Hi everyone O-1 self petitions are difficult for a lot of reasons because a one-stop
petition technically doesn't exist and cannot work but if you can structure it correctly
it might but what if you put your home address as your business address and USCIS finds out about it
well in this case in this story that's exactly what happened got a nasty RFE request for evidence
because USCIS wrote we used google maps we found out that it's a residential address
please explain it was short but there's a sting and we spent the next two three months putting
everything together as best as we can filing it crossing our fingers and then the kids got
to prove so i want to share that story and the know-how with you today let's get to it
hi everyone this is Joseph i'm the managing partner here at Tsang & Associates where we solve
legal problems with creative solutions so today's case is about o-1 self-petition self petition is a
loose term for saying you own your company and your company is sponsoring yourself typically
these cases will be denied because you can't self-sponsor if you own the company then there
is no separation between employer and employee so technically we won't grant that to you but if
you can show that there is a separation between employer employee that your company even though
you own part of it that they can fire you then it will be okay but this is a startup it's not like
a well-established company that you own part of the share or your relatives own part of the shares
but it's entirely a startup it's our client a few professors business partners angel investors but
it is our client right and so this international student who just recently graduated just finished
his opt started this company and this company is doing an 01 cell petition doing medical research
well unfortunately because the company i mean when i say a startup i don't mean like a year-long two
three four year startup i'm talking about it just filed the secretary of state less than a month
ago that type of startup we filed the case we started incorporating the company during the opt
grace period meaning after he's already spent the whole year working and now during the grace period
he needs to find a solution so we incorporated the company prepared the business plan got all
the company documents together and then filed it and then now USCIS looks at this thing and
says your company literally just started your bank account was just open the funding just
came in you didn't even have a chance to find a real office and so it's your home address please
explain yourself and so that's what we did in the next three months when we got this RFE we really
needed to prove that this company is real even though it's at a home address we need to document
exactly what he's doing the steps he plans to do the different contracts that he's negotiating the
research material and we got all of that together prepared it filed it and then fingers crossed the
case was approved now what did we do exactly in three months we prepared seven documents to submit
for this RFE so only seven of course we normally like to present 20 or more but we were only able
to get seven but we documented extensively what each one of these things meant and how important
they were so the first thing is the company got a grant and so we documented the extensive effort in
getting this particular grant and we almost did a mini eb1a analysis on this grant how
difficult it was how many people applied how few people get it what was the adjudication process
to show if it was a fake company nobody would go through that and it has already been evaluated by
another government agency to give this grant right so that was one of the things that we did the
second thing is we showed the detailed proposals and all the research that our client has been
engaging and all the people that's been partnering to do this right all the different professors
the research labs and all the contractors so even though it was just a business plan but in
depth there were so many people that were involved and we showed the product of what they were doing
and third because it was so highly sophisticated all these exclusive licensing agreements that were
signed between the different parties and so that was pretty important and so the fourth thing we
did was to get it evaluated how important was this product that they're trying to research and find
out got an evaluation did a comparison report with other products that are similar and got a price to
it and that was really exciting to see and did all of that within a few months the last two things
was the efforts that our clients made on behalf of the company interviewing different renowned
professors regarding this particular product that he's designing the transcript notes as well as the
a contractor coming in to evaluate how to set up the entire office so there were efforts showing
that the office is being set up so all in all seven things but each thing took an extraordinary
amount of effort to obtain and to solidify if it was purely just a lease agreement or an interior
design of the office with some pictures of his apple computer i think the case would have been
denied but we had to go that much in depth showing the promise of the company and all the people that
was supporting it to really convince USCIS that even though a self-petitioned company
and it was at his house that it has a promise to kick off and we did a comparison with you know
facebook and all these other big tech companies that started in the garage right just because
it's in your local residence doesn't mean it's a fake company and so taking a step back we totally
understand why the government USCIS is a little suspicious when it's at a residential address
when it's a startup when it's a self petition when it's by an international student that already used
up all his opt there's all these red flags to show maybe this applicant just wants to stay in the u.s
and doesn't really intend to work but at the end of the day the O-1 cell petition or the O-1 visa
is really just a few years of visa status but if you can document and show all the promise
of what this person will be able to bring to the u.s and all the efforts that have already
been made and all the validation it could work it did work and in this case i wanted
to present it to you to show you how it worked so if you have any questions about the O-1 feel
free to give us a call we'd love to talk to you about it okay all right take care bye!