Case Evaluation for EB1A PP

M

Mihaly

Registered Users (C)
I greatly appreciate if some members in this forum can give me some suggestions on my application for EB-1A.

Firslty, I list my cresidentials in the following for your reference:

1. PhD from a US university 2009, will start my postdoc at the same university soon

2. 19 journal and conference papers, all first author. Top journal papers in the field.

3. around 40 citations (around 6 are self-citations). several papers are based on my work, and clearly mention my name and my contributions.

4. over 80 reviews for 10 journals and numerous conferences.

5. technical program member for 2 international conferences.

6. Sigma Xi member (won't claim)

7. no media report, no major award

7. five reference letters. 2 independent from professors who cited my work.
(I feel more reference letters can be found, if necessary)


I filed my NIW application in April this year to TSC, but it was transferred to NSC in May. I am thinking of applying for EB-1A now. My questions are the following:

1) Does my case stand a reasonable chance to be approved?

2) Shall I go for the premium processing?

I hear that if one's NIW case was transferred to NSC, his EB1A case is highly possible to be transferred to NSC too? I am wondering whether a requrest for PP service can make my EB-1A case stay at TSC.

Thank you very much.
 
Mihaly said:
I greatly appreciate if some members in this forum can give me some suggestions on my application for EB-1A.

Firslty, I list my cresidentials in the following for your reference:

1. PhD from a US university 2009, will start my postdoc at the same university soon

2. 19 journal and conference papers, all first author. Top journal papers in the field.

3. around 40 citations (around 6 are self-citations). several papers are based on my work, and clearly mention my name and my contributions.

4. over 80 reviews for 10 journals and numerous conferences.

5. technical program member for 2 international conferences.

6. Sigma Xi member (won't claim)

7. no media report, no major award

7. five reference letters. 2 independent from professors who cited my work.
(I feel more reference letters can be found, if necessary)


I filed my NIW application in April this year to TSC, but it was transferred to NSC in May. I am thinking of applying for EB-1A now. My questions are the following:

1) Does my case stand a reasonable chance to be approved?

2) Shall I go for the premium processing?

I hear that if one's NIW case was transferred to NSC, his EB1A case is highly possible to be transferred to NSC too? I am wondering whether a requrest for PP service can make my EB-1A case stay at TSC.

Thank you very much.
Click to expand...

You do have a chance and, if you can afford it, using premium processing is a good idea. You will get the results quickly and, even if denied the first time around, you can re-apply later after addressing the weak points of the first application. (You are, however, a new PhD who has not even started a postdoc yet. That will be a minus but not necessarily a killer)

I think your case is pretty solid on two criteria: authorship of scholarly articles and having served as the judge of the work of others. You do need a third one as well. You could try to make a case that citations of your work qualify as "Published material about the alien in professional or major trade publications". This is not that easy and does not always work but it is worth a try. You'd need to provide details of those citations and explain how exactly they use your work in a significant way.
There is also another criterion, "Evidence of the alien’s original contributions of major significance to the field". Here you could use the citations and the reference letters, conference talks plus any significant grants that you might have had . I think you'll need more than five reference letters for this. You'd need to make sure that the letters are not generic and that they discuss in some detail the specific significance of your work. You should probably make a case for satisfying both of these criteria (plus the other two, where your case is solid) and see if at least one of them flies.
 
I truly appreciate your insightful suggestions! Thanks a lot. I have some additional small questions. I wish you would spare your time taking a look at them.

My first question is about the timing for filling my petition. As you mentioned, I am a new PhD, and I haven't even started my postdoc yet, and this will be a minus. As a matter of fact, I will obtain my diploma and start my employment as a postdoc in one week or so. But on the other hand, I almost have all the supporting materials ready, including the five reference letters which dated back to the beginning of this year. So I am wondering whether it would be better for me to hold off my application for EB-1A for a while. If so, as you see, how long shall I wait?

When I file my petition, I probably will be still on my OPT. In that case, would you recommend me to file the I-485 concurrently? I would like to have your opinion on this.

Again, thank you very much.
 
I am not sure if OPT is dual-intent, maybe someone else can comment on that. If it is not, then dont do 485, do only 140. To be safe, I think it is better to get H1 and then apply EB1-EA via premium - get a response within 10 days, if favorable, then apply 485.
 
Thanks for your kind advice, madmonkey. I think I will hold off my 485 application. In fact, even for my petition for I-140, I will wait for one or two months after I officially start my employment as a postdoc.
 
EB1A PP denied

Hi, baikal3 and madmonkey, thank you both for your kind advice. But it is so sad that my petition got denied today. I filed my I-140 petition for EB1A in October through my attorney, and I chose the PP service. I got the RFE very soon after my materials were received by the TSC. We sent out our response to RFE ten days ago, and I got the denial notice today. It is very frustrating. But the sad thing is that the IO basically denied everything that I claimed. In fact, I only claimed three: 1. major contribution; 2. authorship of scholarly articles; 3. having served as the judge of the work of others.

For my claim #1, the IO mentioned that I "did not submit a citation index showing the number of time he has been cited, although counsel for petionter states he has been cited by many independent scientist from around the world. The petitioner provided copies of several articles that cited his work. In this case, the lack of the citation index and the limited number of independent cites to the petitioner's articles is not adequate to demonstrate that his research has had a nationally or internationally significant impact or that it rises to the level of contributions of major significance in his field."

According to the Google Scholar, I had 50 or so citations around the time of filing my petition. These citations are mainly for a couple of papers of mine. I printed the list and sent it to my attorney, but they did not include it in the materials. Sounds like that the IO denied my petition because I did not provide a citation index? BTW, how many citations should I have, in order to be considered as being heavily cited?

The IO also denied my claim of "authorship of scholarly articles" for the same sake of the lack of citations. But I cannot believe she/he also denied my claim of having served as a judge of the work of others. When we replied to the RFE, we provided three supporting letters (from journal editor and/or conference organizers) and five addtional new review requests

I am considering DIY my case and resubmitting it in a few months. But I don't know whether that is a good idea? Have a lot of people tried to DIY their cases? I just feel that the lawyer is not that helpful. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
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Sorry to hear about it...sometimes i guess the IO sort of decides to bump a case (possibly to maintain some statistics for approval ratio) - who know? and so no amount of arguing may help. Give it a few months and re-apply. I did my second EB1_EA (PP) on my own. The attorney was useful the first time around - but attorneys are slow and I felt after learning from the RFE experience, I coul do a better job on my own. So yeah, definitely DIY.
 
Thanks a lot for your encouragement. I will wait for a few months, and then DIY my case. I have learned a lot of things from you guys here, and I think I can handle my case better.
 
Hi, KMB1975, FYI, my NIW was transferred from TSC to NSC in this May. So far I haven't received any update from the USCIS. Perhaps my lawyer may help me send out a request for service in a few days. Thanks.
 
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