RFE Case Study — NIW — substantial_merit, national_importance, well_positioned, balance (all three Dhanasar prongs)
Denied after RFETwo Endeavors, Neither Proven: An NIW That Was Denied After the RFE Response
An architectural designer's EB-2 NIW was challenged on all three Dhanasar prongs and denied after the response. The root defect was set before the RFE ever arrived: the petition described two different endeavors and evidenced neither completely, which left every prong unanswerable.
The applicant was an architectural designer working at a design studio, self-petitioning for EB-2 classification with a National Interest Waiver. The petition described the proposed endeavor in two ways at once: continuing to practice as an architectural designer, and possibly opening an independent studio. That ambiguity is what the RFE attacked, prong by prong.
On substantial merit, the officer's line was categorical: "simply continuing employment in one's field is not a sufficient enough endeavor to allow USCIS to determine whether or not the endeavor has substantial merit." Dhanasar evaluates a proposed endeavor, and continuing an existing job is not one. As for the alternative — the possible studio — the officer noted there was "a lack of information regarding this business," and then spelled out the consequence explicitly: without a defined endeavor, the petitioner "impede[s] USCIS in determining" national importance, whether the petitioner is well positioned, and the balancing test. One underspecified paragraph propagated into all three prongs.
On national importance, two findings are worth quoting. First, on scope: "benefits that are isolated to a single institution or locality in the United States might be so attenuated at the national level as to preclude a finding that the proposed endeavor has national importance." Client-serving and design practices are structurally exposed here, because their benefit is by construction local to the client. Second, on the support letters: the officer found they "focused on the self-petitioner's experience and achievements, but they failed to provide any information about the national importance of the proposed endeavor." The letters had been written to praise the person, which is what an EB-1A-style letter does. Prong 1 is about the endeavor, and no amount of praise for the individual answers it.
On being well positioned, the officer produced a split finding that is easy to misread as partial success. For the applicant as an architectural designer, USCIS accepted that the applicant was well positioned. For the applicant as a business or studio owner, the record lacked the evidence to support it. Because the petition never committed to one endeavor, the weaker branch determined the outcome for the prong as a whole.
On the balancing test, the officer listed three distinct sub-arguments the petition had not made: that the applicant's knowledge or skills are not easily articulated in a labor certification; that the benefits of the endeavor outweigh those inherent in the labor certification process; and that the applicant offers contributions of such value that the United States would benefit even if other qualified U.S. workers were available. Prong 3 does not follow automatically from prongs 1 and 2, and petitions that treat it as a formality routinely arrive at the RFE stage with nothing on the record to point to.
The response was filed, and the petition was denied.
Key takeaway
Describing more than one possible endeavor does not hedge risk in an NIW — it multiplies it, because the officer analyses the weakest version and a vague endeavor makes all three Dhanasar prongs unanswerable at once. This is a drafting defect that exists before the RFE is issued, and an RFE response usually cannot repair it: by then the record already contains the ambiguity. Decide on one specific, documented endeavor at filing time, write the support letters about that endeavor rather than about the applicant's career, and argue prong 3 explicitly as its own section.
Case details in this article are heavily de-identified from a real RFE we reviewed — names, employers, dates, and figures have been generalized or removed to protect the applicant's privacy.
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