For sale: EB-1A

For a visa category meant to attract extraordinary minds, the EB-1A scam landscape is depressingly ordinary. Every day, self-proclaimed 'immigration consultants' convince professionals that their mediocre resumes can be alchemized into gold-plated EB-1A applications. 

The pipeline of EB1-A approval to EB1-A Consultant or EB1-A Coach dishing out an expensive coaching service is hilarious, infuriating, and tragic. These hacks are preying on desperate people and cheapening the whole endeavor, all for a quick buck.

A scam, you say? How dare I? 

Oh, I dare. While there's nothing technically illegal about legally fleecing a desperate schmuck, let's call this exactly what it is: a con. 
And in this con, you are the mark, my EB1 hopeful friend. 

News Alert: There is, literally, nothing in the EB1 visa process that needs a paid course or paid coaching.

The requirements are available on the USCIS website in plain English. Is reading comprehension only relevant till you take your GREs? Still having trouble understanding? Shove that into any LLM. OMFG!?!

You are being sold a bogus service. Gullible fresh grads are being told to pay anywhere from $15,000 to $35,000 USD to be coached to “BUILD AN EB1 PROFILE”.
Un-fucking-believable!

The MO

They function exactly like an MLM. Massive word-of-mouth marketing and name-dropping if someone from their "cohort" gets an EB1. And the cycle goes on. It's hard to miss these types of celebratory posts on LinkedIn.

Just think about it

If you are someone who has had a long enough career, one of these things will be true:

1. You have a strong profile. You are a top performer. You not only did your job well, but you did a whole lot of things relevant to your field outside of your job.
2. You have a weak profile. You don’t have much to show apart from your job, if that. You have a hard time even proving you are the MVP of your team.

In either case, you already must know it. Sure, there will be apprehensions and uncertainty, but you know, in the back of your brain, where you stand in your industry.
I have spoken to over 100 individuals in the past 4 months (all free; I don’t intend to make money off this cause). People can tell if they have a strong or a weak profile.

If you belong to 1

Bully for you! There is nothing of importance a paid course or coaching can provide you that your lawyer can not advise you on. There is very little in terms of “extra PR” that is even relevant to your case that these paid courses and services can do for you.

You need to make a coherent narrative that needs to be polished and smoothed, and support that with overwhelming evidence that you have likely collected over your illustrious career. The needless PR and random awards and other fluff are, at best, useless.

Hire a decent immigration lawyer who’s done this before, you don’t even need the world’s best immigration firm. You could also just go about this on your own with a paralegal.  If I had to do this again, I would probably go the paralegal route.

If you belong to 2

Sorry, accept it; your profile is not strong enough for EB1-A right now. The EB1-A is way more than just satisfying 3 out of 10 criteria. Even if you somehow manage to satisfy that (or pay someone to do that for you 🤮), you will fail at Final Merits. I talk about this here: https://www.eb1init.com/the-eb-1a-two-step-focused-on-the-wrong-dance/

No amount of PR wizardry or ghost-written articles and fake papers will fool the USCIS.

Do you really think USCIS adjudicators are this stupid? Do you think immigration officers don't raise an eyebrow when they see a mid-level engineer with zero searchable accomplishments suddenly appearing in random news articles? Are people this dense? You are in for a world of RFEs and NOIRs. You don't hear about them much because of survivorship bias. Also, people don't generally announce when they get RFEs or denials.

So what should you actually do?

Instead of throwing your money at these charlatans? Brace yourself for some radical advice: Focus on your actual career. I know, shocking. 😱

Here's the reality check that no paid "coach" will give you: The EB1 visa isn't something you can hack or speedrun. You're either extraordinary in your field, or you're not. And if you have to ask whether you qualify – or worse, if you're considering paying someone to "make" you qualify – you already have your answer.

If you need a video game analogy, building a successful career is the main quest. Awards, conferences, and PR are side quests. If you are not working towards the main quest, the other stuff is useless. Focus on your actual career. Be 1% of your team, your org, your company. Good stuff will happen. Opportunities to speak and present at conferences are much easier to come by when you are flourishing in your career.

For those just starting their careers who dream of that golden EB1 ticket, here's the only “roadmap” you need, and it won't cost you a dime:

- Surround yourself with people smarter than you.

- Find impactful projects and do meaningful work in your field.

- Build real, non-transactional relationships with mentors and industry leaders.

- Create genuine accomplishments that don't need a PR spin to shine.

Yes, it is hard. Yes, it is not obvious. Yes, there is no magic playbook.

Yes, the EB2 waiting times for India and China are soul-crushing. Yes, the immigration system is broken. It’s fucked up, I have lived through it. 

But throwing money at snake oil salesmen won't fix either of these things – it'll just leave you poorer, disgruntled, AND waiting.

Want proof? Look at the successful EB1-A recipients who didn't need to buy their way in. They got there through organic growth, actual achievements, and real expertise. You're not so special that you've discovered some magical shortcut they all missed.

Sometimes, the hardest truth to swallow is also the simplest: There are no shortcuts to the extraordinary.

Who to avoid

Avoid anyone who is not a legal entity or an immigration attorney and is trying to sell you something. There is nothing that they can tell you that you can't find from free stuff online. There is no service that they can provide you that will directly help your case. YOU ARE A PROFESSIONAL. YOU DO NOT NEED COACHING.

Reddit is also a great source to identify these people. If Reddit says someone is shady or a scam, it's best to avoid.

Finally

If you're still tempted to drop a 5-digit sum on an "EB1 profile-building course" or "EB1 coach", I have one last piece of advice: Take that money and invest it.

Remember: a fool and his money are soon parted – and you'll have no one to blame but yourself.

The bitter irony? Those same "consultants" selling you the secret sauce to proving your "extraordinary ability" are proving their own extraordinary ability – at separating desperate immigrants from their hard-earned money.

Now that's what I call American entrepreneurship at its finest.

To these entrepreneurs: