The petition must establish eligibility as of filing, and deliberately leaving essential support for a possible later request is a risky preparation strategy. A request for evidence is not guaranteed to supply the time or opportunity needed.
Finish the material evidence review
Identify which gaps can be resolved and which remain substantive before choosing the filing date. If witness accounts are needed, obtain and verify them while memories and records are accessible. Keep the U.S.
start date flexible. Optional premium processing does not turn an incomplete factual record into a qualified case or guarantee approval. Delay usually traces to an unnamed owner rather than to a slow institution.
When four people could request the same archive record, none does. Assign each outstanding item to one person with a date by which they will report progress rather than completion, so a stalled request surfaces while alternatives still exist. Witness availability decays on its own schedule: colleagues leave, systems are decommissioned, and memories become harder to tie to documents.
Hypothetical example: A soil-testing laboratory postpones interviewing the supervisor who ran a departing analyst’s method-validation work, and by the time the file is assembled that supervisor has moved abroad and answers nothing. The petition must establish eligibility as of filing, so the company, not counsel and not the employee, decides whether to proceed on the record that exists or hold the date until the material gap closes.