EB1 Eligibility?

[sumie]

hello,

I am currently on working on L1A, managing the operations of a critical business unit of my organisation. I have a Masters degree and 11 years of experience out of which around 5 years has been a manager. I relocated to US earlier in 2011 on L1A as a manager and asked my company HR to proceed with GC application.They initially consulted the lawyer and came back saying that my credentials are suitable for EB1 but now they have suddenly raised a concern that I dont have full time employees reporting into me. Due to the nature of business and for cost efficiency purpose, we rely on a constant pool of consultants provided by different vendors. In my daily role, I do manage about 6 consulants and obviously have the authority to hire more or fire existing ones - what HR is saying is that people under you need to be employees and not consultants. I am not sure if that is a valid reason.

Can anybody with some knowledge on this comment? No, please dont blindly say it is right, give me a valid reason.

Thanks.