Recently, after 18 years of living in the US, I was approved for my EB-1A for “Aliens of Extraordinary Ability”. I wrote about my journey in paralyzingly boring detail in my last blog post. This was one of the few ways, as someone born in India, I could have a path to US citizenship in a reasonable time.

Personally, I’ve observed that most people are hush-hush about the EB-1A process — at best, they just don’t talk about the details of what they did as much and at worst, they try to ride a LinkedIn high about how they’re on an “Einstein visa” and try to sell advice. I do not want to sell anything.

My goal with this blog post, just as it is on my Twitter, is to provide actionable advice to talented people, especially Indians, who feel just as helpless as I did in the face of a 150+ year visa wait. It is meant to be a living, breathing document — the ultimate guide to an EB-1A.

I want to underscore three things prior to giving advice on getting an EB-1A —

  • I genuinely believe that anybody can get an EB-1A. Don’t be demoralized by the “Extraordinary Ability” clause. Just because a lawyer, especially your employer’s lawyer on retainer, tells you that your resume or background is “not suitable” for it, does not mean you should give up. These things held me back for many many years. Anyone can get this visa if they focus on it religiously.
  • The EB-1 is a zero sum game. Any good advice here merely hurts those who do not read the advice. At the end of the day, the number of people who will be granted this visa is capped and more people knowing how to do it just means the line is going to get more and more crowded. The sad reality is this — someone who has an already approved EB-1 with a recent, say 2022, priority date might have to wait longer because someone with an older EB-2 priority date reads this and applies to an EB-1 and ports over their 2018 priority date. To those people, I apologize.
  • Don’t listen to the rumors, embrace the randomness. There’s a lot of misinformation around the EB-1 process. “X doesn’t count.” “My lawyer is awesome because they did ABC which made my case go through.” “This guy is really good cause I (a non-lawyer) read his response to my RFE, and it was so well written.” “You might have a hard time with this category if you say X” Rumors around the EB-1 spread easily. Every lawyer has a different take. Every applicant has a singular data point that they generalize. And every RFE / rejection from an immigration officer cites reasons that other officers wouldn’t cite. As a result, everyone who has a successful application touts all the things they did as good advice. They’re almost always not — from all the data points I’ve seen, EB-1A is random and at the behest of your granting immigration officer. I’ve seen really strong people get denied and really weak applications get accepted. Remember — what is legally a strong case has little to nothing to do with how “impressive” someone is to you in real life.

What is an EB-1A and why get one?

An introductory article on EB-1As, why it’s important and why you should consider one.

What are my odds? What is the acceptance rate?

As of 2022, the acceptance rate for EB-1A applications is pretty high — it hovers around 70-75% (data). In comparison, EB-1B (Outstanding researcher) is at 90%. Near-guaranteed visas like EB-1C, EB-2 and EB-3 have a 95% acceptance rate.

Prior to an acceptance, there’s a reasonably high chance (~50% anecdotally) that you may get an RFE (Request for Evidence) or a NOID (Notice of Intent to Deny). In the several I’ve seen through my friends, they’re rarely based on the merits of your case but nitpicking at legal language. In the case of a NOID, my lawyer asked me to withdraw and refile since changing the decision is unlikely. In the case of an RFE, you typically submit more evidence.

Even though there’s some self-selection here (e.g. plane with bullet holes picture, completion rates for the marathon are usually way higher than completion rates for the easier half-marathon), the point I’m trying to stress on is that not all EB-1A applicants are super well qualified and the approval rate is actually pretty high compared to other more selective processes, like college admission.

As far as I know, there’s also nothing prevent you from applying again in case of a denial.

What is a reasonable timeline?

Your timeline for preparation of the application will vary drastically depending on (a) how much of a perfectionist you are (b) how many of the criteria you can meet with no additional effort (c) how much free time you have. I covered my timeline in my last post, and it took me 3.5 years to finish my application, mostly on account of my own laziness and prolonged periods of putting work on my EB-1A on standby.

