Hi everyone,

I’m looking for recent experiences from EB-1 applicants with a pending I-485 who are maintaining H-1B for employment but have used Advance Parole (AP) for international travel.

My main reason for considering AP is to avoid H-1B visa stamping in India. With the current uncertainty/delays around H-1B stamping, AP seems like a useful option for travel.

For example, if I have a valid H-1B approval (I-797) and continue working for my H-1B employer, but do not have a valid H-1B visa stamp in my passport, can I travel to India and return to the U.S. using my approved AP instead of getting a new H-1B stamp?
Has anyone here actually done this recently?

I would especially like to hear from people who:

Had a valid H-1B approval but an expired/no valid H-1B visa stamp;
Traveled to India;
Returned to the U.S. using AP;
Continued working for the same H-1B employer afterward.

How was your experience at the port of entry? Any secondary inspection or questions? Did using AP create any issues later with your H-1B extension/status?

Trying to understand whether AP is a practical backup for H-1B holders specifically to avoid the visa-stamping uncertainty in India.

Thanks!

Hello everyone, I need some advice on the way forward. I submitted my eb1a application on august 22nd 2025, it got updated on September 1st, 2025, with "Case is still being processed by USCIS". Then RFE was issued on September 22nd, 2025, RFE response was sent in on December 1st, 2025. The only update I have received was on July 30th, 2026, which is "Fee Refund Was Mailed" since my application was PP right from first submission. I am just anxious with the whole delay. Thank you

Hi everyone,

Finally I am ready to share my EB1A experience, specifically for folks with an industry-focused AWS / Cloud Architecture background on an H-1B who might be wondering how to position their profile. I had created this account to gain knowledge more on the EB1A and I'm glad I found so may helpful sub reddits.😄 Thus, I am planning to official post my first content on Reddit and I am so overwhelmed while writing it.

Profile & Filing Overview:
• Field: AWS Cloud Infrastructure / Cloud Architecture (Industry)
• Status at Filing: H-1B
• Service Center: Texas Service Center (TSC)
• Processing: Premium Processing
• Criteria Claimed (4):
Leading / Critical Role
Original Contributions of Major Significance
High Salary
Scholarly Articles

Timeline:

• Initial Submission: March 9, 2026
• RFE Received: April 10, 2026
• RFE Response Submitted: May 4, 2026
• Approval: May 15, 2026

The RFE & How We Responded:

USCIS challenged two specific criteria: Leading/Critical Role and Original Contributions.

For Critical Role: The officer questioned whether my work demonstrated a critical role within the broader company rather than being limited to standard day-to-day responsibilities.
We responded with detailed architecture diagrams, internal impact reports, project metrics, and evidence showing the measurable business impact of the cloud initiatives I was responsible for. We also expanded the testimonial letters from senior executives to clearly explain my responsibilities, the importance of the projects, and how my contributions affected the organization.

For Original Contributions: This was probably the more challenging part of the RFE.
Since I don't have a traditional academic background with hundreds of citations, we focused on demonstrating industry impact rather than relying primarily on academic recognition.
We provided evidence around the scale of enterprise deployments, technical solutions I had developed, measurable improvements in infrastructure efficiency, and the broader adoption and impact of those solutions within the organization.

The biggest change was not necessarily adding more documents - it was reorganizing and explaining the existing evidence in a way that directly addressed USCIS's concerns.

Key Lesson Learned:
The RFE made me realize that technical achievements don't always speak for themselves.
As cloud/technology professionals, we're used to talking about architectures, migrations, uptime, scalability, automation, cost optimization, etc. But for an EB1A petition, it's important to connect those technical achievements to measurable organizational or industry impact.
For the RFE response, we went point-by-point through the officer's concerns and mapped each piece of evidence directly to the issue being questioned. That made the response much more focused.

Thankfully, the petition was ultimately approved after the RFE.
Happy to answer questions about positioning an industry-focused cloud/AWS profile, demonstrating critical role or original contributions or handling an RFE in details.

