US Student Visa

Show Summary

This week, we hear from Marla Schechter, a US immigration lawyer with 20+ years of experience. Marla shares her expertise on various topics related to obtaining a visa for studying in the United States. She covers the process of obtaining an F-1 visa, the advantages of studying in a STEM-certified program, the H-1B visa for working in the US, and the Green Card process. She also highlights common mistakes made by student applicants and the potential challenges of obtaining a visa for individuals with criminal records.

Show Notes

Welcome to the 589th episode of Admissions Straight Talk. Thanks for joining me. The challenge at the heart of admissions is showing that you both fit in at your target programs and stand out in the applicant pool. Accepted’s free download Fitting In & Standing Out: The Paradox at the Heart of Admissions will show you how to do exactly that, both fit in and stand out. Master this paradox and you are well on your way to acceptance. You can download your free guide at accepted.com/fiso.

It’s my pleasure to welcome to Admissions Straight Talk, Marla Schechter, an attorney since 1989. Marla has been practicing US immigration law for over 20 years. She earned her bachelor’s from UC Berkeley and then changed coasts earning a JD and LM from Duke Law. Marla is also a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Marla, welcome to Admissions Straight Talk. [2:08]

Thank you, Linda. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

We have a lot of international wannabe students listening to our podcast. Let’s start with the basics. What kind of visa does a graduate student usually need and what is the process for obtaining it? [2:13]

Generally speaking, for most academic programs, a foreign citizen is going to need an F-1 visa. The normal procedure is that one would apply to the university or universities they’re interested in going to. When they get an acceptance and they want to go to that institution, one of their first calls is to speak with the designated student officer who is the individual at the school, the administrative officer responsible for international students.

And that’s at the school that accepted them, right? [2:58]

Yes, the school that accepted, the school they’re intending to go to. Okay? So they’ll speak to that individual, and they’ll have to pay what’s called the SEVIS fee. That’s the Department of State’s fee so that they can do all kinds of background assessments on that individual, and the officer will talk about finances with them. The person has to be able to pay for that education and they have to verify – the student officer has to verify that. So there’s a whole process that the DSO goes through. Once they’re finished, they will indicate the program of study, be it a bachelor’s degree or a master’s. In the case of this program, it’s usually a master’s degree that we’re talking about here. So they indicate a master’s or PhD, approximately how long it’s going to go for, and that’ll all be indicated on the I-XX form. That’s a state department form, and that form when it’s completed is brought to the consulate. This is where you have a situation where the individual has not attended university already in the US, so they’re a new foreign student the first time coming to the US as a student; they could have come here as a visitor. There’s a different procedure just so you know, and for your listeners, there’s a different procedure when the person is in the US as an undergraduate and they can switch their program of study over by again applying to and being accepted by the second-level institution at the master’s level, and they just talk to the DSO at the master’s level at university and they can switch their program over. It’s even an easier process if it’s at the same university and they’re not changing the level of the program.

But there is a way to do it within the US. It’s difficult. What is not a good thing to do, or it’s difficult at best, is to come as a visitor and hope to stay and then get accepted while you’re here and then just stay.

It takes a while to do it, and they don’t prefer that you do it that way and the moment you leave the US, in order to come back in, you’re going to have to go to a consulate anyway to get that F-1 visa stamp. So in my opinion, it’s best to just do it ahead of time. Everyone’s happy with how you’re doing it that way. And then you come in on the F-1, and they give you usually a few years, however long the program is, duration on your visa. And then when you come in, the ICE officer, so the Customs and Border Protection officer, at the border is going to give you what’s called an I94 record, and that’s how long the student is able to stay in the US. And for students, what they indicate on there is D/S. that stands for Duration of Status.

So because programs sometimes are longer or shorter than is originally indicated on I20, and there’s a lot of movement, they indicate as long as you’re a full-time student and you’ve complied with all the terms of the F-1, then you’re able to stay in the US legally. Okay. Once you become not a full-time student, if you take a leave of absence, all these things, any change of plan from the original plan, you must go to the DSO again. Talk to them. They may write a new I-20, you may have to file something if necessary. But the key thing is to go to the DSO. They’re very knowledgeable also in immigration law, and they can tell you exactly what you need to do. Sometimes they’ll say, “Go talk to a lawyer,” or “Have this done through a lawyer,” but they’ll certainly put you in the right direction.

Are there any restrictions in terms of travel while you’re a student on an F-1 visa? If you come in on an F-1 visa and you’re studying in the United States, can you take visits and go home? [6:34]

You have to be careful. It’s a good question because people in some situations can get into trouble.