With focus, even if you have to put in some legwork to meet more criteria, I’d say:

Step Time Notes
Acquiring all the evidence and letters 4-12mos Depends on much prep-work your application needs and how quickly you do it
Polishing and submit petition (I-140) with your lawyer 1mo Depends on lawyer’s responsiveness
USCIS decision 0.5mo You should use Premium Processing
Additional time to respond to RFE 2mo Did you receive an RFE?
Filing adjustment of status (I-485), EAD (I-765) and AP (I-131) 1mo “Date of Filing” must be current on latest visa bulletin
Submit Biometrics 0.5mo You will receive a letter in the mail to go on-site to a local USCIS office.
Receive work (EAD) and travel (AP) document 3-4mo Cannot travel while AP in progress. As of 2023, they should both be valid for 5yrs.
Receive green card 6-9mo “Final Action Date” must be current on the lastest visa bulletin

Total: 24 months

After you’ve received your approval, you can check processing times here and check the last status of your application with your receipt number here.

Here's what you need to enter to get the appropriate processing times for your EAD / AP and Green Card. Anecdotally, I've heard it can take much less than this time.

How do you qualify for an EB-1A?

To get an EB-1A, you have to pick a “field of expertise” and justify your excellence in that field. It is “self-petitioned” and does not need to be supported by your employer.

It has 2 parts:

  • Meeting at least 3 of the 10 criteria.
    • Awards — Receipt of lesser nationally or internationally recognized prizes or awards for excellence in the field of endeavor.
    • Membership in “outstanding” associations — Membership in associations in the field for which classification is sought that require outstanding achievement of their members, as judged by recognized national or international experts in their disciplines or fields.
    • Published Material — Published material about the person in professional or major trade publications or other major media relating to the person’s work in the field for which classification is sought. Such evidence must include the title, date, and author of the material, and any necessary translation
    • Judging — The person’s participation, either individually or on a panel, as a judge of the work of others in the same or an allied field of specification for which classification is sought
    • Original Contributions — The person’s original scientific, scholarly, artistic, athletic, or business-related contributions of major significance in the field
    • Scholarly Articles — The person’s authorship of scholarly articles in the field, in professional or major trade publications or other major media.
    • Artistic Exhibitions — Display of the person’s work in the field at artistic exhibitions or showcases
    • Leading or Critical Role — The person has performed in a leading or critical role for organizations or establishments that have a distinguished reputation
    • High Salary — The person has commanded a high salary, or other significantly high remuneration for services, in relation to others in the field
    • Success in Performing Arts — Commercial successes in the performing arts, as shown by box office receipts or record, cassette, compact disk, or video sales
  • Final Merits determination — a subjective evaluation of your application in its entirety to determine whether you’re eligible. This is the section where you list all your accomplishments cohesively and ascertain that you have “sustained national or international acclaim and recognition in the field of expertise, and is one of that small percentage who has risen to the very top of their field of endeavor”

When you build an application, you also need to provide 5-8 letters of recommendation from experts in the field who both know you directly and indirectly who can attest to your work and ability to meet these criteria.

Eventually, the core of my case was a 44 page written argument about the 8 criteria I applied for (all except Success in Performing Arts and Artistic Exhibitions), although many recommend applying with a few stronger criteria.

I don’t think I meet any of these. How can I change that?

Don’t fret. Most applicants go out and do things specifically so they can get evidence to meet these criteria. In my experience, there are people with barely any evidence for 3 categories who get approved on the first try and others with tremendous evidence and a long history of success who take multiple attempts to get approved. Ultimately, the decision is made by a single officer within 10-15 minutes and is not reproducible, just like admissions into a college. That officer has little to no understanding of what consitutes “impressive” or meaningful in your field. They just read your application and attempt to insurance that it meets a legal definition.

Here are some things you can do to build your profile for an EB-1A:

  • Judging
    • You can simply go online and apply to be a judge in the following awards. They’re pretty pointless awards but they help strengthen your app. While I was applying to these, I found so many of my friends’ profiles on these websites and realized that they did it for their EB-1! These award programs typically have one of their many categories active at different times of the year. I would estimate ~3 months to register, be accepted, judge ~50 submisions and get a public or private certificate.
    • You can use code reviews of popular open source repositories as “reviewing the work of others”.
    • You can use judging hackathons here, as long as they’re not student events.
  • High Salary

    For entrepreneurs or founders of startup businesses, officers consider evidence that the business has received significant funding from government entities, venture capital funds, angel investors, or other such funders in evaluating the credibility of submitted contracts, job offer letters, or other evidence of prospective salary or remuneration for services.”

    As another example, if the petitioner demonstrates that receipt of a high salary is not readily applicable to the person’s position as an entrepreneur, the petitioner might present evidence that the person’s highly valued equity holdings in the startup are of comparable significance to the high salary criterion.

