EB-1A: 66 community questions on the talent visa

All questions: EB-1A

• Foreign-company salary: which country do I compare against?You compare your income against the market of the country where you actually worked and paid taxes, for your occupation. If a foreign company pays you remotely, the community advises comparing against the local market for the role, backed by several statistics sources. Officers usually dispute the comparison method, not the number.
• What documents prove the high-salary criterion?The working combo is proof of your income (contracts, bank statements, tax records) plus a market comparison from several independent sources - official statistics, job aggregators, analytical reports. The community advises showing not just the average but the top of the salary range for your occupation and region.
• Why are cases denied even with criteria met?Because criteria are only stage one. The officer then weighs the case as a whole (final merits): is sustained acclaim and a top position in the field proven. The community regularly sees denials with three to six criteria met. Advice: write a short closing summary of the case, including achievements that do not qualify as standalone criteria.
• How do I show sustained acclaim?The officer wants a continuous line: achievements spread across recent years, not a spike right before filing and not only long-past merits. A working picture from community experience: media over several years, a recent key role, steady publications and judging. Multi-year gaps will need explaining.
• How many criteria to claim: three or more?Three is the minimum, but the community almost unanimously advises claiming extra: officers routinely dismantle half the claimed criteria, and the buffer saves the case. The flip side - weak criteria dilute the impression. Working practice: claim four to six strong ones and push minor items into the closing summary.
• Can I file two petitions in parallel?Yes: for example EB-1A and EB-2 NIW at once - each is adjudicated separately, and a denial of one does not automatically sink the other. Officers can see both, so the facts must not contradict each other. The community uses parallel filing as insurance when time costs more than the fees.
• What goes in the I-140 with no US employer or income?When self-petitioning, the I-140 lists your occupation, occupation code and intended work; foreign income gets an explanatory note or attachment clarifying it is past income from another country. The community shares line-by-line part 6 examples - the key is that the form must not contradict the petition.
• Enter on a tourist visa and file EB-1 with AOS?The path exists, but with two hard limits: you cannot work on tourist status at all, and immigrant intent at entry is a risk. Immigrant intent formally starts with filing DS-260 or I-485; the community discusses waiting ~90 days before filing. Adjustment is only possible when your category is current in the visa bulletin. Since May 21, 2026 USCIS memo PM-602-0199 tells officers to treat bypassing an available consular route as an adverse factor in AOS.
• Should I start EB-1A right after getting an O-1?A common strategy: the O-1 buys three years of legal status while the EB-1A case matures. O-1 is de facto tolerant of immigrant intent, and the community knows cases of O-1 approvals even after an EB-1 denial. Many practitioners advise strengthening the case for about a year before filing EB-1.
• Can I stay in the US while preparing an RFE reply?An RFE by itself gives you no status: you can stay only while your current lawful status is valid, and that status has to be maintained separately. The usual pattern in the chat is to hold another status in advance (a student status or an extended tourist stay) so that a denial after the RFE does not leave you out of status. Switching to studies after a denial is risky: approval can take long, and you must apply from a lawful status.
• Does premium processing raise the RFE risk?Opinions differ, but most consider it a myth: a denial must justify rejecting each document and takes longer than an approval, the officer's KPI is cases per allotted time, and premium only moves your petition forward in the queue. Some members allow that a time-pressed officer may find it easier to issue an RFE, after which the clock is no longer regulated, and mention RFEs arriving on the last premium day. Overall: if you can afford it, speed it up; without premium the chance of a strict officer is the same, but you wait about a year.
• Does an I-140 count as immigrant intent?An approved I-140 is not an immigrant visa but a prerequisite for one; members treat filing the DS-260 or I-485 as the actual immigrant step. The chat quotes the rule that an approved I-140 by itself may not be the sole reason to refuse admission if the trip is temporary, and a similar wording for F-1 students. Filing does not affect the visa itself while it is not revoked; the question is the border officer's interpretation, who sees filed petitions and judges the real purpose of entry. Some file the I-485 before 90 days too; nobody in the chat has seen a denial for that alone.
• Do I have a status while the I-485 is pending?While the I-485 is pending you are in authorized stay: unlawful presence does not accrue, but you hold no status on the I-94, and USCIS states plainly that a pending I-485 does not confer lawful immigration status. That is why many keep their previous status (for example F-1, until the school cancels the I-20): otherwise an I-485 denial leaves you with no status at all. A separate trap is more than 180 days of unlawful presence: no employment green card then, and leaving triggers a 3- or 10-year bar. Working on the I-485 EAD may also count as violating F-1 conditions.
• Final Action Date or Dates for Filing?The green card decision and the interview depend on the Final Action Date, not on Dates for Filing: until the FAD reaches your priority date, no green card is issued. Dates for Filing only lets you file the I-485 earlier, when USCIS allows that chart in a given month. Members observed that the filing date moves in jumps and stalls for months while final action catches up later; the gap between them ranged from a week to several months, and the FAD wait sat around a year and a half in some periods.
