After enough filings, the patterns repeat. Requests for evidence that touch a business plan almost always trace to one of five weaknesses, and all five are fixable before submission.
1. Numbers with no stated basis
The most common by a wide margin. Projections appear, look professional, and cite nothing. USCIS policy asks for the basis of the projections, not just the projections, and an officer who cannot find that basis has an easy request to write.
Fix: a visible assumptions table, and a source for every rate, wage and price in the model.
2. The plan contradicts the rest of the petition
The plan says the beneficiary will lead a team of eight. The support letter says she will work independently. The forms list a different job title. Each document was drafted separately and nobody reconciled them.
This is more damaging than a weak argument, because inconsistency invites the officer to reweigh the reliability of the entire record — the principle articulated in Matter of Ho.
Fix: one consistency pass across the plan, brief, letters and forms before filing. Job title, headcount, dates, dollar figures and the description of the endeavor must match everywhere.
3. Staffing that the financials cannot pay for
The staffing plan promises headcount the cost lines do not support at market wages. The officer finds this by reading two tables. It is entirely self-inflicted.
Fix: reconcile the hiring timetable against payroll month by month, using published wage data for the occupation and location.
4. A market section at the wrong scale
A national industry statistic used to justify a single-location business. It tells the officer nothing about whether this venture will have customers, and it signals that the research was generic.
Fix: analyse the actual service area, name real competitors, and use their published pricing.
5. An endeavor described too vaguely to evaluate
Especially in EB-2 NIW and EB-1A filings. The plan describes a field rather than an endeavor. USCIS has been clear that the proposed endeavor must be specific, and that describing the general occupation is not enough — in Matter of Dhanasar the occupation was engineer, but the endeavor was considerably narrower.
Fix: state what will be done, for whom, where, with what resources, on what timeline. If the description could apply to a thousand other people in the field, it is not an endeavor yet.
The pre-filing pass
None of these require more research. They require one deliberate review, reading the plan as an adversary rather than an author, with the rest of the petition open beside it. That review takes a few hours. An RFE costs months.
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.
