Research Thinking Process flowchart:
Problem/Issue > Collect info > Interpret with personal point of view > Question > Make assumption > Have Idea > Conjecture > Test Experiment > Data > Theory > Double blind Test with placebo > Data supports Theory (with exceptions) > Facts > Conclusion > Publish > Consequences > Implications
EB-1A is officially referred as employment-based, first-preference visa. This is the petition that fast-tracks your green card process. The major benefits for EB-1A are as follows:
Priority dates are much faster which means if your application is successful you can immediately apply for an adjustment of status (more on this below)
You can self-sponsor this petition and it’s not tied to your employer
You can also file this concurrently with your employer petition (EB2 or EB3)
It has a fast turnaround - if you do premium processing, you will hear back within two weeks
A: Regardless of education background, nobody is explicitly excluded from this category. Most applicants are researchers, professors, authors, musicians, artists, singers, conductors, composers, caligraphers, painters, directors, actors, athletes, martial arts masters, Qi Gong masters, models, inventors, entrepreneurs, etc.
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of things that a green card does you to do that other visas (H-1B, L-1, F-1) does not:
Document repository
Even before you begin your petition, I’d start collecting all the documents in one place online to make the process easier. From visas, to I-797 petitions, EADs, marriage certificate, birth certificate, paystubs - you’ll literally need all of them
Number of criteria
Some people apply with just three (like me) and others apply with six. The general advice that I received for the number of criteria is quality and not quantity. Do ensure that the ones you have are watertight vs. simply aiming to add more criteria for the sake of making your petition look better
Letters of support:
The most important part of your petition (imo) will be the letters of support that ascertain why you are extraordinary. These letters should ideally be signed by someone who is “famous” and is an expert in their field. It should be easy to google them - focus on folks who have been in the press or have a lot of publications
If you don’t know many people, start networking today to get to know them. A lot of people will sign these letters even if they don’t know you since they know how much of a pain this is. Pre-write all the letters to make sure it covers the points you want to cover and makes this extremely easy for them to sigh
Besides networking, you’d be surprised on how a cold email or cold DM on Twitter can work wonders. Don’t be afraid to reach out to experts in your field who’d be perfect candidates for your letters
Get letters from people who can ascertain that they don’t know you. One of the reasons for my RFE was my letters of support was only people I had worked with which led them to believe that my contributions didn’t make a “dent” in the industry
Premium processing
There is a lot of debate whether premium processing helps (or negates) a decision since you are pushing USCIS for a quick decision. Having talked to 10-15 immigration lawyers, everyone has their own opinion. My advice is to apply for it so that you can get a quick answer vs. waiting months simply waiting for the USCIS to come back
Final Merits
Between 2016-2020, I had heard a lot of cases where USCIS would accept the criterias but deny you based on “final merits” consideration. There are a lot of strategies to get ahead of this - make sure you ask the lawyer on how you are planning to tackle this in the initial petition itself
Have urgency Throughout the entire EB-1A process, I did not have any urgency. The reason was because I knew I could port over my priority date of 2018 from my EB-2 and renew my H-1B indefinitely in the interim. Because the EB-1 priority date, even for Indians, was current, I didn’t think I needed to move quickly. That was a bad decision because in August 2023, it has retrogressed).
Prior to an acceptance, there’s a reasonably high chance (~50% anecdotally) that you may get an RFE (Request for Evidence) or a NOID (Notice of Intent to Deny). In the several I’ve seen through my friends, they’re rarely based on the merits of your case but nitpicking at legal language. In the case of a NOID, my lawyer asked me to withdraw and refile since changing the decision is unlikely. In the case of an RFE, you typically submit more evidence.
Even though there’s some self-selection here (e.g. plane with bullet holes picture, completion rates for the marathon are usually way higher than completion rates for the easier half-marathon), the point I’m trying to stress on is that not all EB-1A applicants are super well qualified and the approval rate is actually pretty high compared to other more selective processes, like college admission.
As far as I know, there’s also nothing prevent you from applying again in case of a denial.
Your timeline for preparation of the application will vary drastically depending on (a) how much of a perfectionist you are (b) how many of the criteria you can meet with no additional effort (c) how much free time you have.
