My Approved EB-2 NIW Process and Timeline | Immigration |experience

hi everyone welcome back to my channel this is cat as the title suggests I got my NW approved recently so I would like to you know share my experience with you all and hopefully this can address some of your concerns if you want to apply the EB to NW as well and if you like such content related to immigration and how you know as a foreigner living in the United States please don't forget to like this video And subscribe to my Channel where I share tips about immigration Career Development and personal growth from a phd's perspective without further Ado let's get started first I think you should decide if you need a lawyer I'm just going to tell you a little bit about pros and cons you know with or without a lawyer so with a lawyer you can leverage their experience and legal team of course and some of them can provide the templates that you need for your application and that can save you a lot of time and energy especially you know you're working a full-time job or you're still in school second having the lawyer would increase the credibility when you apply it because the lawyer will sign the application so the migration officer are just more likely anecdotally to have a favorable decision so of course as we know having a lawyer just means your cost just gets a lot higher right you can quickly Google around how much how much does it cost to have a lawyer represent you applied an thatw application online so of course without a lawyer that saves you a lot of money right um that just goes back to your pocket you act as your own lawyer of course that just also means you have to spend all this energy and time researching first of all how to fill all this application what goes into a e2w application and then you have to make sure you know you don't really make mistakes along the way because it's immigration so one little step can mess up the whole package so that could translate to know maybe longer time to prepare your application um and maybe just a little bit slightly professional because I do trust us phds or people with other Advanced degrees can uh write cover letter and applications as we all wrot papers if you decide to use a lawyer I personally would strongly recommend that compare different lawyers okay finding a good lawyer is so so so important I just really have to stress that a good lawyer can save you time energy and money okay you might be wondering why money because actually each lawyer charge differently that doesn't mean the lower cost lawyer is not as good as or not or maybe even better than the other one who charge a lot on on top of that a good lawyer maybe you know if they complete everything right they've actually even excelled the application they're so experienced with it then you might get approved you know on your first try without additional proof of evidence or even denial and all that at extra time and of course cost because if you have to reapply that's a lot of money when you look for a lawyer you want to make sure that lawyer charge a reasonable cost of course you know they are providing Professional Service they need to charge your the service fee but I've heard some lawyer charge just outrageous mounts okay it's like six times more than what I've paid to my lawyer and second I want you to pay attention that make sure this lawyer really really focus on niw or like you want eb2 NW okay just very much focused on this area instead of this lawyer say oh I'm an immigration attorney I do eb1 I do eb2 I also do family immigration I also do business immigration you know they do everything then I would be a little bit cautious on that next you want to look for the lawyer is who's reputable okay so you can ask for your friends referrals or read their Google online review make sure they they provide decent Services right and lastly I want to say that was more like bonus point because many lawyers they actually don't do that but if this lawyer or their legal team um does have more scientific backgrounds that's really a plus uh to people like us because that means they know potentially um research in general they can read your papers they understand on the surface level what your research is about so they can help you and more personalize your application and your cover letter and of course that kind of circle back to my initial point that just ask around and compare different lawyers you know some Law Firm they might be very large and very welln um but they might not actually be the best um in niw or in your case specifically so let me just give an example I consulted a um I would say relatively large a law firm who specialize in NW okay they have many many attorneys who specialize in NW and eb1 and I kind of just I had a free consultation with them and then they pretty much told me Point Blank that I am not eligible for LW and my case just ended there with them um but of course I had I vetted this law fir already you know I have multiple uh people that I know from my previous Labs have applied in the wb1 through this Law Firm so it's not like they don't know what they're doing it just maybe for my specific case um they think I'm a consultant that's why I'm not qualified also at least I think many lawyers um they don't really charge initial consultation fee when it comes to niw or at least the Asian ones that I've consulted um last year and um they would you know very nicely have a first free consultation with you so please just talk to at least two three lawyers before making a decision who you should use so after you decide you want to use a lawyer you found a good lawyer you signed a contract you may be paid the lawyer fee and then the first step and the most time consuming Step At least from my experience is to gather your reference so for me it took a few month uh last year and of course it depends on you know how fast and just how early you get a response from your reference but the whole idea if we take a step back is to get about three to four references to prove your outstanding contribution to the field to the United States and you know people of course find their references in all different ways for example if you've talked to um people who are in your field at different conferences in grad school post stock or if you've given a poster session or an oral presentation at different seminars um there are people right who are very much interested in your work uh or they even admire what you do um then you may already have those connections then reaching out to those people relatively easy right because you've talk to them and you might already you know had a few email exchanges as well so you know each other a little bit that means they know you or at least they remember you so it's just easier to ask them for a reference than a complete stranger right even in your field in addition they can add their personal touch on their reference letters to really showcase how significant your work is how that benefits their work which is really important for NW cases so for me I probably did the most common method um I didn't really have those contacts so I pretty much