Extraordinary Ability

The Administrative Appeals Office (AAO) ruled in a recent case that first authorship in articles are not always necessary to establish Extraordinary Ability. The alien had a lot of papers published and "hundreds of citations." However not all papers were first authorship. The Texas Service Center refused to consider those papers.

The AAO wrote:"As modern scientific research endeavors routinely involve collaborative efforts, we find no statutory, regulatory, precedential, or evidentiary basis to conclude that USCIS should not assign weight to collaborative scientific research such as the petitioner's. It could be argued that the director was simply seeking stronger evidence of the petitioner's prominent role in his research studies. However, statements from the petitioner's first-author collaborators submitted on appeal
confirm that he played an integral role in their jointly published research."

Of course, the alien has to have the three criteria out of ten enumerated in the Statute.

The Texas Service Center is out of touch with reality. They had asked me to PROVE that breast cencer research is "National in Scope" for a National Interest Waiver case.

Mr. Roark, I suggest a field trip for your officers. UT Southwestern Medical School, which has four nobel laureates and does tons of research is just a hop skip and jump away from your Stemmons Freeway location. These Officers should probably go and check out how exactly research is done. Also adjudicating officers dealing with "research" based petition should complete an undergraduate degree with some amount of research in College. And maybe a BSC degree will help adjudicators judging Science based petitions, rather than say a major in dance. Where do these officers go to College anyways?

For more information contact Houston Immigration Lawyer or Houston Immigration Attorney, Annie Banerjee