No none knows this? Common! there's gotta be some body who has been thru this....

Explorer,

its a easy process if you satisfy the requirements. In order to qualify for Eb-2 advanced degree category, you must either have master's degree in related field or foreign equivalent plus some experiences or 4 years Bachelor's degree in related field with 5 years progressive expereience in related occupation offered, (expereince obtained after completion of Bachelor's degree and has to be in progressive in nature). If you have 3 years Bachelor's and 2 years masters (education systems in Nepal or India other than engineering degree which are usually 4 years), then case can be complicated in EB-2 category as different Service center adjudicate such cases in case by case basis -- which means it can be approved or it may not be approved as degree doesnt have 6 years schooling as required for Masters. Make sure when attorney files PERM labor certification, 3+2 master's is defined correctly in labor application so that USCIS will approve it under EB2. You do not necessarily have to have US Master's degree to be qualify for EB2, foriegn nationals can have foriegn degree but degree must be equivalent to US Master's or Bachalor's plus 5 years progressive exp.

Let me know if its helps, if not i can provide more information on this category. Whats your visa status, its better to file green card from H1B then F-1 as h1b is for Dual intent but F-1 is just a non-immigrant visa category.

 

 

Explorer,,,I recommend you to check www.trackitt.com  where you can review all kinds of infos ...it was very useful for me at that time...Im sure its going to help you a lot.

Bltran & Contour,

Thanks for the info.. I hold an Undergrad from U.S. university and am also aware of the rules, but my main question was what are the chances of getting approved if you just have little over 5 years of experience after the undergrad degree? What are the chances of getting audited?

you have 5+ yrs of experience after undergraduate degree means you are fully eligible to go for EB-2...you wont have any problem getting your GC approved if you dont have any criminal record. these days in Nepal's case, it takes only 7-10 months to receive the card. make sure your  company is paying the amount that DOL have specified for your area/ for your employment before  starting the process. Actually you are going to need that payrate after the day you get your GC approved. Talk with your company about it beforehand. once you have everything straight up, you will be fine...Nepalese still have a very good situation in GC approval trend if it is EB-2.

As long as you have maintain 5 years of expereince in professional capacity, you should be just fine to meet the labor requirements from your side. Again, of course, USCIS will look into your employer's ability to pay salary offered in Labor Cert. usually EB 2 salary ranges between 70K to 100K depending on your job titles and states where the company is located. This Figure is for IT position (software engg or project manager), as you can not file EB under programmer analyst which can be audited by labor. best title for EB 2 is IT project manager or if you are business professional, Sr. Business Analyst or Sr. Financial Analyst would be good.

In terms of employer's ability to pay the salary to you, USCIS looks for several things,

1) If Net income in tax returns show more than the offered salary - you case is can get approved**

2) If Net current assets is more than offered wage -- case can get approved **

3) if Employer not only employing you but is paying the salary more than offered wage, you case can get approved.

** this theory does not apply when your employer is filing too many GC. If it is the case, USCIS may ask your employer to show the fund to pay all greencards. example, if employer has 20 GC pending with average offered wage of 80K, then your employer has to have at least 1.6 Million in net current assets or net income-- again, employer can subtract the salary paid to these gc applicants towards ability to pay -- in a sense, if all these 20 employees are getting significant amount of salary since filing the Labor cert, then all the cases can get approved including yours.

Just find out if your company is not making lots of money or files too many gc, then that will not be a good company to file with in first place as your case can be denied due to ability to pay of the petitioner.

 

Beltran, to only one of your point above:

no, this is not the case. USCIS dont worry about your past total income...they just look for the offered amount which the company has promised to give him after being permanent resident. THERE IS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PAST INCOME AMOUNT, but you still have to submit last three years tax return. the only thing they look for is the offer letter by the company.....the offered salary should be greater or equal to the DOL limit. even if you are currently working in the company, they are going to announce the vacancy for your position (for your labor certification - 1 st step, Perm Process", and give you a offer letter "presuming you are the best among all applicant". then, once you get your labor approved,,,they file your I 140- petition for immigration, i believe.  with the approved labor cert and I140 you file I485, which is adjustment of status as a permanent residence. SO, when you apply for I-485 you are going to need all your tax return paper for the last 3-years or whatever you have till now...just for your IRS record,,,but they dont worry about the amount youve earned..........THEY JUST LOOK AT YOUR  JOB OFFERED LETTER THAT THE COMPANY HAS GIVEN YOU DURING YOUR LABOR CERTIFICATION. Thats it.