just Google Scholars my own name and then I went to my own publication so I went my so I I went through all of my Publications and no matter how old they are because some of them date you know 10 years ago almost because you know I published them when I was um in college then I looked for who cited my papers um and the reason I do that because if they cited your paper that means first um they know about your research your area of expertise and how significant your publication is then I created a list of authors who cited all my papers and for me it's not really a long initial list so to me it was short because I technically cannot use um my country of citizenship which is China and United States so you know there are just a lot of Chinese researchers out there I included of course but to me you know they are definitely not on my initial list I mean unless I'm really really desperate then I could reach out to them and just give it a try so Chinese or American authors who signed my paper kind of maybe accounts for 70% of all the authors that sign in my paper so you know as you can imagine I have to just exclude them that's why my initial list is pretty short second it's better if your references are you know at Professor level um or just more senior level than post talks or graduate students um of course more senior the better right um but again as you can imagine more senior the are more likely they don't respond to your emails right um so I first sent you maybe five or six of those professors so at least they're faculties they're not posts but I want to actually say to my surprise uh throughout this process I didn't realize how nice um professors are if you think about it um if I were a PR prestigious tenure Professor why would I even care a random email in my inbox asking for a reference letter right I am so busy doing my own research and admin stuff you know it's just a lot already going on so it's I really appreciate their response and help also when I emailed them it was last summer um around July so that means summer holidays right and most of them are Europeans um so you know how they take their vacations seriously you know I have very limited choices to be honest so only one person replied maybe within a week and the other three maybe replied after I sent another kind of follow-up email it was very interesting cuz one Professor kind of told me oh I'm going to be in the woods for the next 3 weeks and to write a paper and I will get back to as soon as I can um basically as soon as I'm back but they're all super super nice and again you know one of them was awarded medals by the president of his country you know like it's that prestigious and then he used to be um I think the chairman of National Academy of science in his country and you know like he was willing to be my reference so I was really really honored and then really appreciate his help also um I was really hyped because I actually not only just got four but I got five reference letters um and in the end I have to pick four out of the five I just can't express my gratitude to these amazing amazing researchers who contribute to not only science every day but also is about to change my life and maybe other people's life who they helped by being my reference and it took maybe about six weeks in total to complete all the letters for me at least so it was not really really terrible considering the timing but again it was summertime and then the lawyer and I both pretty much just prepared application package together mostly the lawyer and the legal team uh to me it's more just to think what I've achieved and um um help write the cover letter again the legal team was really really really helpful they have the research background as I mentioned before the bonus points so it was really easy to communicate with them and with their significant help the cover letter was down very fast and very smoothly and then of course the the law firm took it from there all I did was to get a letter to prove that I'm actually employed and by my employer that I claimed oh and pay the USCIS fee which you know it's all just public information um then of course you can choose um on you file you can choose if you want to do premium processing which means you don't have to wait like everybody else your case will be processed within two weeks I think like 14 business days uh but that also means a very steep premium processing fee of 2500 and I think it has increased early this year to 2800 or so so of course I did not use premium processing basically I chose to wait there's a website you can check actually USCIS case processing time I'm I'm just sharing this website here and you can just choose which form you want to check and in my case of course is i140 and which processing center it will tell you how long it takes to process that specific form at that location uh for me I checked back then it says probably like 80% of case processed in 10 month so I applied um late last September so plus 10 month it's it's going to be you know July this year so I was like okay we'll just you know wait I didn't even bother checking my case then earlier this month um May 2024 I got a mail notification by USPS on my you know in my inbox in my email inbox which is something you can you know just sign up with USPS so the USPS just scan your mail and email you what you might be expecting in the mail and I saw there's a letter from USCIS so I was like oh my god um I'm not sure if it is a decision letter so I was kind of I was I was a little bit nervous I would say because there are three scenarios right so one is approval one is denial and lastly you basically have to submit additional information to proove your case r fee just like in the revision for papers that's how I typically talk about those uh so I was really nervous about this so um what happened was I did not check the mail myself um I asked my partner to go out and check it for me I was kind of watching him walk to the mailbox from the window and then watching them come back with a mail and you know it was like he he had such a poker face so I had no idea what was going on and he opened the door and showed a piece of approval notice so I was really really happy about it and of course um we s celebrate that day as well speaking of Celebration I do have more news for you guys so stay tuned to my next announcement video but this pretty much concludes my NW application and timeline um of course I am a Chinese citizen so that just means the way time uh to get actual green card is a whole another problem which I'm not going to elaborate here uh I'm sure all my fellow Chinese and Indians understand my pain but I'm still very glad that my n IW is approved so I can move on if you have any questions please comment below um and I will try to address them if you like such content please thumb up and subscribe to my channel this is cat and I will see you in the next video

Channel: Dr. CatsLab

Views: 4,224

Keywords: immigration, EB-2, NIW, PhD, employment-based sponsorship, visa, green card, usa, experience

Id: 2V-3gPYMn68

Length: 16min 14sec (974 seconds)

Published: Sat May 25 2024