If you’re reading this, you may have seen some of the content I share about immigration to the US, especially for Indians, on Twitter. Yet, I’ve largely refrained from sharing the details of my own immigration journey. All the while, I was silently suffering through the same immigration challenges I was tweeting about myself. Recently, after 18 years of living in the US and 3.5yrs of prepping this application, I was approved for my EB-1A after an initial denial. This was the last big hurdle (fingers crossed) on my own path to US citizenship in a reasonable time. And by reasonable I mean it’ll still take me ~6 more years to actually receive a US passport. Most Indians are in a 150+ year long wait for legal immigration to the US.

In this blog post, I talk about my journey. I will follow this up with another post detailing things I’ve learnt and concrete advice for others looking to apply for an EB-1A. Disclaimer: I am not an immigration lawyer, so please double check everything I say here.

Immigration Timeline

  • 1992 — Born in India
  • 1995 — Enters America for the first time at age 3
  • 2000 — Gets permanent residency / green card as a child (E-10, child of an EB-1C)
  • 2002 — Leaves America, does not come back to keep Permanent Residency active. No longer eligible for SB-1 for “returning residents”.
  • 2002-2011 — In India for school
  • 2011 — Enter the US, goes to Cornell for an undergrad and masters on F-1
  • 2014 — Graduate Cornell, get employed on STEM OPT with an EAD
  • 2015 — Get H-1B through the lottery while at Facebook
  • 2015 — Move to Google and apply for H-1B transfer
  • 2018 — Google applies for my EB-2 (takes almost a year), get a priority date!
  • 2018 — Renew my H-1B for 3 more years.
  • 2019 — H-1B transfer to startup (Glean) on consular processing because I was in India at the time. RFE + denied’d before approval.
  • 2020 — Started EB-1A exploration with first firm
  • 2021 — EB-2 transfer to Glean
  • 2022 — Moved to Alcorn for my EB-1A petition
  • 2023 — EB-1A Approved!
  • [today]
  • 2024 — Get granted Green Card [hopefully 2018 priority date becomes current for EB-1!]
  • 2029 — Be eligible for US citizenship after 5 years of residence.

What is my story?

Of the 30 years that I’ve been alive, I’ve been in the US for 18 of them (‘95-‘02, ‘11-‘18, ‘19-‘23). My brother is a US citizen — he was born when my family lived in America. I used to have a green card as a dependent of my parents in ‘00. I ha a E10 permanent residency after an L2 in Sep 27, 2000, child of EB-1C, but it expired when we moved back India. However, that green card expired because we did not visit the US to keep its status valid.

I came to the US again for college on an F-1 and was fortunate enough to make it through the H-1B lottery on my first attempt in 2015. At Google, I started my EB-2 application in early 2017 and eventually got a priority date of July 2018. However, EB-2 / 3, the employment based categories for those with undergraduate and masters degrees in the US take 150+yrs for those born in India. I knew this going in but I still needed an EB-2 to secure a priority date (which is transferable if you change your visa category later on, as I did) and to secure renewing a H-1B after 6yrs, in 2021.

In 2018, I moved to Google Bangalore for a year to pursue a career opportunity. Although there were multiple personal and professional reasons for the move, I’d be lying if I said one of them wasn’t to come back on an L-1 which converts to an EB-1C (a green card for multinational managers, that demands you manage a team for a company abroad for minimum 1yr before moving back to the US). At the end of that stint, I had a choice to make —

  • move to Waymo — a cool team within Google, but can’t manage people and won’t get EB-1C
  • move to a boring team at Google — manage people but hate my job
  • move to a reputed startup — give up the EB-1C with the option of maybe doing this again later because they have multiple international offices
  • join an early team at a company — what I wanted to do, without any visa benefits

Philosophically, I made up my mind that I would not sacrifice what I wanted to do in life in pursuit of a visa. I chose the last option.

In 2019, I joined the founding team of what is now Glean. At this point, I had broadly 4 options:

  • get married to a US citizen
  • get $900k-$1.8m invested in the US for an EB-5
  • wait for Glean to be successful and start an India office and try to do an EB-1C
  • try to do the EB-1A (extraordinary ability)

In early 2020, when we were a few months into Glean (it wasn’t even called that), I started looking into an EB-1A. The firm I was working with said they thought I had a reasonable chance, but I had to “beef up” my application. I was hopeful at this point because my previous corporate lawyers at Google (BAL Global) said I had no chance. I learnt later that this is indeed a common response for most corporate lawyers at big firms, who are not incentivized to guide you through an EB-1.

