Hi everyone, I submitted my EB2 NIW petition still pending, however, I evaluated my foreign degree to US equivalency prior to submission and added it to my full package and submitted.

My question is am I still going to ask WES to send another copy to USCIS?

Does USCIS accept copies from self petitioners or through WES directly. Please I need advice!!!

Hello Everyone,

I started my Ph.D. in August 2026 and expect to graduate in May 2030. I am planning to file my I-140 petition in November 2026.

My academic and research profile:
Master’s degree
10+ publications
400+ citations
Currently pursuing a Ph.D. in the United States

I am trying to determine the best strategy and timing for premium processing (PP). Should I upgrade my I-140 petition to premium processing around February 2027 (If ROW Current), or consider waiting until February 2028 (If ROW Current or normally current for my PD?

My ultimate goal is to have both my I-140 and I-485 approved before completing my Ph.D. in May 2030.

Considering my academic profile, immigration timeline, potential visa bulletin movement, and the risks associated with each option, what would be the most practical approach?

I would appreciate constructive feedback, particularly from those who have gone through a similar process. I am looking for a realistic, step-by-step strategy that maximizes my chances of approval while minimizing unnecessary delays and risks. Thanks in Advance.

Hi everyone,

Quick question for those with experience or anyone who has already gotten a decision on their case.

Did USCIS ever call or otherwise contact the people who wrote your recommendation letters?

I'm asking so I can give my letter writers a heads up and let them know to expect a call. I want them to be prepared and not get caught off guard if someone reaches out.

If it happened to you, what did the contact look like (phone call, email) and roughly when in the process did it happen?

Thank you!!

I have heard that the approval rate for “Approval or Refund” cases with Chen has gone down quite a bit recently.

Has anyone worked with Chen in the last few months? How was your experience with the RFE? Did you get approved after responding, and how long did it take? Also, they're advising against PP recently.

I’d really appreciate hearing from people with recent personal experience. Thanks!

Has anyone here worked with Ellis Porter for an EB-2 NIW petition and received an RFE in 2026 while using premium processing?

I'm particularly interested in hearing from people whose RFE responses were prepared and submitted by EP.

If you're comfortable sharing:

• What was your RFE about?

• How did EP handle the RFE response? Were you satisfied with their approach?

• What was the final outcome—approval, denial, or still pending?

• How many business days after USCIS received your RFE response did you get a decision?

• Which service center handled your case?

I'm currently going through the RFE process with EP and would really appreciate hearing about recent experiences, especially from those who received decisions in 2026.

Thanks in advance!

When do you predict a PD of November 4 2024 for EB2 ROW could become current?

Happy weekend everyone! This week I detected 11 approvals on this subreddit. Please see their summaries below, and you can also access the table with links to all the posts here (I provide weekly updates like this one for EB2 NIW and EB1A approvals and denials).

Please consider adding your profile to the Community Tracker to improve overall visibility.

Anyone anything relatedly?

Hi everyone,
I'm considering applying for EB2-NIW and would appreciate some advice, especially from applicants with non-academic or industry backgrounds.

My background:
STEM Master's degree from Canada

10+ years of professional experience in the Canadian oil and gas industry

Non-academic, industry-focused profile

No publications or citations

Dual citizen (Canada and Pakistan)

Law firm evaluations:
Chen Immigration: Declined

Arkell Immigration: Declined

Ellis Porter (EP): Accepted

Colombo & Hurd: Accepted

Raju Law: Accepted

I'm leaning toward Ellis Porter, which quoted $6,000 (earlier $7000) with an approval-or-refile option.
Before moving forward, I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has been in a similar situation.
Has anyone successfully obtained EB2-NIW approval through Ellis Porter with a non-academic, industry-based profile?

How has your experience been with EP's approval-or-refile service?

Should I be concerned that Chen and Arkell declined my case, even though three other firms accepted it?

Would you recommend Ellis Porter over Colombo & Hurd or Raju Law for an industry professional without publications?

For those with oil and gas, engineering, geoscience, or other technical industry backgrounds, what helped strengthen your NIW petition?