Unfortunately, there’s country profiling, let’s just say. Certain countries like Western European countries, the person doesn’t even need a visa to come in. They use their ESTA. It’s a very easy procedure to get an ESTA. They don’t need a visa to come to the US. To come as a student, they do. Everybody needs a student visa with the exception of Canadians. Every other nationality needs to go to a consulate and get a student visa. But when it comes to a country that ordinarily it’s difficult to come as a visitor, and I think your listeners will know if that applies to them because a lot of times they may have applied and tried to get a visitor visa and the consulate will say “No, because we don’t really believe that you’re going to come back.”

There are a lot of people in the world whose circumstances aren’t great, unfortunately, and if given an opportunity, they will come to the US and stay. It’s a privilege that’s very frequently abused. And so customs and border protection is constantly on the lookout and consular officers in the first instance as well. But when you’re studying and you have the legitimate paperwork and you’ve shown that you can pay for this program and you’ve met the approval of the DSO at your university, it’s not so difficult. I would do it within the three-month period before starting because there can be delays. Sometimes there are administrative processing delays as they call them. If your name happens to be the same name as someone else on the no-fly list with the Department of State, you can get into trouble there. There are just innumerable types of trouble you can get into.

So just do things as early as you can and plan for the unintended, let’s just say. You just don’t know what’s going to happen, so you can definitely travel once you’ve come in, you have your student visa, you’ve come in, they’ve given you your DS, the I94 that says DS, at the port of entry. When you have a break from school, and you’re on vacation, you can certainly leave and come back on your F-1 visa stamp. I would always carry I20 with you in case the officer wants to see it. Okay? That’s something you should always have on you when you travel, but yes, you can come and go.

Now, there are some times when you shouldn’t be leaving the country. I just had a situation like this come up where the person had finished from Columbia University, her bachelor’s degree. This gets into another subject that we can go into in a moment, but after you’ve studied for at least one full year, you get what’s called OPT, which is Optional Practical Training, and you’re permitted to work for a full year continuing as an F-1 student, so you can continue in your student status and you’re able to work for a full year and be paid by a US employer.

Do you have to have graduated? [9:37]

You don’t have to have graduated. You have to at least go for a full year. So that brings up another issue, which is the OPT. That is part-time. You get one year of OPT for every level of school that you’re doing. So for a bachelor’s degree, which is typically four years, you get one year of OPT. You can break that up and do a few months every summer, but that will count against what you can get at the very end. Or you just save it all for the end. And that’s kind of a nice strategy because, very often you want to get to the next level, which I, say you’ve finished studying, say you finished your MBA, you have your OPT, you’re working for a year. You really like this employer, they like you and they want to sponsor you for an H-1B. So as many of your listeners may already know, H-1Bs are very hard to get. There’s a lottery and there’s a system you have to register for the lottery, and then only 1/3 to 40% of the people in the lottery will get selected.

You have a chance of getting selected in the lottery if you’ve gone to at least a master’s program or above at a US University. So you have a decent chance of getting it, but you may need a few years to try. So your first year of trying for it would be registering for it in March. The lottery is done by the end of March, and if you got selected, you can file in April or later. So they do kind of a rolling admissions kind of thing, but if you don’t get it that year, you might still be there the following year, depending on if you were STEM. We can get it into that later. You have several years, but you should try every year. I mean, I just had a guy who was STEM, he got it his first year, so he actually gave up two additional years that he could have just stayed in state on OPT, but he got the H-1B and so if you get it, you don’t give it up.

Is an interview necessary if you’re applying for the F-1 Visa and you’re going to the United States for the first time? [11:41]

So they often do interviews. It’s really at the discretion of the particular consulate you’re going to. They want to see who they’re getting. We’ve had problems in the past with people who are registered F-I students who have committed crimes here in the US, major crimes. I think the individuals, at the World Trade Center, were on F-I status. So they like to do interviews. I would say count on an interview if it’s your first time getting a visa other than a visitor visa, if you’ve gotten some other status before, say you’ve worked in the US, or you’ve had an H-1B in the past. So that means you’ve already been interviewed for the most… Not likely you’ve been interviewed before, so they would probably waive your requirement for an interview. Let’s just say, I won’t say probably, it depends on the consulate entirely. Depends on where the consulate is located, but they may waive it. Okay. So that’s the best you can do, expect to go in, but you might be pleasantly surprised and have it waived.