• Can I work on the I-485 EAD while on an O-1?You can, but it is a choice: either keep working on the O-1 for your petitioner, preserving that visa while you wait for the green card, or switch to the I-485 EAD and effectively give up the O-1 status, which is tied to a specific employer. The risk is that an I-485 denial then forces you to leave, because the O-1 has already been violated. Members note that updating your work authorization with the employer automatically means you no longer work under the O-1 terms. EB-1A also separately requires continuing work in your field.
• Where to get salary data for the criterionMembers combine several sources: a paid certificate from a major job site (in English, with a breakdown by salary level and the share of vacancies), open international salary reviews by country and profession, and Rosstat indices from the statistics site. Official statistics alone proved insufficient - the officer wants data for the specific position, so people added job-site figures and built their own multi-year analysis, taking the highest value.
• Can a new criterion be added in an RFE response?Members who reviewed hundreds of RFEs sort them into types: a detailed analysis with specific objections that must be answered point by point, and a fixation on one error, where the petition is effectively rebuilt. A long RFE means the case was read carefully and is rather a good sign. In the response you need not answer every question literally; you can rebuild the criterion and show it from another angle, adding evidence for the evidence. Some members bring in a lawyer at the RFE stage with a letter citing laws and case practice.
• Do a finalist place or a nomination count?Being selected among many candidates is itself an achievement that members submit as an award without stressing the performance; a final or an honorable mention at a prestigious contest also counts, but strong wins go into the awards criterion and the rest into the story or other criteria. Awards are split by meaning: the most important into the awards criterion, patent-related into contribution, those won by the company thanks to you into the leading role. In RFEs USCIS asks to prove the fact of receiving the award: an official letter or publications matter more than cups and certificates.
• Do paid contests and team awards count?In members' experience almost all contests charge a fee, including the most prestigious international ones, so the fee itself does not disqualify an award - what matters is that it is in your field, national or international, received personally, covered by the media, and won by known people in your field. Childhood awards do not build a case: one most prestigious can be mentioned as background. A team or company award formally must be individual, but members have seen approvals where the applicant showed that their contribution was decisive.
• Which associations work for engineers?You must prove three things: your membership, that the association unites professionals in your field and requires outstanding achievements, and that eligibility is judged by recognized experts. Choose an association by its charter and requirements, not by a list - the knowledge-base list is only what members mentioned, and without an RFE nobody knows what counted. Nearly every association charges dues now; that is addressed in the text, the charter wording matters more. Cloud or PMP-type certificates prove training, not membership; international engineering certifications recognized in the US are worth checking separately.
• Does an entrepreneurs association count?By one member's database, associations rarely pass: out of a hundred RFEs they were accepted in about six cases, because people add memberships that do not meet the requirements. Officers are trained to look for outstanding-achievement wording in the charter, and the vast majority of association RFEs say the charter lacks it; letters and the website do not replace the charter. A marketers guild with ordinary personal membership does not count for the criterion, but it can be listed among other achievements or support the leading-role criterion through a letter from it. There is no list of bulletproof associations; the choice is individual.
• Which associations work for artists?The criterion is not membership as such but membership in an association that admits for outstanding achievement - the first thing members tell you to check. A well-known American design association is very visible, and officers understand that everyone applies and pays to get in, so some members look for less obvious international unions that admit after a portfolio review and exhibition participation. Dues exist everywhere; by observation the not-cheapest membership tier tends to be counted. Some foreign unions admit remotely.
• How many reviews close the judging criterion?Two reviews in two journals look thin to members, who aim for ten or more per journal, but duration and quality matter more than count: judging must be an evaluation of peers or of those above you. Judging includes reviewing papers and also invitations to evaluate projects, works and professional materials. For in-company programs you need written rules for selecting experts, proof of the judging itself (voting screenshots, an extract from the minutes) and peers as the judged. Job interviews are not judging. Members advise not to file without this criterion - strengthen it first.
• How to document judging in the petitionMembers assemble a bundle: a letter or invitation from the organizers saying you are a judge and why you were chosen, a screenshot of the site listing you among the jury, a screenshot of the judge account with the entries, screenshots of your scores and written reviews, photos from the judging room and media links with group photos of the jury. Plus a description of who else was on the jury (positions and achievements verifiable online), who competed and how significant the contest is. For an editorial board you need minutes of publication decisions or a certificate from the journal. Judging options: peer review, thesis defenses, selecting candidates outside your own role, university committees, adjacent contests.
• Invited to a jury after filing: where does it go?Members advise not to put weak evidence into the judging criterion: some officers are sticklers who will reject it on formal grounds, so move it to Final Merits or mention at the end of the criterion that you, as a leading expert, have already been invited to judge. A separate tip is to link the criteria into a growth story: worked, gained experience, started writing and competing, developed and deployed something, became known, media appeared, got invited to juries because you are at the top - reinforced with excerpts from recommendation letters. If you never actually judged, do not claim judging.
