EB-1A Case Study: How Manifest Law Helped a Statistical Forecaster Respond to an RFE
Fast Facts
- Matter type: RFE response for initial EB-1A petition
- Client profile: Statistical forecasting specialist focusing on pharmaceutical supply chain modeling
- Industry: Technology / Pharmaceutical
- Country of birth: India
- Location: Applying from within the United States
- Core obstacle: The RFE only granted one out of four criteria pursued, and the attorney had to work off the existing evidentiary record already provided to USCIS
- Strategy focus: Contextualized submitted evidence with more documents, and include proof of open-source adoption data to show the client’s impact in their field
- EB-1A criteria pursued:
- Membership in associations requiring outstanding achievements of their members
- Original contributions of major significance in the field
- Authorship of scholarly articles in professional journals or major media
- Judging the work of others in the field
- High salary relative to others in the field
- Lead attorney: Myron Morales
- RFE: The original self-filed I-140 received an RFE.
- Filed date: October 7, 2025
- Approved date: November 3, 2025
Who was the client?
The client was an H-1B holder who worked as a statistical forecasting specialist for a pharmaceutical company. Their job was to build predictive systems that would help drug manufacturers predict supply shortages and alternatives, to prevent medicines from running out. They wanted to pursue an EB-1A Green Card because they felt tied down to their single employer, and worried their child would be unable to continue studying in the U.S. if their H-4 status expired.
Before they came to Manifest, the client filed the initial I-140 petition independently, and argued for five criteria. They received a Request for Evidence from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that claimed they only met the high salary requirement. Therefore, the client sought our services to help with the RFE response.
The problem: What made this case challenging?
- The client self-filed their I-140, and USCIS accepted only one of the five criteria they pursued. The RFE set a firm deadline, which left the client with a short window to gather new documents and respond.
- The client did not clearly define their field in their self-field petition. The original I-140 filing did not explain what made the client’s achievements significant within their specific field, which left the reviewing officer without the context needed to evaluate the remaining four criteria.
Inside Myron Morales’ EB-1A RFE response strategy
For Manifest immigration attorney Myron Morales, Requests for Evidence should be met with a measured response. In this case, rather than introducing a slew of new documents that could gather unwanted scrutiny, he drew from the client’s existing I-140 petition and only added new material to cover a specific gap requested.
“In several RFEs I’ve handled, an immigration officer only asks the petitioner to provide a specific item, or wants you to clarify how the dots connect between the proof you’ve submitted and the EB-1A criteria. They’re not asking you to send in a new application with an entirely different set of documents, and that’s a big mistake I see when people try to handle responses on their own.”
Below is a more detailed breakdown of how Myron approached this case.
Contextualized field so an immigration officer could understand it
In his evaluation of the client’s initial I-140 filing, Myron knew the client had included evidence of their extraordinary ability for five criteria, such as scholarly articles they published. However, they did not contextualize it with its impact. That left the immigration officer with too many questions, which led to them only granting the high salary criteria.
In the RFE response, Myron first made sure the reviewing officer would easily understand why the client’s work mattered: They had taken a forecasting model used in finance and applied it to pharmaceuticals, so that companies could predict demand for medicine and adjust their supply accordingly. This was considered highly innovative in the field, as it allowed major pharmaceutical companies to better predict where supply shortages would happen and what to use as alternatives.
Myron explained that shift in plain terms, which gave the officer the context needed to weigh the evidence that followed.
Documented impact in the industry
Myron also instructed his client to gather evidence that further contextualized how their work impacted the field they operated in. For example, the client had published the structural framework of their forecasting model on GitHub. In the RFE response, Myron submitted the number of forks and stars—measurements of the number of times the code was re-used or liked, respectively—on that repository to provide measurable proof that practitioners across the industry were building on the client’s work.
For some of the criteria, Myron also asked his client to provide documents that further contextualized the prestige of their achievements. To meet the scholarly articles criteria the officer questioned, he and his client assessed each publication against journal impact factors, quartile rankings, and their citation rate. And if a particular ranked lower by those measures, they provided proof that a well-regarded academic publisher had selected the article, using the publisher’s editorial standards as a secondary marker of quality.
Key evidence that supported this case
| Evidence type | Details |
|---|---|
| Field definition research | Documented the absence of prior technology in the client’s specific subfield, establishing the client as the first to develop it and supporting the field leadership framing across multiple criteria. |
| Citation records | Citation counts from academic databases showing which researchers were citing the client’s work and whether they were recognized figures in the field. |
| Journal and publisher assessment | Impact factor, quartile ranking, and H-index data for each publication, supplemented by publisher reputation where journal rankings were lower. |
| Conference invitation records | Documentation of invitations to present at professional conferences, as well as each conference’s standing in the field. |
| Open-source repository metrics | Fork and star counts from a public code repository showing that practitioners had adopted the client’s forecasting framework, providing adoption metrics independent of citations. |
| Professional membership documentation | Admissions committee composition, member credentials, and membership requirements for the qualifying association, showing that recognized experts had evaluated and admitted the client. |
Outcome
The EB-1A RFE response was filed on October 7, 2025, and approved on November 3, 2025. The petition did not receive a second Request for Evidence.
Why this result mattered for the client
With the approval, the client could file for an adjustment of status. Once they receive a Green Card, they and their child will be able to remain and work in the U.S. indefinitely.
Related FAQs
What should you do if your EB-1A petition receives an RFE?
An RFE is a request for specific information, not a rejection of the petition. The most important step is to read the government’s questions carefully and answer each one with targeted evidence rather than resubmitting everything in the file.
In this case, the client had done solid work on the original petition but had not explained what made their achievements significant within their specific field. Morales identified what was missing and built the response around filling those gaps precisely.
Why does defining the field of endeavor matter for EB-1A?
The field definition determines the standard against which USCIS measures extraordinary ability. A broad or vague definition makes it harder for a reviewing officer to assess whether the petition crosses the threshold.
Morales narrowed the field definition to pharmaceutical statistical forecasting technology, which allowed him to show that the client was not just a practitioner in a general discipline but a pioneer who had built foundational tools that the industry had adopted.
What counts as evidence of original contributions of major significance?
Published articles alone are generally not enough to satisfy this criterion. USCIS wants to see that the field has responded to the work, which means looking beyond the scholarly record.
In this case, Morales used citation data, conference invitations, and open-source repository metrics to show that researchers and practitioners were actively building on the client’s methods. That demonstrated field-wide adoption rather than individual productivity.
About Myron Morales, Manifest immigration attorney
Myron Morales focuses on employment-based immigration, including EB-1A, EB-2 NIW, and O-1 cases. Before joining Manifest Law, he clerked for a district court and built his practice across some of the largest immigration firms in the United States and Canada.