We’ve mentioned the F-I, we’ve mentioned H-1B, we’ve talked about permanent residency/Green Card, and tourist visas. Are there other visas? [12:52]

So the H-1B is the most common track though. The track from F-I to H-1B to Green Card is the most common track, I would say, for people to follow because you don’t have to have your own business, you don’t have to have started in a business, an international business that’s transferring you to a US office. Those are more niche, I would say, and those are more for people that are already solidly into their career. It could happen, but that would be kind of a special circumstance. In most cases, it’s H-1B, and there’s a lot written on that path from Green Card to OPT to getting the H-1B. And the key thing in my opinion, and if I were to give advice to anyone is don’t do too much in the way of OPT while you’re in school because it’s like two months during your summer break, did they really remember you and did you do very much in two months, you’re better off having that full year to get to know the employer, to get them really liking you and on board with hiring you.

Because a lot of employers in the US have a policy not to sponsor very expensive for the employer to sponsor. They’re just a lot of money and the employer under regulation, they have to pay the funds. It cannot be paid. There are a couple of things that can be paid if you choose premium processing that can be paid by the employee or getting their family members in, can be paid by the employee. But in most cases it’s all the employer paying all legal fees and a lot of the application fees and the application fees are higher than pretty much any other visa. So it’s a lot, and they’re not going to just give it out lightly. So once they get to know you, when you’re there on OPT status, that’s when they go to bat for you.

It’s interesting because certainly for MBA programs, many of the students are expected to do an internship between their first and second year. That’s usually a two-month internship, and it usually is a first look, if you will. [15:09]

If that’s the way that it works and then if the company likes you, you would go back there after and finish OPT there, then that could work. I see that as a good path.

We have had many international clients come to us who are applying to American graduate programs and their intention is to return to their home country. So then the F-1, OPT, et cetera, works great. What about those who are viewing a graduate degree as a way to facilitate immigration to the United States? Should they be following the same path or is there a different path for them? Should there be something that they should be aware of? [15:38]

That is kind of the default path I would say, and this is the F-1, OPT and then Green Card. I can get into a little bit more of how the Green Card works while you’re on H-1B and all that. But let me just also say that a lot of people at around that age now, some people will come in married with their spouses and/or children. Some people meet a spouse in the United States. So if that happens, and it’s always nice that way because it’s going to be a lot easier to immigrate.

If you remember, you helped our daughter-in-law immigrate after marrying our son. [16:46]

Yeah. So they’re able to go right to the head of the line, basically. They don’t have to do a lot of the stuff that’s required for your average employee of a US company while they’re a student or at any point during the process, the US citizen files for them with the adjustment of status and the whole thing. And the first thing you get is an employment authorization document and you can start working anywhere you want and you’re treated kind of like a first-class citizen. Those are the best. They’re just the easiest because they value family togetherness, right?

So they don’t want people to have to be separate, people have to go home that are here legally and doing everything right, and they’re married to a US citizen. They want to help facilitate them staying here.

Do you want me to go through the process of what the Green Card part of it looks like after H-1B?

Sure. [17:25]

Just so people know because that’s mostly what they’re going to encounter, especially if marriage is not part of the equation. So there is something called PERM. That’s the process most people have to go through. For most occupations. There’s a few that are excluded, but for most people it’s a PERM process. So the employer takes it on. In every case they work with an attorney because it’s too complex for an HR department to go on their own. But the attorney works closely with the HR department in placing ads because you have to show that there’s recruitment, and the only way that you can get in on the PERM on the Green Card is if you show that there’s no one else, there’s no US worker who’s available and has the essential qualifications to do this job and to fill this position. So you can imagine everything is drafted very carefully.

It has to be the minimum requirements and you can’t tailor it to this person that they want, but so it’s a kind of bit of a dance to get it done properly. So there aren’t a lot of applicants. We have to test the US labor market. It has to be a legitimate test in the US labor market. There’s a lot of waiting involved. Now that category, the EB-RE category or the EB-2 category, people with masters, it’s usually the EB-2 category. It’s a bit retrogress, so again… But once you’re in the H-1B status and your petition has been filed at least a year prior, you can keep getting extensions on your H-1B. So that’s really nice. The key is getting H-1B. Yeah, you can stay up to six years on an H-1B three years at a time, which is a nice long period of time, and if you don’t get your Green Card within that time, but you’ve done the filing early enough, you can get extensions past the six-year limit. So it is a really nice track. The key is getting clenching that H-1B.

And as I said, for people that have masters from US universities, you have an advantage over the rest of the world. So I’d give it 50% on something like that for people with masters. A lot of my clients get it for whatever reason.

