dismissed EB-2 NIW Case: Machine Learning

U.S. Citizenship 
and Immigration 
Services 
Non-Precedent Decision of the
Administrative Appeals Office 
Date : WL. 6, 2023 In Re: 27426002 
Appeal of Texas Service Center Decision 
Form 1-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Workers (National Interest Waiver) 
The Petitioner, a machine learning researcher, seeks second preference immigrant classification as a 
member of the professions holding an advanced degree or as an individual of exceptional ability, as 
well as a national interest waiver of the job offer requirement attached to this EB-2 classification . 
Immigration and Nationality Act (the Act) section 203(b )(2), 8 U.S.C. § 1153(b )(2). 
The Director of the Texas Service Center denied the petition, concluding the Petitioner had not 
established eligibility for a waiver of the required job offer, and thus of the labor certification, would 
be in the national interest. The matter is now before us on appeal. 8 C.F.R. § 103.3. 
The Petitioner bears the burden of proof to demonstrate eligibility by a preponderance of the evidence. 
Matter ofChawathe, 25 I&N Dec. 369, 375-76 (AAO 2010). We review the questions in this matter 
de novo . Matter of Christa's, Inc., 26 I&N Dec . 537,537 n.2 (AAO 2015) . Upon de novo review, 
we will dismiss the appeal. 
I. LAW 
To establish eligibility for a national interest waiver, petitioners must demonstrate qualification for the 
underlying EB-2 visa classification, as either an advanced degree professional or an individual of 
exceptional ability in the sciences, arts, or business. Section 203(b )(2)(B)(i) of the Act. In addition, 
petitioners must show the merit of a discretionary waiver of the job offer requirement "in the national 
interest." Section 203(b )(2)(B)(i) of the Act. Matter ofDhanasar, 26 I&N Dec. 884, 889 (AAO 2016) 
provides that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) may, as matter of discretion 1, grant 
a national interest waiver if: 
• The proposed endeavor has both substantial merit and national importance; 
• The individual is well-positioned to advance their proposed endeavor; and 
• On balance, waiving the job offer requirement would benefit the United States. 
1 See also Poursina v. USCIS, 936 F.3d 868 (9th Cir. 2019) (finding USCIS' decision to grant or deny a national interest 
waiver to be discretionary in nature) . 
II. ANALYSIS 
Regarding the national interest waiver, the Petitioner indicated his proposed endeavor involved 
building and designing accurate and algorithms in order to optimize system performance. The first 
prong relates to substantial merit and national importance of the specific proposed endeavor. 
Dhanasar, 26 I&N Dec. at 889. The Director determined that although the Petitioner satisfied the first 
prong, the Petitioner did not fulfill the remaining two prongs. 
The second prong shifts the focus from the proposed endeavor to the Petitioner in order to determine 
whether the individual is well positioned to advance the proposed endeavor. Dhanasar, 26 I&N Dec. 
at 890. The record contains his curriculum vitae, educational credentials, reference letters, journal 
articles and conference papers, citatory evidence, funding documentation, and peer review activity. 
For the reasons discussed below, the record supports the Director's determination that the evidence is 
insufficient to demonstrate that the Petitioner is well positioned to advance his proposed research 
under Dhanasar's second prong. 
The Petitioner possesses a doctor of philosophy in electrical and computer engineering from the 
University I 12 USCIS considers an advanced degree, particularly a Ph.D. in a Science, 
Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) field tied to the proposed endeavor and related to 
work furthering a critical and emerging technology or other STEM area important to U.S. 
competitiveness or national security, an especially positive factor to be considered along with other 
evidence for purposes of the assessment under the second prong. See 6 USCIS Policy Manual 
F.5(D)(2), https://www.uscis.gov/policymanual. However, a degree in and of itself is not a basis to 
determine that a person is well positioned to advance the proposed endeavor. Id. Although the 
Petitioner's Ph.D. degree in engineering is an especially positive factor, the totality of the evidence in 
the record, as discussed below, does not show that he is well positioned to advance his proposed 
endeavor. Furthermore, in Dhanasar, the record established that the petitioner held multiple graduate 
degrees including "two master of science degrees, in mechanical engineering and applied physics, as 
well as a Ph.D. in engineering." Id. at 891. We look to a variety of factors in determining whether a 
petitioner is well positioned to advance his proposed endeavor and education is merely one factor 
among many that may contribute to such a finding. 
The record contains recommendation letters referencing the Petitioner's graduate research. Overall, the 
letters provide descriptions of the Petitioner's various research projects; however, in further explaining 
the implementation or impact of his work, the letters generally point to other papers that cited to his 
research in their own written work. The letters do not further elaborate and sufficiently explain how the 
Petitioner's work has been utilized in the field or otherwise constitutes a record or success beyond having 
been cited by others in their published works. Moreover, the lack of specificity in the letters do not show 
how his work has affected the field or industry demonstrating a history of accomplishment, well 
positioning himself to advance his proposed endeavor. For instance, althougH !claimed the 
Petitioner's "development of the pseudo mirror descent algorithm has broad implications for improving 
and innovating all applications of machine learning," I I did not additionally discuss the broad 
implications the Petitioner's algorithm has had in the field of machine learning. 