Checking how mass is this mass update?

View Poll

EB1A, India | PD: October 2022 (MSC), Medicals - November 2023, I-485 Approval - August 8th, 2026, Case Approved - August 8th, 2016, Card Mailed to Me status - August 13th. 2026; All through NBC.

I have not checked the status anytime during the wait period, except checking this community. So do not have details on all the updates, received the approval notice on August 14th out of nowhere. This community has been very informative. Thank you very much. Hope this information gives some hope to others who are waiting, and shows there is some movement in MSC cases.

is there a way to check visa bulletin released dates for this and previous year?

I am working in quantum computing industry and contribute heavily towards one of world known softwares in the field. I have a Ph.D in chemistry, 9 publications(2 first authors), 105 citations and have reviewed 10 papers in the field. I filled up the profile evaluation for EB1a for both Ellis Porter and Chen. Ellis Porter says my profile is viable while chen says I should apply for NIW and wait till my profile gets stronger for EB1a. I am now confused if I should proceed with EB1a right now or just lock the date with NIW for now and wait for my profile to build up. I am from India so even if I apply now, it will be a few years before I get my green card. I will appreciate any suggestions.

Fellas,

My priority date still isn’t current, but I already have an FTA1. My case was sent to a non-local field office and then transferred back to NBC. Emma also confirmed the interview was waived.

Does that mean they already reviewed/processed everything at the FO and just sent it back to NBC to wait for the PD to become current? If so, once my date is current, should I expect faster green card approval rather than the usual months-long wait?

Has anyone had a similar experience where things moved quickly after the PD became current in this situation?

PD: Oct 2023- India

Thanks

I filed my application on April 28 2026 and completed my biometrics on June 10. I had one FTAO update on the day of biometrics but nothing since then. Is there anyone in similar timeline? Also how long is it currently taking for EAD and I131 approval? Thank you in advance.

My legal representative did a terrible job handling my petition. He was essentially running the case according to his own approach, and in the end, my petition was denied. I asked him for a refund because I believe he failed to provide the legal services I paid for. Instead of addressing my concerns, he is now threatening to contact USCIS and report me.

I am concerned about how this could affect my other pending case and whether his actions could have any consequences for me in the future.

In August 2025, EB1 India was at Feb 2022. A year later, it is only at Oct 2022 even after 46k spillovers.

While being optimistic is good but practically do we really think dates will breach into late 2023 by next year? Some people are saying 2024. What’s backing this?

Hi everyone, I am preparing my EB1A petition and wanted to get some opinions from people who have gone through the process recently.

I started doing peer reviews in 2025 for papers related to my field. So far I have reviewed 5 papers for:

• International Journal of Latest Technology in Engineering
• International Journal of Research and Innovation in Applied Science

Later I realized that some of these journals may not be very well reputed, so I mentioned this to my lawyer. They recommended not using the judging criterion at all.

Do you think it is better to leave it out or should I still include it as an extra criterion?

Also, what other genuine judging opportunities can I look for to make judging criteria stronger? Besides journal peer review, where do people usually find legitimate judging opportunities

Would appreciate any advice.

Hi everyone, I was hoping to get a realistic evaluation of my profile. I am a senior data scientist in top tech company with total of nine years of experience.

Below are some of the criterion I am considering:

1. Original Contribution: I have a patent (team patent where I contributed) which has been cited by around 10 other companies in their work. Some major tech, finance, telecom companies have cited it plus two of the citations were examiner cited.

2. Critical role: worked on projects which saved multi-million dollars, shipped products (which had internal project coverage with me as a contributor plus also had media coverage about this product). Plus the patent project too.

3. Judging: I have done a book review, few tech conference reviews, multiple hackathon reviews as well.

4. High Salary: 300k

5. Publishing: I have two recent papers in IEEE, though citations are less.

6. Membership: Senior IEEE member. (I know this is scrutinized nowadays and probably is not considered a good level of membership to satisfy this criteria).

