For professionals working at large technology companies – including those commonly grouped under the FAANG or “Big Tech” label – a challenge to national importance can often signal that the petition focused too heavily on the employee’s job duties, employer, or individual projects rather than the broader proposed endeavor. This issue can arise even for accomplished engineers, researchers, product leaders, cybersecurity professionals, AI specialists, and other technical contributors at Amazon, Google, Meta, Apple, Netflix, Microsoft, Nvidia, and other major technology employers.

The question is usually not whether the work is sophisticated or valuable. Instead, USCIS may question whether the petition explains why that work has broader implications for the United States beyond the commercial interests of one company. An RFE or denial, however, does not necessarily end the case. The endeavor can often be refined and the evidence restructured to address the deficiency.

This guide explains why USCIS may challenge national importance for Big Tech employees, how to respond to an RFE, and how to build a stronger EB-2 NIW petition in the event of a denial.

Key Takeaways:

1. A national importance RFE or denial may reflect how the proposed endeavor was framed rather than weak credentials or insignificant work.
2. Under Matter of Dhanasar, substantial merit and national importance comprise the first prong of the EB-2 NIW analysis. For many Big Tech petitioners, national importance is the more difficult issue.
3. Working for a prominent technology company does not independently establish national importance. USCIS evaluates the specific endeavor and its prospective impact, not simply the employer’s reputation or scale.
4. A strong RFE response generally requires more than evidence that the petitioner is talented or that the employer is significant. The petition should define a clear, employer-neutral endeavor and demonstrate its broader implications through objective evidence and tailored support letters.
5. After a denial, filing a new I-140 may sometimes be more practical than pursuing a motion or appeal, particularly where stronger framing and evidence can cure the underlying weakness.

Why Do Big Tech Employees Receive National Importance RFEs and Denials?

The EB-2 NIW is evaluated under Matter of Dhanasar, the 2016 AAO precedent that asks three questions:

1. Whether the proposed endeavor has substantial merit and national importance;
2. Whether the petitioner is well positioned to advance the proposed endeavor; and
3. Whether, on balance, it would benefit the United States to waive the job offer and labor certification requirements.

For many highly qualified Big Tech professionals, substantial merit is often fairly easy to demonstrate. Building distributed computing systems, advancing artificial intelligence, strengthening cybersecurity, modernizing cloud infrastructure, improving semiconductor technologies, or developing more resilient supply chains can plainly involve important technical and economic problems.

The national importance question is more challenging. USCIS may acknowledge that a project is technologically valuable while questioning whether its anticipated impact extends beyond a relatively narrow group of beneficiaries, such as the petitioner’s employer, its products, its customers, or its business partners.

A software engineer may develop a system used by millions of customers, an AI specialist may improve a major commercial platform, or a cloud engineer may increase the efficiency of infrastructure operating at enormous scale. Those achievements can be significant. But unless the petition connects them to broader implications for the field, industry, critical infrastructure, economic interests, public welfare, or another national priority, USCIS may still view the principal beneficiary as the employer.

This problem is not unique to Big Tech. Whenever a petitioner’s work closely tracks one company’s commercial objectives, the petition must clearly explain how the proposed endeavor extends beyond them.

Why Working for a Major Technology Company Is Not Enough

One of the most important distinctions in an EB-2 NIW petition is the difference between the petitioner’s occupation or job and the petitioner’s proposed endeavor. The occupation is the professional role. The proposed endeavor is the specific body of work the petitioner intends to advance and the broader impact that work is expected to produce.

For example: “Senior Software Development Engineer at a major cloud provider” describes an occupation. By contrast, an endeavor might involve strengthening the security and reliability of large-scale cloud infrastructure relied upon by U.S. healthcare organizations, financial institutions, businesses, and government entities.

Those descriptions are not interchangeable. The employer may provide the environment in which the petitioner advances the endeavor, but the employer itself should not become the endeavor.

