Market analysis is the section of an immigration business plan most likely to be padded and least likely to be sourced. It is also the section that establishes whether the venture has customers — which is the premise everything else rests on.
What USCIS expects the section to do
Policy describes a market analysis that names competing businesses and assesses their relative strengths and weaknesses, compares competing products and pricing structures, and defines the target market and prospective customers. Every one of those is specific. None of them is satisfied by an industry growth statistic.
Sources that hold up
- Government statistical agencies. Census data, Bureau of Labor Statistics wage and employment data, state and county business patterns. Free, citable, and difficult to argue with.
- Regulatory and licensing bodies. Permit requirements, licence counts, inspection records — often the best evidence of how many competitors actually operate in a market.
- Public company filings. Annual reports from listed competitors give real margin and cost structures for the industry.
- Named industry associations. Trade bodies publish pricing surveys and operating benchmarks that are specific to the sector.
- Primary observation. Competitor websites, published price lists, local listings. Screenshot them, date them, cite them.
Sources that do not
Unattributed market-size figures. Aggregator sites that themselves cite nothing. Press releases from paid research firms with the methodology behind a paywall. AI-generated summaries with no underlying document. A statistic whose original source cannot be reached in two clicks is a liability, not evidence.
The rule we apply is simple: if we cannot produce the underlying document as an exhibit, the figure does not go in the plan.
Global numbers are the wrong scale
A frequent weakness is a market section describing a multi-billion-dollar national or global industry for a business that will operate in one metropolitan area. The officer is not evaluating the industry. They are evaluating whether this venture, in this location, will have customers.
Scale the analysis to the actual service area. How many potential customers live or operate within the realistic radius? How many competitors already serve them? What do those competitors charge? That analysis is harder to write and far more persuasive.
Name your competitors
Petitioners are sometimes reluctant to name competitors, worried it makes the venture look small. It does the opposite. A plan that names five real businesses, states their pricing and explains where this venture differs demonstrates that the founder understands the market. A plan that says the market is fragmented with no dominant player demonstrates nothing.
Build the exhibit list as you write
Each sourced claim should have a corresponding exhibit ready before the plan is finished. Doing this at the end means rebuilding the research. Doing it while drafting means the RFE response, if one comes, is already half assembled.
This article is general information about how U.S. immigration petitions are evaluated. It is not legal advice, and it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Case-specific decisions should be made with a licensed immigration attorney.
