Building Your Case For Extraordinary Ability

Extraordinary Ability Visa or Green Card

The tips below will help you collect the right evidence for an O-1 temporary visa or building toward an EB-1A immigrant visa petition, even before you meet with an immigration attorney. If you are early in your career and just starting to earn professional accolades and recognition at the national or international level, this guide will help you establish good habits for documenting a future case. If you are in O1 visa status already, it will help you create a stronger foundation for a residence case. A complete case strategy should always be discussed with counsel, and tailored to your professional field and the nature of your accomplishments, as USCIS adjudication trends, patterns and non-precedent case law change frequently.

1. DO Keep Your Resume or Curriculum Vitae up to Date

Your resume or curriculum vitae + publications list is an essential building-block in your case. Remember,  it is not evidence of your achievements, but a resume or CV provides a handy index of what you have accomplished. Include all employment in your field, paid work and volunteer service. Include professional awards and prizes given to you individually by name. Include service on prize juries, editorial boards, conference committees, and as an ad hoc peer reviewer, as well as professional association committees or task forces. Include scholarly publications you have authored which have been published by a journal, trade periodical, or book publisher. Include any publications by an arms’ length publisher about you and your work, such as press interviews, review articles and editorials about your work. Include citations to and discussions of your work in publications by others. Include solo and group performances and exhibitions. What is relevant will vary widely depending on your field. Do not make exaggerated claims that can be disproven by a diligent fact-checker. Remember that your resume is not evidence of your achievements; it is a statement you make on your own behalf, and it serves only as a guide, like an index, timeline or catalogue for the other evidence you may provide. For those in academia and the sciences, keep a current bibliography and citation index as well as full reprints of articles by others that discuss your work at length.

2. DO Keep a Chronological File Documenting Your Accomplishments

Be a pack rat. Keep original evidence of any professional recognition, particularly anything from beyond the four walls of your employer, such as conference agendas and programs from public speaking engagements, reprints and reviews of your publications, prize certificates and award letters (with copies of any accompanying check, gift card or monetary award), recognition of committee service from professional organizations, and thanks for peer reviews you have completed for journals or conferences. Again, what is relevant will vary widely depending on the nature of your work, but the letter “P” is a good place to start: Prizes, Press coverage about your work, Publications by you (include refereed journal articles, editorials, op-ed, trade & general press, books, etc.), Peer review by you of scholarly journal articles by others, published reviews authored by you of books or artworks by others, Publications by others citing and discussing your work, Patents, Programs (from performances, exhibitions, award ceremonies, conferences, etc.), and Paystubs – if you are paid significantly more than others in your field. Any published material must show the name & date of the publication, and author’s by-line if there is one. You will need at least three different types of evidence. Self-published material and press releases don’t count.

3. DO Get Translations

Any documents in a foreign language submitted to USCIS in support of a visa petition must be accompanied by complete, notarized English translations, with a sworn oath of accuracy by the translator. The translator may be anyone other than the beneficiary or petitioner, so you cannot do the translations yourself, nor should evidence be translated by anyone in your family, but use of AI tools to provide automated translations may be accepted, if you disclose what tool was used. Any translations of press clippings, reviews & journal articles must include the date, issue, and name of the periodical, as well as the author’s name, and title as well as full text of the article or column. Keep clippings of any original articles by you or about you that show the full article, the name, date & issue number of the publication together with the translations.

4. DO Identify & Update Professional Contacts, and Stay in Touch

Most extraordinary ability and national interest petitions must be supported by expert testimonial letters confirming your accomplishments and what they signify to others, preferably from people with authority to comment in detail on the nature and specifics of your work, as well as its impact and the influence you have had on others in your field and related fields. These letters are NOT “references;” general praise is almost useless in the immigration context – they are testimony, and should be content-specific to each writer, based on how they know of you and your work, offering that person’s perspective on what you have contributed to the field.

