitted by the Petitioner equates any of the Beneficiary's educational accomplishments to a degree 
in computer information systems. 
The Petitioner asserts that the Trusteforte evaluations "unnecessarily and heavily weighted 
Beneficiary's educational achievements at the master's degree level to reach a determination that 
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Beneficiary achieved a degree in Business Administration rather than a bachelor of science degree." 
However, the Petitioner does not submit independent, objective evidence to support this assertion. 2 
A preponderance of evidence does not demonstrate the Beneficiary's possession of a baccalaureate 
degree in the field of study required by the offered position. We will therefore affirm the petition's 
denial. 
B. Specific Skill Requirement 
As noted above, the accompanying labor certification states that the offered position of senior manager 
technical recruiter requires 12 months of experience in the offered job, and experience with MySQL, 
SNS, EC2, CloudFront CON, AWS, JIRA, Route 53, Auto Scaling, Oracle, SAS and SQL Server. 
The labor certification claims that the Beneficiary gained employment experience, ilcludina
1 experience with these applications, during his more than 18 months of employment with 
I I The Petitioner has established that the Beneficiary has more than 12 months 
of experience in the offered position. The issue on appeal is whether the Petitioner has established 
that the Beneficiary has experience with the specific skills listed in section H.14, as required by the 
labor certification. 
The record includes a 2018 sworn statement from a former human resources manager atl I 
________ (listing the Beneficiary's technical skills as "JavaScript, VBScript, SQL 
Server, Oracle, MS Office, Windows, Unix/Linux, HTML, CSS"). The record also includes a 2019 
letter from the same individual (listing the Beneficiary's additional technical competencies as 
"MySQL, SNS, EC2, CloudFront CON, AWS, JIRA, Route 53, Auto Scaling and SAS.") 
The Director found that the 2018 statement did not include all of the specific skills listed in Section 
H.14 of the labor certification and that the record did not demonstrate that the Beneficiary met the 
skills requirement for the offered position. The Director informed the Petitioner of this deficiency in 
a notice of intent to deny (NOID) the petition. The Director declined to consider the 2019 letter 
submitted in response to the NOID because the letter did not explain why certain experience was not 
included in the earlier sworn statement. The Director cited to Matter of lzummi, 22 l&N Dec. 169, 
176 (Assoc. Comm'r 1998), stating that "a petitioner may not make material changes to a petition that 
has already been filed in an effort to make an apparently deficient petition confirm to Service 
requirements." 
On appeal, the Petitioner contends that Matter of lzummi does not apply in this matter, as the updated 
letter was submitted in response to the NOID and not in an attempt to make a material change to the 
2 The Petitioner requested an additional 30 days to submit a supplemental brief and supporting evidence on appeal. This 
request was granted and the Petitioner's brief was received timely. However, in its brief the Petitioner requests that the 
record be kept open to allow submission of additional evidence, stating that it "diligently attempted to seek a second 
opinion on Beneficiary's education from experts in the field" and was unable to do so. 8 C.F.R. § 103.3(a)(2)(vii) allows 
for limited circumstances in which a petitioner can supplement an already-submitted appeal, permitting "a written request 
... for additional time to submit a brief which may be granted "for good cause shown." The regulations do not require us 
to grant a petitioner unlimited time to supplement an appeal. Here, the Petitioner did not submit evidence documenting its 
attempt to obtain an additional advisory opinion on the Beneficiary's educational credentials and, to date, we have not 
received any additional evidence beyond the Petitioner's brief. Therefore, we consider the record closed with the receipt 
of the Petitioner's brief on appeal. 
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petition. We agree that the Director's reliance on Matter of lzummi is misplaced. However, USCIS 
may assign less weight to testimonial evidence when it is contradicted by other evidence in the record 
of proceeding. See Matter of Treasure Craft of California, 14 l&N Dec. 190, 194 (Reg'I Comm'r 
1972). Based on the second letter's later submission, without explanation, we find the letter to be less 
credible. 
Upon further review of the record, we find an additional inconsistency with the 2019 letter describing 
the Beneficiary's technical competency, which must be resolved in any further filings. The Petitioner 
asserts that the Beneficiary gained experience with Route 53 during his employment with! I 
_________ from 2007 to 2009. However, it appears from an online search of this 
technology that Route 53 first became available io December 201 □, approximately 18 months after the 
Beneficiary's employment with I . ended. 3 Without resolution and 
further information, this apparent inconsistency casts doubt on the potential accuracy of the content in 
the 2019 letter in the record. The Petitioner must resolve inconsistencies with independent, objective 
evidence pointing to where the truth lies. Matter of Ho, 19 l&N Dec. 582, 591-92 (BIA 1988). 
Unresolved material inconsistencies may lead us to reevaluate the reliability and sufficiency of other 
evidence submitted in support of the requested immigration benefit. Id. 
Without further information, we cannot determine that the Beneficiary possessed all of the specific 
skills required for the offered position. We will therefore affirm the petition's denial. 
111. CONCLUSION 
The Petitioner has not established that the Beneficiary meets the minimum requirements as set forth 
on the accompanying labor certification. It is the Petitioner's burden to establish eligibility for the 
immigration benefit sought. Section 291 of the Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1361; Matter of Skirball Cultural Ctr., 
25 l&N Dec. 799, 806 (AAO 2012). The Petitioner has not met that burden. 
ORDER: The appeal is dismissed. 
3 See Announcing Amazon Route 53 - A new DNS Service from AWS available at https://aws.amazon.com/about­
aws/whats-new/2010/12/06/announcing-amazon-route-53-dns-service/ (accessed August 20, 2020). 
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