In 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (Ninth Circuit) reviewed the Administrative Appeals Office’s (AAO) dismissal of a petitioner’s appeal of a denial of a petition filed under 203(b)(1)(A) of the INA. Kazarian v. USCIS, 596 F.3d 1115 (9
th Cir. 2010).
Although affirming the decision, the Ninth Circuit found that the AAO erred in its evaluation of the initial evidence submitted with the petition pursuant to 8 CFR 204.5(h)(3). Specifically, the Ninth Circuit concluded that while USCIS may have raised legitimate concerns about the significance of the evidence submitted, those concerns should have been raised in a subsequent “final merits determination” of whether the petitioner has the requisite extraordinary ability. Id. at 1122. The Ninth Circuit further stated that the concerns were “not relevant to the antecedent procedural question of whether the petitioner has provided at least three types of evidence.” Id. at 1121.
USCIS agrees with the Kazarian court’s two-part adjudicative approach to evaluating evidence submitted in connection with petitions for aliens of extraordinary ability: (1) Determine whether the petitioner or self-petitioner has submitted the required evidence that meets the parameters for each type of evidence listed at 8 CFR 204.5(h)(3); and (2) Determine whether the evidence submitted is sufficient to demonstrate that the beneficiary or self-petitioner meets the required high level of expertise for the extraordinary ability immigrant classification during a final merits determination. By contrast, the approach taken by USCIS officers in Kazarian collapsed these two parts and evaluated the evidence at the beginning stage of the adjudicative process, with each type of evidence being evaluated individually to determine whether the self-petitioner was extraordinary.
The two-part adjudicative approach to evaluating evidence described in Kazarian simplifies the adjudicative process by eliminating piecemeal consideration of extraordinary ability and shifting the analysis of overall extraordinary ability to the end of the adjudicative process when a determination on the entire petition is made (the final merits determination). Therefore, under this approach, an objective evaluation of the initial evidence listed at 8 CFR 204.5(h)(3) will continue as before; what changes is when the determination of extraordinary ability occurs in the adjudicative process. USCIS believes that this approach will lead to decisions that more clearly explain how evidence was considered, the basis for the overall determination of eligibility (or lack thereof), and greater consistency in decisions on petitions for aliens with extraordinary ability.
This approach is equally applicable to the evaluation of evidence in the adjudication of petitions for outstanding professors or researchers and aliens of exceptional ability. Similar evidentiary requirements and qualitative analyses apply to these types of petitions. Therefore, a similar adjudication process also should apply.
Originally Posted by sbhagwat2000
