The EB-1A extraordinary ability green card was approved just 41.7 percent of the time in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, its lowest rate on record. That figure comes from USCIS I-140 data covering petitions decided between January and March, and it is down from 66.9 percent a year earlier. An applicant pool that self-selects for exceptional credentials now loses more decided cases than it wins. And the parts of a petition an applicant can still shape have never mattered more.
One of those parts is media evidence, and it is where Baden Bower, a public relations firm operating from New York, London, and Sydney, has built its reputation among applicants and immigration attorneys. The firm helps individuals document their achievements through independent press coverage, the kind of third-party validation USCIS weighs when deciding whether someone has risen to the top of their field.
"We secure media coverage to provide third-party validation of an applicant's accomplishments," says AJ Ignacio, CEO of Baden Bower. "This recognition is beneficial for individuals who don't have academic accolades."
The distinction matters because EB-1A applicants must satisfy at least three of ten criteria, and Criterion 6, published material about the applicant, is one that an applicant can actively build toward. Awards take years to win. Judging invitations arrive on their own schedule. A documented record of press recognition can be assembled deliberately, provided it is genuine editorial coverage rather than promotional material.
USCIS received 6,647 new EB-1A petitions in the quarter, while the pending backlog reached 27,024, the largest in the dataset. The wider employment-based system is worse: The American Immigration Council found pending I-140 petitions more than quadrupled, from 43,509 in the first quarter of fiscal 2016 to 180,439 by the end of fiscal 2025. More filings, slower processing, a higher bar. A well-documented record of recognition is one of the few things an applicant can still influence before filing.
What USCIS actually counts as qualifying coverage
Not all press helps. USCIS officers are trained to separate genuine journalism from promotional material, and the wrong kind of coverage wastes petition space. Qualifying material is written by an independent journalist, published through an outlet's editorial process, about the applicant rather than their company, and permanently archived so an officer can verify it. Press releases, sponsored posts, and advertorials are rejected on sight. That is why Ignacio frames the work as an evidence strategy rather than a volume.
"The strongest EB-1A petitions are built when your public narrative, media angles, and evidence categories are designed together, not when PR is layered on at the end. Each placement should support a specific criterion, agreed with your immigration attorney before publication begins," he says.
The odds of earning that coverage unaided are long. Muck Rack's 2026 State of Journalism survey found 86 percent of journalists say at least some stories began with a PR pitch, yet 88 percent delete pitches that miss their beat. For an applicant working against a filing deadline, an unstructured pitching effort can produce nothing an adjudicator will ever see.
Timing is evidence, and clustering coverage works against you
Ignacio argues the sequence matters as much as the substance. Coverage that all appears in the weeks before a filing can read as staged to a reviewer. "Coverage clustered immediately before filing appears orchestrated to USCIS reviewers and carries less evidentiary weight. Articles published steadily across 12–18 months demonstrate the sustained national or international recognition the EB-1A category requires," he says.
A fair reader should keep the limits in view. Coverage that an applicant worked with a firm to arrange still has to read as independent to the officer holding the file, and the October 2024 USCIS Policy Manual update tells adjudicators to weigh whether published material reflects genuine editorial interest. Baden Bower's answer is that the articles it helps secure are journalist-authored, run through each outlet's editorial process, carry no sponsored label, and should be reviewed by the applicant's attorney before filing. But no firm controls what an adjudicator decides, USCIS weighs every case on its own merits, and media coverage supports a petition rather than substituting for the legal strategy behind it. Baden Bower is a PR firm, not a law firm, and says so.
What is not in dispute is the direction of the market. Approval rates fell roughly 25 points in a year, the backlog set a record, and the evidentiary bar rose with both. Applicants planning a 2027 or 2028 filing are already inside the 12-to-18-month window Ignacio describes, whether they have started building the record or not. His view is that applicants who treat recognition as something to document deliberately, rather than as something to hope for at the last minute, give an adjudicator more to work with. The next two filing years will show how much that matters.
This article was written in cooperation with Tom White