On July 15, the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia issued an opinion in the case of Sagarwala vs. Cissna. Usha Sagarwala, beneficiary of an H-1B petition filed by HSK Technologies, Inc., sued the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) after USCIS denied the petition, arguing that Sagarwala and HSK Technologies failed to submit evidence demonstrating that the offered position of QA Analyst met any of the four prongs of the definition of “specialty occupation.” Additionally, HSK Technologies indicated in the initial petition they would accept Bachelor’s degrees in a variety of specialties, a fact on which USCIS later relied in its denial. Sagarwala sued USCIS under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), arguing that USCIS’s decision in denying the H-1B petition was not in accordance with the law. The Court decided the case in USCIS’s favor, stating that the Service’s interpretation of the available evidence was reasonable and not arbitrary or capricious.
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