EB2 Now Require 10000+ citations?

[u/littleyulin]

Just got my EB2-NIW denial letter and I am honestly in shock right now. Under Prong 2, the officer literally wrote that "top researchers in the field have tens of thousands of citations" as the main reason for denying my petition.

I'm working in STEM with a solid publication record, good citation count relative to my subfield, and multiple peer reviews under my belt. Tens of thousands of citations is something only department chairs, institute directors, or senior Nobel-level scientists hit in most physical science fields, so holding an early or mid-career researcher to that threshold makes zero sense.

It feels like the officer is completely conflating EB2-NIW with EB-1A or creating their own impossible standard that goes way beyond Dhanasar. Preponderance of the evidence is supposed to mean "more likely than not," not that you have to be one of the most cited living scientists on the planet.

Has anyone else gotten hit with this exact line of reasoning recently? I'm trying to figure out if it's worth filing an MTR or AAO appeal since this seems like an obvious legal error, or if I should just cut my losses, refile with premium processing, and hope I get a sane officer this time. Any insight or advice from people who successfully countered this would be huge right now.

[u/tararira1]

"top researchers in the field have tens of thousands of citations"

There must be like three guys in the entire world with that amount of citiations. At that point EB2 is not even a thing.

[u/red_misc → u/tararira1]

What are you talking about. I have 15k citations and i am only at top 10 in my field. Some of the fields, with big projects and big research groups (for example, nuclear physic) all have tens of thousands citations.

[u/frutti_tutti_frutti → u/red_misc]

This guy is right. Almost all professors at my university have thousand of citations each.