With focus, even if you have to put in some legwork to meet more criteria, I’d say:
Step | Time | Notes |
---|---|---|
Acquiring all the evidence and letters | 4-12mos | Depends on much prep-work your application needs and how quickly you do it |
Polishing and submit petition (I-140) with your lawyer | 1mo | Depends on lawyer’s responsiveness |
USCIS decision | 0.5mo | You should use Premium Processing |
Additional time to respond to RFE | 2mo | Did you receive an RFE? |
Filing adjustment of status (I-485), EAD (I-765) and AP (I-131) | 1mo | “Date of Filing” must be current on latest visa bulletin |
Submit Biometrics | 0.5mo | You will receive a letter in the mail to go on-site to a local USCIS office. |
Receive work (EAD) and travel (AP) document | 3-4mo | Cannot travel while AP in progress. As of 2023, they should both be valid for 5yrs. |
Receive green card | 6-9mo | “Final Action Date” must be current on the lastest visa bulletin |
Total: 24 months
After you’ve received your approval, you can check processing times here and check the last status of your application with your receipt number here.
As of Oct 4, 2023, the EB-1 “Final Action Date” was Jan 1, 2017 and the “Date of Filing” is July 1, 2019. My old priority date, which I retain was July 13, 2018. This means I can begin filing for my EAD (Employment authorization document, a work document) and AP (Advanced Parole, a travel document) and be able to travel and work outside my H-1B. However, I need to wait for the Final Action Date before the government official grants me a green card / permanent residence — depending on how quickly the visa bulletin moves, this could mean 1-1.5yrs. And I can become a citizen 5 years after that. Now, apparently they are granting EADs and APs for 5 years at a time. Here are some advantages of even an EAD and AP over an H-1B:
To get an EB-1A, you have to pick a “field of expertise” and justify your excellence in that field. It is “self-petitioned” and does not need to be supported by your employer.
Once you build this evidence and file your application, USCIS uses a two part system to adjudicate its decision:
a) it checks if the evidence provided against each criteria is satisfactory and if so then b) it looks at the total evidence to determine if the applicant has “extraordinary ability” which it calls the final merits determination.
Commanding a high salary: With the Opendoor IPO, I had an abnormally high income year in 2021 so this one was an easy criteria to satisfy. Even without a major liquidation event, if you work in tech, you should be able to satisfy this criteria relatively easily. Your lawyer will give you benchmarks and you can justify this by looking at salary information on Glassdoor, LinkedIn and others
Original contributions: We were able to showcase that my contributions were unique and industry defining by pointing to examples that competitors copied (e.g. Zillow copying iBuying, Amazon copying address-free shipping) and by press that the features I launched received
Leading a critical role: By this stage of my career, I had worked in 4-5 companies holding an important product role in all of them. Through letters of support mostly from my employer’s CEOs, we were able to ascertain that my role was critical to the success of the company
Other criteria we considered that we could build potentially towards:
Judging: I had started asking around on how I can take part in hackathons and events to build up evidence for this criteria
Publications/patents: Although USCIS defines articles as “scholarly”, I had a few friends with successful petitions who built it on the back of a few “viral” articles and podcast interviews as evidence
Making major and original contributions to your field: My contribution to the field was the creation of a popular Figma plugin called Autoflow. At the time of application, it had been installed more than 250,000 times and was used by teams at large well-known companies. I was lucky to have met Dylan Field, the CEO of Figma, at an event at a time when they happened to be opening up the plugin program to alpha developers and managed to become one of the launch plugins six months later, leading to a ton of organic growth. The supporting evidence in my package included install and usage statistics, and a letter from the CEO of Figma speaking to its importance, and screenshots from blogs discussing the plugin.
Performing a critical role in well-known organizations: In my day job, I’ve led the design of several high-profile projects at Coinbase, most notably the rewrite and redesign of both mobile applications. We also included several projects I’ve been a small contributor to as a contractor at Google. The final evidence includes a letter from the CEO of Coinbase and letters from a product manager and design executive at Google.
Commanding a high salary: thanks to the recent Coinbase IPO and generally competitive bay area tech designer salaries, we were able to demonstrate that I was paid well above the average of my field by drawing comparisons to several salary aggregator websites like Glassdoor.
Judging the work of others: I judged five university hackathons. Two hackathon organizers issued letters detailing the merits on which the applicant was selected as a judge, as well as a list of other judges, which included executives of well-known companies, professors, and public figures. This criterion seems generally pretty easy to hit as it’s worded fairly generously, though meeting the strict minimum as I did might not contribute as much to your final merits.