  • Leading / Critical Role
    • This is pretty easy to prove through letters from people who are familiar with your work. Many jobs can count towards this, including
      • Senior research position at academic or non academic institutions
      • Founder / cofounder of startup with distinguished reputation
      • Leading / critical role of a distinguished organization, as explained by a letter from a director / principal investigator of the org.
    • Well-funded startups count as distinguished reputation
    • The letter should contain
      • Intro and background of author
      • About the company and its own accomplishments
      • Description of your leading role
      • Description of your critical role
      • How your work impacts the company as a whole
      • Why the petitioner is “top” of their field
    • When getting letters, I would draft the letters myself and ask them to sign it. Most expert reviewers do not have the time or knowledge to draft a useful letter.
  • Original Contributions
    • Patents help here — both pending or granted!
    • Published and cited research can also help here
    • Proof that the product you’ve built is commercially used widely.
    • Can use published material about the significance of your work.
    • Letters from experts talking about the nature and significance of your contribution, with info about the author’s expertise.
  • Scholarly Articles
  • Membership in Associations
    • IADAS (International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences) is trivial to apply to and get membership in, but is a well-recognized association that meets the EB-1 criteria. You can get this as a part of the Webby Awards which is used for Judging.
    • The criteria for this is open to interpretation. The USCIS uses this example as sufficient:

    may include membership as a fellow in a scientific society dedicated to artificial intelligence if the membership is based on recognition of a nominee’s significant, sustained contributions to the field of artificial intelligence, and a panel of current fellows makes the selection of new fellows.

    • You should be able to use Y Combinator, certain “hacker” group memberships, company memberships and more.
    • You can try to become a member of various open source organizations based on the merit of your contributions.
  • Published Material
    • You can use Trade Press Services, as mentioned above in “Scholarly Articles”, to aim to get articles written not just by you, but about you.
    • You can appear on podcasts, try to work with media organizations to get them to write about you, or be written about in a book.
    • Being written about even on tech blogs and several lesser known online articles can help, but you will have to cite readership numbers.
  • Awards
    • While many think this award has to be of “Nobel Prize” level, it does not according to USCIS themselves:

    however, there is no specific requirement that an award be open to all members of the field, including the most experienced, in order to meet the requirements of this criterion. While limitations on competitors can be a relevant factor, in some instances the evidence may establish that an award or prize is nationally or internationally recognized despite being limited to youth, amateur competitors, or early-career professionals.” as well as “an award available only to persons within a single locality, employer, or school may have little national or international recognition, while an award open to members of a well-known national institution (including an R1 or R2 doctoral university) or professional organization may be nationally recognized.

    • You can count certain kinds of funding or membership to startup incubators like Y Combinator and South Park Commons as “awards”.
    • You can definitely use winning hackathons as an award, so long as they’re not “student” hackathons. Here’s a person who did that.

Most of the friends I know use Leading / Critical Role, Judging and High Salary. The other criteria may also be relevant to you. If you’re an artist, the two criteria I didn’t cover for artists I hear are fairly easy to prove with some effort.

Recently, USCIS introduced the Comparable Evidence clause which states that if a certain criteria doesn’t apply to your profession, you can change it. This can be used to your liberty, but the USCIS calls out certain things explicitly

  • Presentation at a conference / trade show is a substitute for scholarly articles

For instance, if the publication of scholarly articles is not readily applicable to a person whose occupation is in an industry rather than academia, a petitioner might demonstrate that the person’s presentation of work at a major trade show is of comparable significance to that criterion.

  • Equity counts as high salary

receipt of a high salary is not readily applicable to the person’s position as an entrepreneur, the petitioner might present evidence that the person’s highly valued equity holdings in the startup are of comparable significance to the high salary criterion.

  • Use open-source as comparable evidence One could argue that Github code reviews for important open-source repositories are evidence of “Judging”, that forks on a repository you own or contribute to are examples of “Published Material” about it. Or that a lot of stars is representative of wide use and that it can count as an “Original Contributions”. Or that being an owner of a popular widely-used repository can count as “Membership in Associations”.

Here are a couple of miscellaneous other tips that can help your application:

  • Read through the Kazarian vs USCIS case in detail. It is the case USCIS officers will cite the most often to make your decision. If you study the case, you’ll have the same information the officers do to assess whether you meet a criteria.

