O1B Visa News Media

I. Breakdown of the Law

This criterion is met if the applicant has been in major media publications for their achievements. This law has (3) parts.

1. Applicant is mentioned
2. In a major media article
3. About Applicant’s achievements

II. Meeting the Criteria

When deciding whether an applicant meets this criterion, it’s important to consider the following information for instances in which they were in major media publications for their achievements.

1. Title of Article
2. Name of News
3. Type of Media
4. Date

 Match-Ups

This tangible information matches up with the actual law in the following ways

1. Applicant is mentioned = = > Title of Article
2. In major media article = = > Name of the News, Type of Media
3. About Applicant’s achievements = = > Title of Article

 

III. Proving it to USCIS

1. Title of Article

*The title of the article is used to get the full text of the article. Law This category proves match-up (1) and (3), applicant has been in major media publications for their achievements.

What USCIS Is Looking For

For category (1), “by or about the individual”. This means that if you are a part of a team, and that team gets into the news, that’s not good enough. It needs to be about the actual applicant. USCIS is looking for your actual, printed name in the article.

For category (3), what USCIS is looking for is that the article is relevant to your talent.

Examples

It’s great that you were on the Olympic team, but that profile in The New York Times counts for very little if the USCIS Officer can’t highlight your name in the article.

If you are a Pole Vaulter, an article about you chipping your tooth at a restaurant will not be considered relevant to your talent.

2. Name of News

Law

This category proves match-up (2), the applicant has been in major media publications for their achievements.

What USCIS Is Looking For

For printed media, they want high circulation numbers. Circulation is the number of people that pay for a subscription to the media. The idea is, the higher the subscription number, the more ‘prestigious’ the paper. There is no set benchmark number. They also like to see that the paper has international distribution. Citation information can be looked up in a citation catalog (our office uses Ulrich). If it’s not in Ulrich, then it’s not major media. If it is in Ulrich, then just include as much information as is available.

For online media, USCIS doesn’t know what it wants. You can give Alexa rank, age, site visits, etc… but USCIS officers and blogs are not friends. They say they get it, but they don’t get it. Just do your best. Our office uses Alexa and Whois. The higher the Alexa rank and the older the registration date, the better.

Examples

A blog is registered to a corporation for 20 + years is better than being registered to Grandma’s basement for 6 weeks.

3. Type of Media

Law

This category proves match-up (2), the applicant has been in major media publications for their achievements.

What USCIS Is Looking For

Unofficially, printed media is more highly scored than websites. Websites still do count and can be the sole basis of a finding of matching criteria, but it’s not ideal. If there are no printed sources, I will be concerned the criteria may not be met.

Examples

Newspapers > Magazines > Blogs

4. Date

Law

This category goes to the overall criteria of “being at the top of your field”.

What USCIS Is Looking For

In terms of “being at the top of your field”, USCIS officers are looking for people who have a long but steady incline of success, and are applying while at the very top. Ideally, you would have several news articles, steadily from more and more “major” of media, with the most recent being in the past six months. In reality, that’s quite rare, and USCIS will usually take what they can get.

*Translation

If your media source is in another language you need to pay for an official translation, which can be $ 20-60 per page. You cannot translate the article yourself, nor can you have your friend do it. If the article is untranslated, or not done officially, you might as well crumple it up and throw it in the garbage. USCIS will not consider it.

IV. Difficulty

Level of Difficulty

This criterion is a level 3 difficulty. Only about half of the applicants meet this criterion. Almost all applicants have some news articles about them, but only about half of applicants are deemed to have “major media” mentions and meet this criterion.

 Related Criteria

This criterion is the same for both O-1A and O-1B.