1. I think it's great that OP got the visa, and it's clear (at least to me) that we should be attracting entrepreneurial types like OP to start businesses in the US. I also understand that our immigration system is hopelessly broken, and oftentimes the best one can hope to do is "hack" the system. So I commend you for not just hacking the system, but posting this to Hacker News!
2. It seems pretty apparent that while OP may be able to "check some of these boxes", he, at least to me, doesn't meet the "Extraordinary Ability" intent of this visa. I worry that with more spotlight on these types of applications that various political movements would try to tighten the loopholes for this visa.
To expand on number 2, raising 98K from family, friends and seed investors really does not strike me as a "nationally or internationally recognized award". Again, clearly it is by the letter of the law (at least the rules of the USCIS), but that surprised me as a layperson. The section on "Being employed in a ‘critical capacity’ at an organization with a distinguished reputation" seemed even more dubious. Path, OP's startup that is nothing more than a pitch deck and 100k in funding, is "an organization with a distinguished reputation"???
Again, to be 100% clear, I don't fault OP at all for going this route, and on the contrary, I commend him for "playing the game" correctly. I just worry about the downstream consequences of "pulling back the curtain" and showing how the game works to a larger audience.
No offense to OP and still a nice achievement but OP's listed criteria are not even close to what would qualify for O1 and would not hold up under scrutiny if the letter and spirit of the criteria is applied. It is possible that USCIS is instructed to encourage issuance for start up founders, which is totally fine and is necessary to keep the innovation going.
On a related note, the moment OP resigned from their L1B job, I am fairly certain they needed to leave the country in 60 days or so. It may or may not affect them when they pursue citizenship.
But if I were OP, I would not advertise this and count my blessings in private.
Just a technical note that it won’t affect them at all. When you apply for an employment based green card you can actually have arbitrary amounts of “unlawful presence” before your most recent admission to the US. The Immigration and Nationality Act explicitly allows it. The challenge is generally recentering the US after being here unlawfully, but it seems OP already did this on their new O-1.
Few counterpoints
> and oftentimes the best one can hope to do is "hack" the system
None of this is "hacking". This is how it works and supposed to work in the law. The manuals given to USCIS agents who handle this are at best low grade pen pushers. They have zero understanding of the work they are doing and are not qualified to make these decisions in any way. The way they work is through checklists and unless you pass this checklist your intent and what you are has zero relevance.
When you go deep into why these laws were created and why these specific regulations exist, you will find out that the lawmakers totally intended this. For example, it is ridiculously easy for a model who has even occasionally walked the ramp to "hack" the system. This was created so escorts, supermodels and side chicks of rich and powerful could be brought in easily on O1. One such lady even ended up in white house.
> It seems pretty apparent that while OP may be able to "check some of these boxes", he, at least to me, doesn't meet the "Extraordinary Ability" intent of this visa. I worry that with more spotlight on these types of applications that various political movements would try to tighten the loopholes for this visa.
You are not in charge of deciding who is extra ordinary, USCIS agent is. I bet if you were in charge of making such decisions you would do a better job and actually let in 10x more people. But that is not the way it is. USCIS agent makes the decision based on a relatively very objective criteria.
> To expand on number 2, raising 98K from family, friends and seed investors really does not strike me as a "nationally or internationally recognized award".
It does not "strike to you" is irrelevant. What matters is is it will within the USCIS's defition.
Congrats to OP for writign this piece and I hope more and more people use these sort of systematic approach.
https://www.wildeslaw.com/services/immigration/o-1-visas-for...
It's easier to meet extraordinary ability qualifications in non-technical professions that are more public facing.
What do you mean by this? There seems to be a divide here and NYC is currently in the middle of a immigrant crisis with nowhere to house immigrants.
At least then it becomes about talent rather than money, which also helps with the shitshow IT security at many companies that we have now.
...most politicians would never vote for it even though it'd be one of the most competitive laws in the world. Don't want your citizen to leave? get good.
your comment implies that he did something illegal, but that is not true.
