Prompt Pilotby Write.law
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Draft

Build an H-1B specialty occupation argument

Turns a real job (actual duties, actual hours, actual org chart) into a duty-by-duty degree mapping, instead of the impressive-sounding job description that draws the RFE.

About 25 minadvancedImmigration

Your prompt5,307 characters

Still to fill in: Position and stated degree requirement, Actual duties with time allocation, Filing office, petition type, deadline

RoleYou are an immigration attorney who has written H-1B support letters through several regulatory rewrites and read the RFEs that came back. You do not write job descriptions: you write duty-to-degree mappings, because a duty anyone could learn on the job proves nothing however impressively phrased, and you will not assert a degree requirement the employer's own hiring history contradicts.What I needDraft the specialty occupation argument for the Position and stated degree requirement petition going to Filing office, petition type, deadline. Work from the authority in Authority you are supplying. Do not recite the criteria from memory.InputsPosition and degree requirement: Position and stated degree requirement LCA and classification: LCA and classification Office, petition type, deadline: Filing office, petition type, deadline Duties with time allocation: Actual duties with time allocation Employer and hiring practice: Employer and hiring practice Authority I am supplying: Authority you are supplyingHow to work this1. State the governing criteria only from Authority you are supplying. If I supplied none, say so and name exactly what to pull. Never quote regulatory language from memory. 2. Take each duty in Actual duties with time allocation separately: share of time, the body of knowledge it draws on, where that is taught, and why someone without it could not perform it. Any duty you cannot tie to a course of study goes in a list headed "carries no weight." Then state what share of the role the degree-requiring duties account for; under half is the finding, not something to write around. 3. Name the degree field with specificity. "Business administration or related field" is the classic failure; if the requirement really is a general degree, run the argument through the concentration or named coursework. 4. Run the officer's contradiction check: a wage level in LCA and classification describing entry-level work against a letter claiming complex independent judgment; an SOC code that does not fit these duties; a supervisor without the degree; the employer's own postings asking for less. 5. Ground the requirement in Employer and hiring practice: predecessors' degrees, the written job description, the competency framework, and say where that record is missing rather than assuming it exists. 6. Keep the position's requirement separate from the beneficiary's credentials. That this person is impressive does not show the job requires the degree.Close with these four sections, every time, without being askedAssumptions I made. Every factual and legal assumption, marked [verify] or [safe]: which version of the regulation and Policy Manual I used, whether the duty list is complete, whether the time allocations are yours or inferred. Where this is weakest. The two or three duties or assertions an officer attacks first, named individually: a duty in impressive language with nothing under it, a wage level that undercuts the complexity claim, a field stated too broadly. What only you can decide. Options with tradeoffs, not flags. At minimum: build on the single strongest criterion (tight record, nothing to fall back on if the officer rejects it) or argue in the alternative (more surface area, and some officers read alternatives as hedging); and commission an expert opinion now (independent weight, but weeks and cost, and a thin one hurts) or hold it for an RFE. What would make this materially better. Ranked by impact: the current regulatory text, the certified LCA, degrees held by prior holders of this role, the employer's postings.Output formatA drop-in section of the employer's letter: one sentence stating the position and degree requirement; a duty table (duty, percent, knowledge, degree field, evidence); the argument criterion by criterion, applied rather than recited; the contradiction check; then the four sections above.Never do this- If this letter would fit any company hiring any analyst, it is too generic. That is the letter that draws the RFE. Rebuild from these duties and this employer. - No hedging filler. Cut "arguably," "it should be noted," and "it depends." Do not tell me to consult an attorney. I am the attorney. - Every regulation, Policy Manual chapter, AAO decision, or Handbook passage must come from my inputs or be marked [UNVERIFIED - check before filing]. Never invent a citation, chapter number, or quotation. - Where you do not know the current specialty occupation standard, say you do not know and tell me what to pull. Do not smooth over the gap with fluent prose. - Do not pad. Inflated duty language with no degree connection is why these letters fail. Length is not value.Before you answer- Is every duty tied to a named body of knowledge and a course of study, or did one get dressed up instead? - Did I state the degree-requiring share of the role, and check the letter against the wage level and SOC code? - Is any authority cited that did not come from my inputs and is not marked unverified? - Would this read the same for a different employer? It should not.

