The Contradiction Adjudicators Look For
A Level 1 prevailing wage signals an entry-level position: closely supervised, limited judgment, routine tasks. When the same petition describes an engineer designing microservice boundaries, owning production reliability, or leading a migration effort, the adjudicator sees an internal contradiction. Either the position is entry-level and the duties are overstated, or the duties are accurate and the wage level is understated. Both readings support an RFE.
The fix is not rhetorical. It requires either a wage level that matches the described responsibility or a duty description that honestly reflects a supervised, entry-level role.
Reconciling the Record
Wage level selection follows the Department of Labor's five-factor worksheet: experience requirements, education beyond the baseline, special skills, supervisory duties, and licensure. Most senior enterprise engineering roles accumulate enough points to land at Level 2 or higher. Petitions filed at Level 1 for roles requiring five years of experience are almost always misclassified.
- Re-run the DOL worksheet against the actual job requirements before certifying the LCA.
- Remove supervisory or architectural language if the role is genuinely entry-level.
- Document that the beneficiary is one of several engineers on a supervised team.
- Where the role is senior, file a corrected LCA at the appropriate level rather than arguing the point.
Building the Response
A strong RFE response addresses the wage level directly rather than restating the original petition. It explains how the position sits within the organizational chart, who supervises the beneficiary, what decisions the beneficiary can and cannot make independently, and how the role differs from the senior positions on the same team. Supporting evidence includes an organizational chart, the supervisor's own job description, project assignment records, and industry wage survey data for comparable entry-level engineering roles in the metropolitan statistical area.
Where the classification was genuinely wrong, the cleaner path is withdrawal and refiling with a correct LCA. Defending an indefensible wage level consumes the response window and rarely succeeds.
Preventing the Next One
Wage level should be determined by the same person who writes the duty description, at the same time. Splitting those decisions between an immigration coordinator and an engineering manager is how the contradiction gets created. A short pre-filing review — duties, wage level, org chart, experience requirement — catches nearly all of these before they reach an adjudicator.