> at least to me, doesn't meet the "Extraordinary Ability" intent of this visa.
sorry, who are you?
Just because something is difficult/time-consuming != "hopelessly broken". (No, kids, the Reason magazine "What Part of Legal Immigration Don't You Understand?" flowchart is not ipso facto proof of this, either.)
There is no obligation for the US, or any country, to turn something as important as determining whether someone is eligible to enter the country into a one-click online process. One might say that the country would benefit by making the process easier, and that may or may not be correct, but that is not the same argument.
In any case, the instant you fall just a little outside the prescribed lines is when things start to get hairy. Have a talk with any DACA recipient and you will quickly learn how broken the system can be. Or someone seeking refugee status around the time the annual ceiling is being reached.
> There is no obligation for the US, or any country, to turn something as important as determining whether someone is eligible to enter the country
I have the opposite opinion. Borders should be much more open, and people should stop whining so much about immigration. Nearly everyone -- aside from the relatively small number of Native peoples -- in the US is an immigrant, or the descendant of immigrants. We are all here because our ancestors forced their way here, killing and destroying wherever they went.
The idea that we have some natural right to decide who comes and goes is entirely laughable to me. I get that we should have some controls in place for at least logistical and security reasons. But our immigration restrictions go far beyond that. And again, let's not pretend it's some natural right of ours to do. We get to do it because we've had more guns than other people who wanted to be here and "own" the land.
Also remember that this is not the normal or common state of things. The internationally-recognized passport system we take for granted has existed for barely a century[0]. Before that it was a patchwork of various systems (sometimes just the honor system) and much of what we'd call "illegal immigration" today was the status quo. On top of that, the US's restrictive immigration system has existed for an even shorter time; when my great-grandparents immigrated about 115 years ago, all that was required was they enter through an official port of entry and truthfully declare who they were and where they were from. They didn't have to have a visa, or apply for permanent residency. My great-grandfather became a citizen about 15 years later shortly after applying and providing a record of his original arrival in the country.
Meanwhile, today, adults who were brought here by their parents as toddlers ("illegally" -- like a 2 year old has the capacity to do something illegal) can't even get legal residency or citizenship. If that's not hopelessly broken, I don't know what is.
The funny thing is that we're talking about this in the context of someone suggesting that OP "hacked" a broken system to get a visa. But it sounds like the O-1 system is pretty functional and is working as designed. There's a list of criteria, and a lot of explanation as to what is and isn't covered under those criteria. You document, make your case for why you fit the criteria, and apply. USCIS makes a decision (and pretty quickly, at least in this case!), probably based on a checklist, by people who likely don't really understand the nuances of any particular industry or profession or academic discipline to make any sort of value judgment on the application, beyond the checklist and the case being made. That... seems exactly how it should be? A transparent process with well-defined criteria for acceptance? (You may disagree with the criteria, or the list of things that qualify, but that's a different matter.)
[0] (The idea of passports have existed at least for a couple thousand years, of course, but in the earliest days they were more like a hand-written letter asking, "please allow my subject, Bob, to pass safely through your lands, signed, King Larry".)
Good for OP that he gamed the system, I have no ill-will for him. But the smart thing to do would be to keep quiet and enjoy the legal status, not write a blogpost showing how flimsily it was obtained.
If I were the USCIS I'd see this as a sign that this whole visa application was made in bad faith.
So, really we should hate OP and probably ensure that his current visa gets voided through all legal means, hand him the NOIR he deserves, and then someone who actually deserves it can live in the US.
Yes.
After all, when companies or rich people _legally_ avoid paying taxes, everyone says “no they still need to pay, it’s not fair”.
Yet when it’s about someone “trying to improve their life” (in other words, poor), all of a sudden we should let it slide? Okay
Maybe he didn't get that yea through a black letter reading of the law, so what? The visa-issuers think it is fine. The outcome is good. So in this case the system could be said to be working.
