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*Applies to employment and personal injury matters. Employment-based immigration visa matters are not handled on a contingency fee basis.
Employment-Related
Immigration Visas
Grimberg Law PC assists individuals and employers with employment-based immigration visas, including EB-1 and O-1 petitions.
If your work is recognized in your field, U.S. immigration law has categories built specifically for you. They are narrow, and they are also more accessible than most people assume, because two of the best ones do not require an employer to sponsor you.
THE FIRST DECISION: PERMANENT OR TEMPORARY
Employment-based visas divide into two tracks.
Immigrant visas lead to lawful permanent residence. The employment-based preference categories are ranked, and the first preference, EB-1, covers what the statute calls priority workers.
Nonimmigrant visas are temporary. The O-1 is the temporary counterpart for people with extraordinary ability.
These two are closely related by design. The O-1 nonimmigrant category requires very similar evidence to the EB-1 employment-based extraordinary ability category. Many people qualify for both, and the choice is strategic rather than obvious.
EB-1: PRIORITY WORKERS
The EB-1 category includes three types of workers, all of whom are exempt from the labor certification requirement.
That exemption is the headline. Labor certification is the slow, employer-driven process most employment-based categories require. EB-1 skips it entirely.
1. Persons of extraordinary ability
Extraordinary ability covers the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics. The standard is high: these are noncitizens who have risen to the very top of their fields.
Eligibility can be established two ways: a one-time internationally recognized award, such as a Nobel Prize, an Oscar, or a Pulitzer; or combined evidence of lesser international or national recognition.
The second route is the one most people use, and it is where cases are won and lost.
Two features make this category unusually valuable. Noncitizens in the extraordinary ability category do not require a job offer from a U.S. entity, and they can self-petition. You are not dependent on an employer's willingness to sponsor you, and you are not tied to one job.
2. Outstanding professors and researchers
Internationally recognized professors and researchers with at least three years of experience are eligible if they have an offer of employment from a prospective U.S. employer.
Note the difference: this category does require a job offer. It also does not require labor certification.
3. Multinational executives and managers
Intracompany transferees are eligible if they function at a senior level in an organization. In many respects this category mirrors the L-1 intracompany transferee nonimmigrant visa.
WHAT EXTRAORDINARY ABILITY ACTUALLY MEANS
The regulations define extraordinary ability as a level of expertise indicating that the individual is one of those few who have risen to the top of the field of endeavor.
There is limited precedent interpreting that phrase, but the controlling decision established two principles that pull in opposite directions, and both matter to how a petition is built.
Adjudicators cannot invent requirements
Immigration authorities have denied petitions by reasoning that published scholarly articles are not automatically evidence of sustained acclaim, and that supervising doctoral candidates is not persuasive evidence of acclaim beyond one's own university.
That reasoning was rejected on review. The regulations specifically list publications and judging the work of others among the qualifying types of evidence, and an adjudicator may not add criteria not found in the regulations.
If your petition was denied on a rationale that does not appear in the regulations, that is a recognized problem, not a dead end.
But you still have to satisfy the criteria that exist
In that same matter the denial was nonetheless upheld, because the petition did not contain three types of evidence as the regulations require.
Both halves are true at once. Adjudicators are constrained to the regulations. You still have to meet them.
USCIS instructs adjudicators to conduct a two-step analysis: whether the evidence meets the regulatory requirements, and whether the totality of the evidence demonstrates extraordinary ability. The interpretation of these criteria has narrowed, and the treatment of this standard remains an unsettled area.
O-1: THE TEMPORARY ROUTE
The O category covers athletes, entertainers, and performers, and others in the arts, sciences, business, or education, who have exhibited extraordinary ability demonstrated by sustained national or international acclaim.
O-1 is the principal visa.
O-2 is for people accompanying and assisting an O-1 artist, athlete, or performer for a specific event. An O-2 holder must be an integral part of the performance, have critical skills and experience with the O-1 that are not of a general nature and cannot be performed by others, and maintain a foreign residence they have no intention of abandoning.
O-3 is for spouses and children.
An O visa is available initially for three years, with the possibility of one-year extensions.
WHY PEOPLE COME TO US ABOUT THIS
Two reasons, usually.
I don't have a Nobel Prize, so I don't qualify. The one-time major award is one route. Combined evidence of national or international recognition is the other, and it is the ordinary path.
My employer won't sponsor me. For EB-1 extraordinary ability, they don't have to. You can self-petition.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU CALL
1. A conversation about your background and what recognition you can document.
2. An honest read on which category fits, or whether none does. We would rather tell you that on the first call.
3. If we take it, we handle the petition.
Call (818) 578-4969.