O1 visa bar
People on O1 visa ... Can you tell me how difficult was it to get the visa ? What's the bar ? Just collecting some data points. Especially interested in those cases where people got because of publication and citations ... How many citations did you need ? #workvisa #h1b #rfe #o1 #faang #amazon #apple #google #netflix #meta #uber #lyft #airbnb #microsoft #spotify
It’s relatively easier.
I was on O1 visa twice. Had 40 citations and 5 patents at the time.
What else did your lawyer use ? If you don't mind me asking that is .... Or was that it ?
Talk to Chen immigration. What’s your profile? I can let you know
Why not NIW instead of O-1 ..requirements are the same & NIW gives you GC directly?
1. Eb2 niw doesn't give you gc directly if you're Indian 2. In order to get national interest waiver, you need to work on some federal funded initiative like DARPA, IARPA etc
Wife got it earlier this year for a big pharma company. She has a PhD, H-index of 11, somewhere close to 800 citations. It is not all about citations but also some strong recommendation letters from industry/academia experts. The immigration attorneys play a big role from what I understood to make your case strong.
I got an o1 as a tech founder to go work for my own US company as an employee. No phD or masters, no publications really aside from some tech press and a modest $1m seed round. 01 really starting to open up for non technical founders with a half decent company in the works
Hey, Can you provide some more insight on this? I lost my Job in Meta (H1B with an approved I140 (EB2 2015)), has 20yr of exp. I am tired of living under this constant uncertainty and want to see if I can move to O1 visa and can work on my startup idea.
Hey! Sure thing - sorry to hear about the layoff. problem with the O1 is that you need to be “petitioned” from a US company, that you can indeed own but need to be “fireable” from. So, starting your own company probably wouldn’t work if it’s the early days. In my situation, I was hired as “vp of sales” by my cofounder, and I can’t be on the board or have overarching control of the operations of the company. Also, that startup needs to be proven as “established” based on the criteria of the o1 - for us that was showing we were in an accelerator and that we raised venture capital (my lawyer says rule of thumb is the $1m raised mark for it to be considered “impressive” enough for USCIS). Specifically, criteria of “membership” = accelerator, and “rewards” = Seed round of $1m.
DM me if you need judgment.
O1 has lesser bar than EB1. Normally 4-5 (2-3 first author) pubs with > 50 citation will do (considering you are in comp science). Only part is you need to get 2-3 recommendations from people whom you haven’t worked with. Normally people get it from authors of papers who have cited your paper in a significant way.
If you are on O1 can you tell me your paper count and citations ?
I was in O1. Got it in 2020. I had 13 papers > 300 citations. But my lawyer did mention this at that time.