• Can video be used as evidence?Video links do not work on their own: in members' experience officers do not click links or insert flash drives and discs (USCIS explicitly asks not to send them), and without text nobody will watch the video. The working format is a screenshot of the video with a description of its content, a short summary, information about the channel, a transcript of the key part with a timecode, placed in the petition text with a reference to the exhibits. Interviews on popular channels are attached to the media criterion - there are approved petitions where the media section included an interview on a channel with tens of thousands of subscribers, but closing an entire criterion with video alone is unlikely.
• How to get media coverage for the criterionJournalists do not chase you unless you are on a Forbes list, so most people go through paid PR - faster than a queue you cannot wait out while preparing a visa. Typical lawyer requirements: an outlet with 1M+ traffic and an interview with you, or a major outlet with a piece about you, or a major outlet and your expert article. An expert article must carry an author, an interview the journalist name, otherwise the piece only supports the picture. PR experiences can be sad: a story about me was generated from my resume. Some coverage comes free via hackathons, contacts and the employer PR team; a major outlet without an agency usually means unpaid, but you have to persuade the editors.
• Do publications have a shelf life?There is no formal expiry: old publications and contests can be shown by selecting the strongest in detail and noting that since such-and-such year you have regularly won and published; a long career trajectory is a plus, spelled out in Final Merits. The opposite skew is the danger: five publications in the month before filing can read as forcing the case; officers want steady progress, say five to eight publications over three years. Members put the minimum sensible gap between publication and filing at six months, better a year or two. The consular officer may also ask why, after eleven years of experience, publications appeared only now.
• Scholarly or expert article for the criterion?USCIS treats a scholarly article as a report of original research written by a researcher or expert, usually peer-reviewed, with footnotes, a bibliography, charts and tables - such articles must meet both the journal's and USCIS's requirements. An expert article in a non-peer-reviewed outlet can be submitted, but then you must prove that you are an expert, that the article is on topic, and that the outlet has a suitable audience and reach - and, as members were told, attach an independent review. For non-scientific fields there is the comparable-evidence option: the applicant must explain why scholarly articles are impossible in their field and describe the significance and reach of each expert publication in detail.
• How many scholarly articles does the criterion need?USCIS sets no minimum; in practice EB-1A applicants submit five to seven publications on average, in peer-reviewed journals, international databases or professional outlets, with signs of scholarship - charts, tables, methodology. Quantity is not the point: in a known experimental-physics case only two very strong papers were attached because writing many is unrealistic in that field. Ordinary trade articles close neither the media nor the authorship criterion and go into the general evidence. Fresh papers without citations are a weak spot worth offsetting with other criteria.
• What to attach to a scholarly articleThe standard set: the title page, the table of contents and the article itself, plus a screenshot describing the journal and its editorial board and its indexing in databases. Nobody attaches the whole journal; members gave a list of articles and added journal data to some - peer review, indices. Usually only the key articles are translated: the original with the first and last pages, the translation and the translator certificate, about ten pages per exhibit; the journal description can go into the memorandum or a separate exhibit. Circulation and geography are needed not for authorship but if the article is submitted as a contribution - there you must prove wide dissemination.
• How do I get citations for my articles?The honest community answer: you write useful research and other researchers who needed it cite it; from writing to a decent citation count usually takes two to three years. If you built your career as a practitioner and never needed cited papers, waiting for citations for the criterion is a bad idea - lean on other strengths that cannot be bought. A technical tip: assign a DOI to your articles - databases pick up citations through it, plain links can break, a DOI does not.
• Different spellings of a surname: a problem?This is common and is explained, not hidden: members added a separate petition section stating that transliteration changed and agencies transliterate differently, attached all passport versions and a birth-certificate translation, or a notarized affidavit that all spellings are the same person. The form has a field for all name variants and pseudonyms - every spelling goes there, while the petition text sticks to one name. Some cases were approved with no explanation and no questions, but members have seen several RFEs picking on inconsistent spelling. You can ask the translator to note that translations were made from two languages for the same person.
• What is a letter of intent for EB-1A and O-1?There is no single form: ideally a job offer, but a letter of intent to hire with an approximate role, full-time hours and a US address works. For EB-1A it is optional and many never get one - it is effectively an offer, which needs a hiring manager among your contacts, or a real interview if cold; still, many good lawyers insist on it. For O-1 the same letter is called a deal memo, and companies sometimes prefer the less binding letter of intent. Members obtained letters through hundreds of LinkedIn messages or collected recruiter letters via a profile with a US location. USCIS does verify: there were cases where the officer wrote to the signer asking to confirm the letter.
