Timothy Finkenbinder’s ‘Simple’ Strategy for Visa Petitions
Timothy Finkenbinder has been practicing immigration law since before the Department of Homeland Security existed. He’s helped secure visas for artists refurbishing the works of Michelangelo, corporate executives on Wall Street, and entertainers at Disney World. With nearly 30 years of experience, Finkenbinder’s legal strategy is often to remind the government to follow its own rules.
Building up immigration know-how
Finkenbinder entered the field in the 1990s, working in the national office of Deloitte, one of the “Big Four” accounting firms. He was tasked with centralizing immigration processing for 2,000 foreign national employees, requiring him to build legal systems at the company from the ground up.
“I spent my days working and my evenings reading immigration law because I just didn’t have a lot of experience,” Finkenbinder said.
That quickly changed after he got to work with some of the most prominent immigration attorneys in the field. The job gave him “massive exposure” to business immigration, including extraordinary ability petitions and national interest waivers.
After Deloitte, he became vice president of a tech consulting firm, which included handling all immigration for the firm. He frequently worked to bring consultants to the United States who specialized in SAP, a software suite used frequently by large corporations. To better understand the technicalities of their work, he decided to become a SAP consultant himself.
“Tech has always been part of my background and business,” Finkenbinder said. “Now we’re moving into AI so I’m getting to learn about that.”
| 💡See what a strong EB-1A case looks like. Looking at examples of successful EB-1A cases can help you better understand how your own background might measure up, what a strong petition really looks like and what it takes to get approved. |
Telling the right story
He applies the same level of technical understanding to immigration law. For example, if he’s presenting a client’s publications or scholarly articles as part of an EB-1A petition, he’ll also include information on their readership, to show the weight of their influence.
Finkenbinder calls this “crossing the Ts and dotting the Is” of the application. But the overall story is also important.
He recently took on a response to a request for evidence (RFE) for a client. He hadn’t worked on the initial EB-1A petition.
“After I reviewed everything that was submitted, I felt that the evidence clearly established that he was a person of extraordinary ability,” Finkenbinder said. “The issue was not so much the evidence, but the officer’s failure to properly apply the evidentiary standards to the evidence.”
Finkenbinder’s response to the RFE was only a few pages. He didn’t submit any additional evidence. But he explained why the already submitted evidence met the criteria. The client was approved.
USCIS officers are supposed to use a “preponderance of evidence” standard to review most immigration cases. That means you have to show your claim is “more likely than not” to be true.
| Standard of proof | What it means | When it’s used |
| Preponderance of evidence | The claim is “more likely than not” or “probably” true | Most immigration proceedings |
| Clear and convincing evidence | The claim is highly probably to be true | Certain citizenship and marriage-related disputes |
| Reasonable doubt | The evidence is so strong you’re convinced the claim must be true | Criminal trials |
“So the question is, does this evidence make it more likely than not that the requirement has been satisfied that our assertions are true? That’s part of the story we try to tell,” Finkenbinder said. “Sometimes with the size of applications that we deal with, that simple story gets a bit lost.”
While the evidence may be technical, when it comes to the story he’s telling to USCIS, Finkenbinder applies a lesson he learned his first week of law school: Keep it simple. Sometimes that means responding to an RFE is just a matter of reminding USCIS officers of the instructions in their operating manuals and the relevant case law.
During his career, Finkenbinder has watched as the former Immigration and Naturalization Services under the Department of Labor transformed into its current iteration under the Department of Homeland Security. He feels it’s become more enforcement-focused over the years, with officers increasingly focused on catching mistakes.
But years of drafting petitions, responding to RFEs, and keeping up with court cases and operations manual updates mean he’s not fazed by much.
“I think all that experience has given me a basis to understand what examiners look for,” Finkenbinder said. “How to present the evidence in a way that can help an examiner get back on track. The examiners know they’re supposed to approve cases. We have to guide them back to the place where they can see why the case should be approved.”
