[fishywang]

"specialist knowledge" makes sense in L1 because L1 is for intra-company transfer. You are already working for this company (outside of the US), so it's possible that you have some "specialist knowledge" about the technology this company uses, and if they transfer you to the US instead of a local new hire, it saves the company money and time to train the new hire. H1b is not for intra-company transfer so this doesn't make any sense.

[ry_ry]

Fair point, I guess the specialism aspect would boil down to being really good, or having domain knowledge of similar products.

The latter being easier to demonstrate, not sure quite how you'd convince the govt that Candidate X is a superb programmer or whatever.

Guess we can look forward to whiteboard tree shaking and fizzbuzz at the airport! ;)