2 According to his ~micu)um vitae. the Petitioner also obtained a master of science from! !University and a bachelor 
of engineering fro !university (China); the Petitioner did not provide supporting evidence of these claims. 
2 
The record also includes samples of partial articles that cited to the Petitioner's co-authored work. 
Based on these excerpts, the authors reference the Petitioner's research as background material for 
their own findings, and these limited articles do not represent a level of his success in the field. The 
articles do not distinguish or highlight the Petitioner's work from the other cited papers. 
Regarding his overall citation record, the Petitioner initially provided evidence from Google Scholar 
(GS) reflecting 130 citations from 12 articles, with his highest cited articles receiving 42, 39, and 22 
citations, respectively. The Petitioner, however, did not specify how many citations were self-citations 
by him or his coauthors. Furthermore, the Petitioner submitted data from Clarivate Analytics (CA) 
regarding baseline citation rates and percentiles by year of publication for the computer science field 
The Petitioner claimed his citations from articles published in 2014 ranked among the top 20% and 
citations from articles in 2015 and 201 7 ranked in the top 10%. The Petitioner did not indicate whether 
he factored in any self-citations in determining these percentile rankings. Moreover, the 
documentation from CA states that "[ c ]itation frequency is highly skewed, with many infrequently 
cited papers and relatively few highly cited papers. Consequently, citation rates should not be 
interpreted as representing the central tendency of the distribution." 
In response to the director's request for evidence, the Petitioner provided updated GS figures reflecting 
164 total citations, with his highest cited articles receiving 48, 46, and 24 citations, respectively. In 
addition, he offered a list of highlighted articles claiming to represent independent citations. Further, 
he submitted data claiming to be derived from "OpenAlex" reflecting 97.38% for "Citation Percentile" 
and 97.46% for "Publication Percentile." Notwithstanding the evidence does not indicate the source 
as "OpenAlex," the Petitioner did not show how "OpenAlex" calculates the percentile figures. 
Regardless, the Petitioner has not established that the number of citations received by his published 
articles and conference papers reflect a level of interest in his work from relevant parties sufficient to 
meet Dhanasar's second prong. Further, while we listed Dr. Dhanasar's "publications and other 
published materials that cite his work" among the documents he presented, our determination that he 
was well positioned under the second prong was not based on his citation record. Rather, in our 
precedent decision, we found "[t]he petitioner's education, expertise, and experience in his field, the 
significance of his role in research projects, as well as the sustained interest of and fonding from 
government entities such as NASA and AFRL, position him well to continue to advance his proposed 
endeavor of hypersonic technology research." Id. at 893. 
The Petitioner also highlighted articles indicating that "[t]his work is supported in part by a U.S. 
National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant," "[t]his work was supported by MURI grant," and "[t]his 
work was supported by ONR grant." However, the record does not contain copies of the research 
grants showing the Petitioner as a named grant recipient. In Dhanasar, the record established the 
petitioner "initiated" or was "the primary award contact on several fonded grant proposals" and he 
was "the only listed researcher on many of the grants." Id. at 893, n.11. Here, the record does not 
show the Petitioner was mainly responsible for obtaining fonding for the research projects. 
As it relates to his peer review activity, the Petitioner provided documentation evidencing his review 
of manuscripts for journals and conferences. The Petitioner, however, did not explain the significance 
of his review experience or demonstrate his participation in the widespread peer review process 
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represents a record of success in his field or it is otherwise an indication that he is well positioned to 
advance his endeavor. 
The record demonstrates the Petitioner has conducted and published research while pursuing his 
education, but he has not shown that this work renders him well positioned to advance his proposed 
research. While we recognize that research must add information to the pool of knowledge in some 
way in order to be accepted for publication, presentation, funding, or academic credit, not every 
individual who has performed original research will be found to be well positioned to advance his 
proposed endeavor. Rather, we examine the factors set forth in Dhanasar to determine whether, for 
instance, the individual's progress towards achieving the goals of the proposed research, record of 
success in similar efforts, or generation of interest among relevant parties supports such a finding. Id. 
at 890. The Petitioner, however, has not sufficiently demonstrated his published work has served as 
an impetus for progress in the field or it has generated substantial positive discourse in the industry. 
Nor does the evidence otherwise show his work constitutes a record of success or progress in 
advancing his research. 
III. CONCLUSION 
As the record is insufficient to demonstrate the Petitioner is well positioned to advance his proposed 
research endeavor, he has not established he satisfies the second prong of the Dhanasar framework. 
As such, analysis of his eligibility under the third prong outlined in Dhanasar, therefore, would serve no 
meaningful purpose. 3 Accordingly, the Petitioner has not shown eligibility for a national interest waiver. 
ORDER: The appeal is dismissed. 
3 See INS v. Bagamasbad, 429 U.S. 24. 25 (1976) (stating that ·'courts and agencies are not required to make findings on 
issues in the decision of which is unnecessary to the results they reach"); see also Matter ofL-A-C-, 26 l&N Dec. 516,526 
n. 7 (BIA 2015) ( declining to reach alternative issues on appeal where an applicant is otherwise ineligible). 
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