A self-petition route to a US green card for genuinely strong profiles — no employer, no labour certification. We assess your profile honestly against a bar that tightened in 2025, and we say no when the file isn't ready.
Last updated: June 2026 — reviewed against the USCIS Policy Manual and the June 2026 Visa Bulletin.
Free EB-2 NIW Profile Assessment — we test your record against the three Dhanasar prongs before anyone drafts a petition.
Get Assessment| EB-2 National Interest Waiver (Self-Petition) | |
|---|---|
| Governing authority | U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) |
| Legal test | Matter of Dhanasar three prongs, after qualifying for EB-2 (advanced degree / exceptional ability) |
| Governing guidance | USCIS Policy Manual Vol 6, Part F, Ch 5 — update PA-2025-03 (15 Jan 2025) |
| Premium processing | Not available for NIW (eliminated 2020, not returned) |
| Standard I-140 processing | Roughly 11–18 months (some cases 20+) |
| India green-card queue | EB-2 India Final Action Date 1 Sep 2013 (June 2026 bulletin); FY2026 numbers exhausted |
| As of | June 2026 |
We work with researchers, founders, engineers, clinicians and specialists based in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Doha, Kuwait City, Muscat, Manama, as well as across India and Sri Lanka. Our job is to read your record the way an adjudicating officer now reads it — and to be straight about whether it stands up.
The NIW is not a volume product. It rewards a genuinely strong, well-evidenced profile, and it punishes templated ones.
The EB-2 National Interest Waiver lets a qualified person self-petition for a US green card without an employer, a job offer, or labour certification. You first have to qualify for the EB-2 category — through an advanced degree or demonstrated exceptional ability — and then satisfy the three Matter of Dhanasar prongs: your endeavour has substantial merit and national importance, you are well positioned to advance it, and on balance it benefits the United States to waive the job-offer requirement.
Since the January 2025 USCIS policy update (PA-2025-03), officers confirm the underlying EB-2 eligibility before reaching the prongs, and demand concrete, case-specific evidence of national importance. Broad "STEM field" or generic "creates jobs, boosts the economy" claims now routinely draw Requests for Evidence. The first thing we do is test whether your record clears that raised bar. Find out where you stand — free assessment.
The honest note. NIW approval rates collapsed — from roughly 96% in FY2022 to around 55% in FY2025, and to about 35–44% by Q4 FY2025 and March 2026. USCIS now denies more NIW petitions than it approves, and RFE rates ran near 39–50% in early 2026. We only take forward profiles we genuinely believe clear the Dhanasar bar, and we'd rather tell you that in the first session than after a denial. Every figure on this page carries its as-of date because USCIS adjudication trends shift within a year.
The 15 January 2025 USCIS policy update (PA-2025-03) did not change the three Dhanasar prongs, but it raised the evidentiary bar around them, and it remains the governing guidance in 2026. Officers now first confirm you qualify for EB-2 before assessing the waiver, and they expect specific, documented proof of national importance rather than field-level generalisations.
In practice that means Prong 1 is where most petitions now stumble. A strong file ties your specific work to a concrete, named impact — not "the AI sector matters," but what you have built or advanced and why it carries national importance. Independent letters, adoption evidence, citations, funding and real-world deployment do the heavy lifting. The same tightening is why template-driven petitions, common before 2025, draw RFEs at far higher rates today.
No. Premium processing is not available for EB-2 NIW I-140 petitions — it was eliminated in 2020 and has not returned as of 2026. Standard I-140 processing currently runs roughly 11–18 months, and some cases extend past 20.
This matters because several agency and SEO pages wrongly advertise a "45-day premium" option for NIW; that fast-track applies to EB-1A, a different category, not to NIW. If an RFE is issued, expect an added response window of around 87 days plus re-adjudication, which stretches the timeline further. Plan around the standard queue, not a promised shortcut.
