About a year ago, I was approved for the EB-1A. Since then, I’ve had the honour of helping dozens of friends with their own EB-1A / O-1A applications. This post details my own journey, along with the resources I used. If there’s anything to take away from this post, it’s that with enough effort anyone can get an EB-1A, and that if a friend / lawyer / family member / neighbourhood aunty / random person tells you they don’t think you can get it, it might make sense to ignore their opinion. :)

What is the EB-1A?

For those of you fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with US immigration, the EB-1A is a pathway for getting a green card, specifically for “aliens of extraordinary ability”¹. It allows you to fast-track your way to a green card, which is particularly important given that the regular wait times can be very long for people from specific countries. My friend Deedy has written about this in extensive detail. The way to get an EB-1A is to draft a legal petition, often with the help of an immigration attorney, and submit it to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), who then adjudicates on the petition. These petitions are generally 100s of pages, where you provide evidence from your life and career, arguing why you are extraordinary and why you are a net benefit to the US.

My Story

My EB-1A story begins in the summer of 2024, when I was applying for a green card through my employer at the time. I asked the company lawyer if I could apply for an EB-1A, and I was told that the odds of me getting one would be quite low. This matched my own assessment. Over the years I had solicited opinions from friends and other immigration lawyers about whether I would qualify for an EB-1A, and almost all of them said it would be a long shot. I had resigned myself to applying for one later, when I felt more confident about my chances of getting one. I was thus preparing to apply for a green card through the regular pathway.

Around the same time, I caught up with a Persian friend of mine from graduate school. He told me that he was worried about the fast deteriorating relations between the US and Iran ², and that as a result, he had applied for an EB-1A himself. He had done so without a lawyer, and had been approved. Like me, he didn’t think he had a chance when he applied, but the urgency of the situation had forced his hand. The beauty of being surrounded by great people is that when they do great things, you start thinking you can do great things as well. His optimism rubbed off on me, and made me resolve to try regardless.

For the next couple of months, I poured my time on nights and weekends into drafting my own petition. I wasn’t particularly impressed by the optimism of the attorneys, and I calculated that if I applied without a lawyer, I would be able to reduce my costs by about 3-4x. This would allow me to take more shots on goal if my initial attempts failed, and would give me the opportunity to improve my application. I reached out to people for recommendation letters, consulted a myriad of online resources (more on those below), asked everyone I knew who had received an EB-1A for help, and used AI tools (Cursor) to speed up my writing extensively. Finally, after months of work, my efforts had culminated in a ~500 page document detailing most of my life’s achievements. I distinctly remember the morning when, after pulling an all-nighter, I went to the post office to mail in my application, still high on the double espresso I had consumed the night before. ³

3 weeks later, I received a response. To my disappointment, I had received an RFE (Request for Evidence). “Oh well”, I thought to myself, “I guess I’ll just apply again in a few years.” But when I read the RFE, I found that I disagreed with pretty much everything the immigration officer had said. I had read about this happening during my research, with people online saying that they had the exact same application with minor changes approved by one officer and turned down by another. I decided I wanted another adjudicator to review my application, and that I would address some of the comments from this RFE and apply again immediately.

At this point, a large portion of people around me thought I was deluded. Even my parents, who are generally hands off, started raising their eyebrows. Each application was about the cost of a business class flight ticket from the US to India, and they weren’t particularly convinced I knew what I was doing. When I told them I was applying again, my father was pretty convinced I was setting myself up for an expensive disappointment. My mother, to her credit, fully supported my decision, trusting both my abilities and that her decades of prayer would convince the Gods to reward my efforts.

About a month after receiving the RFE, I withdrew my initial application and submitted an improved one. 3 weeks later, it was accepted. I was officially an “alien of extraordinary ability”. Thanks Mom XD.

Reflections and resources

My own experience, as well as the experiences I’ve read about online or lived through vicariously through my friends have convinced me that the only way to know if you qualify for an EB-1A, is to apply! There is no substitute for direct contact with an adjudicator. This is similar to some other domains in life - for instance, in the world of high technology entrepreneurship, many famous great ideas were deemed bad until they were brought to market. Thankfully, the pioneers didn’t listen to the detractors.

If you are looking to apply for an EB-1A yourself, the internet is filled with wonderful resources. My friend Deedy also wrote an ultimate guide to get an EB-1A, which is incredibly comprehensive and goes through what you need to know and do to write a good petition. I used Razvan Marinescu’s LaTeX template to write my petition. If you decide to use a lawyer, I have had good interactions with Bay Immigration Law, Siskind Susser, Alcorn Immigration Law, Lighthouse, Radhika Balaji, and Ismayil Law.

Go forth, and become an extraordinary alien!