Major victory for H-1B employers as USCIS qualifies market research analyst as speciality occupation

The settlement approved by the federal district court in the Northern District of California would now let companies request that the USCIS reopen and re-adjudicate their denied H-1B petitions

In a major victory for H-1B employers, a federal court has approved a settlement under which the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has agreed to qualify market research analyst as a speciality occupation for the purposes of determining H-1B visa application of a foreign professional.

Based on its prior interpretation of the Occupational Outlook Handbook — a Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics publication profiling hundreds of occupations in the U.S. job market — the USCIS was determining that market research analysts did not qualify as a "specialty occupation".

The settlement approved by the federal district court in the Northern District of California would now let companies request that the USCIS reopen and re-adjudicate their denied H-1B petitions.