Nebraska or Texas: which center is tougher?

Key answer

You do not choose the center - USCIS assigns it by form type and filing location. Both appear in our set of challenged cases, but that set cannot measure strictness: it contains only cases that already drew a request or a refusal.

Breakdown from the data

The answers below are translated from the original Russian - the language of the community chats.

Our sample splits as: Nebraska - 95 cases, Texas - 158 cases. This does NOT mean one center refuses more often: by construction the sample holds only challenged cases and is blind to everything each center approved without asking.
What genuinely differs is wording. Different desks work through the same criterion in different ways, and the officer number on the notice shows recurring lines of attack. So build the RFE response from the text of your own request, not from a center's reputation.
You cannot move your case between centers. Premium processing affects timing; the center does not.

This breakdown is built on real USCIS notices and public sources, linked below. It is reference material, not legal advice: officers decide similar cases differently.

How a case reaches a particular center

USCIS assigns the center, and you cannot influence it. Allocation depends on the form type, the category and the filing address; inside the center the case reaches a particular desk through an internal queue. You can neither pick a center nor ask for a transfer.

You sometimes see the advice to 'file from another state to land at the lenient center'. In practice the filing address is set by the form instructions, not by preference, and bending an address to reach a chosen center creates a discrepancy with your other documents - one more reason for questions.

Why our set cannot say which center is stricter

The set holds 253 cases, and they share one property: each already drew an RFE, a NOID or a denial. Petitions a center approved without a single question are absent from the data entirely.

This is survivorship bias inverted: we see only the problem outcomes. A center adjudicating twice as many cases will have twice as many problem ones at exactly the same level of strictness. So there is only one sound conclusion to draw from these figures: refusals and requests exist at both centers, and the center's name predicts nothing.

What genuinely differs, and what it changes

The wording differs. Different desks take the same criterion apart differently: one presses on membership regularly, another on high salary. The officer number in the corner of the notice shows which criteria that desk challenges most often - the only practically useful thing 'who is adjudicating' yields.

So an RFE response is built from the text of your request, not from the center's reputation. Read which objections were actually stated and answer them point by point rather than reassembling the whole packet.

Sources

Form I-140 on uscis.gov
Current form, instructions, fee.
USCIS: the EB-1 category
Overview of EB-1A, EB-1B and EB-1C.
8 CFR 204.5 - the I-140 regulation

All questions on: Process and timelines All questions on: The petition and formatting All questions on: RFE and denials