[mehrdada]

I would be less than "definitely sure" about that. I know lots of folks firsthand whose primary motivation were that. This is obviously very country-dependent. If you are in a country with presence of say FAANG offices, sure you'd go for L1 or EB1C. Not everyone is that privileged. Not to mention during the Trump era, F1 visa was one of the only exempted ways to get your foot in the door for various countries.

(There's also OPT, btw, which is critical in the process, and H1B lottery chance, assuming a US Masters degree, was more than 50% last time I looked at it a couple years ago. O1 (and even EB1A/B) are not that rare for well-published PhDs, and EB2-NIW is quite easy for any PhD worth their salt, I'd say.)

[throwawayjd]

Thanks for mentioning EB2-NIW, I didn't know that before, and I'll definitely look into it. Regarding O1, one of the PhDs I admire most failed to get an O1 despite his success. I guess publishing papers in our fields is kind of hard and maybe some fields are more easy to get an O1 than others :)