NIW Denied - Please please help for appeal

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NIW_NSC

Registered Users (C)
Hi Eb1Doc, Compass & Others,

Recieved the bad news yesterday that my NIW has been denied. I am planning to appeal my case and I have only 24 days to do that.

Guys - I need your help.

My background
Phd from a top institute in India in Materials Science in 2003. PostDoc in a top institute in the US for the past 2 years. 5 publications. Less than 10 citations. 9 government authored reports. 5 invitations to review. 10 conferences. The citations was the main reason for denial. My initial case was not very strong and I got an RFE to prove the 3rd prong. My research is mostly used in the industry and so I tried to make up for the lack of citations with very strong independent letters from the industry. I have 13 total independent letters(17 in all) with some of the recommenders basically saying that they have heavily relied on my reports/publications even though they are not traditionally cited. Also, had 2 recommenders said that they are using my work to further their own work. The officer seemed to have ignored all these letters submitted in the RFE response and only focussed on the lack of citations. My questions are as follows

1. I am planning to prepare a brief for the appeal highlighting the above myself and have a lawyer look at it finally. Can someone suggest a good lawyer for the appeal. How is Khanna? I used Murthy for the RFE. She feels that I dont have a chance with the appeal and since she is not confident, I am not sure I should go through her
2. What do you gurus think? Do you think I have a chance at all? Eb1Doc, Compass and others, do you mind looking at the brief I prepare to give your opinion? I would greatly appreciate it
3. Any more ideas guys to make the officer look at the right things. My invitations to review were ignored too and so were 2 of the papers out of the 5.

Thanks very much
 
NIW_NSC said:
Hi Eb1Doc, Compass & Others,

Recieved the bad news yesterday that my NIW has been denied. I am planning to appeal my case and I have only 24 days to do that.

Guys - I need your help.

My background
Phd from a top institute in India in Materials Science in 2003. PostDoc in a top institute in the US for the past 2 years. 5 publications. Less than 10 citations. 9 government authored reports. 5 invitations to review. 10 conferences. The citations was the main reason for denial. My initial case was not very strong and I got an RFE to prove the 3rd prong. My research is mostly used in the industry and so I tried to make up for the lack of citations with very strong independent letters from the industry. I have 13 total independent letters(17 in all) with some of the recommenders basically saying that they have heavily relied on my reports/publications even though they are not traditionally cited. Also, had 2 recommenders said that they are using my work to further their own work. The officer seemed to have ignored all these letters submitted in the RFE response and only focussed on the lack of citations. My questions are as follows

1. I am planning to prepare a brief for the appeal highlighting the above myself and have a lawyer look at it finally. Can someone suggest a good lawyer for the appeal. How is Khanna? I used Murthy for the RFE. She feels that I dont have a chance with the appeal and since she is not confident, I am not sure I should go through her
2. What do you gurus think? Do you think I have a chance at all? Eb1Doc, Compass and others, do you mind looking at the brief I prepare to give your opinion? I would greatly appreciate it
3. Any more ideas guys to make the officer look at the right things. My invitations to review were ignored too and so were 2 of the papers out of the 5.

Thanks very much
Click to expand...


So sorry to hear about your denial.
your Publication & research output is convincing enough for NIW case. Apparently this particular officer was not convinced with the impact of your work. I can't advocate lawyer's potential but one thing i would like to suggest is that since your petition is fresh and alomost ready why don't you try again and refile a new petition. .........keeping that idea aside...i beleive you have done best in accumulating letters for RFE....because i think this is the best one can do when you have low citations. you can argue your case again but generally AAO guys are more tough on reassessing pettion than acutal guys.
 
I would agree with eb1doc. Appeal is not the best choice. A re-organized application might work for you better.

My NIW had the same problem as yours -low citation. But I am in Electrical Engineering, and citation is low for many fields, since there are so many research branches.

I remember I had a letter from a JPL manager claiming that it's so difficult to recruit top talents for this vastly important field and America is going down to hell if it loses me (of course I have to explain to INS that why I don't go through LC although there is a lack of workers). I also used this to explain why there is not much citation while my research achievement is so great. :)
 
Thanks guys. So, if I submit the appeal in the next 2 weeks and also file a new NIW maybe a little later in a month or something, what happens to the 485 filed on my current NIW. Can I use that with the new one in case the new one gets approved? What if my appeal gets denied before I hear a decision on the new one?

Also, do you think if my appeal is rejected, it will have any detrimental effect on furture petitions?


Also, shokaido did you file an appeal or a new NIW?

Thanks again
 
The question for low-citation is in my RFE. After I replied the RFE, it was approved in a week. Best wish to your application!
 
