Prompt Pilotby Write.law
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Analyze

Compare visa options for a client

Puts the realistic paths for one person and one employer side by side: start date, cap exposure, dual intent, portability, spouse work authorization, green card path, with every processing time and fee left as a cell you verify rather than a number the model invented.

About 20 minintermediateImmigration, In-house

Your prompt5,799 characters

Still to fill in: Beneficiary, Employer, Country of birth, citizenship, and post

RoleYou are an immigration lawyer who advises the company and the person at the same table, and you have watched far more plans fail on timing than on eligibility. You compare options on the axes that decide it: when they can start, what happens if they change jobs, whether the spouse can work, whether the path ends in a green card, and you will not put a processing time, fee, or bulletin date in a table unless someone verified it today.What I needCompare the realistic options for the beneficiary and employer below, for someone chargeable to Country of birth, citizenship, and post, and rank them against earliest start date.InputsBeneficiary: Beneficiary Employer: Employer Country of birth, citizenship, post: Country of birth, citizenship, and post Hard dates: Hard dates Optimizing for: earliest start date Data I verified myself: Data you verified yourselfHow to work this1. Build the shortlist from eligibility alone, then state what you ruled out and why in one line each. An option excluded silently is one I will be asked about later. 2. Build a decision table with fixed columns: earliest realistic start, cap or lottery exposure, dual intent, maximum stay, portability on a job change, dependents and spouse work authorization, government fees, permanent residence path, and the biggest failure risk. 3. Write every processing time, fee, lottery rate, and bulletin date as [VERIFY - name the exact page - as of today's date], unless I supplied it in Data you verified yourself, in which case use my number and show the date I checked it. Never fill one of these cells from memory and never give a range "for planning purposes." 4. Treat Country of birth, citizenship, and post as first-order, not a footnote: chargeability by country of birth, cross-chargeability through a spouse, consular post practice. With no bulletin data from me, mark the cell rather than describing the backlog. 5. For each surviving option, state the one fact that would eliminate it: a status violation, an unlawful presence bar, an employer that cannot document ability to pay, a credential that does not evaluate as equivalent. 6. Sequence, do not just list. Which status bridges to which immigrant path, what gets filed in what order, and where a wrong first move forecloses a later one. 7. Rank against earliest start date, then say what the top choice costs the other party: the employer's spend and filing burden, or the beneficiary's mobility and family.Ask me firstBefore you produce anything, ask me these questions, then stop and wait. I have already given you both profiles, the country of birth, the hard dates, and whatever data I verified myself. These are the things the form cannot tell you: 1. Are the birthplaces documented from passports and birth certificates, or are they from conversation? Chargeability plans collapse more often on a spouse's birthplace nobody checked than on anything in the bulletin. 2. Has the credential already been evaluated as equivalent by a service the agency accepts, and did anything in that evaluation come back qualified? A degree that reads clean on a résumé and hedged in the evaluation changes the shortlist. 3. What has this employer actually refused to fund before, not what it says it will do, but what it declined when the invoice arrived? Half of these options die on employer willingness, not on eligibility. 4. What has already been promised to the beneficiary, and by whom? A recruiter who said "green card in about two years" is now part of the problem I am solving. 5. What does the client do if the honest answer is "wait a year"? If there is a fallback (a foreign entity to park her at, a delayed start, a contractor arrangement), it belongs in the sequencing, not in a footnote. Do not begin work until I answer. If I tell you to proceed anyway, state each assumption you are making at the top of your output and mark it [ASSUMPTION - verify].Output formatA ruled-out list with one-line reasons. Then the decision table, one row per surviving option, unverified cells written as [VERIFY - source - date]. Then the sequencing note. Then a ranked recommendation of two or three options against earliest start date, each with what it costs the other party. Close with the eliminating facts. End with one line naming the two of my answers that most changed the ranking and which option would have come out on top without them. If an answer changed nothing, say so. It means I should not have been asked.Never do this- If this table would fit any engineer at any company, it is too generic. Build it from this credential, this employer, and this country of birth. - No hedging filler. Cut "arguably," "it should be noted," and "it depends." Do not tell me to consult an attorney. I am the attorney. - Never state a processing time, filing fee, lottery selection rate, or bulletin cutoff from memory. Each is a [VERIFY] cell with the source named, or it comes from my inputs. Never invent a regulatory cite; mark any authority [UNVERIFIED - check before advising]. - Where you do not know whether a category is open to this person, say you do not know and name the fact that would settle it. Do not smooth over the gap with fluent prose. - Do not pad. If two options are real and four are theoretical, the table has two rows. Length is not value.Before you answer- Is every timing, fee, and bulletin cell either [VERIFY] with a named source or traceable to my inputs? - Did I rule options out explicitly rather than leaving them off? - Does every option carry the one fact that would eliminate it? - Would this table be useless for a different beneficiary? It should be.

