So before I respond to this question specifically let me kind of back up and explain that the National Interest Waiver is a type of employment based second categories. It’s a process that leads to obtaining a foreign – obtaining green cards by a foreign national. The huge benefit of the National Interest Waiver cases is that the foreign nationals can self sponsor themselves and they are not required to obtain a prime labor certification, which is it’s a separate step that’s usually conducted in other EB-2 cases.

So who qualifies? Since late 2016 the precedent decision of Matter of Dhanasar that set up a new legal structure for the National Interest Waiver cases. The three criteria that are really consider right now is that the type of work that is to be performed by the foreign national is of intrinsic value and it’s of the national importance to the United States. The big difference is that in the past the immigration service required that the work already impacted some kind of interest on the national scale that it was actually, that the work impacted for example the technology was used in different states, a variety of states. The new criteria proposed by the Matter of Dhanasar requires only that the works of national importance not necessarily focus on the geographic scope of the work.

The other criteria is that the foreign national needs to be well positioned to advance the endeavor. And again, the new part about this criteria is that the foreign national does not have to prove that he or she is more likely or not to succeed. The only thing that they need to prove is that they are well positioned based on their experience, based on their skills, based on their prior achievements or the progress they have made. So again, this a little bit easier to prove that.

And the last criteria the Dhanasar are introduced is that the, it’s beneficial to the United States to waive the term labor certification for this particular person. And again, the difference is that in the past we had to show that there was a harm to the United States if the term labor certification was not waived. Right now it’s not necessary that there is a harm as long as we prove that there is any benefit to the United States that this person is allowed to continue their work. Then we meet the burden required to qualify.

I also want to mention at the end that the EB- 2 National Interest Waiver cases are particular beneficial for people from countries other than China or India, because there is currently a backlog, meaning a wait time in the employment based first category throughout all the countries. And the EB-2 is current in the worldwide category, which includes most of the countries except India and China. And this is very good news, because for those people because they are allowed to proceed to the green card process without any unnecessary wait time or delays waiting for the backlog to be cleared.