Whether you are an employee seeking to work in the United States or a company hiring international talent, HireCade streamlines the immigration journey with expert guidance, tailored strategy, and a high success rate.
Start with an eligibility assessment rather than a quote, so you learn which categories genuinely fit your record. Ask for a criterion-by-criterion gap analysis, confirm who assembles the file and who provides legal judgement, require professional fees, government fees, and premium processing to be quoted separately, and treat any guarantee of approval or promised decision date as disqualifying.
The reason to lead with assessment is that category choice determines almost everything downstream. Filing an extraordinary ability petition when your record supports a national interest waiver, or chasing a cap-subject category when a treaty option exists, costs months that no amount of good drafting recovers.
The gap analysis is the artefact that tells you whether a provider is doing real work. It should list each criterion you intend to claim, what evidence exists today, what is weak, and what would need to be built before filing. If a provider cannot produce that, they are preparing a form rather than an argument.
Finally, separate what a provider controls from what they do not. The strength of the record is theirs to be accountable for. The decision, the queue, and the processing time belong to the government, and anyone who blurs that line is worth walking away from.
The people who get denied are usually qualified. What sinks a petition is almost always presentation: achievements described rather than documented, criteria addressed out of order, or a record that is genuinely strong but assembled in a way that leaves an officer unconvinced.
Extraordinary ability categories are the clearest example. An O-1A or EB-1 petition is not a summary of a career, it is an argument built against specific regulatory criteria, and each one needs its own independent evidence. Strong candidates fail when nobody maps their record to those criteria before filing.
That mapping is the work. We assess eligibility honestly first, tell you if a category is a stretch, and then build the evidentiary record deliberately rather than filing and hoping.
Years of experience with a high success rate across complex visa categories.
Every case is different. We build the argument around your specific record.
From the first consultation through to approval, including responses to any queries.
A track record of approvals for individual applicants and for companies hiring abroad.
For individuals with extraordinary ability in science, business, education, or the arts. We document achievements against each regulatory criterion.
For skilled workers in specialty occupations, including registration, compliance, and paperwork.
For extraordinary ability or outstanding researchers, built as a permanent residence case.
For professionals whose work benefits the national interest, with a persuasive three-prong case.
Moving managers, executives, and specialised knowledge staff into a US entity.
Treaty-based categories for Canadian, Mexican, and Australian professionals.
Changing employer or extending status without a gap in authorisation.
Moving an approved petition to a new employer while preserving your priority date.
Rebuilding the evidentiary record after a request for evidence or a refusal.
Spouse and child status filed alongside the principal applicant.
Staying in valid status while a longer-term category is prepared.
Registration strategy plus a contingency category before the window closes.
Forms, exhibits, and support letters assembled properly.
Wage determinations and LCA filing for H-1B petitions.
Documentation maintained to survive an audit.
Recruitment steps and filing for employment-based residence.
Registration planning and realistic contingency options.
Sequencing start dates around status and travel constraints.
Expiry dates and renewals surfaced before they become urgent.
Clear expectation setting so your team is not guessing.
Checking existing files before anyone else does.
The first conversation is a genuine eligibility assessment, not a sales call. We would rather tell you a category is a stretch than take a filing fee for a petition we expect to lose, because a denial makes the next attempt harder.
If the case is viable, we map your record against each regulatory criterion and identify what is missing. That gap analysis is usually the difference between an approval and a request for evidence, and it often means spending a few months strengthening the record before filing.
For employers, the same discipline applies to compliance. Wage levels, public access files, and recruitment documentation are prepared to survive an audit rather than assembled once a query arrives.
What we will not do is attach a promise to a government decision. We can be accountable for the strength of the record and the discipline of the process. The adjudication itself is not ours to guarantee, and any provider who says otherwise is telling you something useful about how they work.
What the screen actually checks
A single session assessing which categories fit and what your record is missing.
End-to-end preparation and filing for your own O-1A, EB-1, or NIW case.
H-1B, L-1, and PERM support for companies hiring international talent.
Rebuilding the evidence after a request for evidence or a denial.
A few months of deliberate record strengthening before anything is filed.
Standing help with public access files, status tracking, and audit readiness.
Share your case and receive expert guidance plus honest eligibility feedback.