Although the US visa system overall looks a bit silly.
I have an informal waiver from ICE right now, and I'm running a tech business, but I'm deportable and would ordinarily be in immigration jail except I'm in a sanctuary state.
I think there was a shady underground way to match illegal immigrants with SSNs. Or they just networked heavily in their communities.
There are companies that provide a LLC with a SSN for just a fix payment of $400, but I am sure it comes with a lot of taxes issues that I don't want to care for now.
So, how can the financial system rely on SSN if they can be sold for inmigrants?
Likewise I want them to get licenses if they can pass the driving laws test, and should be able to get insurance. I don't want to be hit (or hit and run) by an uninsured driver.
They and their kids should be getting the same vaccines someone with a legal right to live here does, under the same terms. This is basic public health that helps everybody.
This is 100% orthogonal to whether ICE should be pursuing and deporting this or that person. They current system makes the rest of us less safe -- and that's not even getting into the massive impingement on the human rights of law abiding folks due to the misincented immigration (and other) laws and their enforcement).
Or are there just billions of Indian and Asian people?
But the wait and difficulty is much more than 6 times if you’re Asian versus if you’re European.
Sorry but the definition of extraordinary qualification is very capricious to make the claim about it being "hard" a bit meaningless. There are a lot of factors, but it isn't necessarily hard to obtain.
If you feel you were unfairly treated or scammed, you should report your lawyer to their local Bar organization.
Most will take it very seriously - especially in immigration, a repeat offender will often lose their license.
I became a citizen without an attorney and from start to finish it was about 5 years... Different process used though (got married).
Got a pile of paper about 2 inch high from all the forms I had to fill, mail that I sent and received, etc... Painful process.
It potentially helps you slightly for EB-1 (permanent residency for "extraordinary people") since it has similar requirements, and EB-1 has slightly better quotas than EB-2 (because fewer folks qualify ; EB-2 is for skilled workers like your typical tech employee).
If you're from India it's still a very long way out.
Eventually, you have to go through additional steps to convert to an immigrant visa (e.g. be sponsored by your (own) company, or marrying an American, etc.).
[1] https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
You can only work for the employer who sponsored you, for example. That means no additional freelancing.
Nice, just like in the good old days with serfs and feudal lords.
Some serious creativity in using fundraising under the category of "Nationally or internationally recognized awards"
This sounds iffy. I'm in the US on a L1-B visa as well, and my company went through rounds of layoffs, which concerned me. All information I've read, including the immigration team from my company (Big Tech), points out that if I lost my job, I would have had a short time to leave the country with no chance to find other jobs.
Unless I'm reading too much into it, it sounds like OP spent some time in the US in an illegal status, until that gap was bridged with the new visa.
For eg. someone I know of was banned from entering the US for 10 or so years because he worked on his startup under a B1 visa.
instead of making their own country great another country is benefiting from their talent.
and it's a self reinforcing system.
My lawyers originally described this category as "for internationally recognized people such as Nobel prize winners". That seemed a bit out of my league. But they issue 13k O-1 visas per year, so it's really the top (in some sense) 13k people who want to immigrate to the US each year. So I applied and got it.
The annoying part is that it demands legible recognitions: awards the immigration officers have heard of, and recommendation letters from people with Titles in Organizations they've heard of. But they seem to know something about the STEM world. They know about the International Math/Physics/Chemistry Olympiads, and the ACM Programming Contest, good universities, and reputable tech investors.
If I can offer a tip, it's the following. You know what's impressive in the STEM field. The immigration officer also has some experience of what's impressive. Your lawyer has the least idea of the 3 of you. So don't be diffident or self-deprecating with your lawyer! You have to tell them what you've accomplished and how notable each thing is.
Did the criteria change? Is it easier in certain fields? Easier from certain origin countries?
I'm surprised the US requirements would be so low as to accept a $100k investment as an award.
For most people, this is probably not the way to go, we were using it as a potential last resort.
