Immigrating to the US

What the hell are work visas?

To put it simply a work visa is a temporary working permit to allow a foreign national to live and work in the US. The US government allows each year for companies to sponsor visas to get workers from abroad to come and work in the US for a certain duration. There are a lot of different types of visas, but for the purpose of this article, I'll only focus on the 2 visas I held: L1-B and H1-B.

L1-B

In 2016 the startup I was working for in Spain got acquired and incorporated by a US-based company. My employer offered to sponsor my visa to get me to work on US soil, and as the Spanish office was incorporated under that company's name, I could qualify for an L1-B visa.

The requirements to qualify for this visa were the following:

• I had to be an employee of the company or subsidiary for at least a year
• I needed to have specialized knowledge which meant I had to prove that the work I was doing for the US company could only be done by me. As I was the maintainer of some key services of the software that the company was selling, that played in my favor. I had to write an entire essay with proof of my contributions to these key services and why I was essential to the business. That wasn't easy because pretty much anything too vague could fall in the category of "we can find some US worker to do this".

After filing my application with immigration lawyers, I had to wait about 6 months for my visa to be "approved". Yes, the quotes are necessary here, because the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services' (USCIS) decision regarding my immigration case was not enough to guarantee that I could work in the US. I still had to:

• get an appointment at a US embassy
• get interviewed and screened
• give my passport so they could apply and stamp the visa

The interview in itself was not that intense but I remember being terrified to make a tiny mistake and get my visa denied. I kept my answers short, focused (mainly yes's and no's), properly state my employer's name, my degree. I also had to bring several required documents: diplomas, copy of and original passport, transcripts from college (yes they checked those), etc.

Long story short, after a few weeks I got approved, which gave me the following rights as a US non-immigrant worker:

• Live and work in the US up to 5 years
• Pay taxes in the US (just to make it clear to anyone spreading false rumors that immigrants/non-immigrants do not contribute to the US, don't you worry we pay the same taxes as American citizens do)
• That's it.

On the other hand, I was unable to:

• Change jobs
• Start my own business
• Qualifying for social benefits
• Enter the US territory easily (everyone who experienced the immigration queue at SFO after a 12+ hours flight can tell you, it's pretty annoying)
• Change job duties: they had to remain the same to keep my visa valid. For instance, I could not switch from Software Engineering to Product Management. For that, I'd need to reapply for a visa
• Vote or participate in politics

But, hey, I was the happiest I've ever been, I got the opportunity to work in San Francisco, that's something I couldn't have imagined happening to me.

H1-B

After a few months of working in the US office of my company, the HR department contacted me and asked me if I was willing to apply for an H1-B visa. I immediately said yes because the H1-B visa offers quite a few "upgrades" compared to what I had on an L1-B visa. Let's take a look at the updated list:

• Live and work in the US up to 6 years: First 3 years, then I would have to apply again for a second H1-B.
• Pay taxes in the US (yup, still doing it)
• Change jobs

In my situation at that time, the H1-B meant that I'd have better job security: I could go work for another company if I wanted to or was laid off. However despite this new perk I still had to follow the following rules to keep my visa:

• The position and job duties at the new company had to stay the same
• If I were to be unemployed I could only stay so up to 60 days to maintain my status. Failure to do so, I'd lose my visa and have to go back home.

Anecdote: At the beginning, I'd train for coding interviews once a month to be ready to interview in no time in case I'd get laid off. 60 days can be a pretty short amount of time to land a new job.

• My new employer and I would have to go through a tedious process and lots of paperwork (see the info card "Changing Jobs on an H1-B" for more details)

Applying for an H1-B visa, though, is a whole other story. Every year up to 65000 H1-B visas can be issued. As you can imagine, more than 65000 applicants are registering their case to get a visa, so the USCIS conducts a random selection, also called "lottery", to select the 65000 people that might get a chance to get a visa. What happens if you're not selected? Try again the following year. And if you fail again? Try again.

I was extremely lucky: I got through the lottery! Now I needed to contact my immigration lawyers to finish my petition, and I ended up getting my H1-B visa approved in August of 2017.

Starting October 1st of that year my H1-B could become current, I wanted to go home for Christmas, thus needed a new stamp on my visa and had to do the whole embassy interview again. I remember being very anxious not getting my passport back in time before my return flight from France to SF, luckily it only took 4 days for the embassy to send my passport to my parent's address with my shiny new visa on it.

From non-immigrant to permanent resident

We've seen recently through the many bans and executive orders related to immigration that, despite being hard to get, these visas do not guarantee that you can stay through the entire duration. Even pre-COVID, I couldn't feel "safe" in this country without obtaining the status of permanent resident i.e. a green card.

The process to get it though is long is tedious. I'm a French national, born in France (very important, it's the country of birth that matters when applying for a green card), white, male, i.e. the most privileged possible person for this process. Despite that, it still took from October 2017 until November 2019 to get my permanent resident card in hand. To put that in perspective, right now, as I'm writing these words, it can take up to 50 years for an Indian national to get the same piece of paper I got.

