September 6, 2017 at 19:57
Our way to the green card
In the USA, we arrived in the dashing 90s, but since then little has changed, and our experience can be valuable to many. My husband is a programmer and mathematician, able to write on everything, as I understand it (but I'm not at all a programmer, so forgive me if something is wrong), from assembler to C, C ++ and beyond everywhere.
We arrived on an L1b work visa, and we transferred our husband to the American branch of an East European company, in which he had worked for a couple of years before. Before arriving in the USA, I was a linguist, lexicographer, and I was involved in compiling dictionaries. We had a 5-year-old daughter with us, and daughter number two was born shortly after arrival. This is important, because the question of education of children arose soon enough, and as soon as the stress associated with the birth of my second child passed, I started tugging at my husband - what about the design of the Green Card? The question was fundamental - do we teach mathematics with the older one according to the Russian textbook or American? Are we returning to Moscow or staying in the USA? These are two completely different educational tasks! In general, my husband had to break away from his favorite programs and go to the authorities to find out, since his attempts to dissuade me from
It turned out that the authorities were not much interested in issuing the Green Card - we have an immigration lawyer, they said, we pay him for all the employees, and they paid for your Green Card six months ago, all the questions were there. Said done, call there. And I’m not your lawyer, the lawyer answers, I’m the company’s lawyer, all questions go there. Then it became really interesting to me what was happening, and the authorities had to convincingly ask the lawyer to meet with us and tell us when he nevertheless plans to get us a green card and what he managed to do over the past six months.
The meeting with the lawyer was very instructive. A respectable American in an expensive office in the center of the city of Philadelphia told us for a long time what kind of connections he has almost everywhere, and ended his speech with a conclusion, the meaning of which boiled down to the following: I already received money, and therefore there is no reason to worry. In response to a specific question, when will the documents be submitted, he resolutely said: “tomorrow”, and invited us to sign clean, unfilled forms. We refused this tempting offer and asked: “why tomorrow? If nothing has happened in half a year, how can we be sure that it will be tomorrow? ”The American did not reach into his pocket for a word:“ look, ”he told us,“ do you see the envelope? ”And he showed us an envelope with a sticker stamped on it. “See Have I pasted a stamp? So I will certainly send everything tomorrow! ”The argument was murderous, and certainly helped the lawyer achieve what he wanted, we immediately left his office forever. When we went outside, I told my husband something like this: “I don’t understand what is happening, but I see that this lawyer clearly does not consider us to be people.” At a short family council, it was decided that I was going to work for the next lawyer, since from the age of 18, in parallel with my studies at the university, I worked as a professional translator, as well as a secretary-referent. Why did we decide that? The fact is that by the manners of this lawyer, it immediately became clear to me that the problem was not with him personally, but with our social status of foreign clients, and I categorically did not like this social status. This American considered himself immeasurably more significant personality than us, both with university education, good specialists in their field, authors of publications. He categorically could not even understand how the issue of obtaining a green card is related to the education of our children, and why this is important for us. There was even a phrase that we might have to leave the United States and then get a visa again and come back — in short, this gentleman was clearly not going to let us out of his hands and wanted to cut off our employer to the fullest, for the husband was a good specialist , and the employer was willing to pay. In short, he didn’t set any moral limits in the treatment of us, perhaps due to the already extensive connections mentioned above. To compete with another fellow American and still persuade him to submit our documents, despite the fact that the money has already been paid (and all the lawyers, of course, take the payment in advance,
I began to study the question of what did the assistant lawyers do, and how to become such an assistant, and it turned out that I studied for an assistant lawyer (paralegal) for two years, and for a lawyer - three, with a higher education. I passed the law school exam, and at the same time I found work in the office of a lawyer, who was also involved in immigration matters. Since it was this area that interested me most of all, he commissioned it to me, giving me a wonderful set of CDs to help me (in those old times, information was still stored on CDs, the Internet was in its infancy) with all immigration laws, instructions and precedents. It turned out to be very interesting, and it turned out that the authorities did not inform us at all about the options for obtaining a green card, but there were several of them.
In particular, it turned out that waiting for a green card through an employer is not necessary. That is, of course, there is a standard option, the so-called “labor certification”, when the employer advertises that there is a vacancy about him (which is not really a vacancy, but the job that my husband works at ) If there are no American workers who want to work in this place, or if they do not have the indicated skills or knowledge, the Department of Labor issues “labor certification”), and you can apply to the immigration service to get the actual green card . It was this process that the American lawyer was supposed to organize for us, but somehow I did not find the time.
