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How would you rate a senior engineer's odds at qualifying for an O-1 visa? Can they get by on career/work history alone or does it require a level of public notoriety?

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I may be able to share some insight here. At 23 years old, I have gone through the O-1 process twice in the past 3.5 years, I have a couple of references in news publications like TechCrunch but that's about it in terms of public notoriety. Your prior achievements, recommendation letters and peer review are important. TLDR: Don't be intimidated by the absurd name of the visa. My e-mail is in my profile if you want some specifics

3-time O-1 recipient here. Denied for EB-1 once + on appeal.

The O-1, I feel, is pretty dependent on our personal situation, and which side of the bed the reviewer woke up on when they look at your application. But, it can be done. Good luck!

Why 3-time? How long is O-1 valid before it expires?

3 years term per approval. But you have to apply again every time you change jobs. I started with one company, then was founder of a startup, re-applied there, and moved it to another company.

Re-applying is easier once you've been approved once.

What's the reapplication process like? Do you need to have done something exceptional from the time of the previous one's expiry to warrant an extension?

I've never done an extension, just a transfer. It was pretty routine; you just file the application again just like the first time. Not much of a difference; other than the previous approval making your chances of getting approved once more significantly higher.

The first time, I had to get a new visa stamp (which required going back to my home country to get it from the U.S. embassy); the second time I kept the same visa stamp and a little piece of paper in my passport showing the transfer. It's mostly useful as a reference of the case number when I get asked about my employer (which is different than the one shown on the visa stamp) when I travel back to the US from a trip abroad.

I see. How does EB-1 relate to this?

EB-1 is basically a green card version of the O-1 (i.e. an immigrant visa, not tied to your ongoing employment). Once you have an EB-1 you can freely change jobs, start companies, do consulting part time, etc. The requirements are essentially the same as the O-1, but evaluated much more strictly.

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That's incorrect. You only need 3 for the EB-1. See:

http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/permanent-workers...

> * Criteria for Demonstrating Extraordinary Ability You must meet 3 out of the 10 listed criteria below to prove extraordinary ability in your field:

Apologies my mistake!

This is tough to answer because it's not so much tied to your title or even level within a company but your accomplishments.

Do you mean it depends on one's accomplishments within a company? What would be good examples of eligible corporate accomplishments from an O-1 or EB1 application perspective? And would getting accepted into YC be an eligible accomplishment for these?

From what i understand, to get on O visa, you are better off being one of the top 3 specialists worldwide in an obscure combination of OS language platform running on an old mainframe, instead of being in the top 1% of all Javascript/PHP developers.

A good immigration lawyer would help you figure your strategy here.

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