For a recent PhD, is it a weaker case to argue for an industry-focused NIW versus research-focused NIW?

This purely depends on publications.

If you are a PhD graduate who only has internship experience but a significant number of publications and citations (a couple dozen publications and a couple hundred citations), then I’d suggest applying as a research NIW and less as an industry NIW.

If you don’t have too many publications and/or citations, you’ll most likely be better off arguing for an industry-focused NIW unless you can show that one of your publications was particularly insightful or impactful to the research community.

If you fall into the latter category, I’d suggest waiting until you get at least a full time job offer first before you apply for EB-2 NIW.

You don’t need to necessarily be working at that company for a long time, but having a job will at least provide a way for you to argue that you do have the opportunity to do the work that’s related to your proposed endeavor as part of your EB-2 NIW application.

Having just internships and nothing else besides a couple of publications without citations could still be enough, but this is not the kind of profile I’ve handled before - closest thing to this has so far been someone with internships and a job offer at a prestigious company (their NIW was approved).

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Interested in EB-1A, EB-2 NIW or O-1? Feel free to reach out at [email protected] or via LinkedIn messages and I’ll get back to you shortly!

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