From the discs given to me, I learned that everything in this process is not easy, and if it seems naive to us that the main goal of the process is to get the Green Card, then the Department of Labor thinks differently, from their point of view, the most important thing is to employ American workers, and therefore the process is in every way aimed at finding out if there are still people who want to replace my husband at his workplace. For example, if a company has recently passed layoffs, you cannot apply for Labor certification. One cannot demand unique knowledge from potential applicants, one can only demand what they could learn somewhere. The applicant cannot be refused just because the job is occupied, he should not know at all that this is not a real vacancy - the employer is not obliged to hire him, but he cannot apply for Labor certification, - you have to wait 6 months, then again start advertising vacancies, all over again. Knowledge of Russian, Garabar and other languages, too, cannot be required from a programmer, they will refuse, it is considered an illegally limiting requirement. You cannot offer a salary below the baseboard in principle - before applying for Labor certification, you must submit an application to the same Department of Labor (called the prevailing wage determination application), describe what kind of education is required for this work, and they will determine the salary; the more knowledge and experience required, the greater the salary. In general, the process turned out to be completely not as trivial as we imagined it, and we decided that in parallel with this process, in which, as it became clear, a failure can occur simply because the stars didn’t stand up, we will consider alternative options ,
There were two alternatives - bypassing the entire process of Labor certification, you can apply for a Green Card as a person with extraordinary ability or as a person whose work will be in the national interest of the United States (National interest waiver). For university employees or research companies there is another option - submitting to the Green Card as an outstanding researcher, but our company was not involved in scientific research. Therefore, we settled on the first two options, all the more, it turned out that as a free bonus they have a very important feature - these applications can be submitted without the participation of the employer! That is, simply compile, fill out and submit, without contacting either the personnel department or anyone at the place of work, and you can generally not tell them in principle that such an application has been submitted, and you can get the right to work on the basis of such an application, and work not only with the main employer, but at the same time take additional projects and work for yourself, which, in the presence of children and the prospect of paying for my law school, was not superfluous. In addition, at that time, the employer decided to change my husband's visa from L1b to H1b, and we were faced with the fact that I would lose my right to work (the spouses of L1b visa holders have the right to work, and the spouses of H1b visa holders do not), but when applying On the Green Card, as a person with outstanding abilities or as a person whose work will be in the national interests of the United States, the spouse also receives the right to work. Therefore, this option was of great interest to us, but, of course, the question immediately arose - but are we highly marked? The husband, of course, was a competent specialist, but before the Nobel Prize, let’s say,
The discs issued to me contained a lot of precedents, that is, they described specific cases in which the green cards were issued according to the above options, and having studied them, I was inspired. It turned out that with a competent presentation of the material (and we were taught to present the material well at the Department of Structural and Applied Linguistics), it is quite possible to prove that a person can be classified as a person with outstanding abilities or as a person whose work will be in the US national interests, even if the nobel is not yet shining for him! Hurrah! Guided by precedents, we sat down to write a labor biography of the spouse, emphasizing precisely those moments that we paid attention to in positive decisions.
In order to qualify for a Green Card in the category of “a person with outstanding abilities”, you need to satisfy three criteria out of about ten given in the instructions. It turned out that we can demonstrate the availability of publications, the availability of links to publications, participation in evaluating the work of others, an important contribution to the field of professional activity, as well as a leading role in organizations with a positive reputation, that is, even five criteria instead of three! These criteria can easily be found on the Internet, if you are interested in reading the rest, but these five are most often satisfied by those who are involved in IT.
The criteria for submitting documents to the Green Card as a person whose work would be in the national interests of the United States were much more vague, but the precedents were inspiring - those who received the approval were, figuratively speaking, strong good guys, and they did not aim at the Nobel at all. I must say that since then the requirements for applicants for the Green Card under this article were first tightened, and then, at the end of the Obama administration, they were liberalized, so now a solid good guy has every chance, especially if he has a business plan. We did not have a business plan, but there were a couple of patents, and we decided to rely on this.