US immigration is not a market in which Cosmos holds a CICC, MARA or IAA licence — those frameworks cover Canada, Australia and New Zealand. For the United States, Cosmos coordinates eligibility assessment, evidence strategy, documentation and case management, while the I-140 petition itself is prepared and filed through US-licensed attorneys in our network. We do not file USCIS petitions ourselves and we never imply that a Canadian or Australian registration covers a US matter.
No. The NIW waives the job-offer and labour-certification steps, but it does not escape the EB-2 per-country quota. Under the June 2026 Visa Bulletin, EB-2 India retrogressed sharply to a Final Action Date of 1 September 2013, and the State Department confirmed in May 2026 that all available FY2026 EB-2 India visas have been issued.
So even a strong, approved petition leaves an Indian national in a multi-year-to-decade green-card queue, with no further India numbers until FY2027 begins in October 2026 — and a warning of possible further retrogression or "unavailable" before 30 September 2026. We surface this honestly at the assessment stage, because for most India-charged EB-2 profiles a near-term green card is not realistic, and you deserve to know that before you commit.
1. Adjudication risk. NIW approval rates fell from roughly 96% (FY2022) to around 55% (FY2025), and to about 35–44% by Q4 FY2025 and March 2026 — USCIS now denies more NIW petitions than it approves. RFE rates ran near 39–50% in early 2026 after the January 2025 policy tightened the Prong-1 national-importance bar. A weak or templated profile faces a real chance of refusal.
2. Backlog risk for India. Approval is not a green card. EB-2 India is years to decades behind (Final Action Date 1 Sep 2013; FY2026 numbers exhausted), and no premium processing exists to speed the I-140 (standard 11–20+ months).
How we handle it. We market the NIW only to genuinely strong profiles, make no success-percentage or "high approval" claim, position the case under the facilitator model with US-licensed attorneys, and put the India backlog on the table plainly — before any drafting begins.
← View all skilled & talent visa pathways on the hub page.
Yes. The EB-2 National Interest Waiver lets you self-petition with no employer, no job offer and no labour certification — if you qualify for EB-2 through an advanced degree or exceptional ability and satisfy the three Matter of Dhanasar prongs. The route is open in 2026, though the evidence bar rose after the January 2025 policy update.
They fell sharply. Approval ran around 96% in FY2022, near 55% across FY2025, and about 35–44% by Q4 FY2025 and March 2026 — USCIS now denies more NIW petitions than it approves. We make no success-percentage claim; strength of evidence is what moves a case, and that is what we assess first.
No. Premium processing was eliminated for EB-2 NIW in 2020 and has not returned as of 2026. Standard I-140 processing runs roughly 11–18 months, with some cases past 20. Any page advertising a 45-day NIW fast track is confusing it with EB-1A, a different category.
No. The waiver removes the job-offer and labour-certification steps, but not the EB-2 per-country quota. Under the June 2026 Visa Bulletin, EB-2 India's Final Action Date is 1 September 2013 and all FY2026 India visas are issued, so an approved petition still leaves Indian nationals in a multi-year-to-decade queue.
No. The United States sits outside the CICC, MARA and IAA frameworks. Cosmos coordinates eligibility, evidence strategy and case management, while the I-140 petition is prepared and filed through US-licensed attorneys in our network. We never imply that a Canadian or Australian registration covers a US matter.
Cosmos Immigration is a regulated immigration consultancy founded in Dubai in 2014, working through CICC-, MARA- and IAA-registered professionals, with offices in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Hyderabad and Oakville. For US matters specifically, which fall outside those frameworks, the petition is prepared and filed by US-licensed attorneys in our network — verify any attorney's standing on their state bar register, and verify our registered professionals on the public registers. Verify Our Credentials
Cosmos Immigration is a private consultancy, not a government body. Program criteria, approval trends and visa-bulletin dates are set by USCIS and the U.S. Department of State and are subject to change; verified against official sources as of the date shown.
Start with a free assessment, not a sales pitch — or message us on WhatsApp. We'll tell you honestly whether your profile clears the NIW bar — even if the answer is no.
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