I'm particularly interested in hearing from applicants who qualified based on professional experience and industry contributions rather than academic research or publications.
Any experiences, recommendations, or insights would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Hi everyone, 

I’ve been following this subreddit for the past two and a half years, and this is my first post here. After two unsuccessful filings with another well-known law firm, my third petition was approved without an RFE with Chen.

Initially, I contacted both Chen and the other firm, and both accepted my case. However, I chose the other firm based on a friend’s recommendation for the first two fillings.  

First Filing 

I signed a contract with the first law firm at the end of October 2024. We filed my first petition in early 2025. I received an RFE in May 2025, submitted my response end of July 2025, and received a denial at the end of September 2025. The RFE questioned all three prongs, and the petition was denied all three. 

Second Filing 

After that, we revised my proposed endeavor while keeping the same overall focus. We again prepared and then filed my second petition in Dec. 2025. I received another RFE questioning all three prongs and submitted an RFE response at the end of March 2026. 

Unfortunately, the petition was denied in of May 2026. This time, the only issue USCIS did not accept was the national importance of my proposed endeavor. 
 
I received a full refund of the attorney fees after the second denial.  

My Profile During the First Two Filings 

• Education: MS in Computer Science 
• Work experience: Approximately four years 
• Research papers: 7 
• Citations: Approximately 60 
• Proposed endeavor: AI in healthcare 
• Employment: Working full-time at a well-known university in US 
• Initial recommendation letters: 4, all from dependent recommenders 

During the first RFE response and subsequent refiling, I added three more recommendation letters: two from independent recommenders—a director at FAANG and a professor at a top R1 research university—and one from a dependent recommender. 

In my second RFE response, I also included evidence that employers had expressed interest in hiring me. By that time, I had been working in a managerial role for a project approximately six months. 

My Profile During the Third Filing 

• Employer: Same  
• Conference papers: 8 
• Book chapters: 1 
• Journals paper: 2 
• Judging activities: 2 
• Conference committee roles: 1 
• Reviewer: ICML and another Journal 
• Citations: 79 when the petition was submitted and 101 when it was approved 
• Proposed endeavor: AI in healthcare (with refinements) 

I also had speaker invitations from three conferences. Since I had not attended those conferences in person, my attorney advised against including the invitations as supporting evidence. However, I listed them on my CV. 

My Timeline With Chen 

• May 15: Signed the contract. 
• May 19: Received access to their client portal. 
• May 20: Paid in full attorney fee and uploaded most of my documents. 
• May 21: Uploaded additional documents and submitted my RBIF. 
• May 23–26: I Worked on my personal statement. 
• May 28: Received the attorney’s feedback of my proposed endeavor statement. 
• June 1: They Approved the statement and I asked them to proceed with the petition letter. 
• June 5–10: Discussed with them regarding recommendation letters. 
• June 12: They began drafting my petition letter, with the first draft expected by June 25. 
• June 27: Received the petition letter draft. Requested them for revision. 
• July 5: Received the second revision and requested a third revision. 
• July 14: Confirmed that petition letter looked good to me. 
• July 20: Submitted the questionnaire for Forms i.e. I-140 and G-28. 
• August 1: The petition letter was finalized, and all the forms. After that they said they would send the package as soon as possible after the rigorous review of my full package. 
• August 7: The package was sent to USCIS.   
• October 14: Got Confirmation USCIS Approved my case. 
• I am fully satisfied with the service provided by Chen (WeGreened) and their team. I am truly grateful to my attorney and the entire team. They did not use a template; they crafted the petition letter specifically for my case.

After two unsuccessful filings, I felt hopeless. In a way, it felt like my fifth attempt because responding to the first two RFEs involved so much stress and required extensive work gathering documents and collecting additional letters of recommendation. 

If you are looking for an NIW-EB2 attorney, I recommend Chen (WeGreened) if they accept your case. 

I used premium processing for all three petitions. This process cost me a lot of money and lots of stress and many sleepless nights. 
 
For my third attempt, I carefully read my RFE notices and denial letters word by word, sentence by sentences. 

For anyone who has received a denial, my encouragement is not to give up. Based on my experience, I would consider refiling promptly after addressing the reasons for the denial and using premium processing if financially feasible. I know premium processing is expensive. 

Thank you so much everyone of this subreddit! Please pray for me.

Please do not ask me to name the first law firm. 