This distinction is especially important for Big Tech employees because the reputation of the company can sometimes obscure the actual NIW analysis. A petitioner may understandably assume that developing sophisticated AI systems for one of the world’s largest technology companies necessarily demonstrates national importance. USCIS does not automatically make that inference. The petition must explain why the specific work being advanced has broader prospective implications.

The Amazon Example: Employer Impact vs. National Impact

Amazon provides a useful example of why this distinction matters. An Amazon employee may work on projects involving AWS infrastructure, artificial intelligence, logistics systems, cybersecurity, supply-chain optimization, distributed computing, or technologies used at enormous scale. Those projects may be technically difficult and commercially significant, fulfilling the substantial merit requirements of the first prong.

But a petition framed primarily around statements such as “my work improves Amazon’s cloud platform,” “my system increases Amazon’s operational efficiency,” or “my project benefits millions of Amazon customers” can still leave USCIS with an unanswered question: Why does this work matter nationally beyond Amazon?

A stronger petition identifies the underlying endeavor and follows its impact outward. For example, cloud security work might contribute to the reliability of infrastructure used across healthcare, finance, government, manufacturing, and other sectors. Supply-chain technology might address broader resilience, logistics, or infrastructure challenges. AI work might develop methods capable of adoption or application beyond a particular internal platform.

The goal is not to remove Amazon – or any other employer – from the record. Employer projects can provide powerful evidence of expertise and impact. Instead, the petition should prevent the company from becoming the outer boundary or the main focus of the claimed benefit. The same principle applies to professionals at Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia, and other major technology companies.

What Does USCIS Require for National Importance?

The Dhanasar framework requires USCIS to assess the proposed endeavor itself, including its prospective impact and broader implications. A petitioner therefore needs to do more than establish that:

• the technology industry is important;
• artificial intelligence or cybersecurity is important;
• the employer is economically significant;
• the petitioner holds a senior role; or
• the petitioner has worked on technically impressive projects.

A stronger petition answers several connected questions: What problem is the petitioner addressing? Who is affected by that problem? Why does the United States have an interest in solving it? How can the petitioner’s work produce effects beyond the immediate employer? And what evidence shows those effects are realistic rather than speculative?

 The petition should answer those questions directly through external documentation, project evidence, and tailored expert or support letters.

How Do You Respond to an EB-2 NIW RFE Challenging National Importance?

A national importance RFE does not necessarily mean that the underlying profile is weak. But responding effectively requires a careful reading of the RFE and an honest assessment of how the proposed endeavor was originally presented.

The first instinct should generally not be to simply add more recommendation letters explaining that the petitioner is talented. If USCIS already recognizes that the petitioner performs sophisticated work, additional praise may do little to resolve a national importance concern. In fact, the first Dhanasar prong is not focused on the petitioner at all.

A stronger response should instead:

• Restate the endeavor in specific, employer-neutral terms;
• Explain the larger problem it addresses;
• Connect that problem to recognized U.S. technological, economic, security, infrastructure, healthcare, or other national priorities;
• Show how the work can produce benefits beyond the immediate employer;
• Provide independent evidence establishing the scope and importance of the underlying problem;
• Demonstrate adoption, reliance, influence, replication, or downstream applications where available;
• Use expert testimony to explain broader field-level implications; and
• Respond directly to each concern USCIS identified.

 The objective is to make the chain of reasoning explicit. USCIS should not have to infer how an internal AI system, cloud platform, security architecture, supply-chain project, or software methodology translates into broader national impact.

What Are Your Options After an EB-2 NIW Denial?

A denial does not necessarily end the EB-2 NIW strategy. The appropriate next step depends heavily on why USCIS denied the petition. One common option is filing a new EB-2 NIW petition using the RFE and denial notice as a roadmap for improving the case.

Where USCIS was not persuaded by the national-importance analysis, a new filing may allow the petitioner to:

• Redefine the proposed endeavor in employer-neutral terms;

• Address weaknesses USCIS specifically identified;
• Develop stronger evidence of broader impact;
• Connect the endeavor more clearly to national priorities;
• Incorporate additional accomplishments or evidence developed after the original filing; and
• Present the overall theory of the case more coherently from the outset.