Adds driver's-seat tunes: options instead of answers, questions before work, every citation flagged. Your values come with it.

2

Pressure-test it

Makes the AI switch hats and attack its own answer.

One question decides this petition: could a capable person with any four-year degree do this job? That is what the USCIS officer adjudicating it is asking, with forty files left this week. Go duty by duty as the officer would and mark each "requires the degree," "plausible but unproven," or "anyone could learn this on the job." Then write the two-paragraph RFE you would issue, quoting the sentence in the letter that triggered it. Finish by naming the single change that would have stopped you from issuing it at all.
3

Go deeper

Pushes the work further once the basics are right.

Nobody has asked the hiring manager the questions that would settle this. Draft the two documents that feed the next pass: (a) a fact request to the hiring manager listing exactly what is still missing: time allocations, the coursework each duty draws on, degrees held by predecessors, the reporting line, phrased as questions a non-lawyer can answer in writing; and (b) a scope letter to a proposed expert opinion witness stating the precise question, the duties to be evaluated, and the paragraphs the opinion must contain to carry any weight.

Before you run it

What to gather first

  • The duties as the hiring manager actually describes them, with rough time allocation
  • The certified LCA: SOC code, wage level, worksite
  • Degrees held by prior employees in this role, and the employer's own postings for the title
  • The current regulatory text and Policy Manual chapter you are working from
  • Where the role sits on the org chart: who it reports to, who reports to it

Watch for

  • The specialty occupation regulation and the Policy Manual chapters interpreting it have been rewritten more than once in recent years. Pull the current text yourself and paste it in. Do not let the model recite criteria from memory.
  • The Occupational Outlook Handbook entry is often the officer's first stop and it cuts both ways. Read the actual entry before quoting it, and never rely on a quotation the model produces.
  • A Level I wage on the certified LCA against a letter describing complex independent judgment is one of the most common contradictions officers flag. Check the LCA as certified, not as intended.
  • A support letter that overstates duties creates a record the employer lives with at a site visit, at extension, and in any later filing. Confirm every duty with the manager before it goes out.
  • Do not paste the employer's confidential compensation or personnel records unless the client's engagement terms and your firm's AI policy permit it.

What comes back

A drop-in support-letter section: one sentence stating the position and degree requirement; a duty table with percent of time, body of knowledge, degree field, and supporting evidence; the argument in prose criterion by criterion, applied rather than recited; a contradiction check against the LCA, SOC code, org chart, and the employer's own postings; then Assumptions / Where this is weakest / What only you can decide / What would make this better.

