This is an AAO appeal decision — a case denied once and appealed. It shows how the framework is applied; it is not the filing population.
The Petitioner founded a delivery and transportation company in South Carolina and proposed to serve as its President, directing operations and developing growth strategies to improve the quality and timeliness of freight and trucking services.
Field: delivery and transportation / logistics · Read the decision (uscis.gov)
Prong 1 — national importancenot established · dispositive
“the Petitioner improperly relies upon the importance of the industry to establish the national importance of the Petitioner's proposed endeavor”
“the record does not establish its national importance”
“the business plan does not provide sufficient explanation for the basis of these projections”
“he has not established how his specific endeavor stands to impact the broader transportation and logistics field, region, or nation”
AAO decision text
How the evidence was treated
- business plan · discounted
“the business plan does not provide sufficient explanation for the basis of these projections”
AAO decision text - other · discounted
“working in an important field is insufficient to establish the national importance of the proposed endeavor”
AAO decision text
Where this case turned
- Business plan speculative · p1 — projections without a documented basis or steps
- Economic claims unsupported · p1 — job/revenue projections with no corroborating basis
- Field importance conflated with endeavor · p1 — argues the field matters, not the specific endeavor
- Local, not national scope · p1 — impact confined to clients / a region
Notable
AAO explicitly reserved EB-2 classification and prongs 2-3 as unnecessary to reach given dispositive prong 1 failure, citing INS v. Bagamasbad twice. The business plan's job/revenue projections (29 employees, $1.6M tax contributions) were treated as speculative and insufficiently explained, a business-plan-speculative argument deployed within the prong 1 national importance analysis rather than prong 2.
Authorities this decision leans on
From the doctrinal survivor set — 187 authority tests across 47 distinct authorities cleared the differential-lift gates. Only those appear here.
- 8 C.F.R. 103.3
- 8 C.F.R. 204.5(k)(2)
- 8 C.F.R. 204.5(k)(3)(iii)
- Flores v. Garland
What this case teaches
Analyst reading of the decision text.
Petitioner conflated importance of the transportation/logistics industry with national importance of his specific company's endeavor, and failed to quantify or substantiate scale of impact.
Tie the endeavor's projected jobs, revenue, or industry impact to specific, well-supported evidence of national or regional scale—not industry-level generalities or unexplained projections.
vague
economic_job_creation · economic_growth_generic · field_advancement
person_focused
Cases in adjacent profiles
- The Beneficiary proposed to establish an asset investment management and compliance advisory firm in New York offering c
- The Petitioner proposed to develop and commercialize zeolite-based products in the United States, including agricultural
- The Petitioner proposed to operate a medical billing and healthcare revenue cycle management firm in the United States,
- The Petitioner proposed to establish and lead as CEO a cybersecurity and crisis management company in Florida, offering
- The Petitioner proposed to establish and operate an IT consultancy company in Michigan providing cloud migration, cybers