By Staff
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
SEATTLE — Architecture firm, MG2 Corp., is suing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in federal court over the agency’s decision to deny a work visa to one of its employees.
MG2 said USCIS violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it denied its H-1B petition amendment on behalf of Bharath Raj Kumanan, a database manager who had been promoted.
H-1B visas are reserved for temporary foreign workers with advanced degrees in specialty occupations.
Kumanan, an Indian citizen, had been approved for an H-1B visa in his previous role as a database manager three years ago, according to the lawsuit. MG2 says USCIS failed to consider the company’s “extremely detailed” statement describing what the new position entails when the agency said in its denial that the job description was “generic in nature.”
The complaint called USCIS’s denial “arbitrary and capricious.”
USCIS said that Kumanan’s new role didn’t qualify as a specialty occupation, which is necessary to obtain an H-1B visa.