Writing articles in professional publications: I spoke in a mix of podcast, local, and online events, both individually and as part of a panel. Though the criteria technically asked for scholarly articles, we figured that if we can get a reputable academic (we got a VC and lecturer at the Stanford d.school) to say how the product design field shares professional findings in podcasts and talks instead of journals, that we can make my public appearances count.
Note: There’s some different rules regarding the criteria for professors/researchers (EB1-B) and for managers/executives working in other countries (EB1-C)
When you build an application, you also need to provide 5-8 letters of recommendation from experts in the field who both know you directly and indirectly who can attest to your work and ability to meet these criteria.
Eventually, the core of my case was a 44 page written argument about the 8 criteria I applied for (all except Success in Performing Arts and Artistic Exhibitions), although many recommend applying with a few stronger criteria.
Don’t fret. Most applicants go out and do things specifically so they can get evidence to meet these criteria. In my experience, there are people with barely any evidence for 3 categories who get approved on the first try and others with tremendous evidence and a long history of success who take multiple attempts to get approved. Ultimately, the decision is made by a single officer within 10-15 minutes and is not reproducible, just like admissions into a college. That officer has little to no understanding of what consitutes “impressive” or meaningful in your field. They just read your application and attempt to insurance that it meets a legal definition.
Here are some things you can do to build your profile for an EB-1A:
For entrepreneurs or founders of startup businesses, officers consider evidence that the business has received significant funding from government entities, venture capital funds, angel investors, or other such funders in evaluating the credibility of submitted contracts, job offer letters, or other evidence of prospective salary or remuneration for services.”
As another example, if the petitioner demonstrates that receipt of a high salary is not readily applicable to the person’s position as an entrepreneur, the petitioner might present evidence that the person’s highly valued equity holdings in the startup are of comparable significance to the high salary criterion.
may include membership as a fellow in a scientific society dedicated to artificial intelligence if the membership is based on recognition of a nominee’s significant, sustained contributions to the field of artificial intelligence, and a panel of current fellows makes the selection of new fellows.
however, there is no specific requirement that an award be open to all members of the field, including the most experienced, in order to meet the requirements of this criterion. While limitations on competitors can be a relevant factor, in some instances the evidence may establish that an award or prize is nationally or internationally recognized despite being limited to youth, amateur competitors, or early-career professionals.” as well as “an award available only to persons within a single locality, employer, or school may have little national or international recognition, while an award open to members of a well-known national institution (including an R1 or R2 doctoral university) or professional organization may be nationally recognized.
Most of the friends I know use Leading / Critical Role, Judging and High Salary. The other criteria may also be relevant to you. If you’re an artist, the two criteria I didn’t cover for artists I hear are fairly easy to prove with some effort.
Recently, USCIS introduced the Comparable Evidence clause which states that if a certain criteria doesn’t apply to your profession, you can change it. This can be used to your liberty, but the USCIS calls out certain things explicitly
For instance, if the publication of scholarly articles is not readily applicable to a person whose occupation is in an industry rather than academia, a petitioner might demonstrate that the person’s presentation of work at a major trade show is of comparable significance to that criterion.
receipt of a high salary is not readily applicable to the person’s position as an entrepreneur, the petitioner might present evidence that the person’s highly valued equity holdings in the startup are of comparable significance to the high salary criterion.
Here are a couple of miscellaneous other tips that can help your application:
Read through the Kazarian vs USCIS case in detail. It is the case USCIS officers will cite the most often to make your decision. If you study the case, you’ll have the same information the officers do to assess whether you meet a criteria.
Draw attention to relevant parts of evidence When submitting evidence, make it amply clear with outlines and arrows where your name is and any other relevant information. Don’t give the officer more work.
Use ChatGPT! I find it helpful to rephrase technical language in letters in ways that audiences unfamiliar with the material can understand.
Email screenshots are evidence Use of emails inviting you to events or thanking you for judging an award, or accepting you as be a member of an association.
Use the NSTC CET (Critical and Emerging Technologies) document Another part of securing an EB-1A visa is proving that your entry to the US will substantially benefit the US. To that extent, use the NSTC (National Science and Technology Council)’s CET list to reinforce the value of your area of expertise. Some broad buckets they list include:
The 5-8 letters of recommendation that are required with your application not only help your entire application but can be specifically used to make a case for several categories, such as leading and critical role. The general structure of a letter is:
It is very critical to abide by the above structure for a successful application. Usually, the strategies to pick recommenders are:
I had 8 reference letters from professors in academia as well as industry managers. They are ideally from people that are well-known in their field of endeavour (e.g. professors known in their research fields, people in mid-/upper-management in companies, etc …). They should also provide substance by talking concretely about your projects, so it’s important that they know you or have heard of you. It is also important that they provide evidence towards those specific criteria that you chose: so if you choose to provide evidence for the leadership criterion, they need to talk concretely about specific organizations/key-projects/etc where you were a leader.