We map your record to each criterion and build a plan to strengthen it.
We prepare and file all forms, exhibits, and supporting documentation.
We stay with you until approval, including any queries along the way.
All four routes can produce a filed petition. They differ in how much legal judgement is applied to your specific record, who owns the deadlines, and what happens when the government asks a hard question.
| Factor | HireCade | Traditional law firm | Online filing service | In-house or self-filed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eligibility assessment | Honest review first, including advice not to file where a category is a stretch | Usually thorough, though often billed hourly from the first conversation | Minimal: category is typically chosen by the customer from a menu | Depends entirely on how well you read the criteria yourself |
| Evidence gap analysis | Criterion-by-criterion mapping before anything is filed | Common at firms that handle argument-heavy categories | Rare: the model relies on you supplying complete documents | Only if someone internally knows what each criterion requires |
| Legal judgement included | Attorney judgement on category, framing, and government queries | Yes, and usually the main thing you are paying for | Limited, often paralegal assembly with light review | None unless you retain counsel separately |
| Employer compliance work | Wage determinations, public access files, and audit-ready documentation | Yes, at firms with a business immigration practice | Generally out of scope | Falls to HR, which is where audit problems usually begin |
| Cost profile | Quoted per case after review, with government fees itemised separately | Hourly or fixed fee, typically the highest of the four | Lowest headline price, with the least judgement included | Government fees only, plus a large amount of internal time |
| Best suited to | Argument-heavy petitions and employers who want strategy plus compliance | Complex litigation-adjacent matters and large sponsorship programmes | Simple, well-documented, low-risk filings | Continuous sponsorship volume with a dedicated internal owner |
No route can promise an approval or a decision date. Adjudication is a government decision, and the honest differentiator between providers is the quality of the record they build.
An immigration case is a documentation project with a legal argument on top. The visible milestones are the consultation and the filing, but almost all the hours in between go on collecting evidence, chasing third parties for letters and verifications, reconciling dates across a decade of employment, indexing exhibits so an officer can follow them, and checking that every claim in the narrative is supported by something in the file.
The second half of the job is calendar management. Status expiry dates, cap registration windows, priority dates, response deadlines for requests for evidence, travel that would interrupt a pending application: these are hard constraints, and missing one can cost more than a weak argument would. Good case management is mostly about never being surprised by a date.
For employers there is a parallel stream of compliance work that has nothing to do with any individual employee's ambitions. Wage determinations, labour condition applications, public access files, and recruitment documentation all have to be prepared to survive an audit that may come years later. That work is boring, unavoidable, and the first thing to be skipped when nobody owns it.
Immigration work splits cleanly into assembly and judgement, and the split matters commercially. Assembly is document collection, form completion, exhibit preparation, and deadline tracking, handled by paralegals and case managers. Judgement is category selection, argument structure, how to characterise a weakness, and how to respond when the government pushes back. That belongs to an attorney.
The reason to ask about the split before engaging anyone is that quotes vary mostly by how much attorney time is included. A low fee usually means a paralegal assembles the file and an attorney signs it after a brief review. For a routine extension that may be entirely appropriate. For an extraordinary ability petition, where the whole case is an argument, thin legal review is where denials come from.
Inside a company, the equivalent question is who owns what. A mobility or immigration coordinator can own documents, deadlines, and employee communication extremely well without providing legal advice, and that division usually produces better outcomes than an HR generalist improvising both. Ask any provider directly: who prepares the file, who reviews it, who signs it, and who answers the phone when a request for evidence arrives.
The single biggest cause of delay is not adjudication, it is evidence that takes weeks to gather because nobody asked for it early. Before your first consultation, write a plain chronology of your education and employment with exact dates, list every publication, patent, award, press mention, and speaking engagement you can substantiate, and note which of those you can prove with a document rather than a memory.
Then identify your recommenders and be honest about how reachable they are. Letters from busy, senior, independent people carry the most weight and take the longest to obtain, so they should be requested first. Help them by supplying specifics: what you did, what changed as a result, and why they are in a position to know. A generic letter is worse than a short specific one.
