EB1 EA- Do i Qualify

[fos2]

I work in a upcoming feild - Public health Informatics. I am MS in Comp Science and PhD candidate in Health Informatics. Both are from a reputed US university. I am a federal employee working with Bioterrorism surveillance and disease surveillance systems design. The following are some of my credentials

Prizes-
-Internationally recognized training fellowship for 2 yrs avg $55K sponsored by Federal Agency (5 awardess every year- applicants range from PhDs, MDs arounds the world- not restricted to students to work with the agency- i ended up with a job at the end of the fellowship)
-Finalist in a Internation Annual Conference (i did not win) but got prints of the finalist
-Winner is two annual awards for research in grad school

Memberships
5 International/National Organizations (few are open to anyone in this field, while some have requirements- not in the level of notable contribution)
2 National Interest Cohort workgroup (invited membership- leading one of the workgroup)

Published Material
-none

Judge or Panel
reviewer in 3 international conference (6 papers)
Reviewer of Government Contracts, Bids, cooperative agreements as a technical reviewer (3 contracts avg $6 mil each)


Business Related
Leader and organizer of 40 biweekly conf calls with 50 state leaders in the field ( effort is highly well spoken off in this field)
Invited speaker for a lecture in well known university school course
Invited speaker to a national conference and a cohort work group

Scholarly articles
3 conference presentation and 12 conference abstracts (no citations- reason is bcz the audience are state and local depts and i can get letters indicating how the paper has helped them but no citations as they rarely publish in this field.) - Infact there is no journal for public health informatics track.

Display of aliens work
10 posters at various national, internation conference
Demostrations of work by hosting booths in conferences

Critical role in org
work for CDC in a very critical role. Trained and certified in emergency management and crisis management. HHS certified project officer.
number of certifications project mgmt, comp security, team leader etc.


I understand it will be slam dunk for NIW, but what are my chances with EB1A?

please advice.

Arun

 

[jk0274]

There are two problems that I would classify as major impediments with your credentials, although nothing is insurmountable with a good presentation:

1- Limited scholarly publications, and more importantly;

2- You are still a doctoral candidate, which in USCIS eyes hardly qualifies you as someone 'who has risen to the top of his/her field and is internationally recognized'.

Therefore, a good petition for you would be to emphasize your accomplishments in other categories you listed above (and you can explain the lack of publications that way) and also to DE-emphasize that you are still a student. In fact, you have an advanced degree (Masters) and stop at that.

By the way: nothing is ever a slam dunk, even for NIW.

 

[fos2]

Thanks jk0274. you brought up some very important area regarding my PhD candidacy. I am on my way to graduate in August 08. I am from a retrogressed nation so i wanted to see if i can start the process early. Another reason is it will be easy for my wife to start her residency with a EAD than searching for a H1B.

Do you suggest it will be worthwhile to apply for NIW now and apply for EB1 after my PhD?

Well i understand that nothing is a slam dunk but what i actually meant is, i can build up a case quite convincing for national Interest. I am successfully leading and directing an effort for 18 months that is currently adopted by around 29 states. The work is identified high priority by US DHHS secretary Leavitt in his recent announcements.CDC and DHHS is investing mils and mils of $ to get it correct. My LORs are all state epidemiologists and leaders in the feild. So a good presentation of the paper work will place me in a better spot for NIW... EB1 -hmmmm? worried...

Arun

 

[jk0274]

If you can afford it, you could try both now. My point about the PhD is to ignore it entirely. You can build your NIW petition exactly as you point to above but remember, it's not enough to show that your field is important to the national interest, you have to convince USCIS that you are of critical importance to the field. You seem to have these credentials. As for EB1, you would claim that you have an advanced degree (a Masters) but make no mention that you are a PhD candidate at all or that you will be getting a PhD. You would build the petition as an individual with an advanced degree working on highly important work and is well-regarded and recognized in the field. Okay so your work is part of your PhD program, but USCIS does not need to know that. Since you have some invited speaker credentials, you can probably build a good case. In such a scenario, waiting until you get the PhD is not really relevant, because you're not basing the petition on your degree but on your work.

So you can do as you suggest (NIW now and EB-1 later) or you can file for both now and then use the EB-1 receipt to file for I-485. The problem is that if the EB-1 is denied and EB-2 (NIW) is still retrogressed, you will have to maintain an underlying status (namely, H status).