On May 31^st, 2016, and August 31^st, 2016, we received another EB-2 NIW (National Interest Waiver) and EB-1A (Alien of Extraordinary Ability) approval for a Postdoctoral Associate in the Field of Developmental Biology (Approval Notice).

General Field: Developmental Biology

Position at the Time of Case Filing: Postdoctoral Associate

Country of Origin: China

Service Center: Texas Service Center (TSC)

State of Residence at the Time of Filing: Florida

Approval Notice Date: May 31^st, 2016 (EB-2 NIW) and August 31^st, 2016 (EB-1A)

Processing Time: 13 Days (EB-2 NIW) and 21 Days (EB-1A, Premium Processing Requested)

Case Summary:

A postdoctoral associate from China hired North America Immigration Law Group (NAILG) to help him and his spouse obtain their green cards. The first step involved filing an I-140 petition. Our client wanted to increase his chances of obtaining an I-140 approval and thus, filed two petitions: one under EB-1A (Alien of Extraordinary Ability) and another under EB-2 NIW (National Interest Waiver). He chose to file his EB-2 NIW first and to our surprise, the USCIS only spent 13 days adjudicating the case before granting their approval (it usually takes them between 4-9 months). Nearly 2.5 months later, we filed our client’s EB-1A petition and upgraded it to Premium Processing (PP) 12 days in. This time around, our client waited 21 days in total for the USCIS to take action on his case. Either way, we are pleased that our client obtained two petition approvals.

The field of developmental biology has seen plenty of progress since our client started investigating and clarifying the ways defects that arise during cellular and organ development cause many disorders, ranging from autism to Down syndrome to muscular dystrophy, in addition to work on a novel biomarker and drug target for lung cancer. We demonstrated that his findings help us understand how a single cell develops into a multicellular organism, how the behavior of cells at a molecular level contributes to development, how normal cells develop into cancer cells, and how those cancer cells survive and grow to become cancer tissue. These breakthroughs advance the US medical sector in terms of cancer treatments and therapies. According to an influential member of the field—one who contributed a recommendation letter to support both our client’s EB-1A and EB-2 NIW petitions—our client’s many years of experience “…have undoubtedly played a part in honing his technical skills to a level that enables him to produce such remarkable work.”

Besides recommendation letters and details on his research, our client’s petition packets contained data on the 125 times his work was cited by other researchers, the 30 times he conducted peer reviews for various scientific journals, and the 11 publications to his name. Another one of our client’s recommenders had this to say about his experience: “… [Client’s] body of published work, as well as a review of his professional accomplishments… mark him as an unusually gifted member of the developmental biology community.”

Taking the final step towards green card success:

Our client and his spouse are now taking the final step towards their green cards. They retained our I-485 services to help them adjust their status for permanent residence. Once we get everything in order, we will file their I-485 applications and join them as they await a favorable outcome from the USCIS. In the meantime, we wish our client the best with his continued research efforts and thank him for choosing our law firm.