On the basis of the studied precedents, as well as the numerous samples that the employer provided me (subsequently on the basis of continuous interaction with immigration authorities, as well as on the basis of my legal education, which turned out to be unexpectedly fundamental), my husband’s biography and letters of recommendation were compiled, but it prevented me from sending our applications, some kind of creative dissatisfaction. At the same time, I worked on the affairs of our many clients and studied at the law school, and all the time I improved and worked on something until I finally understood, that's all. There was nothing more to add, all possible precedents were taken into account, potential objections were reflected. The Labor certification process, meanwhile, was moving at a slow pace; the labor department received all of our documents and went quiet, showing no signs of life. In my other cases, I knew that this was not specifically related to us, at that time they were undergoing yet another reorganization, and all cases were delayed. As a result, we received correspondence on three applications at the same time - both approval by Labor Certification, and by applying for National Interest Waiver, and by applying as a person with outstanding abilities. At that time, we were ready to part with the employer through whom we applied for Labor certification, so the approval of self-filed applications came in handy. The husband went to work in a large company, where he would not have been hired for a work visa, because they basically do not do work visas. So we gained freedom! As a result, we received correspondence on three applications at the same time - both approval by Labor Certification, and by applying for National Interest Waiver, and by applying as a person with outstanding abilities. At that time, we were ready to part with the employer through whom we applied for Labor certification, so the approval of self-filed applications came in handy. The husband went to work in a large company, where he would not have been hired for a work visa, because they basically do not do work visas. So we gained freedom! As a result, we received correspondence on three applications at the same time - both approval by Labor Certification, and by applying for National Interest Waiver, and by applying as a person with outstanding abilities. At that time, we were ready to part with the employer through whom we applied for Labor certification, so the approval of self-filed applications came in handy. The husband went to work in a large company, where he would not have been hired for a work visa, because they basically do not do work visas. So we gained freedom! so the approval of self-filed applications came in handy. The husband went to work in a large company, where he would not have been hired for a work visa, because they basically do not do work visas. So we gained freedom! so the approval of self-filed applications came in handy. The husband went to work in a large company, where he would not have been hired for a work visa, because they basically do not do work visas. So we gained freedom!
I graduated from law school, passed the exam for a license, and since 2000 I have been working as an immigration lawyer, as it turned out that this is my favorite area of American law. And in immigration law, my favorite direction is to issue Green Cards for those who, as I often manage to prove not only to the immigration service, but themselves, it turns out, are persons with outstanding abilities, or, at least, benefit this country and all of us (that is, fits the National interest waiver category). I am especially pleased when I manage to help a person break out of immigration dependence on the employer, a dependence that I consider humiliating and unfair. Basically, it seems to me that I succeed not only due to knowledge of laws (this is very important, of course), but also due to
And how did it end with math? - you ask. Very simple - due to prolonged uncertainty, mathematics was taught in two textbooks. As a result, they entered several Ivy League universities at once, so everything turned out well.
We arrived on an L1b work visa, and we transferred our husband to the American branch of an East European company, in which he had worked for a couple of years before. Before arriving in the USA, I was a linguist, lexicographer, and I was involved in compiling dictionaries. We had a 5-year-old daughter with us, and daughter number two was born shortly after arrival. This is important, because the question of education of children arose soon enough, and as soon as the stress associated with the birth of my second child passed, I started tugging at my husband - what about the design of the Green Card? The question was fundamental - do we teach mathematics with the older one according to the Russian textbook or American? Are we returning to Moscow or staying in the USA? These are two completely different educational tasks! In general, my husband had to break away from his favorite programs and go to the authorities to find out, since his attempts to dissuade me from
It turned out that the authorities were not much interested in issuing the Green Card - we have an immigration lawyer, they said, we pay him for all the employees, and they paid for your Green Card six months ago, all the questions were there. Said done, call there. And I’m not your lawyer, the lawyer answers, I’m the company’s lawyer, all questions go there. Then it became really interesting to me what was happening, and the authorities had to convincingly ask the lawyer to meet with us and tell us when he nevertheless plans to get us a green card and what he managed to do over the past six months.