• Who writes the recommendation letters?In practice the letter text is usually drafted by the applicant, an assistant or the lawyer from your bio and your description of the relationship, and the experts read, edit what they disagree with, and sign - easier than asking them to write in the required format. Collecting articles and materials also goes to an assistant; signatures are gathered through an e-signature service, with rare exceptions for originals. Recommenders you do not know are worth more: write directly to professors, chief engineers, executives - someone will agree. For EB-1A members aim for six to eight letters from respected people in your field, about your contribution rather than where you crossed paths.
• File the petition yourself or with a lawyer?An officer has about ten to twenty minutes per petition, and you pay a lawyer for packaging your achievements so the officer instantly understands what he is looking at, in business American English; a known firm is also a mark of quality. But the achievements must be yours: a lawyer helps present them and cannot build a case from nothing. The flip side: members have seen lawyer errors - someone else's name in the case, exhibits without URLs that triggered an RFE - and advise neither trusting them blindly nor dropping their advice because of chat opinions. A budget benchmark with a lawyer: around 15 thousand dollars including filing, translations and the visa trip, without PR.
• What does an O-1 or EB-1A lawyer cost?The range from the chat: Russian-speaking lawyers charge from 10-15 thousand dollars per case, English-speaking ones average 5-6 thousand, and one member got an O-1 for 6,300 dollars with a free consultation and four months of work. Prices around 3 thousand do not exist among reputable lawyers: from 5 thousand up to a full-case fee plus a rush surcharge. At hourly billing around 200 dollars per hour, two to four months of intensive work come to 20-25 thousand. Whether the price is justified members measure in their own time: a self-prepared petition takes 300-400 working hours. A separate pain is late add-ons: some firms ask for another couple of thousand before filing for a review and update.
• Does the lawyer gather the evidence for you?No lawyer will gather evidence for you: they do not know you or your field, you describe every achievement yourself, and the lawyer packages it correctly. So many start on their own: scholarly articles are scholarly articles for any lawyer, judging and prizes can be collected by reading contest rules, expert articles can be written in bulk, and then you show it all to the lawyer, who says what to add. The opposite view exists too: do not collect criteria without a lawyer, because different lawyers see criteria differently, and your job is to make a lawyer interested in your case. A warning from members: avoid those with a 100 percent approval rate - they take only unlosable cases, demand top-tier publications, and hand the writing to a paralegal.
• An I-290B appeal after a denial: is it worth it?First the same officer reviews the case and may admit an error or disagree; if not, the case goes to the independent appeals office, whose job is to find three criteria, and then returns to a service center to another officer, no longer under premium, where it can sit indefinitely and later be denied on final merits. One member's experience: the AAO answer came in just under a year, the appeal was won, the case was sent back for a final-merits review - and has been stuck for a year and a half. The practical takeaway: while an appeal is pending you can safely file new EB-1 petitions - one person got approved that way. Writing the appeal yourself is realistic if you study the USCIS manual and appeal decisions.
• How to prove an original contribution in ITThe working scheme from the chat: you are at the top of the industry, the industry has a problem, you solve it, many people in the industry use your solution without knowing you, and it has innovative features compared with alternatives. One member closed the criterion with his own popular open-source projects, proving it with download, install and site-visit statistics and examples of use by well-known companies. A great product used by customers is usually a role, not a contribution; a solution used only inside a company, even a huge one, is hard to show as an industry contribution - dissemination is needed. For NDA libraries and for journalists the contribution is shown through recommendation letters from those who used your work, and you still have to prove novelty.
• How to describe an award in the petitionA single award or judging event took members dozens of pages: why the contest matters for the country, how contestants and the jury were selected, why you in particular were chosen, whom you judged and in which industry. The general principle is evidence for the evidence: for a publication in a major outlet people find a dozen files proving its status, save each in Russian with a translation and oath, and put an explanatory page before every file. A pile of similar wins is not written up that way - pick the strongest. A useful move is to look for awards and contests where jury selection or a win automatically grants association membership.
• Which EB-1A criteria are worth claiming?Across our set of challenged cases the criteria fare very differently: judging is accepted in more than half of cases, original contribution in a handful. That does not make the hard ones useless - three accepted criteria are mandatory - but it does tell you where evidence is hardest to make stick.
• Which professions and fields file for EB-1A most often?Business, sciences and the arts dominate our set of real cases. But the profession itself decides nothing: the criteria are identical for everyone, and refusals turn on missing external evidence, not on the field.
• What is the final merits determination?Final merits is the second stage: the officer first counts how many criteria you met, then separately decides whether the evidence as a whole shows sustained acclaim. You can meet three criteria and still be refused at this stage.
• Do conference abstracts count as publications?There is no outright ban, but refusals keep resting on the same ground: it is not shown that the work is scholarly in nature and appeared in a professional or trade publication. Abstracts frequently fail both at once.
• Why are media publications refused?The officer is not checking that publication happened but three other things: the material is about you, the outlet is professional or major, and the platform exercises editorial selection. Refusals land on one of those, not on the existence of the article.
• What counts as a contribution of major significance?This is the hardest criterion in our sample. The reason is consistent: applicants prove the work is good, while the criterion asks them to show it changed something in the field beyond their own company and project.
