Success Stories: O1-A Approval in Just 12 days for a Building Performance Analyst in Maryland in the Field of Building Technology
Client’s Testimonial:
On September 5th, 2018, we received another O1-A (Individuals with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement) approval for a Building Performance Analyst in the Field of Building Technology (Approval Notice).
General Field: Building Technology
Position at the Time of Case Filing: Building Performance Analyst
Country of Origin: China
State of Residence at the Time of Filing: Maryland
Approval Notice Date: September 5th, 2018
Processing Time: 12 days (Premium Processing Requested)
Case Summary:
A building performance analyst from China hired North America Immigration Law Group (NAILG) to help her obtain an O1-A (Individuals with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement) visa. In order to receive notification of case approval, she needed to show that she was an individual with extraordinary ability who was temporarily entering the United States to continue work in her area of specialization. With our help, our client accomplished this goal and received petition approval in a short span of 12 days. Our vast experience dealing with employment-based visa petitions armed us with the perfect legal strategy to secure our client’s O1A petition approval.
Before we started work on the case, we conducted a thorough evaluation of our client’s credentials to verify her chances of O1-A approval. We confirmed that she held a doctoral degree in architecture with a focus on high performance building, and that she had extensive research experience in building performance simulation. We also determined that our client was an expert in creating data-driven inverse models for building energy use prediction; in fact, she has developed an accurate and more accessible tool to predict a given building’s energy consumption. Our goal was to prove to the USCIS that our client’s findings are of great importance to the country’s construction and renewable energy industries.
Our client’s O1A petition packet also detailed her citation and publication record. At the time of filing, our client’s publications included 8 peer-reviewed scientific articles that had accumulated 117 citations. Moreover, our client had been invited by several high-impact journals to review the work of her peers in the field. Our client had already conducted 20 reviews when we filed her case. This was proof of her important standing amongst other experts specializing in building technology.
To validate the extent of international influence her work had garnered, our client procured five letters of recommendation signed by top-level experts from home and abroad. One of the recommenders stated: ”[Client]’s citation history identifies her as an exceptionally influential researcher who has come to be considered a reliable source for inventive, cutting-edge research by other experts around the world. Her situation as an international leader in the field therefore shows that she is extremely valuable.” These letters, which were incorporated into our client’s O1-A petition dossier, amply endorsed our client’s credentials.
After months of diligent work, we successfully demonstrated that our client had satisfied the O1A criteria. We congratulate her for securing O1-A petition approval and we wish her the best as she continues to advance the important field of building technology in the United States.