I started the employment-based green card process also called EB in late 2017. Up to 140000 EB green cards can be granted every year. The whole process consisted of 3 steps that will be more or less detailed below.

The PERM

1. File up the "worksheet": detail all the work duties yet another time, the salary, the current position held by the applicant, proof of current and past employment, letters from all my previous manager,...
2. Drafting a job notice, and advertising for the job position of the applicant: the company sponsoring must advertise for the position of the applicant in the newspaper, on its website, and its office for at least 10 business days for US workers to apply. If no one applies and qualifies for the position within 30 days the process may continue.
3. Prevailing Wage Request: the salary and the job description have to be submitted to the Department Of Labor (DOL) to ensure that the applicant is paid accordingly. This step takes about 6 weeks.
4. Filling the Program Electronic Review Management (PERM): the system used for obtaining Labor Certification and is the first step for certain foreign nationals in obtaining an employment-based immigrant visa. This step takes 4 to 6 months.

When I reached step 4 we were already in December 2018. The PERM took about 3 months to get approved on my end, which let me continue the process in March 2019. As you can see, despite taking longer to get approved, this entire step is pretty similar to the one done when applying for my H1-B. It ensures that US workers are still prioritized when it comes to employment.

The i-140 and i-485

The next 2 steps are run concurrently and can be the longest depending on the applicant's country of birth.

1. File the i-140 form, also called Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker. It allows a foreign national to work in the US permanently. This form had a lot of overlap with the PERM, but this time had to be sent to USCIS instead of DOL. I chose to submit it for Premium Processing, as it brings down the time it takes to get it approved from 6 to 8 months to only a week. It cost me about $1440 to do so.
2. Pass a medical exam. I had to go to an immigration doctor to get a checkup, give an up to date list of all the vaccines I've ever had (it was a pain because my vaccination record was written in French), and get some extra vaccines. This was not covered by my health insurance: $1200.
3. The biometrics appointment. After receiving my i-140 approval in May of 2019, I got my biometrics registered again: photo + fingerprints.
4. File the i-485 form, also called Application to Register Permanent Residence. This is the main form that once approved would grant me the status of permanent resident of the US. The processing time for this one ... no one knows. It can be counted in months, or years. The processing time depends on your country of birth, which field office is going to process your case. At this point, the only thing I could do was wait.

I submitted my case end of May 2019. Just about 2 months later I got "scheduled for an interview" which was perhaps the luckiest thing that could have happened to me, instead of waiting almost a year, it took only a few weeks to reach this step. I was scheduled for the interview on the 26th of August. I had to go to a USCIS office to answer a series of questions to a USCIS officer and verify if my paperwork was still in order.

I received my approval notice for my i-485 and shortly after my green card in hand the first week of November 2019. Only immigrants who went through the process know the feeling of all the anxiety and stress linked to their status in the US just suddenly going way.

Here's the list of perks I got thanks to this new piece of paper:

• Live and work in the US.
• Pay taxes in the US (yup, still doing it)
• Change jobs without going through any tedious process
• Start my own business
• Qualifying for social benefits
• Enter the US territory easily
• Change job duties
• Qualify for the citizenship program after 4 years

Conclusion

• Green Cards are not as easy to get as some US citizen say they are
• I'm exhausted by this visa and green card process to this day
• I'm probably an immigration expert at this point
• I feel extremely lucky to have gotten all my paperwork before the pandemic. If it wouldn't have been the case, my current situation would have been far more precarious as I still would have been under an H1-B visa, due for renewal in September, with a visa ban in my category
• I'm grateful to have been given the chance to do this and I believe I'm a net positive to this country
• Was it worth the time, the stress, and the effort? Yes, yes and yes

Whenever I have to explain what the US immigration process looks like, and I don't have the time to talk about it like I just did in this article, I always quote this tweet:

Flo Crivello@Altimor

One comparison that could help them understand: you know the kind of experience you get at the DMV? Getting a visa is 10x more kafkaesque and frustrating, and takes several months (to be repeated every few years, for 5-15 years until you get a green card)

Ava@noampomsky

I feel like a lot of US citizens don’t quite get how hard it is to get an immigrant visa even if you are super qualified—many friends/family have struggled w the H1-B lottery or spent months applying for an O1 or got denied entry even though they have MIT degrees/great jobs/etc

6:48 PM - Feb 1, 2020

983311

9:50 PM - Feb 2, 2020

570

A few years back, I imagine it would have been a no-brainer for most to bring their talent and specialized skills through the work visa and green card program to the US. However, in 2020, with all the paperwork, stress, anxiety, and uncertainty that it causes, all that to be caught in the middle of some political game, 🤷‍♂️ ... I'll let you be the judge of it whether it's worth it or not.