Hello NIW-NSC,
I agree with many others suggestions that it might be a good idea to submit a new petition especially when you have collected many reference letters recently. It is very unfortunate that the officer is not convinced with the impact of your work. AAO generally applies higher standards and I think you may want to shy away from this if you are not very confident. I do not want to sound pessimistic but I want to bring out certain points to your attention.
* You need to clearly show that you graduated from a very selective program in India and currently working at a world class research institution in the US. Burden lies with the petitioner to provide extensive supporting documentations.
* Why only three publications accepted by the officer? There is an AAO decision stating that qualifications acquired after submitting a petition (e.g., getting more papers published after submitting the petition) may not carry the same weight.
* If citation was the only reason for denial, then your chances for appeal is good as you have made this with "independent" letters from industry.
* There is AAO decision saying that invitation for reviews may not receive a high weight compared to being an editor for instance. The argument was there were hundreds of reviewers for a journal and being a reviewer is not very selective.
I have read cases where people with less qualification (compared to you)obtaining approvals. The only downside of submitting another petition is the new officer will know the reason of your previous denial and may scrutinize for any "new" evidence in your new petition.
Wish you the best of luck. I have heard Khanna is good and so you may want to talk to him to get his opinion.
 
Also, do you think if my appeal is rejected, it will have any detrimental effect on furture petitions?


no!
 
NIW-NSC,

I did a self prepared application for my wife's NIW (I am the beneficiary) which recently approved from CSC without RFE. I used the format of cover letter from http://www.usaia.org/ kit to prepare the letter. Their kit is not that good, but the format of the cover letter , I think worked in our case. We had applied EB-1 earlier that got denied (we used a high profile lawyer for EB-1, and that guy messed up everything), so for us NIW was a must win situation and it worked for us. Couple of points:-

1) Just do the application yourself - no one can write about you better than yourself.

2)Regarding the labor shortage point; my argument was that it does not apply to my wife. We asked one of the professors to write like the following in his rec. letter : -

In summary, I see Dr. XXXX as an outstanding young scientist whose work has already contributed significantly to amelioration of neurological disease. I am convinced that she will continue to make significant contributions to this important area of biomedical research. Her absence from this effort will surely delay progress. As her choice of research area is one with tremendous impact on public health, her work will continue to benefit public health research in the United States. It is not possible to quantify the creativity, innovation and quality of the work required for her position, hence the process of Labor certification is not precisely applicable to her case. However, the loss of such an outstanding researcher will be detrimental to the progress of research in health sciencesin the U.S.

3) She had only 2 (out of 7) first author papers, that too not published in high level journals.

4) Please try to get 1-2 letter from the industry.

5) Since you have an application denied, it is better to apply for the appeal and at the same apply fresh also.You can use the same rec letter for both appeal and new application. Just take a good color photocopy of the letter. We used e-mailed letters and USCIS accepted it.

Just my 2 cents
 
Hi NIW-NSC,
I would recommend you still to go for appeal! When I did it, my lawyer was not optimistic too, but appeal was finally approved. Of course you can also file a new NIW but I would think of first file appeal, then maybe rather look if you can file I-140 in other category, like OR, depends where are you working currently and if you have permanent position and your employer will support you.
Just prepare a new strong cover letter, maybe use a lawyer or maybe just do yourself. Make a special paragraph on citations, explain why they are low, and again point out to those industry letters you had. Do you have patents, even provisional? If yes then mention them here and attach copies of front pages.
How did you find your citations, maybe using other search engine (not sure which but search for someone's postings on this topic) you can find more?
Also I would not file another I-485 now, just I-140 and wait what happens with your appeal first, I think if it will be approved then they automatically re-open your old I-485.
Good luck to you!
 
Thank You All. I am in the process of preparing the brief for the appeal and am trying to gather as much info as possible. I will keep you all updated.

Thanks again
 
Hi Guys,

One of my friends filed the NIW with TSC even though he falls under NSC. He works in Colorado. He got approved recently. He said that he filed from TSC b'cause his wife works in Houston and he filed his taxes from there?

Now that I am thinking to file another NIW and also appeal my current NIW, I was just curious. Can I file my second petition from TSC ?

Thanks
 
It makes sense that he tries to file at Texas since he can argue that he lives in Texas jurisdiction states with his wife (e.g. he might visits his wife every weekend and spend as much as 50% of the time per year there--even though I still feel it is stretched. As long as he makes a good case with TSC, that's fine). The jurisdiction is for people residing in a certain state because it is not unusual for one to work in one state and live in another. If he used the Texas related address for his all filings, then it makes sense.

However, your friend must take extra caution to be consistent and credible. For instance, he must have used the Texas-related address on all his W-2s (the address will appear on W-2, usually the same one as the address that you receive your payroll check or notice of direct deposit), and filed joint tax returns with his wife and used the same address, etc. etc. If the employer's location is too far from the claimed residence, it might cause suspicion of fraud.

Above is just my personal opinion. If you have a lawyer, check with him first.
 
I will suggest no alternative filing at TSC, unless you can put forward a similar argument. Once again, ask a professional for more advice.
 
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