Immigration Site

I am planning to file EB2-NIW concurrently very soon. I am from Nepal. I was wondering if I am qualified for NIW. My qualifications are the following:
1. PhD (USA, research in a DOE operated national lab).
-Now a postdoc at the same lab but funded by different university.

2. I have one publication, as a first author, in "Science" which is cited 13 times so far (excluding self citation). Several university/national labs released press releases on this publication. A professional Science Writer published an article on "Physics Today" on the content of the same "Science" paper.

3. As a third author I have 1 publication in Physical Review Letters (PRL). I also have 9 publication in PRL and 1 in Physics Letters B; in these, authorship is in an alphabatical order among about 60 authors. Overall citation: 325.

4. I have one invited talk, whose publication is in process.

5. Several conference talks/abstracts/posters, altogether more than 25.

I have hired a lawyer and currently I am trying to draft recommendation letters. Several referees ready to give letters. But the lawyer says choose only 6 among them, I would choose 7.

Its very hard to make 7 different letters by myself. Please suggest how. The lawyer is of no help except for the grammar and quality check.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

Hey Ramesh,

I would advise you to go for EB1 rather than NIW. You have excellent publication record and a large number of citations. Since you are from a non-retrogressed country, it shouldnt matter if you apply for EB1 or EB2. However, you can take advantage of the premium processing option that is available for EB1.

Good luck!

Thank you GC-Hopes for your nice reply. I thought EB1 way at the first thinking. While I started reading this forum, I found numerous EB1-seeking folks having criteria way beyond my imagination, very smart guys. This forum gave me a lesson. My only basis for applying green card is the "Science" publication. I do not have any award, not much US job experience either; I am in 2nd year of my postdoc. I also seeked suggestion from attorney, who suggested EB2-NIW; I would probably stick with that.

I am positive that there are many folks on this forum from physics (may be from nuclear physics itself) who could suggest me how to craft multiple recommendation letters showing examles of national interest in a way understandable by the USCIS folks. Please help educate me.

Ramesh, in my opinion, the IO wouldnt know the difference between a PRL paper and a Science paper. We know that a report/article in Science is very prestigious and very very hard to publish but for them any paper is a paper. However, you can show them the large number of citations and they will immediately recognize the merit of your application.

Also, the USCIS does not distinguish between first authorship from other co-authorships - so you can use the total number of citations to show your impact in the field. In nuclear physics, 300+ citations in a relatively short number of years is impressive, IMO.

Cheers and good luck with your petition,

If you want any help with citation search, please let me know.

Vijay.