For employers the brief is different but the principle is the same. Before engaging anyone, assemble the job description, the wage level you intend to pay and the basis for it, the start date you need, the candidate's current status and expiry, and any travel already booked. Those five facts determine which categories are even available and whether the timeline you have in mind is realistic.
Start by asking for an assessment rather than a quote. A provider worth engaging will look at your record and tell you which categories genuinely fit, which are a stretch, and what is missing, before discussing fees. A provider who quotes for the most expensive category without reviewing your evidence is selling a filing, not an outcome.
The most useful work sample you can request is a gap analysis on your own record: for each criterion you intend to claim, what evidence exists, what is weak, and what would need to be built. This is the document that separates serious providers from filing mills, and a good one is specific enough to be uncomfortable reading.
Then test how they talk about risk. Ask what would make them advise against filing, how they would handle a request for evidence on your weakest criterion, and what they will not promise. Confident vagueness is the warning sign. Be equally cautious about anyone quoting approval statistics without explaining what population those numbers describe, because a firm that only accepts strong cases will always look better than one that helps difficult ones.
Published processing times are estimates derived from recently completed cases. They move with service centre workload, category demand, policy changes, and which queue a particular file lands in. A category that was fast last quarter can slow down without any announcement, and two identical petitions filed the same week can be decided months apart.
Some timing constraints are structural rather than administrative. Cap-subject categories have fixed registration windows and a lottery, so demand rather than merit decides who gets to file. Employment-based residence depends on priority dates that advance and retrogress with demand from each country of chargeability. None of that is influenced by how good your petition is.
This is why any promise of a decision date should end the conversation. What can be planned is everything on your side: filing as early as the evidence allows, deciding whether premium processing is worth its separate fee, keeping status valid throughout, avoiding travel that would complicate a pending application, and preparing a contingency category before you need it. Employers should build the same slack into start dates rather than committing a new hire to a date that depends on an adjudicator.
Most people need one of four things. A single eligibility consultation, when the real question is which category fits. End-to-end preparation and filing for an individual petition. Employer sponsorship support covering petitions plus the compliance work behind them. Or a response to a request for evidence or a denial, which is a rescue project with a fixed deadline.
Fees track the work, not the category name. An extraordinary ability petition built from a thin record consumes far more hours than a straightforward extension, which is why we quote after the eligibility review rather than publishing a rate. Insist that any provider separates professional fees, government filing fees, and optional premium processing fees in writing, because bundled quotes are impossible to compare and tend to hide the part that scales.
The expensive mistakes are consistent. Filing in the wrong category because it looked faster. Rushing to hit a cap window with a record that was two months from being strong. Treating recommendation letters as a formality. Leaving employer compliance until an audit arrives. Making a job offer contingent on a start date that depends on a government decision. And hiring on price alone for a case that is fundamentally an argument rather than a form.
It depends on your record and whether you have an employer sponsor. O-1A and EB-1 suit people with documented recognition in their field. EB-2 NIW suits professionals whose work has broader national benefit and does not require a sponsor. H-1B requires an employer and is subject to an annual cap and lottery.
The consultation exists precisely to answer this. Filing in the wrong category wastes months, and a denial makes the next petition harder to argue.
Preparation is usually the longest phase: four to twelve weeks to assemble a strong evidentiary record, longer if there are gaps worth closing before filing.
Adjudication varies by category and service centre. Premium processing shortens the decision window substantially for eligible petitions, and we will tell you whether it is worth paying for in your case.
No, and you should treat a guarantee as a warning sign. Adjudication is a government decision made by an officer applying discretion to the record in front of them, and no provider controls that.
What a provider can be accountable for is the quality of the record: whether every criterion has independent evidence, whether the narrative matches the exhibits, and whether the weaknesses were identified and addressed before filing rather than after a request for evidence arrives.
Evidence, far more often than eligibility. Extraordinary ability categories require independent evidence for each criterion, and petitions fail when one document is stretched to cover several, or when achievements are asserted rather than corroborated.
The other common cause is inconsistency between the petition narrative and the underlying documents. Both are avoidable with a proper gap analysis before filing.
Paralegals and case managers do the assembly: collecting documents, chasing recommendation letters, indexing exhibits, preparing forms, tracking deadlines, and keeping the file consistent. That work is the majority of the hours on most petitions and it is where sloppy filings come from.
