Decision summary: AAO decision NOV012021_01B2203: dismissed. Awards and published material were not established; material about the petitioner as competitor did not address the intended coaching field. The AAO reserved other claimed criteria after threshold failure and made aggregate no-acclaim observations.

Source reviewed: This page summarizes the specific AAO source and posture recorded in the completed source-review tracker. It does not turn a nonprecedent decision into a general rule.

Scope classification from review: The source identifies an EB-1A petition appeal or motion. Motion decisions are eligible for procedural analysis, not as a new merits adjudication.. This is a source-review label, not a legal conclusion.

Decision snapshot

What the AAO decision addressed

Awards and published material were not established; material about the petitioner as competitor did not address the intended coaching field. The AAO reserved other claimed criteria after threshold failure and made aggregate no-acclaim observations.

Criterion-by-criterion status in this source

These labels reproduce the source-review record. “Not considered,” “not reached,” and “not coded” do not mean the criterion failed. A Director finding recited as background is not an AAO holding unless the decision says so.

Source-cited findings recorded in review

• claim: Petitioner competed in martial arts and proposed to continue in the United States as a coach; he claimed awards, published material, judging, membership, and leading/critical role.; pages: 1; 2

• claim: Medals and organizer letters did not establish national/international recognition for excellence, including for lower-belt categories; media coverage was insufficient.; pages: 2; 3; 4

• claim: Published material lacked authorship, circulation/viewership, and major-media evidence; athlete/competitor coverage did not relate to the intended coaching field.; pages: 4; 5

• claim: The AAO found awards and published material not met; after these failures made the threshold impossible, it reserved additional criteria.; pages: 5

• claim: Prior O-1 status did not preclude denial of the immigrant petition; AAO dismissed the appeal.; pages: 6

How this record may be used in research

Comparison scope: Eligible for individual case discussion

Page-level source trail

Use the official PDF and the cited physical page numbers to check each statement.

• PDF page 1 — Caption/date/classification/field/posture visually checked.

• PDF page 2 — Analysis page visually checked; claim-level findings and criterion states are pinpointed above where relevant.

• PDF page 3 — Analysis page visually checked; claim-level findings and criterion states are pinpointed above where relevant.

• PDF page 4 — Analysis page visually checked; claim-level findings and criterion states are pinpointed above where relevant.

• PDF page 5 — Analysis page visually checked; claim-level findings and criterion states are pinpointed above where relevant.

• PDF page 6 — Final source page visually checked; operative order/outcome are pinpointed above.

How to use this record

This is a historical, nonprecedent AAO decision about its own administrative record. It is not a prediction, success rate, or current filing instruction. Compare the issue and procedural stage before drawing an analogy. The current framework is in the USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 6, Part F, Chapter 2.

Related corpus research

• Full-corpus research index

• Awards research

• Membership research

• Published material about the person research

• Judging the work of others research

• Leading or critical role research

• Athletics sector research

• Performance sector research

• Threshold research

Browse the AAO decision index · Read EB-1A evidence guides · Review source and correction methodology.

Primary source

Official USCIS AAO decision PDF for NOV012021_01B2203