Most of the letters should be from people outside of your present employer. Hopefully, some will be colleagues who first met you or contacted you through professional channels because they heard you give a talk, saw or heard you perform, read a publication by you or about your work, used or purchased a product you developed, etc. Experts may include past employers, professors, or colleagues, clients, counterparties to major deals or transactions, editors, critics, curators, colleagues at other companies who have served on panels or committees with you, etc. Expert testimonial letters should be on the writer’s professional letterhead and accompanied by their resume, CV, or bio.

5. DON’T Use a Template

Testimony in support of a visa petition should be unique to each writer; they are only persuasive where each letter offers something different. Each writer should identify their credentials, level of experience or expertise in the field, and the basis of their authority to comment on your work, before discussing your particular achievements, the quality of your work, and explaining how you have influenced the field. Distributing the same sample or template to all your peer experts can be the kiss of death to a case that might otherwise succeed: if all your testimonial letters contain an identical paragraph or sentence, that undermines the credibility of all of them. Writers should focus on what distinguishes you professionally, and what impact your work has had on those in the field, beyond your own teachers, employers and clients. A strong case cannot be built on expert letters alone. Objective evidence is essential to support and corroborate factual statements made in the testimonial letters. Peer experts should be advised that USCIS adjudicators may contact them  directly to verify the contents of letters submitted.

6. DO Identify the Appropriate Peer Group(s)

A temporary O-1 visa petition must be accompanied by a peer advisory consultation letter from a labor union, peer group, or individual expert in the field. If there is a labor union governing the type pf work you do, their letter must consent to the employment offered to you in the U.S.  All peer advisories must confirm that you meet the relevant standard as “extraordinary”.  In the performing arts, which labor unions must be consulted for O-1B classification will depend on the type(s) of work offered in the petition. In film or television, at least two unions must be consulted, one for labor and one for management. More may be required if your talents are diverse: acting, writing, directing, camera work and producing each require an advisory from a different union.  In other fields, if there is no labor union governing work in your occupation, then a relevant professional society, institution or trade organization with the right expertise may be consulted. If there is no such peer group, e.g., if you work in a field that is interdisciplinary, or brand new, or small and arcane, then individual experts should be consulted. Discuss this with counsel, as obtaining the peer advisory consultation is one of the last steps before an O-1 petition can be filed.

7. DO Continue to Build on a Strong Foundation

You can never be too extraordinary or have too much evidence, so keep aspiring to do more, whether that means getting your work published by reputable periodicals, conferences, or book publishers, performing, submitting your work to prestigious juried competitions, or developing new products, technologies, or business processes. A big trove of documents can always be winnowed to use the strongest evidence. For example, if you already have a lot of press clippings about your work, then identify those articles in the largest major media publications or refereed journals with the highest impact factor, which mention you by name and discuss your work favorably and in great detail. If you already have an O-1 visa, especially in the arts or film, keep in mind that the standard for the EB-1A immigrant visa is much higher, so documents that were sufficient for an O-1 petition may not be enough for a green card.

8. DON’T Use Vanity Press

USCIS is justifiably skeptical of paid press placements, and good at identifying them. They will also discount or dismiss press releases republished verbatim by news outlets, and any self-published material. Paid placements are a waste of money. Press releases should be clearly identified as such. Self-published material should only be submitted where accompanied by evidence of paid subscribers,  audience size and demographics.

9. DO Prioritize Substance over Form

Evidence of any scholarly publications you have authored in peer-reviewed journals should be submitted in the form of full authorized reprints or preprints, not abstracts. Likewise, editorials about your work, review articles by others discussing your work, and new articles detailing work by others that builds upon your discoveries or innovations should also be submitted in the form of authorized reprints or preprints. However, if you work in the arts, or a non-academic business discipline, there may be  scholarly articles authored by you, or articles about your work authored by others, in major media or trade publications whose editorial policy and practice omits footnotes and does not entail peer review. A work is “scholarly” by virtue of its content based on original research and analysis, and its intended audience, not on the basis of its format.