The EB-1A requires you to prove you match 3 out of 10 categories to deem you as “extraordinary”. In 2020, some of the evidence for these categories were weak. My first lawyer was pretty unresponse. To make matters worse, I was extremely busy with work. I just could not make progress on my app. I moved slowly, begrudgingly peddling through the 100s of minute bits of evidence I had to hunt for and submit. To give you an idea, a final EB-1 app is a “novel” about your life that ended up being 926 pages long for me.

In late 2022, a close colleague of mine’s EB-1A was approved. He was far more diligent about this process than I was. He had been using my first lawyer and said the one he moved to was far better. On his advice, I changed my lawyer to his, Alcorn Law. To somewhat excuse my tardiness, I also didn’t see the point in rushing. I could retain my 2018 priority date from my Google EB-2 and renew my H-1B indefinitely (to stay in the country as long as I was employed). When I eventually apply for an EB-1, whose dates were typically always “current”, even for Indians, I’d be able to port over my 2018 priority date and I’d be fine! I eventually ended up applying on Aug 4, 2023. I applied for 8 out of the 10 categories (my first lawyer and I were only looking at only 3 or 4, and charged for extra categories). I applied with Premium Processing and at this point had spend nearly $15-20k in fees.

On Aug 17, tragedy hit. While I was expecting a somewhat common RFE (request for evidence), which means I have to supply more evidence before a decision on my case is made, I actually got a NOID (notice of intent to deny). Why? Despite the officer approving the necessary 3 of my 10 criteria, I was denied on the subjective criteria, “final merits”. USCIS’s “NOID” response explained the reason for the denial, but it was wholly nonsensical. It took parts of my recommendation letters out of context and say “You didn’t cite what customers use your product, how do we know it’s truly useful?” even though if you scroll down that very letter, I actually do provide evidence. This was a recurring theme in the NOID — information taken out of context and argued against when there was clearly other evidence to prove this. A NOID is much harder to fight than an RFE and you only have 30 days to respond. I learnt from a friend who also applied for an EB-1A in the same time that he got denied from the same officer. In fact, a quick google search shows that this officer has a ton of lawsuits against them fighting an “unlawful” rejection of a visa. It seemed to me like he was just a bad officer, but I had no way of knowing. This made me anxious. The pain didn’t end there. My lawyers said there’s no point fighting a NOID — we should just withdraw the case and re-apply and that they’d do it free of cost (except another $3.2k to file premium processing). However, USCIS incorrectly denied the case anyway (unlawfully) a mere 2 weeks after the NOID. My lawyer then has to get into an email thread with USCIS to reverse the denial. I don’t know to what extent this is true, but I was told that a denial would’ve been harsh because it would be on my permanent record, reduce the chance that I’d get approved in a follow-up application, and it would mean my application would get routed to the same officer again. I couldn’t have that!

By this point, it’s worth me telling you that, for myriad reasons, such as EB-1C Premium Processing starting, many Indians applying for EB-1C after the pandemic and the near infinite green card wait, on August 2023, the EB-1 priority date for Indians regressed more than it ever had in history — by 11 years! We were hoping (more like praying) that by October, when the fiscal year restarts, the EB-1 would reset to current for Indians. Much to my dismay, the October 2023 visa bulletin had EB-1 priority dates for Indians still stuck in 2017! Tragic.

As the email thread with the USCIS to revert my denial into a withdrawal proceeded, I reluctantly decided to apply the second time anyway and not delay any longer. On Sep 26, we applied a second time. The application was largely the same — we more explicitly addressed the issues in the NOID the previous time, added a recommendation letter, polished up some letters, reduced the expansive set of published material about me to be more targetted (that wasn’t regarded as admissible last time) and added more Glean contracts with customers and their dollar amounts. On Sep 28, we received news that the withdrawal was processed and the denial reversed — a bit of good news.

Finally, on Wednesday Oct 4, 2023, after 1318 days, 3.5yrs of struggling with the EB-1, I was notified of my approval via one of the best emails I’ve ever received.

The email from my lawyer letting me know my approval went through.

