VisaBuilder Tech Toolbox: The Extraordinary-Ability Instruction Manual for Founders, Engineers, and Tech Professionals.

Does searching for information about O-1 / EB-1A tech visas make your head spin, just a little?

Do you feel like you might have a good shot at O-1 / EB-1A, but it’s hard to tell how close you are, or which credentials you should build next?

Is is hard to figure out which information’s trustworthy, among the sudden proliferation of O-1 / EB-1A “experts” offering advice after getting their own cases approved?

Are you tired of hearing that you need a PhD and academic papers, to get your O-1 / EB-1A, because you know that’s incorrect, but it’s hard to find the template that fits engineers?

Are you willing to hire the best extraordinary-ability lawyer you can find … but you can’t figure out which ones will actually work with you one-on-one, vs. dump you in a queue with no help or guidance?

Module 1, Audience Focus, concentrates your energy with laser precision on the ONLY moment that matters to all your case-building efforts: The 30-minute window your USCIS examiner spends reviewing and deciding your case.

This hyper-focus on the 30-minute adjudication window, excluding all else, is the secret weapon of the most skilled extraordinary-ability lawyers in the immigration bar. You won’t find it discussed anywhere online. But it’s how the best attorneys achieve a 98%-plus approval rate, year after year.

Chapter 1. Introduction: Reverse-Engineering Your Case From the Moment of Decision. Every element of your evidence package will be reverse-engineered, down to the smallest detail, to optimize your examiner’s half-hour experience of YOU. Your petition will delight your adjudicator, make their day, and earn a quick, enthusiastic approval. Attorneys don’t call it this, but it’s user experience design for your USCIS adjudicator.

Chapter 2. Your Adjudicator’s Workplace: Welcome to the USCIS Service Center! Where does your case go for adjudication? How does it move through the system? How does it get routed to a decisionmaker? What else is going on around it? What is the USCIS service center, anyway? Is it open to the public? What’s it like to work there?

Chapter 3. Meet Your Adjudicator. What kind of person decides your case? What’s their experience, training, and worldview? What are their job duties and priorities? Are they specialists? How much do they know about extraordinary ability? Do they know anything about tech or engineering?

Chapter 4. A Day in the Life: How Your Adjudicator Decides Your Case. What happens in that crucial 30 minutes when adjudicator meets petition? How do they work through your case, evaluate your evidence, and make a decision? What factors tip the balance?

Chapter 5. A Winning Case vs. a Losing Case: What That Looks Like to Your Adjudicator. What’s the quality range of the O-1 / EB-1A petitions your adjudicator sees that day or that week? What’s an “A” submission, what’s an “F” submission, and how can we position yours as “A+”?

Chapter 6. The Most Important 30 Minutes of Your Life: How to Delight Your Adjudicator and Earn a Quick Win. Our highest priority in case design is to give your adjudicator a great experience of YOU for 30 minutes. When they open your case file, we want them to experience a half-hour relaxing in a hammock, not slogging through a swamp. Our aim is to delight this person, make their day, and give them a gift of the best petition they’ve seen all week.

Module 2, Category Evidence, dives right into your most urgent questions about the 8 O-1 / EB-1A categories. What does the language really mean? Which categories? How many categories? What qualifies? What doesn’t? How much evidence per category? What’s USCIS actually looking for here?

Chapter 1. Introduction: Your USCIS Examiner’s Approach to Category Evidence. Your USCIS adjudicator starts with the letter of the law, and we will too. We’ll optimize the category structure for tech and engineering cases, not academic cases: 3 “substance” categories, 2 “must-have” categories, and 3 “acclaim” categories.

Then we’ll shadow your adjudicator as they work down the list of the required legal elements for each category, checking items off their checklist one by one.

Chapter 2. The 3 Substance Categories: Original Contributions, Critical Role, and High Salary. These are the core categories in tech and engineering cases. They showcase what you’ve contributed, why it’s cool, and how others value it.

Original contributions is your foundational category. It’s the most challenging to build, and it has the highest case-winning payoff. Critical role and high salary are also high-payoff, and should be included whenever possible.

• Original Contributions of Major Significance. The foundational category for a tech industry case, showing your dent in the universe. 2 legal elements:
  Originality of contribution.
  Specific impacts on the industry as a whole.
• Critical Role for Distinguished Organization. Your contributions to your employer’s mission. 2 legal elements:
  Criticality of role.
  Distinction of organization.
• High Salary. How the industry values your contributions. 2 legal elements:
  Proof of compensation.
  Salary surveys showing you in the top percentile.

Chapter 3. The 2 Must-Have Categories: Published Articles and Judging the Work of Others. In tech and engineering industry cases, these 2 categories are evaluated much more generously than they are in academic cases. You can also compile them 100% via your own efforts, positioning yourself as a subject matter expert in your niche.

Every case should include lots of evidence in these 2 categories! Note that we’re talking about tech industry publications and events here, NOT academic papers or citation counts.

• Published Articles. 3 legal elements:
  Actual publication or presentation.
  Audience of tech professionals or peers.
  Prestige and reach of publication or venue.
• Judging the Work of Others. 2 legal elements:
  Invitation to serve as a judge of the work of peers.
  Proof of actual judging and its outcome.

Chapter 4. The 3 Acclaim Categories: Exclusive Memberships, Awards and Prizes, and Major Media Coverage. These categories say “here’s how my industry applauds my work.” Acclaim-seeking isn’t a big thing in engineering culture, so these are listed last. However, they’re also the engineer’s secret weapon. The compilation of detailed statistics is the key to success in the acclaim categories. Most applicants don’t bother — so if you do, you’ve got the advantage. You’ll need at least one acclaim category.