Reference letter writers should also ideally not be in your immediate collaborator circle. Rather it can be someone who cited your work, used your work for developing a downstream project, or who used your work towards building a product in their company, etc … It is important that they not only describe your work, but highlight the impact your work had in the academic field or in their company.
If any of them were very busy, I offered to draft the letters myself, and they had the option to change anything before putting it in letterhead.
Here is a summary of the arguments for denying the others:
Finally, the Final Merits criteria was rejected because of lack of “preponderance of evidence” on various criteria they did accept. The legalese language translates to “you did say X, but X isn’t enough by a preponderance of the evidence”. It cited the case Kazarian vs USCIS repeatedly, a case you should absolutely read through if you’re applying to the EB-1A and tailor your application’s language to.
When the denial hit, my lawyer recommended I withdraw my application (instead of keeping a denial on my record) instead of trying to fight it in 30 days. She said that the officer is unlikely to budge after issuing a NOID (denial notice). When we reapplied, 99% of the application remained the same except
Once you submit this application, the decision you get from USCIS will be one of three things:
Approved - your petition is approved - rare
Request for Evidence (RFE) - USCIS asks for more evidence on one or more criteria to help inform them further - most common
Denial - your petition is immediately denied - very rare
If you get an RFE, the USCIS officer will lay out the reasons on why the evidence provided to satisfy the criteria is unsatisfactory and a time period that you can respond by to provide more evidence. If you are able to provide the right details that satisfies the USCIS officer, then your application will be successful. If not, then your application will be denied
In the last few years, we have also started seeing that the USCIS officer determines that you satisfy all the criteria but don’t meet the final merits bar and hence your application is denied. These instances are definitely lower in the Biden presidency.
However, do note that denials are not final - you can refile your EB-1 as many times as you want. There are many many people who have got an approval after filing it 2-5 times as they tweaked their application by incorporating arguments from the RFE/denial.
USCIS has started to be more stingy with EB1s so expect an RFE. More often than not, you are going to get one (or more).
As I mentioned before, it mostly depends on how good your lawyer is in framing your case. I also got an RFE as USCIS asked for more proof on some criterias. Worry not, the laywer has to reframe the case and add some more evidence.
Of note, I was highly impressed by the amount of detail; convincing counter-reasoning in the USCIS's RFE and the response my lawyer wrote to tackle it.
We applied with premium processing (this guarantees an answer in 14 days for an extra fee of $2500) and received an RFE within 10 days. They accepted the leading a critical role criteria but pushed back against the two criteria:
Salary - this was a technicality since the “product manager” role is not in the USCIS handbook so we had applied with a separate role type. They seemed to have an issue with what we compared against.
Original contributions - USCIS argued that my contributions were not industry defining since most of my letters were from people I knew
We wrote a detailed pushback, got new letters of support from additional “famous” people who didn’t know me and sent in our response. Within a few days, the response was met with a denial. They said that I met the salary criteria, but didn’t meet the original contributions criteria. This was heartbreaking but also not very uncommon. My lawyer said that there was no point responding to a denial since that can take years, and we decided to refile our EB-1 petition
Refiling the EB-1 petition was pretty straightforward since we had most of the material from the previous petition. This time around, we restructured our petition to take into account the arguments they had and highlighted those areas specifically.
The final criteria that we needed to prove was “original contributions”. In order to do so, we decided to exclusively focus on third-party letters of references from executives who didn’t know me to share how my original contributions were truly path breaking. We still included all the evidence for salary and leading a critical role but we made it clear the USCIS already had accepted that the requirements has been met. We also wrote some additional language of how I intended to stay in product management after getting my green card.
It took us about 4-5 weeks to get it all wrapped up and we applied with premium processing again. This time we got an immediate approval within 8 days. I used to keep refreshing the case status page every few hours and I simply couldn’t believe my eyes when I finally saw the approved status!
Most lawyers refrain from applying EB1s with premium processing. I have consulted multiple lawyers and the consensus is that the cases with premium processing have higher chance of getting RFEs than regular ones. I am not sure what causes this to happen inside USCIS. Maybe it's just their trick to push the can down the road but this means that you will have to wait 6-12 months for your case to be adjudicated.