As of Oct 4, 2023, the EB-1 “Final Action Date” was Jan 1, 2017 and the “Date of Filing” is July 1, 2019. My old priority date, which I retain was July 13, 2018. This means I can begin filing for my EAD (Employment authorization document, a work document) and AP (Advanced Parole, a travel document) and be able to travel and work outside my H-1B. However, I need to wait for the Final Action Date before the government official grants me a green card / permanent residence — depending on how quickly the visa bulletin moves, this could mean 1-1.5yrs. And I can become a citizen 5 years after that. Now, apparently they are granting EADs and APs for 5 years at a time. Here are some advantages of even an EAD and AP over an H-1B:

  • You can change jobs without additional paperwork
  • You can be unemployed (for more than 2 months)
  • You can start a company. Your employer no longer needs to sponsor you.
  • You can travel internationally without having to worry about getting your H-1B renewed every 3 years and stamped — a process which can take a really long time for Indians too. — Your dependents are covered by it

In any case, my EB-1A was approved after 3.5yrs of work, nearly 12 constant years of being in the US, 18yrs total of being in the US, after paying $20k+ and I still need to stay here 6 more years before I become a citizen! If US immigration wasn’t painful enough, for Indians specifically, its absolutely disastrous!

The final I-797 Notice indicating that the EB-1A had been approved with my old priority date ported over, 7 days after submission.

EB-1A Timeline

  • Feb 24, 2020 — Oct 2022: Work with my previous law firm
  • Oct 18, 2022 — First consultation call with Alcorn
  • Dec 5, 2022 — Initial dump of documents for my criteria ready. Wanted some more documents.
  • Apr 4, 2022 — Got more evidence, resume process.
  • May 16, 2022 — Got several more pieces of evidence to strengthen my case, add a few criteria.
  • July 17, 2023 — Acquired all my 6 recommendation letters and “Final Merits” instructions
  • Aug 4, 2023 — Applied for EB-1
  • Aug 17, 2023 — NOID
  • Aug 22, 2023 — Withdrew application
  • Sep 1, 2023 — Case erroneously denied
  • Sep 26, 2023 — Applied attempt #2 at EB-1
  • Sep 28, 2023 — Initial denial reverted, application withdrawn
  • Oct 4, 2023 — EB-1 Approved!

What would I have done differently?

  • Have urgency Throughout the entire EB-1A process, I did not have any urgency. The reason was because I knew I could port over my priority date of 2018 from my EB-2 and renew my H-1B indefinitely in the interim. Because the EB-1 priority date, even for Indians, was current, I didn’t think I needed to move quickly. That was a bad decision because in August 2023, it has retrogressed).
  • Start the grunt work early Despite having a lot of external media references, I didn’t realize that legally these don’t really help me. What does help me, according to the law, is extremely specific types of “Judging” events, patents, articles written about me in my field of expertise, and other such things. There are a lot of little things you can do — events to go to, things to ask for — that you can do over 6-12 months prior to your actual application in the background to “strengthen” your case.

What did your final application look like? What criteria did you use?

I applied for my EB-1A with the expertise “Artificial Intelligence Search Engine Technology Entrepreneurship” [sic]

I’d initially said my application was 900+ pages long. What goes into those 900 pages you ask?

  • Pages 1-2 — Filing fees
  • Pages 3-4 — Letter with table of contents
  • Page 5-8 — G-28 (Notice of Entry of Appearance as Attorney or Accredited Representative)
  • Page 9-14 — I-907 (Request for Premium Processing Service)
  • Page 15-24 — I-140 (Immigrant Petition for Alien Workers)
  • Page 25-26 — Previous EB-2 approvals for Google and Glean
  • Page 27-40 — Passport, I-94, visas, previous I-797s
  • Page 41-85 — Meat of the petition: written out text argument for why I fit the criteria I applied for pointing to 28 “Exhibits” or pieces of evidence, and citations to the reference letters. I applied for 8 criteria
    • Leading / Critical Role
    • Original Contributions
    • Membership in Associations
    • Judging
    • Scholarly Articles
    • Published Material
    • Awards
    • High Salary
  • Page 86-926 — 28 Exhibits:
    • Academic credentials
    • Information about my startup, Glean
    • Letter 1
    • Letter 2
    • Letter 3
    • Documentation around critical role at Google
    • Letter 4
    • Letter 5
    • Patents
    • Customer contracts for Glean, to prove wide use of patents
    • Conferences, panel discussions, guest lectures
    • Membership in associations
    • Judging references
    • Scholarly articles that have been published in journals
    • Google Scholar screenshot
    • Listing from SCImago Journal & Country Rank, confirming research is in renowned journals
    • Published material in professional trade publications
    • Appearance in podcasts
    • Award documentation
    • Startup name change documentation
    • Equity info
    • Startup valuation documentation
    • Salary info
    • Salary statistics from BLS
    • USCIS Policy Manual section confirming equity can be used in lieu of cash compensation
    • Independent media, organizational justifications, statistical data, and scholarly articles supporting that equity commands accepted negotiable value in the field.
    • Report from the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSCT) Fast Track Action Subcommittee on Critical and Emerging Technologies (CET) confirming that Artificial intelligence and Advanced Computing are areas of critical national importance.
    • National Science and Technology Council’s (NSCT) Fast Track Action Subcommittee February 2022 update of the list of critical and emerging technologies to inform forthcoming strategy on U.S. technological competitiveness and national security.

