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Most professional accomplishments happen in teams. USCIS knows this, and Dhanasar does not require you to have worked alone. But you do need to clearly document your specific role, your individual contributions, and the significance of your decisions within collaborative work. This article explains how to present team-based achievements in a way that genuinely supports your Prong 2 argument.
Why Team-Based Work Creates a Documentation Challenge
Collaborative professional environments are the norm in most industries. Software gets built by teams. Research projects involve multiple investigators. Business initiatives are executed by cross-functional groups. Clinical work is done in care teams. For NIW purposes, this creates a specific documentation challenge: USCIS wants to understand your individual contribution, not just the output of the group.
An RFE may raise concerns when the evidence submitted does not distinguish between what you personally did and what your team collectively accomplished. If your employer letter says “the team successfully launched a product that improved system performance by 40%,” USCIS cannot easily assess your individual role. It does not know whether you were the architect of the solution, a mid-level contributor, or a peripheral participant. The burden of proof rests with you, and vague collective language does not meet it.
This is not a requirement that you prove you were the sole contributor or the most important person on the team. The Dhanasar decision itself involved a petitioner whose research was funded through grants where another person was the lead principal investigator. The AAO still found him well positioned because the record established that he played a significant and distinctive role in the projects. The key phrase from Dhanasar: the petitioner “initiated or is the primary award contact on several funded grant proposals and is the only listed researcher on many of the grants.” That level of specificity about individual role is what you need to produce.
What Employer Letters Should Actually Say
The most common vehicle for documenting individual contributions within team projects is the employer letter. Most employer letters fail to do this job well because they focus on job duties and employment confirmation rather than on specific project contributions and their significance. A letter that says “Mr. X was responsible for software testing on the Acme project” is much weaker than a letter that says “Mr. X independently designed the testing architecture for the Acme project, identified seventeen critical vulnerabilities that the development team had not flagged, proposed and implemented a risk-based testing prioritization framework that reduced post-deployment defects by 35%, and trained three junior team members in the methodology he developed.”
The stronger letter specifies what was designed, what was found, what was proposed, what was implemented, and what was taught. It uses active voice and specific verbs: designed, identified, proposed, implemented, trained. It includes measurable outcomes where possible. And it attributes these activities specifically to the petitioner rather than to the team as a whole.
When you prepare briefing materials for letter writers — and you should always brief your letter writers — provide them with a list of specific projects and your specific role on each one. Give them the measurable outcomes you remember. Ask them to use language that distinguishes your contributions from those of your colleagues. Most letter writers will not do this automatically, because they are not immigration attorneys and do not know what USCIS needs. Your briefing makes the difference.
What USCIS Is Looking for in Team-Based Evidence
USCIS’s Prong 2 analysis under the Policy Manual asks whether the evidence shows your “education, skills, knowledge, and record of success in related or similar efforts” and your “progress toward achieving the proposed endeavor.” Within a team context, this translates into specific questions: What decisions did you make? What problems did you solve that others could not or did not? What did you design, build, or implement that became part of the final output? What did your presence on the team enable that would not have happened without you?
You do not need to claim that the project would have failed without you. That is almost never true in collaborative work, and USCIS is sophisticated enough to know it. What you need to show is that your specific contributions were meaningful, skilled, and reflective of the expertise your proposed endeavor requires. A petitioner whose proposed endeavor is to improve software quality assurance processes should be able to show that they personally designed testing approaches, identified quality gaps, developed quality frameworks, or trained others in quality methodologies — activities that directly demonstrate their positioning for the proposed endeavor.
Structuring Your Own Account of Your Contributions
In addition to employer letters, your personal statement is an important place to describe your individual contributions to past projects. The personal statement is your voice, and you can use it to provide context that letter writers might omit. For each significant project you reference, include a brief description of what the project was, what your specific role was, what you personally contributed, and what the outcome was — including any measurable results attributable to your contribution.
Organize your project descriptions around the skills and expertise that are most relevant to your proposed endeavor. If your endeavor involves cybersecurity-integrated quality assurance, highlight projects where you personally incorporated security testing into quality processes. If your endeavor involves AI-assisted software testing, highlight projects where you explored or implemented automation and intelligent testing tools. The goal is to show a coherent thread from your past work to your proposed future activities.
Avoid the temptation to list as many projects as possible. A few projects described in significant depth are more persuasive than a long list of projects described superficially. USCIS adjudicators have limited time, and a detailed description of two or three significant projects where your individual contribution is crystal clear will outperform a catalogue of ten projects where your role is ambiguous.
Responding When USCIS Challenges Team-Based Evidence
If you receive an RFE challenging your Prong 2 evidence on the grounds that your projects do not “single out” your work as a significant individual contribution, respond by providing additional employer letters that are more specific, supplemental descriptions of your individual role in each project, and any documentary evidence of your specific contributions such as project reports, deliverable records, or communications showing your decision-making authority.
Also note in your response that Dhanasar does not require a petitioner to be the sole contributor to a project or to prove that they contributed more than any other participant. The relevant question is whether you are well-positioned to advance the proposed endeavor — and your specific contributions, taken together, provide the answer to that question. A clear, organized RFE response that addresses each project specifically and provides at least one concrete piece of evidence for each contribution will be far more effective than a general argument that your work was important.
References and Further Reading
8 CFR 204.5(k) — EB-2 Regulatory Standards — https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-8/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-204/section-204.5
Matter of Dhanasar, 26 I&N Dec. 884 (AAO 2016) — https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/err/B5%20-%20Members%20of%20the%20Professions%20Holding%20Advanced%20Degrees%20or%20Aliens%20of%20Exceptional%20Ability/Decisions_Issued_in_2016/DEC012016_01B5203.pdf
USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 6, Part F, Chapter 5 — Well Positioned — https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-6-part-f-chapter-5
USCIS — Evidence Requirements for I-140 Petitions — https://www.uscis.gov/i-140
