The Petitioner, a production engineer in the oil and gas industry, sought to continue working in that field, but did not clearly specify the future work he intended to perform.

Prong 1 — national importancenot established · dispositive

“the Petitioner does not directly state what his future work would involve, other than that he will work in the field of production engineering in the oil and gas industry.”

“the Petitioner did not demonstrate that his endeavor: (1) would broadly impact the oil and gas industry, (2) has significant potential to employ U.S. workers, (3) or that it otherwise offers substantial positive economic effects for our nation.”

AAO decision text

How the evidence was treated

• motion resubmission · discounted

  “because the paper was previously submitted and reviewed as part of the appeal process, it is not considered new evidence”

  AAO decision text
• other · discounted

  “the Petitioner has not established that the facts in the present matter are analogous to those in the unpublished decisions”

  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
• Local, not national scope · p1 — impact confined to clients / a region

Notable

Petitioner argued Dhanasar's national importance prong is harder to satisfy than NYSDOT's national-in-scope criterion and that AAO must explain any change in difficulty; AAO rejected this as unsupported by authority and noted Petitioner conflated the two distinct standards. Petitioner also cited two unpublished AAO decisions, which AAO held non-binding and factually distinguishable.

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(c)
• 8 C.F.R. 103.5
• Matter of Coelho
• Matter of L-A-C-

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