Legal update (October 2026): This article describes a national interest waiver approval obtained under the legal framework in effect at that time. In December 2016, Matter of Dhanasar, 26 I&N Dec. 884 (AAO 2016), replaced the earlier NIW framework. Under the current test, the proposed endeavor must have substantial merit and national importance; the petitioner must be well positioned to advance the endeavor; and, on balance, waiving the job offer and labor certification requirements must benefit the United States. The petitioner must also meet the underlying EB-2 requirements. The original case history below is preserved, but its historical legal criteria and processing time observations should not be treated as current USCIS requirements or estimates.
National Interest Waiver – Part I
I’m going to introduce a new segment to my blog readers. Many current and potential clients contact me or my office to discuss whether or not they can qualify for certain applications like the national interest waiver. I wrote one previous entry describing the typical qualifications for our NIW clients but I would like to start a periodic series describing particular NIW cases that we have successfully handled in the past.
Historical NIW Requirements (Before December 2016)
- That the alien seeks employment in an area of substantial intrinsic merit;
- That the proposed benefit will be national in scope; and
- That the national interest would be adversely affected if a labor certification would be required for the alien.
National Interest Waiver Approved Case Part I
Degree: PhD in Physics
Position: Research Associate
Field of Expertise: Materials Science
Publications: 14
Citations: 11 including self citations
Conferences: 21
Recommendation Letters: 4
The applicant in this case was a South Korea national. It was approved without a request for additional evidence and because the visa numbers were current for the EB2 category, the applicant obtained her residency approximately 1 year after filing. During the second half of 2009, our firm was regularly seeing some NIW petition approvals in less than three months. That describes our experience at that time, not a current USCIS processing time estimate.
This applicant surpassed the minimum requirements for an NIW application. Most of our clients have 4 publications or less and are employed as a post doc at a University. However, the applicant had a very poor publication to citation ratio. This could lead the adjudicating officer to believe that her work was not well regarded and of poor quality. In a sense this was true but we were able to overcome this issue by highlighting her other accomplishments and through her recommendation letters.