USCIS officer 0413
Updated: Author: Alina Kanametova
Number 0413 on your notice is an adjudicating desk, not a person. Our set holds 13 cases from it: 6 parsed notices and 7 coded cases.
What arrived
- DENIAL4
- RFE9
Center: Nebraska (7). Years: 2024, 2025, 2026.
Most often questioned
Accepted: Published material about you (1), Leading role (1).
Fields the cases came from
- business4
- sciences3
The field split across our cases from this desk. A desk is not assigned by field - this reflects who filed, not what the desk specializes in.
These counts do NOT show how often this desk approves. The data holds only cases that already drew a request or refusal; petitions approved without questions never appear. You cannot choose or change your desk.
Why this criterion gets refused
The grounds officers actually rely on when they refuse this criterion, and how often it survives.
Among petitions that drew an RFE, NOID or denial and claimed this criterion, the officer accepted it in 12% of cases (22 of 188).
Not an approval rate. The sample is petitions that were challenged: the figure says how often a claimed criterion survived scrutiny, not how often EB-1A petitions succeed.
Based on: 253 coded USCIS I-140 notices (RFE, NOID, denial) · updated Sep 6, 2026 · RFE by criterion
The entry requirements do not amount to outstanding achievement. A fee, years of experience, a degree or a member’s referral is not the threshold this criterion demands.
Grounds observed across 150 real USCIS notices, summarized in our own words - not quotations from any individual case.
How notices from this desk read
From community members' review of six EB-1A notices (RFEs and denials) out of Nebraska, 2024-2025; fields: IT, venture capital, project management, massage therapy, industrial engineering, web development.
Notices from this desk read like a credibility audit rather than a three-criteria check. The order is constant: one area of expertise across all documents, whether the claimed US work is real, whether public sources (CrunchBase, LinkedIn, state databases, Google) match the petition, whether documents are genuine - and only then the criteria themselves. Any weakness found is declared "doubt has been cast" and carried into every following criterion; in the hard-stop mode the criteria analysis is suspended altogether. Across the six reviewed cases two criteria were credited in total.
Recurring patterns
- A doubt cascade: one weakness opens every following criterion with a reminder of unreliability.
- Open-source checks: client company sizes, addresses, e-mail domains and office registration dates are compared with the petition.
- Content without editorial review (HackerNoon, Dev.to, Medium, GitHub, Wikipedia, SimilarWeb) is rejected by default.
- Knows specific organisations by name: Globee, Forbes Technology Council and IEEE Senior Member are dissected with quotes from their own sites.
- Salary means base pay only, compared within the city; bonuses, RSUs and options do not count.
- "Self-manufactured" documents - pitch decks, self-built sites, board minutes, training manuals - are not objective evidence.
- Form I-140 is checked line by line against the cover letter, personal statement and LinkedIn; post-filing corrections are treated as an impermissible material change (Matter of Izummi).
- Immigration history is pulled from USCIS records: student status against a claimed full-time job is a typical finding.
- Cut-and-pasted articles, added page numbers and captions strip a document of probative value ("altered documentation").
- An identical paragraph in two "independent" letters destroys both; letters without the author's contact details or from gmail.com addresses carry little weight.
- The denial repeats the RFE verbatim and adds "the requested evidence was not provided": alternative evidence in place of what was asked for is not credited.
- The same accountant who filed the taxes and wrote the salary letter is "not an independent source".
Signature wording
Verbatim from the notices; applicants' details removed.
«doubt has been cast upon the record of evidence»
The desk's signature: opens every following criterion once a weakness is found.
«USCIS suspends further analysis of this documentation until such time that the reliability of the record of evidence is established.»
Hard-stop mode: no criterion is analysed until the record's reliability is restored.
«USCIS need not discuss every piece of evidence to demonstrate that it has been considered.»
An appeal shield: the desk pre-empts the "you ignored exhibit X" argument.
«USCIS is familiar with the Globee awards.»
AwardsPay-to-enter, self-nominated awards are recognised by name.
«This requirement is less than 'outstanding achievements.' Therefore, IEEE Senior Membership does not meet the plain language of this criterion.»
MembershipIEEE's bylaws say "significant performance", and the desk quotes them against the applicant.
«User-created content, blogs, social media, web portals, or a company's website are not subject to editorial review; there are no assurances about the reliability of the content»
Published material about youThe standard paragraph against self-publishing and corporate sites.
«Because it is not evident whether users come to the website intentionally or are redirected unintentionally, web traffic is not directly comparable to circulation.»
Published material about youSimilarWeb traffic in place of circulation is not accepted.
«To overcome the doubt cast upon the credibility of these known predatory publishings»
Scholarly authorshipPredatory journals are "known", not suspected; the desk asks for JCR, Scopus, COPE, DOAJ listings.
«Independent evidence that these contributions constitute major significance»
Original contributionThat is, not recommendation letters but external traces of adoption and citation.
«The record does not demonstrate that the beneficiary does in fact have employees, which would be applicable with the title of CEO.»
Leading roleA title without an org chart, Form 941 and payroll does not work.
«USCIS utilizes base salary when evaluating comparison data. Therefore, benefits, dividends, stock options, and bonuses are not considered salary for the purposes of meeting this criterion.»
High remunerationBase pay only, compared with the same role in the same city.