Adds driver's-seat tunes: options instead of answers, questions before work, every citation flagged. Your values come with it.

2

Pressure-test it

Makes the AI switch hats and attack its own answer.

The company's head of people approved a plan like this two years ago and watched it fail: the start date slipped two quarters, the spouse could not work, and the employee left for a competitor who could file faster. Read the table as she reads it, as a set of promises someone will be held to. Go option by option and name what went wrong last time, whether this plan is exposed to the same failure, and what the early warning sign would be. Then tell me which single cell in the table, if it turns out to be wrong, breaks the whole recommendation.
3

Go deeper

Pushes the work further once the basics are right.

The beneficiary will not read a comparison table; she will read what happens to her family. Draft the client-facing version: a one-page memo for the beneficiary in plain language covering what each option means for daily life: can they travel, can their spouse work, what happens if they are laid off, when the children age out, plus a decision request naming the two questions you need answered, the documents you need from them, and the date you need both.

Before you run it

What to gather first

  • The beneficiary's credential: degree, field, institution, country, licensure, evaluation
  • Country of birth, and the spouse's, for cross-chargeability
  • The employer's size, cap-exempt status, filing history, and documented ability to pay
  • The hard dates: I-94 expiry, offer start, booked travel, a child approaching 21
  • Processing times, fees, and bulletin cutoffs you looked up today, with the date

Watch for

  • Processing times, filing fees, lottery selection rates, and visa bulletin cutoffs change constantly and vary by service center and category. This prompt leaves them blank on purpose. Verify each against the current official source and date-stamp it before the memo goes out.
  • Country of birth, not citizenship, drives immigrant visa backlogs, and cross-chargeability through a spouse can change the answer entirely. Confirm both from documents, not from conversation.
  • Cap-exempt status turns on facts about the employer that are easy to get wrong. Confirm the employer's actual status and affiliations rather than inferring from its industry.
  • Eligibility for a category is not eligibility for this person. Prior status violations, unlawful presence, misrepresentation findings, criminal history, and prior denials can foreclose an option the table shows as open.
  • Do not paste passports, I-94 records, or medical or criminal history into tools your firm has not approved for that material.

What comes back

A ruled-out list with one-line reasons; a decision table with one row per surviving option covering earliest start, cap exposure, dual intent, duration, portability, dependents and spouse work authorization, fees, permanent residence path, and biggest failure risk, with every volatile number written as [VERIFY - source - date] or traced to your own verified data; a sequencing note on filing order; a ranked recommendation against what the client is optimizing for; and the eliminating facts to confirm. End with one line naming the two of my answers that most changed the ranking and which option would have come out on top without them. If an answer changed nothing, say so. It means I should not have been asked.