  • Draw attention to relevant parts of evidence When submitting evidence, make it amply clear with outlines and arrows where your name is and any other relevant information. Don’t give the officer more work.

  • Use ChatGPT! I find it helpful to rephrase technical language in letters in ways that audiences unfamiliar with the material can understand.

  • Email screenshots are evidence Use of emails inviting you to events or thanking you for judging an award, or accepting you as be a member of an association.

  • Use the NSTC CET (Critical and Emerging Technologies) document Another part of securing an EB-1A visa is proving that your entry to the US will substantially benefit the US. To that extent, use the NSTC (National Science and Technology Council)’s CET list to reinforce the value of your area of expertise. Some broad buckets they list include:

The 19 Critical and Emerging Technologies as determined by the NSTC that can prove that your area expertise is valuable to the US.

What do I do for my letters of recommendation?

The 5-8 letters of recommendation that are required with your application not only help your entire application but can be specifically used to make a case for several categories, such as leading and critical role. The general structure of a letter is:

  • Should be about 2 full pages in length.
  • Introduction of the recommender to show that they are an expert in the field and qualified to write a recommendation letter.
  • How well the recommender knows you and your work, whatever it may be.
  • What the recommender thinks about the importance of your work and specifically your contribution to it, using as many objective numbers as possible.
  • Whether the recommender thinks you are indeed at the top of your field.
  • Conclusion: an explicit recommendation.

It is very critical to abide by the above structure for a successful application. Usually, the strategies to pick recommenders are:

  • The more important they are, the more valuable.
  • Pick a variety of people including your manager now, but not more than 1-2 persons from the company you work at, as well as general industry experts from other companies, different geographies and of varied insight into your work.
  • Have a couple recommenders who do not personally know you, but know of your work.
  • Write your letter and send it to them and have them sign it — few people have the time to draft an entire letter.

You can see examples of great letters in Razvan’s and Andrey’s public EB-1 applications.

What’s happening with EB-1A priority date for Indians?

As of writing this, the January 2024 Visa Bulletin, EB-1 applicants born in India have a date of filing of Jan 1, 2021 and final action date of Sep 1, 2020.

This used to be current until December 2022, retrogressed a little to Feb 1, 2022 for 7 months until July 2023. Then, it retrogressed all the way to Jan 1, 2012. You can see the historical graph of EB-1 priority dates here.

While there were no EB-1s backlogged for Indians in Dec 2022, this rose to 7,005 in March 2023 and 10,049 in June 2023.

In July 2023, EB-1 for Indians became the most retrogressed it has ever been, 11.5yrs! Source

As per this Visa Bulletin:

As readers were informed was possible in the May 2023 Visa Bulletin, it has become necessary to retrogress the EB-1 final action date for India, effective in August. India is oversubscribed, and therefore subject to prorating under INA 202(e). Until now, applicants chargeable to India had been able to receive prior unused numbers within EB-1 under INA 202(a)(5). With a worldwide final action date being set for EB-1 because the demand is greater than the number of visas remaining, the Department can no longer issue EB-1 visas without regard to the per-country numerical limitations and so applicants from India are no longer able to receive EB-1 numbers under INA 202(a)(5). Having reached their limit for FY-2023 within EB-1, India will be subject to an EB-1 final action date of 01JAN12, the oldest priority date of an EB-1 applicant (many Indian EB-1 applicants have priority dates from 2012-2015 because of priority date retention based on previously-approved petitions in the EB-2 or EB-3 categories). It is likely that in October the final action date will advance to at least the final action date announced in the July Visa Bulletin; however, the date is dependent on the demand for EB-1 visas by Indian applicants and the FY-2024 annual limit on employment-based preference visas.

I write in depth about my hypothesis that the future outlook is bleak in depth with statistics in my post here, however since the priority dates have actually moved forward so several of my assumptions may be incorrect.

What lawyer should I use and how much does it cost?

I used Alcorn Law and Sophie Alcorn as my lawyer. She charges $11,750 for a 12-week EB-1 I-140, $700 for I-140 filing and $2500 for Premium Processing. She charges extra for RFE hourly at $350/hr for an attorney. This is a total of $14,950. My successful application went through her, and I highly recommend her.

My previous lawyer, whose name I will not disclose, but is very popular in immigration SEO, charged $8800 for a 3-category case and $1500 more for an extra category and the standard $3200 filing fee for a total of $13,500. I used them for a while, but I was dissatisfied at how many times the person working on my case changed, the primary attorney had a severe tragedy, and they didn’t seem regularly responsive enough. When a friend moved to Alcorn from this firm and reported a much better experience, I followed suit.