The meeting with the lawyer was very instructive. A respectable American in an expensive office in the center of the city of Philadelphia told us for a long time what kind of connections he has almost everywhere, and ended his speech with a conclusion, the meaning of which boiled down to the following: I already received money, and therefore there is no reason to worry. In response to a specific question, when will the documents be submitted, he resolutely said: “tomorrow”, and invited us to sign clean, unfilled forms. We refused this tempting offer and asked: “why tomorrow? If nothing has happened in half a year, how can we be sure that it will be tomorrow? ”The American did not reach into his pocket for a word:“ look, ”he told us,“ do you see the envelope? ”And he showed us an envelope with a sticker stamped on it. “See Have I pasted a stamp? So I will certainly send everything tomorrow! ”The argument was murderous, and certainly helped the lawyer achieve what he wanted, we immediately left his office forever. When we went outside, I told my husband something like this: “I don’t understand what is happening, but I see that this lawyer clearly does not consider us to be people.” At a short family council, it was decided that I was going to work for the next lawyer, since from the age of 18, in parallel with my studies at the university, I worked as a professional translator, as well as a secretary-referent. Why did we decide that? The fact is that by the manners of this lawyer, it immediately became clear to me that the problem was not with him personally, but with our social status of foreign clients, and I categorically did not like this social status. This American considered himself immeasurably more significant personality than us, both with university education, good specialists in their field, authors of publications. He categorically could not even understand how the issue of obtaining a green card is related to the education of our children, and why this is important for us. There was even a phrase that we might have to leave the United States and then get a visa again and come back — in short, this gentleman was clearly not going to let us out of his hands and wanted to cut off our employer to the fullest, for the husband was a good specialist , and the employer was willing to pay. In short, he didn’t set any moral limits in the treatment of us, perhaps due to the already extensive connections mentioned above. To compete with another fellow American and still persuade him to submit our documents, despite the fact that the money has already been paid (and all the lawyers, of course, take the payment in advance,
I began to study the question of what did the assistant lawyers do, and how to become such an assistant, and it turned out that I studied for an assistant lawyer (paralegal) for two years, and for a lawyer - three, with a higher education. I passed the law school exam, and at the same time I found work in the office of a lawyer, who was also involved in immigration matters. Since it was this area that interested me most of all, he commissioned it to me, giving me a wonderful set of CDs to help me (in those old times, information was still stored on CDs, the Internet was in its infancy) with all immigration laws, instructions and precedents. It turned out to be very interesting, and it turned out that the authorities did not inform us at all about the options for obtaining a green card, but there were several of them.
In particular, it turned out that waiting for a green card through an employer is not necessary. That is, of course, there is a standard option, the so-called “labor certification”, when the employer advertises that there is a vacancy about him (which is not really a vacancy, but the job that my husband works at ) If there are no American workers who want to work in this place, or if they do not have the indicated skills or knowledge, the Department of Labor issues “labor certification”), and you can apply to the immigration service to get the actual green card . It was this process that the American lawyer was supposed to organize for us, but somehow I did not find the time.
From the discs given to me, I learned that everything in this process is not easy, and if it seems naive to us that the main goal of the process is to get the Green Card, then the Department of Labor thinks differently, from their point of view, the most important thing is to employ American workers, and therefore the process is in every way aimed at finding out if there are still people who want to replace my husband at his workplace. For example, if a company has recently passed layoffs, you cannot apply for Labor certification. One cannot demand unique knowledge from potential applicants, one can only demand what they could learn somewhere. The applicant cannot be refused just because the job is occupied, he should not know at all that this is not a real vacancy - the employer is not obliged to hire him, but he cannot apply for Labor certification, - you have to wait 6 months, then again start advertising vacancies, all over again. Knowledge of Russian, Garabar and other languages, too, cannot be required from a programmer, they will refuse, it is considered an illegally limiting requirement. You cannot offer a salary below the baseboard in principle - before applying for Labor certification, you must submit an application to the same Department of Labor (called the prevailing wage determination application), describe what kind of education is required for this work, and they will determine the salary; the more knowledge and experience required, the greater the salary. In general, the process turned out to be completely not as trivial as we imagined it, and we decided that in parallel with this process, in which, as it became clear, a failure can occur simply because the stars didn’t stand up, we will consider alternative options ,
There were two alternatives - bypassing the entire process of Labor certification, you can apply for a Green Card as a person with extraordinary ability or as a person whose work will be in the national interest of the United States (National interest waiver). For university employees or research companies there is another option - submitting to the Green Card as an outstanding researcher, but our company was not involved in scientific research. Therefore, we settled on the first two options, all the more, it turned out that as a free bonus they have a very important feature - these applications can be submitted without the participation of the employer! That is, simply compile, fill out and submit, without contacting either the personnel department or anyone at the place of work, and you can generally not tell them in principle that such an application has been submitted, and you can get the right to work on the basis of such an application, and work not only with the main employer, but at the same time take additional projects and work for yourself, which, in the presence of children and the prospect of paying for my law school, was not superfluous. In addition, at that time, the employer decided to change my husband's visa from L1b to H1b, and we were faced with the fact that I would lose my right to work (the spouses of L1b visa holders have the right to work, and the spouses of H1b visa holders do not), but when applying On the Green Card, as a person with outstanding abilities or as a person whose work will be in the national interests of the United States, the spouse also receives the right to work. Therefore, this option was of great interest to us, but, of course, the question immediately arose - but are we highly marked? The husband, of course, was a competent specialist, but before the Nobel Prize, let’s say,
The discs issued to me contained a lot of precedents, that is, they described specific cases in which the green cards were issued according to the above options, and having studied them, I was inspired. It turned out that with a competent presentation of the material (and we were taught to present the material well at the Department of Structural and Applied Linguistics), it is quite possible to prove that a person can be classified as a person with outstanding abilities or as a person whose work will be in the US national interests, even if the nobel is not yet shining for him! Hurrah! Guided by precedents, we sat down to write a labor biography of the spouse, emphasizing precisely those moments that we paid attention to in positive decisions.
