VISA SPOTLIGHT: OUTSTANDING RESEARCHERS AND PROFESSORS

Generally, the most difficult part of an employment related green card application is the labor certification process. Labor certifications can take six months to a year and a half, they are expensive, they cost an employer a lot of time and about a third of them are denied by the US Department of Labor. But for certain researchers and professors, the labor certification process can be bypassed. EB-1 Permanent Residency Visas are available to outstanding researchers and professors who meet various INS requirements.

The researcher of professor must have an offer for "permanent" employment. This means the position must be either tenured, tenure-track, or for a term of indefinite or unlimited duration where the employee will ordinarily have an expectation of continued employment unless there is good cause for being fired. The position can be with a university or a private employer if the employer employs at least three persons full-time in research activities and the departmental, division or institution has achieved documented accomplishments in an academic field.

The category is available to a professor or researcher who is recognized internationally as "outstanding in an academic field." "Academic field" is defined broadly to mean "a body of specialized knowledge offered for study at an accredited United States university of institution of higher education."

In order to document that the professor or researcher is recognized internationally as outstanding in a specific academic field, the applicant must provide evidence of at least TWO of the following:

• documentation of the receipt of major prizes or awards for outstanding achievement in the academic field;
• documentation of membership in associations in the academic field which require outstanding achievement;
• published material in professional publications written by others about the person's work in the academic field;
• evidence of the person's participation, either individually or on a panel, as the judge of the work of others in the same or an allied academic field;
• evidence of the person's original scientific or scholarly research contributions to the academic field; or
• evidence of the person's authoriship of scholarly books or articles (in scholarly in the academic field.

The applicant must also have at least three years of experience in teaching and/or research in the field. Research or teaching experience gained while working on an advanced degree is acceptable if the research is recognized as outstanding or if the alien had full resonsibility for classes taught.

The application process involves filing for initial approval with the INS Service Center having jurisdiction over the researcher or professor's place of employment. After this, application must be made at a US consulate or a local INS office having jurisdiction over the applicant.

Generally, success in this category depends on the quality of the evidence offered. Letters from current or former employers, letters from independent experts in the field, proof of peer-reviewed presentations at academic conferences, copies of peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals, a large number of entres in a citations index citing the applicant's work as authoriztative and participating as a reviewer for a peer-reviewed scholarly journal are all excellent types of supporting documentation.