Other recommendations from friends:

  • Lima by Rajat Suri charges $15k for application and $15k on approval.
  • Project Law Group under Wells Wakefield charges $11k only on approval with additional filing cost of $3.2k separate. They offer a free refiling as well. This is the best deal I’ve seen for applicants, but this was a special offer for a candidate who had already done some prep. They may ask for some money upfront.
  • Bay Immigration Law under TJ Albrecht has stellar reviews and they do applications for a lot of founders and startup employees in the Bay Area. I believe they charge ~$12.5k.
  • Nadia Yakoob and her firm is quite popular in the Bay Area, particularly for entrepreneurs.
  • North America Immigration Law Group (Wegreened.com) and Victoria Chen charge $2.75k on filing and $2.75k on approval.
  • Wright Law Firm and Chris Wright
  • Legalpad, a company by Deel who provides green card services

I do not recommend company lawyers or those without explicit experience in EB-1 applications like Fragomen and BAL Global. They’re neither experts nor incentivized to make your case successful.

What about filing without a lawyer?

I actually do recommend this. Although applying for an EB-1A is a long, tiresome process that involves a deep understanding of the law:

  • it can also be an expensive process.
  • It can be demoralizing when a lawyer authoritatively says your case is not good enough even though they’ve only seen 10s of them.
  • Even when you use a lawyer, you do 70-80% of the work yourself.
  • It can be frustrating to work with paralegals and attorneys who do not understand your field or your work.
  • You are just another client for them, even though your future hinges on this. They will not resonate with the high stakes situation.

It’s important to note that the entire business model of lawyers is to tell you that you cannot possibly do it on your own and that you need their legal expertise. The “95%+ success rate” your lawyer boasts is something every lawyer boasts, but not something you can actually verify. You can instead pay a much smaller ~$250 fee by simply consulting a lawyer for feedback after drafting your EB-1A application yourself.

Applicants have successfully filed on their own in the past. Here are some public examples:

I personally enjoyed working with my lawyer, and having a lawyer gives you security and confidence that you’re not doing anything wrong. However, I don’t feel like there was anything in my final petition that I couldn’t have written myself using these examples.

What are some common EB-1A myths? Are there examples of “normal” people who got an EB-1A?

  • You’re not a “Nobel” prize winner and don’t have the “Extraordinary Ability” to deserve an EB-1A — many people who have successfully gotten an EB-1A, including me, are nowhere close to a “Nobel” prize. The USCIS says the EB-1A requires:

    a level of expertise indicating that the individual is one of that small percentage who have risen to the very top of the field of endeavor

    Remember, an EB-1A at the end of the day is an objective legal judgment on whether you fulfil a set of requirements — “small” and “top” and “field of endeavor” are not clearly delineated concepts here. Take a look at the credentials of certain people who have been approved for an EB-1A to benchmark yourself:

  • Your equity / stock grant does not count towards your “high salary” criteria — it does and USCIS says so too!

As another example, if the petitioner demonstrates that receipt of a high salary is not readily applicable to the person’s position as an entrepreneur, the petitioner might present evidence that the person’s highly valued equity holdings in the startup are of comparable significance to the high salary criterion.

  • You don’t have enough citations to meet your “scholarly articles” criteria — there are cases where very low citation counts are accepted for this criteria. I only had 46 citations to meet this criteria, and I’ve heard of as low as 7 citations (example)! It’s a commonly heard myth that “you need 500+ citations” or some such number that usually just discourages applicants.

  • You need to be on an O-1 before you apply for an EB-1A — You can apply for an EB-1A while being on other statuses (H-1B, L-1, F-1). You can even apply for an EB-1A through consular processing without even being in the US. Having an O-1 does help though:

Though the prior approval of an O-1 petition is a relevant consideration and can be an indicator of eligibility in adjudicating an immigrant petition for a person with extraordinary ability, it is not determinative… For this reason, where possible, officers issuing denials in such cases should provide a brief discussion as to why, notwithstanding the previous O-1 nonimmigrant visa petition approval

  • You should keep your EB-2 date if you’re close instead of getting a new priority date for my EB-1A — If you have a prior EB-2 / EB-3 application, you can port your priority date over from that and won’t get a fresh date (link).

Are there other resources you recommend reading?

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