On April 20^th, 2016, we received another EB-1A (Alien of Extraordinary Ability) approval for a Research Engineer in the Field of Mechanical Engineering (Approval Notice).

General Field: Mechanical Engineering

Position at the Time of Case Filing: Research Engineer

Country of Origin: China

Service Center: Nebraska Service Center (NSC)

State of Residence at the Time of Filing: Michigan

Approval Notice Date: April 20^th, 2016

Processing Time: 33 Days (Premium Processing Requested)

Case Summary:

Not long ago North America Immigration Law Group (WeGreened.com) helped a research engineer from China obtain an EB-1A (Alien of Extraordinary Ability) petition approval. Our client, who has a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, has years of experience working in the same field. Although she had very strong credentials for EB-1A, she hired us because she knew that we would put together a convincing petition on her behalf.

Obtaining EB-1A petition approval:

It is no secret that attaining an EB-1A petition approval is not easy. Petitioners must prove that they meet at least three out of the 10 criteria set by the USCIS. In this case, we proved that our client met the following three requirements:

1. She is an expert at judging the work of others: When we filed the case, our client had conducted two dozen peer reviews for high impact journals. This denoted the value that the mechanical engineering community placed on her opinions and insights.
2. She has authored impactful publications: Our client’s research has led to the publication of 19 peer-reviewed journal articles and 3 scientific reports, all of which were positively received by other researchers.
3. She has made significant contributions to the field: Thanks to Google Scholar and other sites like Scopus, we established that our client’s work had gathered 218 citations at the time of filing. This impressive figure demonstrated that other mechanical engineers are using her findings to progress their research.

Once we had established that our client met the three criteria, we carefully reviewed her research projects to thoroughly understand the focus of her work. We did so in order to prove to the USCIS that she is an asset to the nation and that her investigations greatly benefit the United States. Based on what we learned, we concluded that our client’s research on improving combustion and emissions within automotive vehicles impacts technology within the country’s automotive industry. To further fortify our client’s EB-1A petition, we incorporated recommendation letters that she had obtained from other influential professionals in the field.

We are pleased that our attentive efforts resulted in the approval of our client’s EB-1A petition. Thanks to Premium Processing (PP), she received notification of case approval 33 days after we filed the petition on her behalf. It would have taken far longer (between 4-9 months) had she not elected to upgrade her case to PP 19 days after it was filed (she received petition approval exactly 2 weeks after the upgrade). We are currently helping our client prepare her I-485 application. As the final step in the green card process, she will become an American permanent resident once the USCIS approves her application.