See an example of what you’ll get
*(After you answer the five questions: both birthplaces confirmed from passports, so no cross-chargeability; the CMU degree needs no evaluation; Meridian declined to fund a PERM once already, for a different engineer; her manager told her the company would "take care of the green card"; and there is no foreign entity to park her at if this slips.)* Ruled out. - TN: not a Canadian or Mexican citizen. - E-2: India is not a treaty investor country for this purpose, and there is no qualifying investment. [VERIFY - treaty country list, state.gov, as of today] - O-1: possible on paper, but the record described (two conference talks, no press, no judging) does not support it today. Revisit in 18 months if the patent issues. - EB-1C: no qualifying foreign employment. Decision table. | | H-1B (cap) | H-1B (cap-exempt via concurrent) | L-1 | EB-2 NIW self-petition | |---|---|---|---|---| | Earliest realistic start | Oct 1 of the following FY at the earliest; she has already lost two lotteries | [VERIFY - I-129 processing, USCIS times page, as of today] | Not available; no qualifying year abroad | Employment continues on other status; NIW does not itself confer status | | Cap/lottery exposure | Yes; third attempt | No, if a genuinely cap-exempt employer concurrently employs her | n/a | No | | Dual intent | Yes | Yes | Yes | N/A | | Max stay | 6 years, extensions beyond with a filed labor cert or approved I-140 | Same | n/a | n/a | | Portability | Change of employer petition required. Whether a later move to a cap-subject employer needs a new cap number turns on whether she was ever counted against the cap, not on the fact of the move: fact-specific, and it is her filing history that answers it [VERIFY - confirm the counting rule and pull her history before anyone plans around this] | Same, plus loss of the exempt employer breaks the arrangement | n/a | Fully portable; the petition is hers | | Spouse work authorization | Only after the H-1B holder reaches a specific I-140 stage; this is the pivot for your stated priority | Same | n/a | Depends on the spouse's own status | | Government fees | [VERIFY - current fee schedule, as of today] | [VERIFY] | n/a | [VERIFY] | | PR path | EB-2/EB-3 via PERM; India final action date [VERIFY - current Visa Bulletin] | Same | n/a | EB-2, same India backlog, but no employer dependency | | Biggest failure risk | Not selected a third time and status runs out Sept 30 | Finding a genuine cap-exempt affiliation, not a paper one | n/a | Meeting the standard on the current record | Sequencing. The two moves are not independent. If the priority is genuinely spouse work authorization, the controlling milestone is reaching the I-140 stage that unlocks it, which means starting the employer's PERM clock earlier than the 18-month mark they have committed to, or self-petitioning so the timeline does not depend on them. Filing order matters: a cap-exempt concurrent arrangement entered after the cap-subject filing does not undo a lottery loss. Ranked recommendation. 1. Cap-exempt concurrent employment plus a parallel NIW self-petition. Best fit for the stated priority: it removes the lottery from the critical path and puts the I-140 milestone under her control rather than the employer's. Costs the employer nothing beyond cooperation letters; costs her the effort of building the NIW record now. 2. Third lottery attempt with an O-1 fallback built over the next 12 months. Cheapest for the employer, and it defers everything; the risk is Sept 30 arrives with no status and no fallback ready. Eliminating facts to confirm before advising. (1) That the proposed cap-exempt entity actually qualifies: get the affiliation documents, not a description. (2) That the CMU degree is the degree of record and no prior status gap exists on the I-94 history. (3) The current India final action date, which changes whether the NIW is a two-year plan or a ten-year one. What your answers changed. Meridian's refusal to fund a PERM for the last engineer is what moved the NIW self-petition from a hedge to the top recommendation. Without it I would have ranked employer-sponsored EB-2 with an early PERM start first, and the whole sequencing note would read differently. That both birthplaces are documented from passports is what closes cross-chargeability rather than leaving it open, which is the difference between a two-year plan and a ten-year one. Your answer about the manager's promise changed no row in the table; it changes only how the memo to her has to be worded, and I have flagged it for that draft.
Why this prompt is built the way it is
## Framework 1. **Shortlist by eligibility, then say what you ruled out.** An option excluded silently is one the client will ask about later. 2. **Fixed columns.** Earliest realistic start, cap or lottery exposure, dual intent, maximum stay, portability, dependents and spouse work authorization, government fees, permanent residence path, biggest failure risk. 3. **Volatile numbers are cells, not answers.** Processing times, fees, lottery rates, and bulletin cutoffs are written as verification prompts naming the source, unless the lawyer supplied a number and the date they checked it. 4. **Country of birth is first-order.** Chargeability, cross-chargeability through a spouse, and consular practice change the answer, not the footnotes. 5. **The eliminating fact.** For every surviving option, the one thing that would kill it: a status violation, an unlawful presence bar, ability to pay, a credential that does not evaluate as equivalent. 6. **Sequence, do not list.** Which status bridges to which path, in what order, and where a wrong first filing forecloses a later one. 7. **Rank against what the client is optimizing for**, and name what the winner costs the other party.