I can get LoRs for critical role plus patent adoption from some other companies.

I have talked to few law firms, and all of them have said it’s a good profile and has a strong chance. But then it is their business to tell me that lol.

I wanted to check what others in this forum think about my profile.

Thanks!

Looking for guidance on building an EB-1A profile from an industry background

I’m currently a software engineer at a Fortune 500 company, working in the consumer electronics space. I have close to 10 years of industry experience across several technical domains, including about 5 years with my current area.

Most of my accomplishments so far have been within my employers, including a few high-impact internal projects. However, I currently have no publications/citations, patents, peer-review or judging experience, open-source contributions, or significant external recognition.
I realize that my current profile is not strong/eligible for EB-1A, and I’m not looking to file anytime soon or manufacture credentials just to satisfy the criteria. I’m willing to spend the sometime organically building a stronger profile.

I’d particularly appreciate advice from people who started from a similar industry-only background and eventually built a successful EB-1A profile:

1. What did you focus on first?

2. Which activities actually helped your case versus things that turned out to be a waste of time?

3. How did you build external recognition when most of your work was internal/proprietary?

4. Did you work with an attorney or legitimate profile-building/mentoring service while building your profile? If so, who did you use, and would you recommend them?

5. Roughly how long did it take before you felt your profile was genuinely ready to file?

6. I’m especially interested in firsthand experiences from industry engineers, including people who started without a research/publication background.

TIA!

Hey everyone,

I’m trying to see if anyone is in the same boat. I have a pending I-485, and the very last time I saw any activity on my account was a "silent update" specifically on April 28th.

It seemed like there might have been a system-wide bulk update going on around that day, but it's been complete radio silence on my end ever since. No real updates, no RFEs, no case transfers, and no approvals—just stuck on that 4/28 date.

Did anyone else get caught in that specific April 28th batch of silent updates? If you did, have you seen any actual movement since then, or are you also still stranded waiting for the next shoe to drop?

Feel free to share your PD (Priority Date) or receipt block (e.g., IOE091...) if you're comfortable. Trying to figure out if there is any pattern to this or if we just have to keep waiting.

My RD is 12/19 and receipt block is IOE09350..

Thanks in advance, and good luck to everyone still waiting!

Hello, my base is 158.5K and 90th percentile is 160K.

Including stocks the annual pay is around 275K.

I’m slight less than 90 percentile but with stocks almost 50% more than needed.

What all documents I need to prepare to make this criteria strong?

For those who recently filed EB-1A with premium processing, how long did it take to get a decision after the receipt date?

Would appreciate recent timelines — approval, RFE, or otherwise. Please share your filing/receipt date and decision date if possible. Thanks!

I’m sorry for long post but I wanted to provide the context otherwise answers don’t help me.

Story:
I worked for a fairly reputed US company. Through them, I worked on some major venue construction projects in the US. Such as international Airports, Ivy league schools, resorts, museums and such. I performed technical duties in manufacturing building materials.

I will aim for critical role rather than a leading one. I will focus on proving technical expertise and criticality of it and I am fairly confident enough to say that my expertise were important to project delivery, and the success of that organization. My contributed work in 3 projects, in year 2022-2024-2026, helped company won industry award. I have other 3/4 projects as well which have been recognized publicly and I can cite those for the features I worked on. I worked overall 100+ projects in 5/6 years. We worked at scale. Small, medium, large - all kinds of projects. Very common in construction industry.

I worked FT for that employer and then left them to work for another company - and bcs of my expertise, 1 year later - they invited me back to work as a consultant - basically providing the same technical services but independently. I send them invoices for the work I do and charge them hourly. I do this in evening, still working on some exciting projects.

Question:
What kind of evidences I should start collecting and what would be a high level framework for this criteria?

If anyone could please share some insights based on your experience with this criteria. I do have basic understanding of this criteria.

Thank you in advance!