congratulations! how does expedite request work? i am eb4 in r1, Indian origin. my pd is nov 2020 too. i am still waiting for a decision.

congratulations

@Krishna R, congratulations 🎉

@Hijen Hijen Thanks. unfortunately, I don’t know how expedite request work and I am not knowledgeable about EB4. Apologies.

hi Krishna, was your case EB1A self petition?

Yes, I just made a request via Emma. Took some tries.

@Krishna R - Did your case go to a field office ? if yes, which one and how much did it take after that ?

@A T Yes, self petition. @K K I don’t recall but don’t think it did. I was just notified that it got approved few days after filing expedite request based on my need to travel for work that I explained to the officer I was able to reach to after trying quite a lot with Emma to get to a human agent and getting a case ticket.

@K K Yes, I did provide evidence for my then impending work travel and it’s material impact to my company’s revenue. Also, provided evidence that since I am the Chief data scientist and co-founder, I need to be physicall present and represent my company’s technology.

thanks @Krishna R did you use a lawyer to file AOS, AP and EAD? I am wondering whether to use a lawyer or do it myself. also, for I-693, there’s no more expiration date. Do you think one can start the medical process with civil surgeon suo moto and be ready for when the date becomes current?

Nope. Did it myself by following instructions online and on USCIS webpages. Its not complicated but you have to be attentive and make sure to complete the steps well. I carved out a weekend and just worked on it. IMHO the lawyers will not do it themselves either. it will be their paralegals. So unless you want to save time and don’t mind paying, there is no additional skill set being offered by lawyers here. Frankly and I say it with all humility, I thought I did a much better job during self petition for EB-1 A too. I wrote much better letters than the generic ones that lawyers write. But yes, it took time and thinking about how to present everything well. And that makes sense because it’s your story after all and you will know it the best. And, this was before GPT3.5 so now there are no issues. Waste of money to pay someone to write for you at this point.

@Krishna R I recently filed for an EB-2 NIW & I'm considering filing for an EB-1A as well. According lawyers, I have a good chance of approval for EB-2 but not for EB-1A at least 1-2 years. However, I believe I do have a chance for EB-1A. Honestly, I'm not sure what is the selection criteria for eb-1A. I just received my PhD last month & started a job as a research scientist at a well-established Fortune 500 company. I have a recommendation letters from NAVAIR & my advisor, who is a retired scientist from NASA and many more scientists. I also have close to 100 citations & one patent. I know it not enough for eb-1A category , but I'd like to know what’s the selection criteria if anyone has more information other than law firms.

@Farhan Mirza Hey! I don’t think this is as cut and dry as lawyers make it out to be. What I realized doing self-petition is that if you qualify for it, you will usually satisfy 5 criteria not the minimum 3. And then a lot depends on quality of evidence, final merit letters etc. The best way to think about this is to evaluate it subjectively. Are struggling to justify minimum 3 criteria vs qualifying multiple - and take a more qualitative view of things.

@Krishna R Thanks for your valuable information , I will definitely dive more deeper into it.

You are welcome. I can give one example. Take High Salary as a criteria. You need to satisfy that by the job role and show evidence for your particular role in your particular region. So for example, a data scientist making Base Comp of $250 K in San Fransisco may not be “High Salary” but will definitely be if that is the Base Comp in Birmingham or Nashville. Similarly, an epidemiologist in San Francisco’s salary has to be compared to average salary amongst epidemiologists in SF not to all data scientists in SF. You get the idea. My key point is that mindset should be “to build a case based on holistic merit” rather than “have a case based on some pre-existing numeric cut-off”. Hope it helps.

Congratulations!!