Getting the O-1 was such a nightmare though. I'm not being modest. I'm really not extraordinary at all. I just think the O-1/EB-1 system is a little antiquated, so they look for things like academic publications more than e.g. if you actually invented a really great technology. Plenty of colleagues are actually more extraordinary and productive than me. The criteria for O-1/EB-1 maybe made more sense back in the 1970s where the smartest folks wrote academic papers? But anyway, I did a PhD in a very niche subject area which was kind tied to applications in industry, which you can make the argument affects lots of people, and so the general argument the lawyers made was: "X is a very niche field. America needs X". I have a few hundred citations, not thousands. But one or two pieces of work were with bigger companies so did make the press (mainly a short article which was copied and multiplied lots of times across different outlets). The really big pain was asking for 7+ references from people I had worked with in the past, explaining that, hey, this isn't a normal professional reference, this is a US immigration thing, so if you could say how much of a genius I am that would be super helpful, thanks.