Immigration research
United States
Five main paths to a US green card or work visa, and — for one of them — the actual U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reasoning behind 2,369 published decisions, not just a description of the rules.
Research United States immigration for your situation.
Tell us where you are, what you do, and what you are trying to understand about moving to or staying in the United States.
Main pathways
Have an advanced degree and work that benefits the US, but no employer to sponsor you?
EB-2 National Interest Waiver (NIW) →
For advanced-degree professionals whose work benefits the US enough to waive the usual job-offer/labor-certification requirement.
Official source: USCIS — EB-2 immigrant visa preference →Already at the top of your field, no job offer needed?
EB-1A Extraordinary Ability
For people at the top of their field, evidenced against ten USCIS criteria -- no job offer required.
Official source: USCIS — EB-1 immigrant visa preference →Have $800K+ to invest in a US enterprise?
EB-5 Immigrant Investor
For investors committing $800,000 (targeted employment area) or $1,050,000 (standard) to a qualifying US enterprise.
Official source: USCIS — Green Card for Immigrant Investors →Have a specific job offer requiring a bachelor's degree?
H-1B Specialty Occupation
A temporary work visa for a specific job requiring a bachelor's degree or higher in a specific specialty, subject to an annual lottery.
Official source: USCIS — H-1B Specialty Occupations →Have a US citizen or permanent resident spouse, parent, or child?
Family-based immigration
For spouses, children, parents, and siblings of US citizens or permanent residents, with wait times that vary sharply by relationship and country of birth.
Official source: USCIS — Family of US citizens →Considering studying in the US first?
F-1 Student Visa
A nonimmigrant (temporary) status for full-time study at a Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP)-certified school -- not an immigration pathway on its own.
Optional Practical Training (OPT) after graduation gives up to 12 months of work authorization (24 more for STEM degrees) -- from there, an employer can sponsor an H-1B.
Official source: DHS SEVP — Study in the States →EB-2 NIW approval rate
71% → 55.2%
FY2024 to FY2025, full-year USCIS data.
EB-1A approval rate
66.9% → 41.7%
FY2025 full year to FY2026 Q2.
EB-5 minimum investment
$800,000 / $1,050,000
Targeted employment area / standard, set by the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022.
Government filing fee (I-140)
$1,015
Self-petitioner rate, NIW/EB-1A.
Processing time
~24 months
Approximate, NIW/EB-1A. Varies by service center.
A denial follows you
Must be disclosed
Refiling after a denial requires disclosing the prior petition on the new I-140.
H-1B and EB-5 approval-rate percentages aren’t shown above — we couldn’t verify current figures directly against an official USCIS page in the time available, and we’d rather show nothing than a number we can’t stand behind.
Only available here
2,369 published USCIS decisions, searchable and source-linked.
For EB-2 NIW, we didn’t just summarize the rules — we read every published Administrative Appeals Office decision, extracted what USCIS actually found on each legal element, and linked every finding back to the exact page of the government PDF. No other page on this site (and few anywhere) can show you that.
See the NIW cases →EB-1A: 887 decisions are already downloaded and structured, but not searchable yet — we validate our classification accuracy for a case type before publishing it, and haven’t finished that for EB-1A’s ten-criteria framework.
What this data covers
Public USCIS data across 6 pathways and 6 sourced data points, plus 2,369 searchable EB-2 NIW appeal decisions.
⚠ It doesn't assess your eligibility or predict an outcome. The case archive covers denied-then-appealed EB-2 NIW petitions only -- not a representative sample of all filings.
Last updated 2026-08-20
Official resources
State bar admission (no separate immigration-consultant license)
US immigration legal advice must come from a licensed attorney admitted to a state bar, or an accredited representative recognized under federal regulations. This is also why we don’t run advisor advertising next to case research — see methodology for the reasoning.