Why I Started a Blog About EB1A

This story actually started a couple years ago when I moved to the United States with my husband. He accepted a job offer from a U.S. university as a postdoc.

After a couple exhausting months of preparations, we finally ended our life in Europe and started the new one in the USA. How exciting!

Well not really… My husband’s employer fired him only 2 months after we moved to the USA!

What the hell should we do now?

My husband had only two weeks to solve this situation, otherwise we would be kicked out of the country. The visa was set to expire on the same day as his job was ending.

He saved this critical situation literally in the last minute and got another job. But, we had learned a difficult and important lesson: staying on work visas was highly insecure.

In addition, I had only H-4 visas which meant I couldn’t work at all. I had to put my engineering career completely aside and sit at home doing nothing.

Soon after that, I realized I was pregnant for the first time in my life. I felt so vulnerable and desperate.

My husband was on probation period in his new job and we knew we could potentially face another job termination. We had one low-income postdoc salary from my husband and zero income from me. And we saw no chance to change this in the next few years. With our first baby on the way, we had to start working on some solution immediately.

EB2 NIW Green Card

The only option to change this situation was getting a green card. But my husband’s employer wouldn’t sponsor his green card. We found out that there are only two options to apply for a green card as a self-petitioner:

• EB2 National Interest Waiver
• EB1A Extraordinary Ability

My husband got his PhD degree just recently back in Europe and had no work history in the USA. Almost no network, no clearly significant impact on the field, and no grand achievements. For that reason, we excluded the EB1 category and narrowed it down to that last option. He had to try his best to build his EB2 NIW case.

At that time, my husband was under extreme pressure to prove to his new employer that they really needed him. He was very busy at work while I was sitting at home, worrying about our future.

I decided to start working on his green card application. Of course, I didn’t even consider asking a lawyer for legal help. We needed the money for the baby delivery and for the green card fees. So I started this long painful journey on my own…

Blog and Helping Community

I studied everything I possibly could. From official resources and attorney websites, to blogs and forums – I read literally everything I found.

I needed to make my own notes and organize that information to make my work on NIW petition easier. During this process, I came to the realization that there must be plenty of people in the same situation who likely needed the same information and resources as I did. Instead keeping all of my notes private, I started the EB2 NIW blog. I shared our whole experience and all the important information we learned there.

The blog started to grow quickly and the number of visitors skyrocketed. It was great to support and help others. People even started to ask if I wanted to do a DIY kit. They wanted to see what our application looked like. I thought that it was a good idea, but I wanted to make sure our green card was approved first. I needed to be sure that our case was well built, and that we would be selling something that worked.

We got our green card approval, and on the same day I announced to the community that we were launching the sale of our EB2 NIW DIY kit. I was blown away by how many people were giving back by buying our kit, and their reactions were amazing. I am so thankful for hearing that it helped so many people!

Update 2/10/2023: our free blog served to 600,000 visitors and over 2,900 people bought our NIW DIY kits and book about NIW.

But Why EB1A?

In the last couple years, during my blogging at EB2 NIW, many people shared their life stories with me. It is a pure joy to hear from people how getting a green card changed their lives forever, and how they regained their freedom. It is even better for me to hear that my blog significantly helped them to achieve it.

But over the years, I have also heard many sad stories. Similar to the one I told you at the beginning of this blog post. People on work visas sometimes get fired and are just kicked out of this country. I feel very sorry for these people working very hard for many years to contribute to this country and suddenly, they have to leave everything here and start over in a different part of the world.

This led me to the thoughts that perhaps I can help even more people. I can do the same thing as I did with EB2 NIW and create a high-quality information blog about EB1A. I want to support the community of the people in the same boat and provide them this free information resource. And later, potentially offer more exclusive help in the form of a EB1A DIY kit, if anyone needs it.

I already have some knowledge about EB1A but I want to do much more thorough research and pull all the important information here on the blog. I am also considering finding people who already have been through EB1 journey and inviting them to share their experience. I might also try to find some professional (lawyer) who would be willing to contribute to this blog.

Let me know in comments your thoughts, thank you!