Given that this is an application about my work, I decided that it was best if I present it myself instead of delegating a lawyer to do it. Put otherwise, I strongly believed I could do a better application since I knew my work best, as opposed to a lawyer who would’ve just met me.
In addition, even if you go with a lawyer, you still do 70-80% of the work yourself: they ask you to fill in an 80-page form describing all your work so far, you have to gather all evidence (scientific articles, diplomas, transcripts, reviews you did, …), you have to draft the reference letters and email the letter writers yourself, etc … Some lawyers offer to draft the reference letters for you, but I don’t understand how they can do that since they don’t know what your interaction was with the letter writer. And you need to have several zoom calls with the lawyer, go back and forth with the documents (they send you written feedback on the drafts, etc ..), and that can easily take several months. If you work full-time on it, you can finish it in approximately 1 month.
I used Alcorn Law and Sophie Alcorn as my lawyer. She charges $11,750 for a 12-week EB-1 I-140, $700 for I-140 filing and $2500 for Premium Processing. She charges extra for RFE hourly at $350/hr for an attorney. This is a total of $14,950. My successful application went through her, and I highly recommend her.
A good lawyer is also very expensive so expect to spend invest anywhere from $15k to $25k or even more. I would recommend not using your company's lawyer or a big firm considering your non-research profile requires a more unorthodox and personalized petition specific to your profile and will not fit the boilerplate template that these bigger firms tend to use.
My previous lawyer, whose name I will not disclose, but is very popular in immigration SEO, charged $8800 for a 3-category case and $1500 more for an extra category and the standard $3200 filing fee for a total of $13,500. I used them for a while, but I was dissatisfied at how many times the person working on my case changed, the primary attorney had a severe tragedy, and they didn’t seem regularly responsive enough. When a friend moved to Alcorn from this firm and reported a much better experience, I followed suit.
Other recommendations from friends:
I do not recommend company lawyers or those without explicit experience in EB-1 applications like Fragomen and BAL Global. They’re neither experts nor incentivized to make your case successful.
I actually do recommend this. Although applying for an EB-1A is a long, tiresome process that involves a deep understanding of the law:
It’s important to note that the entire business model of lawyers is to tell you that you cannot possibly do it on your own and that you need their legal expertise. The “95%+ success rate” your lawyer boasts is something every lawyer boasts, but not something you can actually verify. You can instead pay a much smaller ~$250 fee by simply consulting a lawyer for feedback after drafting your EB-1A application yourself.
I personally enjoyed working with my lawyer, and having a lawyer gives you security and confidence that you’re not doing anything wrong. However, I don’t feel like there was anything in my final petition that I couldn’t have written myself using these examples.
You’re not a “Nobel” prize winner and don’t have the “Extraordinary Ability” to deserve an EB-1A — many people who have successfully gotten an EB-1A, including me, are nowhere close to a “Nobel” prize. The USCIS says the EB-1A requires:
a level of expertise indicating that the individual is one of that small percentage who have risen to the very top of the field of endeavor
Remember, an EB-1A at the end of the day is an objective legal judgment on whether you fulfil a set of requirements — “small” and “top” and “field of endeavor” are not clearly delineated concepts here. Take a look at the credentials of certain people who have been approved for an EB-1A to benchmark yourself:
Your equity / stock grant does not count towards your “high salary” criteria — it does and USCIS says so too!
As another example, if the petitioner demonstrates that receipt of a high salary is not readily applicable to the person’s position as an entrepreneur, the petitioner might present evidence that the person’s highly valued equity holdings in the startup are of comparable significance to the high salary criterion.
You don’t have enough citations to meet your “scholarly articles” criteria — there are cases where very low citation counts are accepted for this criteria. I only had 46 citations to meet this criteria, and I’ve heard of as low as 7 citations (example)! It’s a commonly heard myth that “you need 500+ citations” or some such number that usually just discourages applicants.
You need to be on an O-1 before you apply for an EB-1A — You can apply for an EB-1A while being on other statuses (H-1B, L-1, F-1). You can even apply for an EB-1A through consular processing without even being in the US. Having an O-1 does help though:
Though the prior approval of an O-1 petition is a relevant consideration and can be an indicator of eligibility in adjudicating an immigrant petition for a person with extraordinary ability, it is not determinative… For this reason, where possible, officers issuing denials in such cases should provide a brief discussion as to why, notwithstanding the previous O-1 nonimmigrant visa petition approval