• When does the premium processing clock start?The clock starts not when the petition is filed but when USCIS receives a properly filed Form I-907 at the correct address. After an RFE response it starts over. The decision is almost always visible in the online status before any paper arrives.
• Do recommendation letters need an address or original?There is no formal requirement about fonts or wet-ink signatures. There is a requirement that is actually checked: that the recommender can be identified and verified, and that the letter contains specifics rather than general praise.
• Which category is denied most often?USCIS's own figures show an enormous spread, and it is widening. In the first three quarters of fiscal 2026, 59.3% of EB-1A decisions and 50.9% of EB-2 NIW decisions were denials, against 6.2% for EB-1B and 2.8% for EB-1C. A year earlier, in fiscal 2025, it was 33.1% and 44.8%; in fiscal 2024, 27.8% and 29.0%. This is the share of decisions issued that were denials, not the share of petitions filed.
• Which precedents do officers cite in an RFE or denial?We counted two ways. Across 183 whole notices (157 cases) the most mentioned are Kazarian (64), Matter of E-M- (49), Treasure Craft (38), Matter of Ho (24) and Chawathe (22). Inside individual criterion analyses (150 notices) Kazarian leads (17, 13 desks), while Chawathe, Izummi and Dhanasar never sit there.
• How does EB-1 differ from EB-2, and which to pick?EB-1 has priority over EB-2, but the risk splits along a different line. In the first three quarters of fiscal 2026 the denial share of decisions was 59.3% for EB-1A and 50.9% for EB-2 NIW, against 6.2% for EB-1B, 2.8% for EB-1C and 3.1% for EB-2 with an advanced degree. In fiscal 2024 the same two self-petitions stood at 27.8% and 29.0%.
• How should patents be presented in an EB-1A petition?A patent is almost always claimed under original contribution - the most-refused criterion: across our 253 coded cases it was accepted in 4% of the cases where it was claimed. The officer's question is not whether the patent issued, but who is using it.
• What does the officer number on a USCIS notice mean?The four-digit number on a notice identifies an adjudicating desk inside a service center, not a named person. Across the 74 desks in our set, desks weight the criteria differently - and that is the only thing the number tells you.
• What counts as an exhibition under the EB-1A criteria?The criterion is limited to artistic exhibitions and showcases - the word is in the regulation itself. In our set it was claimed least often (59 of 253 cases) yet accepted in 44% - the second-best rate after judging.
• How much must you earn for the high-salary criterion?There is no dollar threshold: the criterion is comparative. The officer compares your income with others in the same occupation, industry and area. In our set it was claimed 160 times and accepted 23 - 14%.
• How is an EB-1A petition structured?There is no mandatory template, but USCIS prescribes the assembly order, and the content logic follows the two-step assessment: the criteria one by one, then a separate section on the record as a whole. The officer will not supply a section you left out.
• How do you prove coaching and teaching work?Your students' achievements prove their level, not yours - that is the bottleneck. What works is a chain: a documented role, independent corroboration of your method, and a result recognized beyond your own organization.
• Which route to pick: O-1, EB-1A or EB-2 NIW?They are not directly comparable: O-1 is a temporary work visa, while EB-1A and EB-2 NIW are two green-card petitions you can file yourself. The choice between the latter two turns on what you can prove - EB-1A needs sustained acclaim, EB-2 NIW national importance - not on which category sounds better. In the first three quarters of fiscal 2026, 59.3% of EB-1A decisions and 50.9% of EB-2 NIW decisions were denials; in fiscal 2024 it was 27.8% and 29.0%.
• Which occupations file for EB-1A most often?Across 253 coded USCIS notices the most frequent are business (87 cases), sciences (67), arts (53), then education (16) and athletics (14). But these are cases that drew a request or a refusal, so the list says who argues with an officer most often, not who is approved most often.
• What counts as a leading or critical role?The criterion needs two separate proofs: that the role was leading or critical, and that the organisation itself has a distinguished reputation among comparable ones. A job title does not establish the role - what turned on you personally has to be visible. Across 1242 AAO decisions it was counted in 41% of the cases where it was claimed.
• How do you prove a leading role at a small company?Company size does not disqualify the criterion but changes the line of proof: instead of a place in a structure you show a critical role - that the organisation's result would not exist without your work - and prove distinguished reputation through external signs rather than internal paperwork. Across 1242 AAO decisions the criterion was counted in 41% of the cases where it was claimed, and more often in business than in the sciences.
• Why is the leading role most often not counted?Two reasons repeat across the parsed notices: the role is not shown to have been leading or critical - a title does not establish it - and the organisation's distinguished reputation is not documented against comparable entities. Across 1242 AAO decisions the criterion was counted in 41% of the cases where it was claimed: of 624 such cases it survived in 256.
• Can you get O-1 or EB-1A without a college degree?A degree is not among the O-1 or EB-1A criteria: those are judged on recognition evidence - media, judging, awards, letters - and the community has approvals with no higher education. For EB-2 NIW education is part of the threshold, but with alternatives: an advanced degree, OR a bachelor's plus 5 years of progressive experience, OR exceptional ability shown through criteria. If you do have a diploma, it goes in for context - by itself it closes no criterion.
• Premium processing deadline missed: how to get a refund?No approval, denial, RFE or NOID within the premium timeframe means USCIS refunds the premium fee and keeps processing the case (8 CFR 106.4).
• Can a U4U parolee file I-485 based on EB-1 or NIW?Not on parole alone: an employment-based I-485 requires lawful nonimmigrant status, and parole is not one (INA 245(c)(7)). A valid TPS removes that bar.