Why was your application denied? What did you change?

Typically, EB-1A applications receive an RFE (request for evidence), to which applicants have to submit evidence to prove out their criteria further. It’s very common for the USCIS to issue an RFE. However, when I applied the first time, my application was given a NOID (notice of intent to deny), an outright denial. This is very rare, but, as far as I understand, the reason the officer had to deny my application is because they admitted that I met 3 of the 8 criteria I applied for (Judging, Scholarly Articles and Leading / Critical Role), but somehow didn’t meet “Final Merits”.

I think the denial was bogus. It was by a USCIS officer who has had a lot of public legislation against him on account of unfair denials. In fact, of all my friends who applied, the ones who got denied actually had the same officer. Here is a summary of the arguments for denying the others:

  • Awards — says there was not enough documentation on the (a) criteria for the awards (b) info on reputation of who gives the award (c) eligibility and significance of the award (d) how the award was given. They wanted a copy of the award, photo of it and a public announcement.
    • This is all bogus, since the application clearly had all of this evidence, in plentiful detail.
  • Membership in Associations — says there wasn’t enough documentation on (a) how membership is determined (b) qualifications required by application reviewers.
    • This is partially bogus. Although arguably we could’ve provided even more information, I think this was amply documented.
  • Published Material — says “published material may not be about your work, but about you. Some of the articles do not mention you at all and cannot be considered primarily about you”
    • This is bogus. Out of 20+ articles I submitted, they cherry-picked one article which was more about cricket than me, but did clearly mention by in a whole paragraph and my work on Google cricket.
  • Original Contributions — cites letters and says “does not demonstrate that the innovation is widely used.” and says “author does not explicitly name the technology (in the letter)”.
    • Again, bogus. The part of the letter that does not mention the technology is true, but the next paragraph does. There is an exhibit of all of our company’s enterprise contracts that show that they use the technology that was clearly ignored.
  • High salary — says “generic online salary data does not state what the very top software engineers and developers earn above the 90th percentiles in their data.”
    • This is so bogus that by the time you read this, you can tell the officer does not want to approve this application. It is amply clear from the numbers that the cited salary + equity numbers add up to a very high percentile of any public salary standards. And this is a tenured officer who sees plenty of EB-1A applications and should be well aware what kind of salary is exceptional and not, instead of denying the criteria because on account of the public data in this application. Remember, USCIS issued a clarifying statement saying equity counts towards the high salary criterion.

Finally, the Final Merits criteria was rejected because of lack of “preponderance of evidence” on various criteria they did accept. The legalese language translates to “you did say X, but X isn’t enough by a preponderance of the evidence”. It cited the case Kazarian vs USCIS repeatedly, a case you should absolutely read through if you’re applying to the EB-1A and tailor your application’s language to.

When the denial hit, my lawyer recommended I withdraw my application (instead of keeping a denial on my record) instead of trying to fight it in 30 days. She said that the officer is unlikely to budge after issuing a NOID (denial notice). When we reapplied, 99% of the application remained the same except

  • small changes to how the letters were drafted
  • an additional recommendation letter
  • reducing some information in “Published Material”
  • specifically calling out even more clients that our startup (Glean) has dollar-value contracts with in a letter
  • adding more of the contracts above as evidence

With a near identical application, and it was approved without an RFE in 7 days!.

Final “merits”

After seeing 5-10 friends as well as myself go through this journey closely, I truly belief the process is quite random and has no correlation with how genuinely valuable or impressive a person is. Plenty of people who are just generic L4 / L5 engineers at BigTech (and sometimes even much lesser known firms) managed to get their EB-1A. You can even see examples online. If you’re reading this, I’d highly advice you do not go through paid EB-1A services that anyone provides except a lawyer. I’ll go through detailed advice in a second follow-up post specifically about EB-1A advice and reveal a lot of these “secrets” for free!

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