I just asked and they did it, haha. I work for a big company with a big lawyer team. I came here on an O-1 and it was basically just resubmitting all that paperwork. I was actually pretty pissed off at the time, because they just filed it super fast after I asked, without even getting my final approval on the full application. I thought the standard for EB-1 was much higher so I was worried, but it turned out fine I guess (though I haven't got the physical green card in my hand yet, I do have the i-140 approved which I think is the hard part where they judge if you're "extraordinary" or not?).
Getting the O-1 was such a nightmare though. I'm not being modest. I'm really not extraordinary at all. I just think the O-1/EB-1 system is a little antiquated, so they look for things like academic publications more than e.g. if you actually invented a really great technology. Plenty of colleagues are actually more extraordinary and productive than me. The criteria for O-1/EB-1 maybe made more sense back in the 1970s where the smartest folks wrote academic papers? But anyway, I did a PhD in a very niche subject area which was kind tied to applications in industry, which you can make the argument affects lots of people, and so the general argument the lawyers made was: "X is a very niche field. America needs X". I have a few hundred citations, not thousands. But one or two pieces of work were with bigger companies so did make the press (mainly a short article which was copied and multiplied lots of times across different outlets). The really big pain was asking for 7+ references from people I had worked with in the past, explaining that, hey, this isn't a normal professional reference, this is a US immigration thing, so if you could say how much of a genius I am that would be super helpful, thanks.
t seems like you're exactly the sort of person that both the letter and spirit of the law are supposed to help. It's not supposed to be a system just for, say, Nobel Prize winners.
Thank you! Yes, it worked well for me, but I can't help but think the real intention of the visas is just to bring "extraordinary people" to the US. Saying that, I have no idea how to devise a fairer criteria to judge that (because I'm not that extraordinary, obviously). In my mind, I'm thinking of some people I know who are definitely a lot smarter than me but just don't have a PhD and publications. Some of the best people I know don't even have degrees. How can an immigration official with little knowledge of the area of expertise differentiate those people and bring them here?
