Startup founders often cannot self-sponsor through traditional employment-based green card categories. EB-1A allows you to self-petition based on your own extraordinary ability as a founder — independent of your company’s current immigration sponsorship capabilities. Founders with significant venture funding, media coverage, industry recognition, and a track record of business impact are strong candidates. Silmi Law builds compelling petitions for early-stage and growth-stage founders across all industries.
Employer Sponsor Required
Petition Filed
Criteria Required
Preference Priority
We assess your funding history, press coverage, awards, advisory roles, and business milestones to identify the strongest EB-1A criteria.
We map your entrepreneurial achievements onto the ten EB-1A criteria and develop a tailored evidentiary strategy around your strengths.
We map your entrepreneurial achievements onto the ten EB-1A criteria and develop a tailored evidentiary strategy around your strengths.
We file the petition and provide detailed support for any Requests for Evidence issued by USCIS.
We understand venture funding, accelerator programs, and startup milestones — and how to translate them into USCIS-ready extraordinary ability evidence.
We identify and frame media coverage, industry awards, and advisory roles as strong evidence under multiple EB-1A criteria.
Sharif Silmi personally oversees every founder EB-1A petition from strategy through filing.
We work with founders at all stages — from pre-revenue startups to scaling companies — tailoring the EB-1A strategy to your specific profile.
We coordinate expert letters from investors, advisors, and industry peers who can speak to your extraordinary impact as a founder.
We serve startup founders throughout New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, Massachusetts, Washington, and nationwide.