• Exclusive Memberships. 4 legal elements:
  Proof of membership.
  Organization as a free-standing entity.
  Elite selection criteria.
  Prestige of individual selectors.
• Awards and Prizes. 3 legal elements:
  Individual receipt of specific award.
  Purpose of award as recognition of excellence.
  High prestige of award in your field.
• Major Media Coverage. 3 legal elements:
  Articles “about” you.
  Prestige of publication.
  Title, date, and author of article.

Putting It All Together. How many categories do you need, and how many accomplishments in each category? Here are a few examples showing different ways to achieve a critical mass of winning evidence.

Module 3, Final Merits Determination, shows you how top attorneys ace the “final merits determination” by staging a 30-minute “performance of extraordinariness.”

Chapter 1. Introduction: Solving the “Hard Problem” of the Final Merits Determination. The adjudicator decides your case in a 2-step process. First, they work down their checklist to evaluate the required legal elements of your category evidence. Second, they perform a “final merits determination” to assess your “sustained acclaim at the very top of your field of endeavor.”

Your adjudicator excels at checklists, as we saw in Module 2. But “final merits” is subjective. It’s not a checklist item. It’s hard for them to code-switch out of left-brain list mode, into right-brain big-picture mode. Luckily, we’ve solved that hard problem for them!

All the way down the checklist, we’ve already “performed extraordinariness” for them. Our carefully designed presentation has been hard at work, imprinting a vivid subliminal picture of your “sustained acclaim at the top of the field of endeavor.” So when they reach the final merits, it’s an easy approval for them, and an easy win for you. Here are the 4 elements of our performance art.

Chapter 2. Structure: An Authoritative Content Framework. A clear, obvious petition structure helps your examiner grasp the entirety of your case during a short time frame. Your categories are strategically ordered into a narrative. They’re rigidly separated, identified, and defined. They “over-perform extraordinariness,” aiming for the maximum, not the minimum, with high-quality evidence in 5 or 6 categories or more.

Chapter 3. Niche: A Narrow, Specialized Field of Endeavor. The essence of extraordinary ability is proving that you’re “one of that small percentage who have risen to the very top of the field of endeavor.” Strategically defining a specialized niche makes it much easier for the adjudicator to view you as someone who’s risen to the top of your field.

Chapter 4. Story: A Simple, Compelling Narrative. Page 1 of your cover letter is a one-page shapshot of your O-1 / EB-1A qualifications. It’s your “cover of Time magazine.” It explains to the examiner, in simple language, who you are, what you do, and why you’re the best in the world at it.

Chapter 5. Design: A Striking Visual Impression. A beautiful presentation is an instant marker of authority and credibility. This “halo effect” imprints on your adjudicator’s brain within milliseconds. It makes your whole petition glow with extraordinariness. Designing beautiful exhibits is easy and fun. It’s a terrific force multiplier to show sustained acclaim at the top of your field.

Putting It All Together. How to organize your own “performance of extraordinariness” to ace your final merits determination.

Bonus Section: Inspiring Case Studies of O-1 and EB-1A Winners. Meet 10 founders, engineers, and tech professionals who mastered the O-1 / EB-1A case-building process. Read their inspiring public accounts of how they persevered and overcame obstacles to win their golden tickets.

Module 4. Instructions, switches the focus away from your USCIS adjudicator, and onto you and your design-build project. It explains how to plan, outline, and construct your own winning O-1 / EB-1A case.

Chapter 1. Quick-Start Guide: Ten things You Can Do Right Now to Build Your Winning Portfolio Without Any Special Instructions. Ready to jump right in? Start here.

• 10-point task list. The one-page TL;DR to start your case today.
• Bonus list 1. Four tasks best left for later.
• Bonus list 2. Four surprising kiss-of-death elements to avoid at all costs.

Chapter 2. Your Mindset. Stepping into the arena with USCIS requires some rigorous mental preparation. Your battle arsenal includes taking ownership of every factor within your control; depersonalizing all USCIS interactions; summoning your stubborn-minded perseverance; and deploying some advanced gamer strategies to outwit, outlast, outplay.

Chapter 3. Case Visualization. We’ll visualize your ideal case in your mind’s eye, then create an avatar for your player-character in the starring role.

Chapter 4. Original Contributions: Your Career Trajectory and Your Greatest Hits. The foundation of your winning case is your chronology of original contributions over the trajectory of your career. We’ll build your timeline, identify your “greatest hits,” and dig up some specific impacts of those projects on the world.

Chapter 5. Your Category Outline. We’ll build out all your category evidence along the same timeline, and standardize the format for listing your evidence items in each category.

Chapter 6. Your Niche, Your Superpower, and Your Story. These closely intertwined elements position you as a thought leader at the top of your field. We’ll define your narrow, specialized field of endeavor. We’ll identify your superpower: The one thing you do better than anyone else in the world. We’ll see how to distill your story down to its essence, framing you as “one of that small percentage who has risen to the very top of the field of endeavor.”

Customized Consultations Available. Still have questions? Book your (optional) consultation to supercharge your case. Includes a thorough review of your credentials; a one-hour Zoom call to answer your questions; and a recap email with recommendations for moving forward. $500 per consultation. Private link inside the course.

2. The Design-Build Course. The foundational course. How to design, plan, and build your winning O-1 / EB-1A evidence package. (This course.)

Make yourself at home. Unpack all your boxes. Then put them in the recycling bin. You won’t be needing them anytime soon.