RFE Series III: NIW Approved Within One Week of RFE Response

At the beginning of May 2008, we helped one of our clients, Dr. Lee,* get his NIW petition approved after an RFE. With his story, we want to tell our readers and clients that NIW applicants do not need to be too worried if they receive an RFE notice. A well-prepared response may help you get your petition approved.

After obtaining his B.S. and M.S. in mathematics in China, Dr. Lee came to the U.S. and got his M.S and Ph.D. in computer science from a distinguished U.S. university. When he first contacted our office on April 13, 2006, he was seeking employment in the field of biomedical and biotechnology research, focusing on bacterial identification and microorganism detection, which would save millions of lives and billions of dollars in the U.S. Dr. Lee only had four journal publications, including two in Chinese, and a U.S. patent. He did not think his credentials were very strong, but based on our experience, we believed that his petition still had a good chance of being approved if it was well prepared.

We filed Dr. Lee’s NIW petition on December 21, 2006. The petition package included a petition letter; six letters of recommendation, of which one was drafted by an independent recommender; seven co-authored publications; and other supporting documents. But unfortunately, on February 19, 2008—after this petition had been pending for more than one year—we received a request for evidence (RFE) from USCIS.

In the RFE notice, additional evidence was requested to help USCIS evaluate Dr. Lee’s eligibility for a national interest waiver. Specifically, Dr. Lee needed to submit additional evidence that the benefit of his proposed employment would be national in scope and any available additional documentary evidence that, as of the date petition was filed, he had a degree of influence on his field that distinguished him from other scientists with comparable academic/professional qualifications.

We were disappointed to receive the RFE. Our clerk forwarded this notice to Dr. Lee as soon as we received it. The in-charge attorney, Bennett J. Wisniewski, also contacted Dr. Lee at once to prepare the RFE response.

Attorney Wisniewski conducted extensive research on this case and then prepared a tailor-made response package based on Dr. Lee’s specific background and achievements. In the response letter, Attorney Wisniewski addressed the RFE from the following perspectives:

In addition, we enclosed five more recommendation letters from experts, among which four were from independent experts at research universities and national laboratories in America and Germany. These experts excelled in similar fields as Dr. Lee and unanimously recognized his invaluable contributions to U.S. science and technology. We also submitted five more co-authored publications and other documents, including patents, abstracts, and evidence of conference presentations.

We filed the RFE response package at the end of April, before the deadline of May 13, 2008. Only several days later, on May 2, Dr. Lee received the approval notice. He was excited to hear this good news. In an email to Attorney Wisniewski, Dr. Lee wrote:

I am very glad to tell you that my NIW petition is approved after the RFE. I got an email notice yesterday saying that an approval notice has been sent. I can not tell you how excited I was when I got this email notice.

I would like to thank you for all of you excellent work. I know my case is not strong. It is you who help me to persuade the immigration office to approve my case. Without your help, the result might just be to the opposite.

Your hard work and quick responses to my answers deeply impressed me. As a primary example, I would like to review on how quickly you prepare the RFE response. I sent out all additional evidence to you on Tuesday April 22. It arrived to your firm Wednesday the next day. To my big surprise, you completed the response in just two days and had it ready for me on Friday, April 25. This gave me enough time to work on the response during that following weekend. The draft response was great. It hit all the points in my mind. So, I just made minor changes to it. You even made a phone call to me that Friday morning to make sure the evidence we were going to submit is really "additional" instead of duplicates. I could never expect such an excellent and responsible service if it was not you.

I really appreciate your wonderful service on my case. I would not hesitate to recommend you to my friends if possible in the future.”

Our attorneys and supporting professionals were also very happy with the result of Dr. Lee’s case. We attribute the success of Dr. Lee’s application to his cooperation and our firm’s teamwork.

*In order to protect our clients’ privacy, all of their identifying information has been changed.

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An attorney’s expertise and experience play a critical role in an NIW green card application. Our attorneys have extensive experience in NIW applications. In the past 12 years, we have successfully handled thousands of NIW applications with an extremely high overall approval rate.

If you plan to file an NIW application, please send your CV to Attorney Jerry Zhang (info@hooyou.com) for a free evaluation.

Zhang & Associates, PC.

Houston ∙ New York ∙ Chicago ∙ Austin
Tel：1-800-230-7040, 713-771-8433
Email: info@hooyou.com
website：http://www.hooyou.com

(05/20/2008)

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