Success Stories: EB-1A Petition Approved Despite RFE for Postdoctoral Scientist from India in the Field of Proteomics (155 Citations)

Client’s Testimonial:

“Thank you very much for the news. I am very happy to find out that my I-140 has been approved.”


On May 18th, 2017, we received another EB-1A (Alien of Extraordinary Ability) approval for a Postdoctoral Scientist in the Field of Proteomics (Approval Notice).


General Field: Proteomics

Position at the Time of Case Filing: Postdoctoral Scientist

Country of Origin: India

State of Residence at the Time of Filing: Tennessee

Approval Notice Date: May 18th, 2017

Processing Time: 3 months, 15 days (Premium Processing Requested)


Case Summary:

A postdoctoral scientist from India hired North America Immigration Law Group (NAILG) to help him prepare and file an EB-1A (Alien of Extraordinary Ability) petition. With a Ph.D. in Pharmacognosy and extensive experience conducting proteomics fieldwork, our client checked all the boxes when it came to meeting 3 out of the 10 EB1A criteria:

  1. Original contributions: At the time of filing, our client’s work had already been cited 155 times. This proved the value of his work not just to other researchers but to the field of proteomics as a whole.
  2. Authorship: The many years that our client has spent working in the field has led to the publication of 17 scientific articles, all of which appeared in well-known scientific journals.
  3. Judge of others’ work: To highlight the fact that our client’s ideas and opinions are respected by other researchers in the field, we presented his peer review record—3 reviews conducted by the time we filed his case.
Besides the 3 EB1A criteria mentioned above, our client’s EB1A petition dossier contained a wealth of information on his research that is focused on using proteomics to investigate the protein responses of bacterial cells in pathogenesis and obesity. According to a prominent researcher based in Europe: “I am able to confirm that [Client’s] research is groundbreaking and influential to human health. His research is not only beneficial to the international science community, but to the United States at large.” He was not alone in his show of support for our client’s work, and was joined by five of his peers. Each of them contributed a recommendation letter that advocated for the approval of our client’s petition. These letters played an important role in our presentation to the USCIS and we have no doubt that they carried weight in the overall adjudication process.

Because our client chose to file his case under Premium Processing, the adjudication timeline (despite the issuance of the RFE) amounted to less than four months. We are glad that our client has passed this first, significant hurdle in the green card process, and we thank him for retaining our I-485 services.