EB-2 NIW for engineers: how the Dhanasar prongs read on a technical record

The first Dhanasar prong asks whether the proposed endeavor has substantial merit and national importance. For engineers this is usually a concrete technical endeavor — infrastructure, tools, research directions — with evidence of field-level significance: adoption, citations, funding, or deployment beyond a single employer.

The second prong asks whether YOU are well positioned to advance it. The evidence patterns are track record: publications and citations, patents, shipped products, prior execution, and current role and resources.

The third prong is a balancing test: whether waiving the job-offer and labor-certification requirements benefits the United States. Evidence patterns include work whose impact extends past one employer and self-directed progress independent of any sponsor.

An NIW dossier organizes the same record you would use anywhere else — it just maps it onto one endeavor and three prongs instead of eight criteria. The mapping must stay honest: thin prongs get named as thin.