On December 8^th, 2016, we received another EB-1A (Alien of Extraordinary Ability) approval for an Economist in the Field of Public Policy (Approval Notice).

General Field: Public Policy

Position at the Time of Case Filing: Economist

Country of Origin: China

Service Center: Texas Service Center (TSC)

State of Residence at the Time of Filing: Virginia

Approval Notice Date: December 8^th, 2016

Processing Time: 22 Days (Premium Processing Requested)

Case Summary:

Exactly a week after North America Immigration Law Group (WeGreened.com) filed an EB-1A (Alien of Extraordinary Ability) petition on behalf of an economist from China, she elected to upgrade her case to Premium Processing (PP). PP is an add-on service offered by the USCIS that allows petitioners to have action taken on their cases within 15 calendar days. True to their word, our client received notification of case approval precisely 15 days after the upgrade.

As EB-1A is one of the hardest visa categories to secure petition approval, we had to make sure that our client met at least 3 out of the 10 requirements set in place by the USCIS. After assessing her professional portfolio, we determined that we could present the following points to the USCIS:

1. Citation Count: Thanks to Google Scholar, we determined that our client’s work had been cited 130 times by researchers around the world. This signaled the importance of her work to other researchers, who together, are progressing the field of public policy as a whole.
2. Peer Review Record: When we filed her case, our client had already reviewed 13 manuscripts for an array of scientific journals. This record demonstrated the importance of her opinions to other researchers in the field.
3. Publications: At the time of filing, our client’s investigations had led to the publication of 10 scientific articles. These papers were well-received by the scientific community and appeared in some of the most prominent scientific journals in the field.

Alongside data on our client’s achievements were six recommendation letters provided by other experts in the field. These letters advocated for the approval of our client’s EB-1A petition and contained statements like this: “…the progress of the field as a whole is sure to slow if [Client’s] research does not continue. This means that without [Client], the resolution of serious national and international economic issues will be postponed, perhaps even indefinitely. [Client’s] future contributions to public policy analysis are in this respect extraordinarily important to the health of the global economy.” These letters also briefly detailed our client’s work on analyzing entrepreneurship, diversity, and economic development.

As our legal team and support staff were able to demonstrate to the USCIS that our client’s findings are important to the US—most notably when it comes to the evaluation of employment changes due to new firm formation, racial and cultural diversity, and regional industry structure—the USCIS was prompted to approve her EB-1A petition. We congratulate our client for accomplishing this massive goal in the green card process and we wish her the best as she continues to improve the country’s public policy.