US Immigration Journal - H1B to EB2 NIW

If you understand what the title says, I feel sorry for you. And for myself.

This post records my EB2 NIW journey, as I mailed out my petition package on April 7, 2026.

My H1B stamping interview

Following my last US Immigration Journal article, I scheduled an in-person H1B interview in Shanghai. The visa got approved.

The summer of 2024 in Shanghai was brutal, around 38°C on average. The upside: the Ritz-Carlton next to the Shanghai U.S. Consulate was $250 per night, and that was my first time staying in a luxury hotel.

At the Shanghai consulate, H1B has its own window. While B1/B2 lines were long, the H1B line was short. When I arrived, only three people were ahead of me. Interview times varied, some took 10–20 minutes. When it was my turn, the officer asked who I worked for, what I did, and whether I was faculty. After I answered, she said my visa was approved. It was fast and surreal. Definitely one of the best moments of my life.

I had scheduled four weeks of PTO in case of administrative processing, but it never happened.

After that, I spent time with my family in my hometown and with my partner in Shanghai.

The good old EB2

What is EB2?

EB2 stands for Employment-Based Immigration: Second Preference EB-2. You may be eligible if you are a member of the professions holding an advanced degree or its equivalent, or a person who has exceptional ability.

Long story short, if you have a master’s degree or above and a job, your employer can apply for you. The steps:

Labor Certification (PERM) — currently takes about 14 months as of 2026
1. First you need to get a Prevailing Wage Determination (PWD) from the Department of Labor (DOL).
2. Then your employer need to do Recruitment (Job Posting): prove no minimally qualified U.S. workers are available.
Immigrant Petition (I-140) - once PERM is approved, file I-140. This secures your priority date (PD).
- If you change jobs, your new employer must redo PERM (~14 months again) before file I-140. Your PD stays, but without a new PERM, it’s useless.
- 180 days after I-140 approval, you can extend H1B beyond six years and apply for H-4 EAD for your spouse.
Adjustment of Status (I-485)
- After I-140 approval, you wait until your PD becomes current. This timeline is unpredictable. If USCIS is processing 2025 and your PD is 2026, that does not mean you’ll get a green card in a year. No one knows the wait time.
- Once current, you file I-485 and wait again. Every step has an unknown timeline.

Now, let’s talk about how non-sense and broken this system is. The 3 steps in a nutshell:

PERM: “We have a position and want to hire a foreigner. DOL, is that okay?”
I-140: “We found the person. USCIS, can you check them?”
I-485: “USCIS says yes, now give them a green card so they can work for us.”

The process should start and finish before hiring, as the purpose was hiring a foreign person. Instead, it takes years. No company will do this unless you already work for them. The system is backwards. People don’t get green cards to work, they work to get green cards.

It gets worse. PERM job postings cannot include skills you developed at your current job, because as stated above, the PERM is for your current position, technically, you have not started your job yet. If your employer won’t promote you, your job posting must reflect who you were when hired. So after three years, your job description still looks like a new grad posting. It’s absurd.

My “promised” EB2 sponsorship is gone

The sub-title is false. No one actually promised me anything. I asked HR if EB2 sponsorship was available; they said yes. My department was very supportive, hired a lawyer, and set up meetings. I’m grateful for everything they did. Whenever I asked, they were on my side.

Then on July 29, 2025, I was told the College of Engineering would not support my case. The reason: my situation was not “sufficiently unique or exceptional” under their guidelines. After follow-ups, I was told it wasn’t about title or seniority, engineering staff simply weren’t considered “sufficiently unique or exceptional.” That got me thinking: whose job is, really? With all due respect to academia, to engineering, to the whole society, I don’t see one. Or maybe I see millions. It’s all about narrative.

The irony is top-notch. I graduated from this college. The skills I use were trained here. I work for this college. Yet the work I do isn’t considered “sufficiently unique or exceptional.”

I like my job. In modern society, having meaningful work is a privilege. My work directly supports the robotics education the college provides. Maybe helping students just isn’t “unique or exceptional.”

It is what it is. I decided to pursue NIW myself.

Self-petition EB2 NIW

NIW stands for national interset waiver. It falls under EB2 but waives the PERM requirement and does not rely on an employer.

I reconnected with a middle school friend who is now a successful immigration lawyer in California. After talking with her on August 11, 2025, I started my NIW petition.

My department remained very supportive throughout, helping with verification and recommendation letters. My boss and colleagues were great. I have nothing but good things to say about my department. I’d recommend it to anyone pursuing robotics here. The college itself, meh.

After five iterations of rewriting my petition letter, I submitted my application online on March 25, 2026.

It got rejected the next day.

Rejection is different from denial. Denial means they reviewed your case and said no. Rejection means they didn’t review it, something was wrong with the submission. I called Chase twice to confirm the payment went through. I resubmitted three times. All were rejected the next day. Even though I filed online, USCIS would not post the reason there and insisted on mailing it. After two weeks, the notice arrived. It said: invalid payment.

After digging around and posting online, we figured out it was an issue with the online portal. I switched to mailing the application.

Now I wait. Life sucks but we roll with it. Thank you for reading.