NIW Bearings
dismissedMAY122026_02B52032026-05-12 · appeal

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, a foreign-trained legal consultant, proposed to facilitate business transactions for American investors and companies entering or operating in the Albanian market, offering legal advisory services such as due diligence, compliance guidance, and contract support.

Field: legal consulting (cross-border business/legal advisory for Albania-U.S. transactions) · Read the decision (uscis.gov)

EB-2 threshold — addressed

SCOPS and AAO agreed Petitioner qualified as an advanced degree professional based on her foreign master's degree in law.

Prong 1 — national importancenot established · dispositive

“the Petitioner has not sufficiently demonstrated the national importance of her endeavor under the first prong of the Dhanasar analytical framework”
“the evidence does not establish the proposed endeavor's national importance because it only highlights that the endeavor's impact is to the individual client or companies that hire the Petitioner”
“the relevant question is not the importance of the field, industry, or profession in which the individual will work”
“the Petitioner has not shown that her proposed endeavor stands to sufficiently extend beyond her future clients to impact her field of law, the economy, or U.S. societal welfare more broadly”
“they do not offer persuasive detail concerning the impact of her proposed endeavor or establish how such an impact would extend beyond her future clients”

AAO decision text

How the evidence was treated

  • degree · credited
  • business plan · discounted
    “the Petitioner has not provided sufficient evidence demonstrating that her proposed endeavor would operate on such a scale as to rise to a level of national importance”
    AAO decision text
  • contract revenue · discounted
    “it only highlights that the endeavor's impact is to the individual client or companies that hire the Petitioner”
    AAO decision text
  • recommendation letter · discounted
    “they do not offer persuasive detail concerning the impact of her proposed endeavor”
    AAO decision text
  • other · discounted
    “this fact is insufficient to establish the national importance of her proposed endeavor”
    AAO decision text

Where this case turned

  • Economic claims unsupported · p1 — job/revenue projections with no corroborating basis
  • Endeavor too vague · p1 — described as a job role, not a defined undertaking
  • Field importance conflated with endeavor · p1 — argues the field matters, not the specific endeavor
  • Letters conclusory · p1 — letters praise skills in general terms without tracing specific impact
  • Local, not national scope · p1 — impact confined to clients / a region
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Notable

AAO cited Flores v. Garland, 72 F.4th 85 (5th Cir. 2023) in a footnote to support the discretionary nature of NIW adjudications, joining several circuit courts; the essay cited by Petitioner regarding need for foreign legal consultants was treated as field-importance evidence and rejected as conflating field importance with endeavor importance.

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. 103.5
  • 8 C.F.R. 204.5(k)(2)
  • Flores v. Garland
  • Matter of L-A-C-

What this case teaches

Analyst reading of the decision text.

Decisive factor

Petitioner showed only individualized client impact (one letter of intent) and field-level importance, not that the specific endeavor's effects extend broadly enough to be nationally important.

Transferable lesson

Support national importance with concrete evidence of the endeavor's scale/reach (e.g., multiple clients, quantified economic effects), not just field significance or personal credentials.

Endeavor framing

moderate

National-importance theory

economic_growth_generic · economic_job_creation · field_advancement

Evidence targeting

person_focused

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