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Frequently asked questions

Foreign-company salary: which country do I compare against?

You compare your income against the market of the country where you actually worked and paid taxes, for your occupation. If a foreign company pays you remotely, the community advises comparing against the local market for the role, backed by several statistics sources. Officers usually dispute the comparison method, not the number.

What documents prove the high-salary criterion?

The working combo is proof of your income (contracts, bank statements, tax records) plus a market comparison from several independent sources - official statistics, job aggregators, analytical reports. The community advises showing not just the average but the top of the salary range for your occupation and region.

Why are cases denied even with criteria met?

Because criteria are only stage one. The officer then weighs the case as a whole (final merits): is sustained acclaim and a top position in the field proven. The community regularly sees denials with three to six criteria met. Advice: write a short closing summary of the case, including achievements that do not qualify as standalone criteria.

Other themes

• Process and timelines95 questions
• The petition and formatting59 questions
• O-1 visa48 questions
• Consulate and interview42 questions
• Green card42 questions
• EB-2 NIW21 questions
• Articles and citations17 questions
• General questions16 questions
• Original contribution14 questions
• Document translations13 questions
• Awards12 questions
• Association membership12 questions
• RFE and denials12 questions
• Scientists12 questions
• Judging10 questions
• Media about you10 questions
• IT professionals8 questions
• Recommendation letters8 questions
• Choosing a category8 questions
• Salary and income7 questions
• Self-petition7 questions
• Founders and business5 questions
• Leading role5 questions