Success Stories: Texas Service Center Grants Petitioner from India in the Field of Biochemistry EB-1A Approval
Client’s Testimonial:
“Thanks a lot for your help and making things easier for me”
On March 9th, 2016, we received another EB-1A (Alien of Extraordinary Ability) approval for a Petitioner in the Field of Biochemistry (Approval Notice).
General Field: Biochemistry
Position at the Time of Case Filing: N/A
Country of Origin: India
Service Center: Texas Service Center (TSC)
State of Residence at the Time of Filing: Delaware
Approval Notice Date: March 9th, 2016
Processing Time: 2 months, 24 days (Premium Processing Requested)
A gifted expert in the field of biochemistry approached North America Immigration Law Group (WeGreened.com) for help with an EB-2 NIW (National Interest Waiver) and an EB-1A (Alien of Extraordinary Ability) petition. It is not unusual to file two petitions simultaneously as it increases one’s chances of getting an approval notice—if one petition is denied, the other may still be granted approval. In this case, our client received two approval notices.
Understanding Current Priority Dates:
We are particularly pleased that Texas Service Center approved our client’s EB-1A petition. This allows her to file an I-485 application whenever she wants, and not have to wait for her priority date to become current. For petitioners born in India whose EB-2 petitions were recently filed and approved, they have to wait several years for their priority date to become current before filing an I-485 application. This has to do with the quota system set in place by the USCIS. On the other hand, Indian petitioners with EB-1 approvals need not worry about priority dates as there is no quota in place.
Client’s Credentials:
Our client is undoubtedly a researcher of very high standing in her field of biochemistry and our job was to prove this to the USCIS. We were sure to include information that supported our claim: her advanced degrees, the 107 citations to her work, her 9 journal papers and several conference papers, and the 22 times she conducted peer reviews for scientific journals. We also reviewed and accounted for her research efforts on neurological diseases and how the disruption of metabolic processes caused by mitochondrial malfunction is associated with those diseases. We demonstrated the importance of her investigations to the United States drug development industry and the country’s overall healthcare system.
Third-Party Support:
Our experience putting together successful EB-1A petition packets has taught us that recommendation letters can go a long way, so we urged our client to touch base with other influential biochemists for recommendation letters. She managed to obtain six letters, all of which firmly attested to the value of her work to not just the field, but to the United States as a whole. One of our client’s recommenders described her work as “… fundamental to the overarching study of health and medicine. […] Her studies provide the academic community with novel discoveries that have direct application within a medical context. As such, her work promotes advancements within the field of medicine and encourages progress in the area of drug therapies and pharmaceutical development. In short, [Client] is an asset to the United States and should be allowed to continue her research within the country.”
Favorable Conclusion:
We are pleased that our client’s strong credentials and our diligent efforts played a role in case approval. Largely thanks to Premium Processing (PP), Texas Service Center granted their approval less than three months after we filed the case on our client’s behalf (she chose to upgrade her case to be adjudicated under PP a little over two months after the initial filing). We would like to congratulate our client for obtaining EB-1A approval, and we look forward to helping her and her spouse obtain their green cards.