I am skeptical of this. If you can’t afford to pay a lawyer, it’s unlikely your accomplishments would qualify you for anything you could self-petition for, especially under this Administration. In fact for some visa categories, commanding unusually high pay is literally one of the qualifying factors. And if your employer is petitioning for you then their lawyer should be helping resolve any challenges. I think EAs are less likely to delude themselves about this sort of thing than most people, but the risk is not zero.
There are exceptions, such as family-based petitions, where your salary history wouldn’t be relevant. But I would advise that this group should steer clear of anything like the extraordinary ability visa’s referenced in the post, because the nature of the group creates an adverse selection problem.
hey thanks for your comment, i think there’s a real point here about adverse selection that i want to engage with - you’re right that ability to pay a lawyer correlates with the kind of profile that clears an O-1/EB-1A bar, and that high compensation is itself a criterion. where i’d push back is on the implication for what i’m doing:
My vision for this side-project is more like a “quick 30mins to tell you some options you might have if you don’t know where to start”, and NOT “i will be your lawyer / i will stand in as your lawyer / i will commit to solving your visa problem in its entirety”!
agreed, it’ll be wonderful if someone already landed a job offer + their sponsoring-org has a legal retainer to / someone fulltime to help navigate visa challenges thoroughly! but unless you work at an established org, often enough, this is not the case!
some people are battling this visa challenge alone in the dark, and these are the people i hope to say some useful things to.
If most people I talk to shouldn’t pursue extraordinary ability visas, then telling them that in 30 minutes is the valuable outcome, not a failure mode. The alternative for someone in that position isn’t “correctly does nothing,” it’s often “spends months and several thousand dollars finding out the slow way,” or “never learns that a completely different route was open to them.” I’d rather be the person who says “your evidence is weaker than you think, and here’s what a lawyer will tell you” than have them arrive at that conclusion after paying for it.
steering clear means people in the hardest position, no employer, no retainer, no idea what exists, get nothing. That seems worse than a 30-minute call that frequently ends in “probably not this, but have you looked at X.”
[revised] my announcement post did lean toward the exciting options and probably set the wrong expectation. I should have led with “most people asking about O-1 shouldn’t file for one, but there are usually other things worth knowing about.”
was hoping to get this out there into the universe! perfect is the enemy of good here :)
Fwiw, as of posting this, I have already chatted with 2 people over a 30min-1hr call and braindumped things like
“have you considered this visa option?” based on their nationality / circumstance
“if you seriously want to try for the O1, you can consider xyz” or like “i think this evidence that you thought qualifies as an O1 criteria, is actually weaker than you think, but you should talk to xyz visa lawyers which i can recommend hopping on a consultation call”
“given that you’re graduating this date, if you want to be on track for xyz visa, consider doing xyz by xyz date and so forth”
counterfactual: and they both expressed “tremendously helpful, thank you for laying out my options (that i haven’t considered before) / scoping what it would look like within a 30min-1hr call!”
I am skeptical of this. If you can’t afford to pay a lawyer, it’s unlikely your accomplishments would qualify you for anything you could self-petition for, especially under this Administration. In fact for some visa categories, commanding unusually high pay is literally one of the qualifying factors. And if your employer is petitioning for you then their lawyer should be helping resolve any challenges. I think EAs are less likely to delude themselves about this sort of thing than most people, but the risk is not zero.
There are exceptions, such as family-based petitions, where your salary history wouldn’t be relevant. But I would advise that this group should steer clear of anything like the extraordinary ability visa’s referenced in the post, because the nature of the group creates an adverse selection problem.
hey thanks for your comment, i think there’s a real point here about adverse selection that i want to engage with
- you’re right that ability to pay a lawyer correlates with the kind of profile that clears an O-1/EB-1A bar, and that high compensation is itself a criterion. where i’d push back is on the implication for what i’m doing:
My vision for this side-project is more like a “quick 30mins to tell you some options you might have if you don’t know where to start”, and NOT “i will be your lawyer / i will stand in as your lawyer / i will commit to solving your visa problem in its entirety”!
agreed, it’ll be wonderful if someone already landed a job offer + their sponsoring-org has a legal retainer to / someone fulltime to help navigate visa challenges thoroughly! but unless you work at an established org, often enough, this is not the case!
some people are battling this visa challenge alone in the dark, and these are the people i hope to say some useful things to.
If most people I talk to shouldn’t pursue extraordinary ability visas, then telling them that in 30 minutes is the valuable outcome, not a failure mode. The alternative for someone in that position isn’t “correctly does nothing,” it’s often “spends months and several thousand dollars finding out the slow way,” or “never learns that a completely different route was open to them.” I’d rather be the person who says “your evidence is weaker than you think, and here’s what a lawyer will tell you” than have them arrive at that conclusion after paying for it.
steering clear means people in the hardest position, no employer, no retainer, no idea what exists, get nothing. That seems worse than a 30-minute call that frequently ends in “probably not this, but have you looked at X.”
[revised] my announcement post did lean toward the exciting options and probably set the wrong expectation. I should have led with “most people asking about O-1 shouldn’t file for one, but there are usually other things worth knowing about.”
was hoping to get this out there into the universe! perfect is the enemy of good here :)
Fwiw, as of posting this, I have already chatted with 2 people over a 30min-1hr call and braindumped things like
“have you considered this visa option?” based on their nationality / circumstance
“if you seriously want to try for the O1, you can consider xyz” or like “i think this evidence that you thought qualifies as an O1 criteria, is actually weaker than you think, but you should talk to xyz visa lawyers which i can recommend hopping on a consultation call”
“given that you’re graduating this date, if you want to be on track for xyz visa, consider doing xyz by xyz date and so forth”
counterfactual: and they both expressed “tremendously helpful, thank you for laying out my options (that i haven’t considered before) / scoping what it would look like within a 30min-1hr call!”