O‑1A Founder Case Study: How an Indian Analytics Manager Got Approved After a Layoff

One of Manifest immigration attorney Avalon L. Paul's latest clients had spent close to a decade as a supply chain and analytics manager at a global pharmaceutical company. When the two first met, the client told her how they rebuilt the way the company tracked its logistics, and how other companies later adopted their work.

Like many of the people she consults with, the client had plenty of impressive accomplishments. But Paul had to ask the question many O-1 visa petitions eventually come down to. "Wonderful, but where’s the proof?" she told them.

On top of that, the client had recently lost their job, which meant they had a few weeks to find another way to stay in the U.S. For Paul, that meant building a record with limited materials on a tight timeline.

For foreign workers, a layoff means more than a lost job

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, foreign workers in the U.S. on temporary visas must keep a valid status to remain in the country. The client, an Indian national on an H-1B visa, was no exception. Because their visa was tied to their employer, the layoff ended the basis for their legal status and gave them a grace period of up to 60 days to find a new job or another way to stay.

By the time the client first sat down with Paul for an urgent consultation, they wanted to file for another H-1B visa through the company they had founded, with its chief operating officer signing the petition as their employer. The route is less common than sponsorship by an outside employer, but it lets the client keep working in the U.S. on their own venture.

But Paul saw a stronger record and realized the client didn't have to rely solely on the H-1B. "I said, hey, you have the foundation for an O-1A application," she said. In Paul's view, the client's record, including a platform other companies had adopted, already pointed toward the O-1A's evidentiary criteria. The visa also offered something else: more flexibility to work on their ventures without the need of a traditional employer sponsor.

The client chose to pursue both, one at a time. The H-1B came first, filed through another law firm, so the client could keep working for their own company. Then came the O-1A with Manifest, which also solved a practical problem with travel. “H-1B visa stamping in India is really still very much atrocious," Paul says, referring to lengthy timelines for getting an appointment. "But wait times for the O-1 are much shorter."

After USCIS approved the H-1B in January 2026, Paul got to work on the O-1A petition.

Building a case from what was left

To get approved for the O-1A visa, USCIS asks applicants to prove they are at the very top of their field. “It's all about distinguishing yourself,” Paul says. “For example, if there are 2,000 software engineers applying for an O-1, why are you different?"

For the client, the answer was a single piece of work. Three years into their job, they had built the company's first end-to-end supply chain analytics platform. Before it existed, the logistics team worked from scattered spreadsheets, manual data pulls, and performance numbers that didn’t match from one report to the next.

The client’s platform replaced about six separate software programs with one product that consolidated everything from data intake to dashboard reporting. In addition, their system added cost analysis, transit-time analysis, scenario simulations, and forecasts of what was likely to fail. To this day, the pharmaceutical company that laid off the client still uses their system. But because they no longer owned the product, they could only provide slide decks and screenshots of internal emails.

Paul pushed the client for a redacted copy of the system framework itself, and together they obtained one. They also gathered letters from former supervisors and a senior executive who described how the client’s platform massively improved operations. The reason? Paul wanted more from those letters than confirmation of a job title. "The government doesn't care about employment verification letters," she says. "They want to make sure that while you were working there, you did something that was so extraordinary."

Then she made the gap part of the argument. The former employer had what Paul calls an "ironclad" confidentiality agreement. She put it in the petition with the relevant sections highlighted, so the officer could see why most of the client's work could not be shared outside the company. "Now we're able to ... explain that gap as to why the majority of the corroborating evidence wasn't there," she says.

Overcoming a visa sponsorship issue

The client's O-1A petition also had to show they weren't filing for their own visa. Unlike the EB-1A or EB-2 NIW Green Card categories, which let applicants petition for themselves, the O-1 requires a U.S. employer or a U.S. agent to file on the applicant's behalf. Because the client owned the company they would work for, they could not sign their own petition.

To address this issue, Paul filed the petition through an O-1 visa agent. The client wrote a business plan of just over 10 pages and an itinerary of weekly duties, and at Paul's urging built a website where customers could book services. W-2s, tax returns, and an HR letter placed the client's old salary in the employer's highest pay bands, and government wage data supported Paul's argument that the pay sat above the 90th percentile for the occupation.

Responding to pushback from USCIS

Paul and her client filed in March 2026. The O-1A petition submitted was about 210 pages and argued for three criteria: original contributions, a critical role, and high remuneration.

Twenty days later, USCIS issued a request for evidence that accepted none of the criteria Paul and her client argued for. An O-1 RFE like that can look like a reason to start over with new criteria and new evidence. This client had neither to offer, because the same missing records that limited the petition to three criteria left nothing to support a fourth. So Paul framed the RFE response by tying the three initial criteria around what made the client different from every other manager with the same title.

Paul and her client included a new role description that demonstrated how the client's duties differed from a typical manager's. She also submitted additional wage data that tied the client's pay to their specific occupation code, which further backed the salary claim. Lastly, Paul and her client submitted an independent expert opinion that explained why the platform was original in the field.

In her opinion, Paul believes this independent expert letter was one of the most important things in the RFE response. The letter, she says, "came into play to really demonstrate and discuss why" the client's work "was so original."

The final RFE response came close to 144 pages—over half the size of the initial O-1A petition. Because the case had premium processing, the decision came within weeks, and the final outcome was favorable. USCIS approved the petition, with no further RFEs.

About Avalon Paul, Manifest immigration attorney

Avalon L. Paul is an immigration attorney at Manifest Law with over 10 years of experience in business and family immigration. She was named to the Top 40 Under 40 and Top 100 lists by The National Black Lawyers in 2025 and 2026, respectively.