Case Summary:

“[The client’s] findings are of particular importance to the United States. American rice farms are struggling to maintain production as weedy rice and climate change hurt crop yields. With the weeds’ tolerance to herbicides becoming severe, it is imperative that American agriculturalists develop new methods of weed resistance that are effective and sustainable in the long term. Her continued work in agricultural improvement is most directly beneficial to the U.S., as she focuses on local crops and develops methods catered towards those exact plants.”

This quote belongs to a letter of recommendation issued for a graduate research assistant working in the field of agricultural science. She was an expert on the subject and held an M.S. degree in weed science and was pursuing a Ph.D. as well when she came to us seeking help for her National Interest Waiver (NIW) petition.

Hailing from Nepal her proposed endeavor was to work on plant phenotyping, molecular genetics, and bioinformatics. She wanted to select and breed high-yielding crop varieties with acceptable stress tolerance in order to enhance sustainable food production and mitigate global food insecurity. It was evident to our team that her work was of great importance because it contributes to efforts to mitigate the effect of climate change on agricultural crops.

On the other hand, the importance of her work became clearer when we saw that her work had in fact been supported with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

We showed in her petition that her research has resulted in 9 peer-reviewed journal articles (3 of them first-authored) and 1 first-authored book chapter and that these publications have been cited a total of 38 times according to Google Scholar.

We also presented detailed descriptions of 3 of her key projects as evidence of her contributions to and expertise in the field of agricultural science. These project summaries were complemented by expert commentaries that helped highlight her use of innovative methodologies, the nature of her breakthroughs, and the ways that her unique findings have been applied throughout the field. It was significant to show that she has pursued research directly related to her proposed endeavor of developing sustainable agricultural breeding strategies for 6 years now. Thus, we showed that our client is also uniquely well positioned to pursue this work considering the breadth of her experience as well as her leadership and expertise in the field.

We were delighted to know that her case approval came through less than 3 months from filing. It was a great pleasure working with her and we are proud of having done so. Our firm wishes her the very best in all future endeavors.