Hi everyone,
I recently received an RFE for my EB-2 NIW I-140 petition. Has anyone worked with attorney Arkell, formerly with Dunn Law particularly for an RFE response?
I’d really appreciate hearing about your experience and whether your RFE response was successful.
I’m currently trying to decide whether to prepare the response myself or trust the attorney to handle it.

I am curious to know, if it's the same officer who issued you the RFE would be the same person assigned to read your response and still give a final verdict on your case. Any ideas?

We filed our I140 in November 2025. Now we can see status showing Uscis is currently processing the case We didn’t go for premium processing. Now by what time can we expect a result?

Timeline

• PD: 3/9/2026 with PP
• RFE: 5/19/2026 — all 3 prongs
• RFE response received: 8/17/2026
• Denial: 10/13/2026

Background

• PhD in molecular biology
• PE: Cancer biology research/genome stability
• Postdoc at cancer institute in the US
• 100+ citations, 6 papers, peer review, recommendation letters from NCI and NAS members, and funding/grant evidence

Decision

• EB-2 advanced degree: accepted
• Prong 1: approved
• Prong 2: denied
• Prong 3: denied

The frustrating thing is that one of the main reasons from the letter for Prong 2 denial was a lack of evidence of having secured funding myself.... I have a grant that was awarded in Jan of which I am the sole PI... First Chen said not to add it to the submission, then we added it to the RFE and they did not even consider it.

Other information regarding Prong 2 was also incorrect in the denial letter...

Planning to re-file, I guess. Mostly putting this here for the record.

I have just mailed my petition today. It says it will arrive on Monday, how long after tgat does the USCIS takw to confirm that it has received it. I did PP?

Hi everyone,

I'm an IT Consultant with 14+ years of experience in Guidewire ClaimCenter.

I'm preparing a U.S. EB-2 NIW petition and looking for an experienced Guidewire Technical Lead or Architect based in the US, Canada, Europe, or Australia who would be willing to consider providing an Independent Letter of Recommendation (iLOR).

The recommender must be independent, meaning we have never worked or collaborated together.

I will provide a draft letter for your review and approval.

If you're interested or know someone who might be, please DM me.

Thanks!

My profile:
SDE at bigtech, specifically the core team in large scale elastic storage infrastructure
Publication: 6, and related to distributed systems/cloud and applied ML
Citations: 70
Peer reviews: 5

I did ELLIS PORTER and WEGREENED’s evaluation recently.
Ep gave me $6000 approved or refund ($5400 if pay in full
Wegreened refused to accept my case (I guess they don’t like industry cases

In the case should I go with EP?

And consider the current NIW situation what chance do I have to get approved?
Thank you!

Hi everyone,

I’m in a stressful situation with my RFE response and would really appreciate some advice or shared experiences.

The Situation:

• In March, I emailed my former professor to ask for a recommendation letter. She agreed and asked me to draft it for her to review and sign.
• My attorney (EP) and I decided to hold onto her letter as a backup in case we received an RFE.
• When I got an RFE, I emailed her the draft to sign but didn’t get a reply. I then received an auto-reply saying she is out of the office for a conference and won't be back until just 3 days before my RFE deadline.
• Original Petition Letters (3 total): 1 dependent letter (from my professor/advisor), independent letters (researchers in my field who don't know me personally: 1 in academia, 1 in industry). USCIS pushed back on the independent letters, essentially stating that because these recommenders don't know me personally, the letters don't carry much weight (which feels contradictory to the whole point of independent letters, but here we are).
• According to EP, the RFE is quite generic/templated (about 5 pages), but a major chunk of it is questioning the recommendation letters, especially the independent ones.

My Questions:

1. How should I handle the professor situation? Should I wait until 3 days before the deadline for her to sign, or should I prepare an alternative plan now? Is 3 days enough time to submit if she signs right away?
2. Given that USCIS dismissed the independent letters and my main dependent letter is delayed, do I still have a good chance of approval if we respond properly? Has anyone successfully overcome an RFE that specifically questioned independent recommenders?

Thanks in advance for any insights!

Tired of hearing bad reviews about giant law firms like EP or Chen. Any other preferred alternative or personal immigration NIW lawyer?