In order to qualify for a Green Card in the category of “a person with outstanding abilities”, you need to satisfy three criteria out of about ten given in the instructions. It turned out that we can demonstrate the availability of publications, the availability of links to publications, participation in evaluating the work of others, an important contribution to the field of professional activity, as well as a leading role in organizations with a positive reputation, that is, even five criteria instead of three! These criteria can easily be found on the Internet, if you are interested in reading the rest, but these five are most often satisfied by those who are involved in IT.
The criteria for submitting documents to the Green Card as a person whose work would be in the national interests of the United States were much more vague, but the precedents were inspiring - those who received the approval were, figuratively speaking, strong good guys, and they did not aim at the Nobel at all. I must say that since then the requirements for applicants for the Green Card under this article were first tightened, and then, at the end of the Obama administration, they were liberalized, so now a solid good guy has every chance, especially if he has a business plan. We did not have a business plan, but there were a couple of patents, and we decided to rely on this.
On the basis of the studied precedents, as well as the numerous samples that the employer provided me (subsequently on the basis of continuous interaction with immigration authorities, as well as on the basis of my legal education, which turned out to be unexpectedly fundamental), my husband’s biography and letters of recommendation were compiled, but it prevented me from sending our applications, some kind of creative dissatisfaction. At the same time, I worked on the affairs of our many clients and studied at the law school, and all the time I improved and worked on something until I finally understood, that's all. There was nothing more to add, all possible precedents were taken into account, potential objections were reflected. The Labor certification process, meanwhile, was moving at a slow pace; the labor department received all of our documents and went quiet, showing no signs of life. In my other cases, I knew that this was not specifically related to us, at that time they were undergoing yet another reorganization, and all cases were delayed. As a result, we received correspondence on three applications at the same time - both approval by Labor Certification, and by applying for National Interest Waiver, and by applying as a person with outstanding abilities. At that time, we were ready to part with the employer through whom we applied for Labor certification, so the approval of self-filed applications came in handy. The husband went to work in a large company, where he would not have been hired for a work visa, because they basically do not do work visas. So we gained freedom! As a result, we received correspondence on three applications at the same time - both approval by Labor Certification, and by applying for National Interest Waiver, and by applying as a person with outstanding abilities. At that time, we were ready to part with the employer through whom we applied for Labor certification, so the approval of self-filed applications came in handy. The husband went to work in a large company, where he would not have been hired for a work visa, because they basically do not do work visas. So we gained freedom! As a result, we received correspondence on three applications at the same time - both approval by Labor Certification, and by applying for National Interest Waiver, and by applying as a person with outstanding abilities. At that time, we were ready to part with the employer through whom we applied for Labor certification, so the approval of self-filed applications came in handy. The husband went to work in a large company, where he would not have been hired for a work visa, because they basically do not do work visas. So we gained freedom! so the approval of self-filed applications came in handy. The husband went to work in a large company, where he would not have been hired for a work visa, because they basically do not do work visas. So we gained freedom! so the approval of self-filed applications came in handy. The husband went to work in a large company, where he would not have been hired for a work visa, because they basically do not do work visas. So we gained freedom!
I graduated from law school, passed the exam for a license, and since 2000 I have been working as an immigration lawyer, as it turned out that this is my favorite area of American law. And in immigration law, my favorite direction is to issue Green Cards for those who, as I often manage to prove not only to the immigration service, but themselves, it turns out, are persons with outstanding abilities, or, at least, benefit this country and all of us (that is, fits the National interest waiver category). I am especially pleased when I manage to help a person break out of immigration dependence on the employer, a dependence that I consider humiliating and unfair. Basically, it seems to me that I succeed not only due to knowledge of laws (this is very important, of course), but also due to
And how did it end with math? - you ask. Very simple - due to prolonged uncertainty, mathematics was taught in two textbooks. As a result, they entered several Ivy League universities at once, so everything turned out well.