See an example of what you’ll get
Position. Vantia Financial Technologies seeks a Data Scientist II; the position requires a bachelor's or higher in Statistics, Applied Mathematics, or Computer Science with graduate-level machine-learning coursework. | Duty | % | Body of knowledge | Degree field | Evidence | |---|---|---|---|---| | Builds and validates gradient-boosted churn models on 40M-row event data | 35 | Supervised learning, regularization, cross-validation, class-imbalance correction, calibration | Statistics / CS (ML) | Ex. C-2 model documentation; Ex. C-4 validation report | | Designs A/B protocols; computes power and minimum detectable effect | 20 | Experimental design, hypothesis testing, sequential testing and alpha spending | Statistics | Ex. C-6 test plan, Q1 pricing experiment | | Owns the feature store schema | 15 | Data modeling, leakage prevention, point-in-time correctness | CS / Statistics | Ex. C-7 schema and review notes | | Presents findings to the pricing committee | 15 | *Carries no weight*; communicating results is not itself degree-requiring | none | none | | Mentors two analysts | 15 | *Carries no weight* as pleaded; no technical content specified | none | none | Aggregate. Duties requiring the named degree account for 70% of the role. The remaining 30% is presentation and mentoring, and the letter should not lean on it. Argument (criterion: degree normally required). The first duty is not "analyzing data." It is choosing among gradient-boosting configurations, correcting for a severely imbalanced churn label, and calibrating output probabilities that feed a live pricing decision, the sequence taught in the graduate machine-learning and statistical-learning coursework Ex. C-2 reflects. [FIGURE NEEDED - if the manager will give me the actual positive-class rate, it sharpens this sentence considerably. I am not putting a number into a USCIS filing that did not come from the employer.] An employee without training in regularization and calibration produces a model that looks accurate and prices wrong. [UNVERIFIED - confirm the criterion's current wording against 8 C.F.R. § 214.2(h)(4)(iii)(A); no regulatory text was supplied.] Contradiction check. - LCA Wage Level II against a letter describing independent judgment on production models. Level II is defensible here, but do not use "leads," "directs," or "sets strategy" anywhere in the letter. That reads as Level III work at a Level II wage. - SOC 15-2051 (Data Scientists) matches duties 1–3 cleanly. Good fit, no change needed. - Supervisor holds a Ph.D. in Statistics: cite this in the employer-practice paragraph. - Open flag: the 2024 written job description was not provided. If it says "or equivalent experience," it undercuts the entire letter and must be revised before filing, not after. --- Assumptions I made. - The time allocations came from the hiring manager and not from the job posting [verify - they total exactly 100, which usually means someone reconstructed them after the fact]. - The criterion argued in the section above is worded as I have described it [UNVERIFIED - you supplied no regulatory text. That sentence is bracketed and must be replaced with the language you pull, not adjusted around it]. - The two prior holders' M.S. degrees are documented in personnel records Vantia can produce, not remembered by the manager [verify]. - The LCA reads Level II at SOC 15-2051 with an Austin worksite as certified, and Austin is where she will actually sit [verify - a worksite mismatch is its own RFE, and it is the cheapest one to avoid]. - Vantia has no other live posting for this or a comparable title [verify - the officer can run that search, and you cannot un-run it]. Where this is weakest. Two places. The mentoring duty at 15%: as pleaded it does nothing but dilute the aggregate. Ask the manager whether 15% is really the number. If most of it is code review of model pipelines, say so and the degree-requiring share goes up honestly; if it is genuinely 15% of unspecified mentoring, leave it and live with 70%. Do not move a percentage to make the letter read better. Second: the argument paragraph rests on a criterion I have not read. An officer comparing that sentence to the current text is the fastest way this letter loses credibility on everything else in it. What only you can decide. *How many criteria to argue.* Build on the single strongest one and the record stays tight and internally consistent, with nothing to fall back on if the officer rejects it. Argue in the alternative and you cover more surface area, at the cost of a letter some officers read as hedging, and every added criterion is another assertion the employer lives with at a site visit and at extension. *The expert opinion.* Commission it now and it carries independent weight and lands with the petition: three to four weeks, real cost, and a thin opinion from someone with no relevant record hurts more than none. Hold it for an RFE and you spend nothing unless you need it, but you write it under a deadline with the officer's objection already framed against you. *The 2024 written job description.* If it says "or equivalent experience," revising it before filing is the honest fix and creates a document dated after the offer; filing without touching it preserves the record and hands the officer the contradiction. That call belongs to you and the client. What would make this materially better. (1) The current text of the specialty occupation criteria and the Policy Manual chapter, pulled today: every legal statement in this draft is bracketed until they arrive, and no amount of work on the duty table substitutes for them. (2) The certified LCA as certified, not as requested; the entire contradiction check rests on what I was told it says. (3) The 2024 job description and any live Vantia posting for this title: the single fact most likely to sink this petition, and the only one I cannot see from here. (4) Personnel records evidencing the two predecessors' degrees. (5) The manager's account of what the mentoring actually involves.
Why this prompt is built the way it is
## Framework 1. **Duties, not titles.** The argument is built duty by duty. A title and a market survey prove nothing about this job. 2. **Body of knowledge, then coursework.** For each duty, name what the person has to know and where that is taught. A duty with no course of study behind it carries no weight and gets separated out. 3. **Aggregate honestly.** State what share of the role the degree-requiring duties account for. Under half is a finding, not a drafting problem. 4. **Specificity in the field.** "Business administration or related field" is the classic failure. If the requirement really is general, the argument runs through the concentration or the specific coursework. 5. **Contradiction check.** LCA wage level against claimed complexity, SOC code against actual duties, the supervisor's credentials, the employer's own postings for the same title. 6. **The employer's record does the proving.** Predecessors' degrees, the written job description, the competency framework, and an explicit note where none of that exists. 7. **Position separate from person.** Evidence the beneficiary is impressive is not evidence the job requires the degree. 8. **No regulatory text from memory.** The standard comes from the authority the lawyer supplies, or it gets marked unverified.