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On Friday, June 13 I came home from work around 8pm and found the letter from the US immigration office that I have been waiting for for more than a year. Finally I had an answer to my greencard application. It was denied. Now this was a great surprise. As a result I could only stay until my work permit (H1B visa) expired, which was about 6 weeks later. After six years of working on a H1B visa it is not reasonably possible to renew it and so the only conclusion was that I had to leave the country. Otherwise I would be an illegal immigrant. Now I had a job, a house and a life in New York. All this had to go in SIX weeks. Also my wife Chisako had a job and she had to quit it immediately. She was not even allowed to give notice as her work permit was dependent on my greencard application and with the denial of the application her permit immediately became invalid.

Now you wonder why did I get denied? You would think that after working and paying taxes for six years I would qualify as the type of immigrant that any country would be glad to have. Unfortunately it does not work that way. To get a greencard you have to apply in a certain category. A lot of people get it because they already have family members in the US or are married to a US citizen. This is not the case for me. Other people get a greencard through the lottery which is officially called the Diversity Program. The chances are really small though as every year about 10 million people apply for just 55000 greencards. Many computer programmers get it through employment. Their company sponsers them. I did not choose for this route as it means that you have to work for the same company for about four years, otherwise you have to start anew. Most companies realize that the immigrant can not quit and so abuse these workers. Also the company has to prove many things. For example that they can not find an American who can do the job and that they make enough profit to pay your salary. So there is a big chance that after slaving four or more years for a company you still get denied. So instead I choose to apply in the EB-1 category, otherwise called the Extraordinary Ability Alien program. For this category you have to prove in short that you have extraordinary abilities and that you have risen to the top of your field. You do not need sponsership from an employer. After having consulted with my lawyer and several experienced friends I choose to apply in this category in the beginning of 2002 and attained the services of an extremely experienced immigration lawyer specialized in EB-1 cases. Her name is Ann LaRue and she works for Fragomen, which is one of the largest immigration law offices. The final petition was almost 1500 pages documenting in detail the skillset I possess. Processing time by the immigration department stood at that moment at around four months and even though September 11 had just happened there were no indications that this program would be affected strongly by the new paranoia about terrorists. It is after all highly unlikely that a terrorist would apply in this category.

Unfortunately the immigration department is among the most inefficient government agencies and it took about one and a half year to get a definite answer. The final reason given for the denial was that the evidence I supplied was not considered objective enough as it was mostly supplied by clients that I worked for. Instead the immigration officer was more looking for independent academic publications of my work. This is rather strange as in my profession as in many others it is highly unlikely to publish in independent acadamic magazines. Would this mean that only academic people would benefit from the EB-1 visa category? Of course not, it is just that the individual who processed my application felt like writing a denial that day. And as there is no possibility for an appeal I was left empty handed. I could file the application again, but currently it takes the immigration department about a year just to open the mail. Under the new ministery of Homeland Security it has a higher priority to keep millions out than to attract valuable immigrants. All in the name of fighting terrorism of course.

I investigated all other options and the following solutions where thought out by varying people:

1) Apply for an extension of the H1B visa past six years, based on the fact that I had spend a lot of time outside of the country. In the meantime file the EB-1 petition again. The H1B extension most certainly would get denied, but it would take several months and in the meantime it might be possible to get a new advanced parole and workpermit based on the new greencard application. All of this of course would cost me a lot of money and the chances that it would go wrong would be very high. And when it would go wrong I would have to leave the country immediately. This would give me no time to sell the house and my project manager no time to find a replacement. As this would be the likely scenario I rejected this costly adventure.

2) Another option was to apply for a greencard sponsered by my employer and ask for an extension of the H1B work permit based on the fact that a greencard petition is pending. The law states though that that greencard application should be pending for at least a year, which it obviously would not be. The trick was in the fact that I would fill in on the extension application the number of the already denied greencard application, which indeed was older than a year. Again this strategy would cost up to 10000 dollars and would have high chances of disastrous failure. Yes, I would be able to stay in the country a few months longer, but the costs and risks were all mine. No thank you.

3) And then the last option was the more obscure O-visa. This visa has the same requirements as the EB-1 visa, but is only valid for a limited amount of time. The processing time is faster and if another processor would look at my evidence I would be most likely approved. In the meantime the EB-1 application could be resubmitted. Unfortunately it takes time to prepare such an application and even with the shorter processing time it would still take more than six weeks to get the whole thing done, which would mean I would have to quit the job and leave the country anyway.

And so, after a few days of deliberation the house and furniture were put up for sale. Chisako already had quit her job and I informed my project manager that I could not finish the project. And so I decided to go and do the only other thing that I know how to do well: traveling.