I had my MS from US. I used Nepal's undergrad and + 5 years Nepal experience to file under EB2.

explorer I don't think one automatically qualifies under the EB2 category just because they have an undergraduate degree and 5 yrs experience or a Masters Degree. There are a few criteria.

1. The job minimum education requirement has to be Bachelor + 5yrs experience or a Master degree
2. Than you need to meet that requirement (of course including other job requirements but DOL primarily focuses on education and experience).
3. If the Onet website job requirement lists that Undergraduate is usually the minimum requirement, than you and your lawyer will need to prove why is your particular case or company different. If you have others in the same position with the same requirement than it makes it easier.
4. Your company needs to verify that they tired their best to find an American candidate and either they couldn't find one or the ones who applied didn't qualify due to education or experience. DOL doesn't care about who is the better candidate if a foreign national is competing for a job against an American as long as the American meets the minimum requirements.
5. Your pay has to be comparable to the pay scale on Onet.
6. One critical thing I was told by my lawyer was I cannot use the experience I gained at my current job to apply for a green card. The only time you can do it is if you held two completely different positions at the same company. The reasoning is if your jobs minimum requirement was a BS+5, how did you get that 5 years ago without any experience. So technically it means you were able to do this job without any experience so its not a requirement. (I hope I was clear on my last point). Logically it made sense to  me after my lawyer explained it. My job required Masters +1 and I had been at my job for over a year so I had when I applied for my GC I had Masters +2 but when I was hired I had Master +1 (which is the one that counts towards your GC application).

biggy small is 100% right. My job description was for a position that requires at least undergrad and 5 years or more experience. Minm requirement on Onet website was Undergrad for that position. My case went through 'audit' during LC process for business necessisity .

Contour-- you were right about few things -- but USCIS looks for ability to pay from the day Labor was submitted  To someone gets the premanent residence. That is a requirement.  Lets say if you file perm in Arpril 2008 and got approved in July 2008 and then you file the I-140 in july. At this time your company wont have 08 tax return so USCIS relies on net income company had for 07 or quarterly return for 2 qtrs of 08. If netincome was not good in 07 but company is paying the employee that matches the offered wage in GC, then just attached 2008 Paystubs, it should take care of the issues.

One of my freind's I-140 was approved and he was just waiting for 485 approval but USCIS revoked the approved I-140 stating that company didnt have the ability to pay. Their argument was that company had filed over 1000 I-140s since 2002 and they asked the company to show the proof of ability to pay all of these employees. Though company had pretty good gross income of over 40mil, and netincome and assets of about 2Million,. how ever they did  not have enough to pay all candidates and they revoked most of the approved I-140 including my friends.... He wasted 3 last years there for g/c, and finally he had his turn to get one....uscis revoked it. Again, having said that you just have to be careful about these Indian IT companies who had their business survived with Labor Subsitution until last year where they filed so many I-140 substitution for future employees and they were not in payroll.... because of that it makes harder to get approved.

Other 3 years individual taxes are for 485, and it does not have impact on 140. At the time of 485 adjudication, officer wants to know if you are working legally and paying the right taxes

Thanks everyone for their insightful input. I'm really not worried about thencompany because it is an American company with over 100 consultants (most of them are U.S. citizens) and they pay me more than I deserve ;)

And they hardly do anyone's GC.

My worry, nonetheless, is being audited due to the small gap in work experience, but that can also be overshadowed as my experience is approaching to the 6th year after undergraduate. So, let's see.

According to my lawyer, experience w/ same employer can not be used for green card, unless the position's work nature is more than 50% different than what you were doing in H1B/OPT/CPT. Check w/ your lawyer if this is the case.

Beltran,,,,,you are right. I misread you. YES, Company's tax return is a must important,,and it has to show that they can pay you the offered amount.....i was thinking you are talking about the beneficiary's previous taz return.