The Goalposts Keep Moving. Bob Webber on How Attorneys and Immigrants Can Pivot in 2025
16th September 2025
Date
Interviewee
Bob Webber
Immigration attorney Bob Webber on surviving 25 years of shifting rules, surging demand, and the hard pivot from NIW to EB-1A
The first thing Bob Webber will tell you about his career is a joke that is not really a joke. He says he is the person who always changes Costco checkout lines, convinced the next one will move faster, only to discover it is slower. He has done versions of that in law too. Big firm to boutique. Solo practice to big law. Back to solo. Each move looked like the greener field. Each taught him something harder and more useful than comfort: how to adapt.
That instinct is why he has lasted since 1999, through policy swings, economic cycles, and the rise and recoil of high skilled immigration. It is also why his current message to both lawyers and immigrants sounds plain and unsentimental. The goalposts moved in the middle of the game. You can still score, but you will have to change how you play.
Webber fell into immigration at the end of the 1990s, when the H-1B boom and tech hiring were accelerating. He started in a large firm that did not really have an immigration practice, jumped to a boutique where he learned the craft, then launched his own shop. For 15 years he ran that firm, growing to about 20 people. During the first Trump term he tried another pivot, merging into a general practice big law outfit for the infrastructure and support he hoped would free him from IT and personnel headaches.
It did not work. Immigration is a niche. Then came the pandemic and, in Minneapolis, the upheaval around the death of George Floyd. By late 2021 Webber returned to his own firm and rebuilt. If there was a silver lining, it arrived quickly. In 2022 the EB-2 NIW category opened up beyond its traditional academic core, just as layoffs and labor market friction pushed many high skilled workers to seek alternatives to PERM. His practice scaled to meet that demand.
Then the weather changed again.
When NIW felt like EB-1A
The surge years of 2022 through 2024 rewarded industry engineers with modest academic profiles. A single thesis publication or a lone patent could carry a well framed national interest argument. In 2025, Webber sees a different map. Approvals are clustering around heavier research credentials. Think PhD, peer reviewed output, citations. In other words, NIW now looks and feels more like EB-1 in the evidentiary burden.
That does not mean industry candidates are shut out. Webber points to two recent approvals that share a common feature: a clear federal tie. In one case, an engineer’s work was cited in an EPA white paper. In another, project-specific documentation from a major automaker directly requested the applicant’s expertise on braking technology. The lesson is not politics. It is documentation. When a federal agency or a national priority can be shown in the record, adjudicators may treat it as a concrete signal of impact.
Just as important, he is studying approvals, not only denials. With RFEs and rejections often written in generic language, the positive outcomes are where the clues live. His team is even using AI tools to cluster recent AAO and internal results, looking for patterns that reflect the current standard rather than yesterday’s.
There is a trend Webber finds far more troubling than moving goalposts. He is now approached by candidates whose resumes emerge overnight with dozens of publications and thousands of citations in journals that do not pass a sniff test. He did not see this five years ago. He sees it now.
The risk is not abstract. He believes some cases sail through an initial stage only to unravel at adjustment, where investigations can and do happen. The wider damage is reputational. Fraud taints a category. It invites stricter treatment for everyone. His response has been to raise diligence. Trust but verify has become verify first.
On the substance, Webber’s guidance is consistent. Be transparent about strengths and weaknesses. Consider multiple paths. File in more than one lane when prudence and budgets allow. Not because that is convenient for lawyers, but because different officers and different bottlenecks exist across categories, and no one knows where a case will land.
His fee approach mirrors that pragmatism. Fixed fees for specific scopes. No promise to solve everything at once. Add work as circumstances change. Clients appreciate predictability more than bravado.
October 2025 and the bulletin that moved
When the October 2025 Visa Bulletin landed, its Chart B dates jumped significantly in several categories. Chart A moved more modestly. Webber reads that as classic spillover. If family based visas go unused in a fiscal year, they increase employment based numbers for the next one. Tighter consular processing abroad can produce that effect. The practical takeaway is simple. If Chart B lets you file the I-485, do it. The EAD and advance parole alone can be life changing. You can change employers more easily. Your spouse and, in some cases, your child can work. You may avoid consular bottlenecks. Interviews appear to be returning more often, which can slow adjudication, but being in the final stage is still a better place to wait.
For India in particular, the strange reality persists. EB-3 can be a better date than EB-2. Downgrades make sense unless a credible EB-1 path is ready. For the rest of world, EB-1 is still current. For India and possibly China, EB-1 may remain backlogged because so many long-waiting EB-2 candidates have upgraded and will continue to do so.
The student’s dilemma and the O-1 bridge
What does that mean for the international student who once hoped to go F-1 to green card with no interim status? Webber is blunt. That path is essentially gone. O-1 is the practical bridge that mirrors EB-1A’s standards but requires an employer. H-1B remains valuable because transfers are simpler than O-1 moves and H-4 EAD exists for some families. If those options are not available, other routes deserve a look. L-1 through an overseas stint. Or sector pivots into areas with political and economic tailwinds.
If high wage entry roles in big tech are thinner and AI compresses some hiring ladders, you go where the need is obvious and the national interest is hard to argue against. Health care. Advanced manufacturing, including chips. Power grid modernization. Nuclear. Domestic critical minerals and rare earth processing. These are the kinds of roles even restrictionists struggle to oppose when the skill set is clear and scarce. Data analytics for a social app does not carry that narrative weight. Precision engineering for domestic supply chain resilience does.
Internationally, his anecdotal view is that some Europeans are wary of the current U.S. climate, China flows had already tightened, and many South Asian candidates still want the U.S. but are looking for workable detours. Canada feels less attractive than it did a few years ago. Australia draws interest. Japan, long seen as culturally and linguistically challenging, is showing up in conversations more often.
If there is a single message Webber repeats, it is that there is no shortcut worth taking. Build the record you claim. Use coaches or consultants to help plan real work, not to manufacture it. If you are truly EB-1 material, that profile will not appear in two months. If your goal is NIW, look for the federal throughline in your impact and document it. If you are not interested in the grind, be honest with yourself about what a stable H-1B life can still offer. Many families build very good lives on temporary status.
What the next three years require
If you are an attorney, Webber’s playbook is straightforward. Stay close to the trends. Study approvals. Talk honestly with clients about option sets. Use fixed scopes. Diversify so you can pivot when categories tighten. Above all, do the diligence. You cannot build a practice on shortcuts when the system is increasingly alert to them.
If you are an immigrant, his counsel is just as direct. Do the real work to match the category you want. Accept that some timelines are long. File the I-485 when Chart B lets you. Use the mobility that EAD and advance parole provide. Target sectors and roles aligned with national priorities. If you choose to wait on a temporary path, do it with eyes open and a good life in the meantime.
Adaptability is not optional in immigration. It is the only way forward. Or in Webber’s terms, stop searching for the perfect checkout line. Learn how to move well in the one you are in, and be ready to step into another when the facts, not your wishes, tell you it is time.
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