How Do You Build a Stronger Big Tech EB-2 NIW Petition When You Refile?

Whether responding to an RFE or preparing a new petition after denial, the central task is the same: separate what the petitioner does for the company from the broader endeavor the petitioner proposes to advance in the United States.

2. Define the Proposed Endeavor Narrowly and Substantively: Avoid defining the endeavor simply as “software engineering,” “artificial intelligence,” “cloud computing,” or work for a specific corporate team or company. Instead, identify the technical problem or body of work being advanced. For example: Strengthening the security, reliability, and resilience of large-scale cloud infrastructure relied upon by U.S. organizations across regulated and economically important sectors. That description identifies concrete work while allowing the petition to demonstrate implications beyond one employer.
3. Connect the Endeavor to a Recognized National Priority: Federal policies, agency initiatives, government reports, legislation, and authoritative industry research may establish national priorities involving AI / ML, cybersecurity, advanced computing, semiconductor development, supply chain resilience, critical infrastructure, and U.S. competitiveness. Importantly, the petition should not merely cite those priorities. It must explain how the petitioner’s specific endeavor advances them.

There is also a balance to strike. An endeavor that is too narrow may appear employer-specific, while an overly ambitious endeavor may be nationally important but difficult to connect realistically to one petitioner’s work. The strongest framing falls between those extremes.

5. Show Impact Beyond the Employer: For Big Tech professionals, this is often the most important step. Relevant evidence may include methods or technologies adopted outside the immediate team, open-source contributions, influence on industry practices, applications across organizations or sectors, reliance by external customers, independent recognition, technologies capable of replication, downstream economic or security benefits, and expert testimony explaining broader field-level impact.
6. Use Prospective, Forward-Looking Framing: EB-2 NIW analysis concerns what the petitioner proposes to advance going forward. Past accomplishments are important because they demonstrate capability and trajectory, but a petition focused almost entirely on prior achievements can lose sight of the prospective inquiry. The strongest petitions use prior work as evidence that the petitioner is well positioned to pursue a clearly defined future endeavor with broader U.S. implications.
7. Quantify Scale – But Explain Why the Numbers Matter: Objective data can strengthen the case, including the number of systems affected, users served, organizations relying on a technology, economic scale of an industry, cybersecurity losses avoided, or infrastructure protected.

But scale alone does not establish national importance. “Millions of users interact with this product” shows that the product is large. “Technology developed through this endeavor addresses security vulnerabilities affecting systems relied upon across healthcare, finance, and government” begins to explain why the underlying work has broader implications. That second analytical step is critical.

The Employer Should Support the Case – Not Define It

Across the initial filing, RFE response, and any subsequent refiling, the same principle applies: the strength of the petition turns on the proposed endeavor and its broader importance, not simply the reputation or scale of the employer.

Employment at Amazon, Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia, or another major technology company can provide valuable evidence that a petitioner works at substantial scale and has the ability to solve difficult problems. But the employer cannot independently establish national importance. A strong Big Tech EB-2 NIW petition uses company-specific work as evidence of expertise, impact, and positioning while establishing an endeavor whose significance extends beyond the employer’s commercial interests.

The best time to establish that distinction is before the initial filing. But when an RFE or denial identifies the weakness, the same concerns can often provide a useful roadmap for building a more targeted response or stronger subsequent petition.

By: Kasey Shell

Kasey Shell is a Staff Attorney at Reddy Neumann Brown PC. Her work focuses primarily on self-petitioned employment-based immigrant visas, including EB-1A and EB-2 NIW petitions for professionals across industries. Kasey’s practice covers all phases of the application process, including preparing petitions, responding to Requests for Evidence, filing Adjustment of Status applications to secure permanent residence, and preparing individuals for Adjustment of Status interviews with USCIS.