Legal judgement belongs to an attorney: which category to file, how to frame the argument, how to respond to a request for evidence, and whether a weakness is fatal or survivable. When you engage a provider, ask explicitly who does which part and who signs the filing, because a cheap quote often means paralegal assembly with very little legal review.
Expect three groups. Identity and status documents such as passports, prior approvals, and entry records. Evidence of your record such as publications, citation reports, press coverage, patents, awards, salary evidence, and membership confirmations. Third-party corroboration, mainly recommendation letters and independent verification of your claims.
The third group is the one that causes delay, because it depends on other people. Start requesting letters and verifications before the rest of the file is finished, and expect to spend real time helping recommenders write something specific rather than generic.
Not for every category. O-1A needs a US petitioner, which can be an agent rather than a traditional employer, and EB-2 NIW is specifically designed to be self-petitioned.
H-1B, L-1, and PERM-based green cards do require an employer. If you are a company hiring international talent, we handle the sponsorship side including compliance.
Immigration files contain some of the most sensitive material a person will ever hand over: passports, medical details, salary history, and family records. We collect only what a category actually requires, keep it in access-controlled storage, and restrict it to the people working the case.
You should ask the same questions of any provider. Where is the file stored, who can open it, what happens to it when the case closes, and how are documents transmitted. A provider who asks you to email scans of your passport to a personal address is telling you something about the rest of their process.
Yes, and this is a meaningful share of our work. An RFE is not a refusal; it usually means one criterion was under-documented and can be addressed within the response window.
After a denial we assess whether to refile with a stronger record or pursue a different category, and we will say plainly if we think neither is likely to succeed.
Because they are estimates drawn from recent completions, not commitments. Adjudication speed shifts with service centre workload, category demand, policy changes, and where your particular file lands in a queue.
Plan against the constraint you can control instead. Know your status expiry, any travel you cannot move, and the latest date a start could slip to, then decide whether premium processing is worth paying for. Anyone quoting you a firm decision date is describing a hope.
It depends on the category and the state of your evidence, so we quote per case after the eligibility review rather than publishing a figure that would need heavy caveats. An extraordinary ability petition built from a thin record takes far more work than a straightforward extension.
Government filing fees are separate from professional fees in every case, and premium processing is a further separate fee. Ask any provider to split those three out in writing before you engage, so you can compare quotes that are actually comparable.
You do not need a US entity to employ someone abroad. Our Employer of Record service acts as the legal employer at $499 per employee per month, handling payroll, tax, and local HR obligations.
If the person needs to be in the United States specifically, that becomes a sponsorship question and we can handle both sides of it.
It becomes worth considering once sponsorship is continuous rather than occasional. A dedicated immigration or mobility coordinator pays off when you are filing regularly, managing cap season every year, and maintaining public access files as a standing obligation.
Below that volume, in-house capability tends to mean one HR generalist holding responsibility they were never trained for. A common middle path is an internal coordinator who owns documents, deadlines, and employee communication, with outside counsel retained for legal judgement.
Related HireCade products and guides: the employment structures that let you hire abroad without relocation, the hiring services that find the people you sponsor, and the research tools individual applicants use.
The full immigration product, including employer sponsorship and compliance.
Employ someone abroad at $499 per employee per month with no local entity.
Engage international contractors without carrying misclassification risk.
Hiring, screening, employment, and immigration products together.
Delivery teams abroad when relocation is not the right answer.
How recruiting, contract, and self-serve fees are structured.
Pre-vetted engineers, the most commonly sponsored technical roles.
Labelling and evaluation talent across languages and domains.
Search specialists for technical, content, and link acquisition work.
Recruiting specialist participants and researchers across markets.
Run the hiring side yourself with unlimited jobs and team seats.
Sourcing and screening priced per resume and per interview.
How candidates use HireCade to find sponsored and remote roles.
A clean record of your work history, useful when assembling evidence.
Benchmark an offer, and understand wage level questions.
Understand how seniority maps across companies and markets.
Practise for the hiring process that comes before any petition.
Discussions with people going through the same categories.
Early applicants are prioritized.
Whether you are a skilled worker or a company hiring international talent, HireCade is here to help.
