h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

so this would be for geniuses who aren't employed? that wouldn't be stephen hawking or any other academic surely.

i'm having trouble thinking to whom this might apply. chess wizards?

The O1 is there so persons of genius can be fast-tracked into the country to work in the US, *for* the US.

Consider something like a modern Manhattan Project.
If you were drafting in scientific luminaries from all over the world to work on a project of national importance, you wouldn't want them prevented from working by a law that says they can't if they're just visitors. Hence 'special' categories like the O1.

your example would appear to already be covered by H1B. I understand the distinct one for entertainers (P) since they are working but self employed. but scientists would be employed in one form or another.

to find someone who fits into this category you need someone who is both a genius AND unemployed. my point is that wouldn't be a scientist like hawking. so if it isn't sports, science or entertainment...what?

Doctors or surgeons flown in to perform procedures that they have pioneered or that only they are capable of doing is the obvious example. Academics sort of fall into this category too, but only the very best and usually only when there's no other way of getting them into the country.

Don't forget, with an H1-B, the employer must show they have tried and failed to find an American to do the job. These things genuinely are audited, regularly, and woe betide the employer who fails to perform Due Diligence.

The reason I use Stephen Hawking as an example is that he's very clearly at the very top of his field but not someone a corporation would employ. It would, in fact, be hard to bring Stephen Hawking to the USA and say "we're employing him to be Stephen Hawking" if he's doing the job of Professor of Esoteric Physics at the Miskatonic. There might be a queue of qualified Americans who could fill that position. If you want to employ Stephen to be Stephen, the O1 visa is a good option.

And as I indicated in my previous post, the visa exists as a catch-all for those niggling little situations where you might need to assemble an international cast of geniuses in a hurry.

i understand what you are saying. my point is that hawkings or any other non us citizen at the top of their field definitionally becomes someone who has skills that cannot be sourced in the us, thereby qualifying them for work in the us under h1b.

your final word, 'hurry', suggests the proper purpose of o1 is speed. while i understand this in the context of the example you give regarding medical procedures, seems to me hardly likely anyone would need a cosmologist in a hurry.

and surely there is a capacity in the us to waive visa requirements for medical emergencies and national security matters anyway?

i could be wrong, but it seems to me o1 is really a political rather than a practical visa and that the most obvious application would be to get 'defectors' into america quickly. hence my reference to chess wizards.

not a criticism btw, i am genuinely interested in the origin and use of this particular visa type.