US Immigration Journal - NIW Approved
Long story short, my EB2 NIW approved! Although didn’t really change anything for now, but dobby is 0.5% free.
| Milestones | Dates |
|---|---|
| First time contact my lawyer | Aug 11, 2025 |
| First rough draft sent to my lawyer | Sept 27, 2025 |
| 5 iterations of re-drafting the petition letter | |
| 1st time online submitted | March 25, 2026 |
| 1st submission was rejected | March 25, 2026 |
| 2nd time online submitted | March 31, 2026 |
| 2nd submission was rejected | April 1, 2026 |
| 3rd time online submitted | April 6, 2026 |
| 3rd submission was rejected | April 7, 2026 |
| 1st time mail-in mailed thru FedEx | April 8, 2026 |
| 1st time mail-in I-797 receipt date | April 10, 2026 |
| EB2 NIW I-140 Approved! | June 4, 2026 |
I filed with I-907 Premium Processing. For more details about why I got 3 rejections and the filing fees, please check my last post US Immigration Journal - H1B to EB2 NIW.
In my case, my background helped me a lot.
- I am very lucky that I studied robotics and started my career in robotics, a field that clearly aligns with national interest and is directly mentioned in White House documents.
- I am very lucky that I am also in robotics education, and own a real project that actually got deployed.
These 2 points carry way more weight these days compared to how NIW used to work.
I think the time has changed. EB2 NIW used to be the secondary EB1 — when people weren’t quite good enough for EB1 but were heading that way, they’d use NIW to secure a priority date. I think those old “good” times have come to an end, yet law firms have not updated their templates. Meanwhile, big companies are failing on EB2 PERM, so the pool of NIW applicants grows bigger, while the law firms’ strategies get weaker, ultimately causing the NIW pass rate to drop drastically.
I believe from now on, NIW will more and more strictly align with the USCIS guidelines — no longer the secondary EB1, but a completely different path.
For example, a PhD in mathematics with high citations, currently working in quant — a very promising and common career path — used to be fine for an NIW petition, but no longer makes sense. Because one can argue math is important for national interest, but working in trading? That’s not a complete story.