A corporate attorney's EB-1A petition was remanded after the AAO agreed with SCOPS that only 2 of 3 required criteria…

The Petitioner, a Taiwan-based corporate attorney and chief counsel at a large semiconductor company, appealed SCOPS's denial of his EB-1A petition. SCOPS found he met only two of the required three criteria (scholarly articles and leading role). On appeal, he argued he also met the awards criterion and the high salary criterion. The AAO affirmed denial of the awards criterion because his internal employer award lacked national recognition and his dissertation fellowship was not shown to be awarded for excellence specifically in the legal field. On the salary criterion, the AAO disagreed with SCOPS's reasoning but identified a different problem: the salary benchmark data likely covered salary only while the Petitioner's figures included bonuses and profit sharing, making them an apples-to-oranges comparison. Because SCOPS never gave the Petitioner a chance to address this specific deficiency, the AAO remanded the case for a new decision.

What worked: The Petitioner successfully established two criteria: authorship of scholarly articles and a leading/critical role at an organization with an outstanding reputation. His compensation statements successfully showed that bonuses and profit sharing were compensation for his services, overcoming SCOPS's incorrect reasoning on that point.

What failed: The internal 'Excellent Instructor Award' failed because it was only recognized within the employer. The dissertation fellowship failed because it was awarded across the humanities and social sciences broadly, not for excellence in law specifically, and its national/international recognition was not established. The salary comparison failed because the benchmark data likely measured salary only, not total compensation including bonuses.

Takeaway: When relying on salary evidence for the high salary criterion, petitioners must ensure that the comparison data covers the same compensation components (e.g., base salary plus bonuses) as the petitioner's actual earnings; mismatched comparisons will fail even if the raw numbers look favorable. For awards, internal employer recognition is insufficient—petitioners must provide concrete evidence that the award has recognition outside the awarding organization and is specifically tied to excellence in their professional field.

Cases like this are frequently used by attorneys when responding to RFEs or building initial petitions. The evidence patterns that worked (or failed) here directly reflect what USCIS officers look for when evaluating EB-1A criteria.

Criterion-by-criterion breakdown