«A petitioner may not make material changes to a petition that has already been filed in an effort to make an apparently deficient petition conform to Service requirements.»
Matter of Izummi: a corrected I-140 answer in the RFE response is an impermissible change.
«You may only apply one area of expertise per Form I-140.»
Several fields in one packet - analysis stops until one is chosen.
By criterion: what it accepts and what it rejects
| Criterion | Accepts | Rejects |
|---|---|---|
| Awards | Third-party nomination, no entry fee, independent coverage of the award itself, a list of past laureates. | Globee, Stevie and other self-nomination, pay-to-apply awards; "all-industry" awards; online awards. |
| Membership | Associations whose bylaws require outstanding achievements and expert selection. | IEEE Senior Member, Forbes Technology Council, professional certifications (AWS, PMP) as "academic achievement". |
| Published material about you | Editorial publications in recognised outlets - the only evidence credited here under this criterion. | Self-publishing, Forbes Councils blogs, paid placements, web portals, SimilarWeb traffic, an outlet's claims about itself. |
| Judging | An invitation (not self-application), the organisation's standing in your field, judging criteria that needed your expertise. | General voting, "recognition" proven only from the organiser's site. |
| Original contribution | Independent editorial sources, third-party adoption metrics, citations in journals with an impact factor. | Letters as the main evidence, contributions to others' GitHub projects, company press releases. |
| Scholarly authorship | A journal found in Clarivate JCR, Scopus, COPE, OASPA, Ulrichsweb or DOAJ; an article with research and a bibliography; a Google Scholar trace. | "Known predatory" journals, general-audience overviews, self-publishing. |
| Leading role | A large company's employment records - the only criterion "rescued" here in an RFE response. | A CEO title with no employees, an organisation's standing shown only via CrunchBase, a generic job description. |
| High remuneration | Base pay, BLS statistics for the same role and city, sources that agree with each other. | Bonuses and options, national comparisons, a letter from one's own accountant, BLS and Glassdoor figures that disagree. |
Precedents it cites
- Matter of Chawathe, 25 I&N Dec. 369 (AAO 2010) - Evidence must be relevant, probative and credible - cited under every criterion.
- Matter of Ho, 19 I&N Dec. 582 (BIA 1988) - Doubt on one aspect allows a re-evaluation of the whole record - the legal basis of the cascade.
- Matter of Izummi, 22 I&N Dec. 169 (Assoc. Comm. 1998) - No material changes to a petition once filed.
- Kazarian v. USCIS, 596 F.3d 1115 (9th Cir. 2010) - Three criteria are the entry ticket; the final merits review follows.
- Matter of Caron International, 19 I&N Dec. 791 (Comm. 1988) - Expert letters are advisory opinions; USCIS decides.
- Braga v. Poulos, 317 F.App'x 680 (9th Cir. 2009) - An outlet's self-serving claims about being major media need not be accepted.
- Matter of Price, 20 I&N Dec. 953 (Assoc. Comm. 1994); Grimson v. INS (N.D. Ill. 1996) - Salary is compared with the same profession and role, not the industry average.
- Mestanek v. Jaddou, 93 F.4th 164 (4th Cir. 2024); ScotlandShop USA v. USCIS (N.D.N.Y. 2024) - The adjudicator need not discuss every piece of evidence.
How to respond
- Read the mode off the text: itemised requirements per criterion mean a cascade; "suspends further analysis" means hard-stop; the strategies differ.
- In a cascade first remove the doubt with documents, then reinforce criteria with exactly what was requested; withdrawing weak criteria is a strategy, not a weakness.
- In hard-stop mode 80% of the response is credibility: licences, tax forms, contracts, explained inconsistencies; 20% is the criteria.
- Give exactly what was asked: if it was a Clarivate impact factor, give Clarivate, not an editor's letter.
- Do not change the I-140 after filing and do not change the story between filing and response.
- One area of expertise, in the same words, across every document - from the cover letter to LinkedIn.
- Submit articles whole: a full-page screenshot with URL, date and site name, or a scan of the original, with no pasting or hand-numbering.
- Letters: corporate e-mail, the organisation's full address, a verifiable title, letterhead, unique text in each.
- After a denial from this desk an AAO appeal is hard by design; a refiling must be fully reworked, and it may land on the same desk.
Six cases are an observation, not desk statistics; the outcomes of two RFE responses are unknown to the reviewers. Petitions approved without questions never enter such samples.
Common questions
What does officer number 0413 mean?
It is the code of an adjudicating desk inside a USCIS service center, not an employee's name. It cannot be resolved to an individual, and USCIS does not publish that information.
What should I focus on if my request came from this desk?
In our data this desk most often questioned: Membership, High remuneration, Judging. That is not a prediction, but a hint about which parts of the response deserve more depth. You still answer the text of your own request.
What do community reviews say about this desk's style?
Notices from this desk read like a credibility audit rather than a three-criteria check. The order is constant: one area of expertise across all documents, whether the claimed US work is real, whether public sources (CrunchBase, LinkedIn, state databases, Google) match the petition, whether documents are genuine - and only then the criteria themselves. Any weakness found is declared "doubt has been cast" and carried into every following criterion; in the hard-stop mode the criteria analysis is suspended altogether. Across the six reviewed cases two criteria were credited in total.