I assume if one does not want to use the OPT while studying in the United States and one does want to work, whether it’s a summer internship or just a part-time job, you can do that. Or does the F-I not allow for one to earn money while in the United States? [19:51]

There’s something called curricular practical training CPT, which is something you can do up to 20 hours a week while you’re a student, and you can do that throughout school. What you can’t do is you can’t really work off campus in an area that’s unrelated. Again, it all has to be approved with your DSO. They have to know. They have to make sure that it’s less than 20 hours a week, and then you can do…

Oh, the CPT, by the way, has to be part of the person’s program. So a lot of programs, I know Drexel University is famous for this, that they have co-op built in to their undergraduate program. I don’t know about their graduate programs, but it’s required part of the program. So that does not count against your OPT. Yeah, it’s a nice thing to be able to do instead of going to school full-time, part of getting your credits in the class is working. So that’s when you get CPT and OPT is when you’re basically working full-time, usually full-time. You can work up from half to full-time. So it’s either part-time or it can be full-time, but that’s where it can be full-time. And CPT it cannot.

What about a spouse or a significant other for that matter? One member of the couple wants to study in the United States, gets accepted, and applies. Can the spouse or significant other also get a visa? [21:21]

Unfortunately the spouse comes in as an F-2 as do any children of the couple. So they can come, they can be here. They cannot work, as F-1 spouse so that’s an F-2, F-2 spouse cannot work under that visa in some limited circumstances. I think if they really explain that and can justify that they are able to, they’re really not trying to cover the cost of living for their F-1 student that has to have been proven ahead of time or the program and their cost of living, but they’re just trying to do it to be able to take their kids on cultural outings or something like that. Then sometimes they can, the F-1 student also can work on campus without any special arrangement made that doesn’t come out of CPT or OPT. They can work on campus on a part-time basis getting paid probably minimum wage.

What are the advantages of studying in a STEM-certified program? [22:34]

So the key advantage is that you have more OPT time. You can get up to another two years past your first year, and then you go back to your DSO and say, well, I studied STEM and so I’m here to get my extra two years, and then they’ll give it to you. And so you have multiple chances to get to H-1B at that point.

By the way, I should mention also that you asked about different visa types. So for people that are entrepreneurial, I get calls from people that are going to Stanford all the time, and they’re in the tech world and they’re starting ventures up in Silicon Valley and they say, well, I didn’t get into the H-1B program, but I want to start this venture. And I’ve got partners and we have capital. So sometimes they can come in as an E-two, it’s a non-immigrant investor visa, and it usually requires that individual own, at least 50% of the company, they put in significant capital. Sometimes they have family members who are able to help them with that, and it can just be a gift. And that’s totally fine, and they can come in and run their own company. It does not permit them to work for anybody else though. And they’re working for their own company and that’s the only company they can be paid for. They can get clients for their company, obviously, but they’re not working for those other companies.

Is there a time limit on that visa? Or is it just as long as the company is in business? [24:11]

It depends on what the reciprocity table shows. So, Canada, for example, you can get five years on it. I know in certain countries you can get only one year at a time. In some, you can get two years at a time. It just depends on the country. But what that means is that you have to go, every time you leave the country, you have to go to that consulate and get a new stamp, which is a real pain. A lot of people from those countries. I had a client from Afghanistan who every time he left on an L-1, which is intra-company transfer, before he got his Green Card, every time he left and he had to go back to the consulate and make an appointment, get a new visa stamping, it added in an extra day or two to his… Then you got to wait for your passport to be returned. So it’s a bit of a hassle.

And I just will say, too, that it’s sometimes best for people from those countries that don’t admit a lot of non-immigrants, let’s just say, to not leave very much. When you leave the country, anything can happen. I mean, I had a situation of a client, it wasn’t actually a client, but I got a call. It was a friend of a client’s from Pakistan who was here as a student. He went to a very reputable school as a student. He got his degree, got an H-1B, was working in the US, hadn’t left the US for five years and finally wanted to go home and visit his family. So because he had gotten onto H-1B status within the US, he never got a stamp in his passport, which is fine. You don’t have to, you don’t have to [inaudible 00:25:44] stamp you get in your passport is really in order to gain admission to the US.

Once you’re here already, it goes to USCIS who then gives you the I-94, which shows you how long you’re able to be here. So the moment you leave, you need that stamp in order to reenter. So he goes back to Pakistan, has a lovely two-month visit with his family, and then is ready to come back. His employer’s like, “Okay, we need you, we need you back.” He goes to the consulate and they interview him. I mean, he’s already been accepted by USCIS, Department of Homeland security. They should not be re-adjudicating whether or not he’s eligible for the H-1B. He’s already been on it for like two years. And they don’t have to tell you much. They really don’t. They just will give you maybe a letter saying, we need more information. And they said that it’s an administrative processing, it had been an administrative, at the point he called me, it was an administrative processing for over six months. There was really nothing much I could do for him. I mean, it was Pakistan and they had his passport and they just were not giving details, at that point.

This was the US government, not the Pakistani government? [26:49]

It was the US consulate. But from certain countries, they’re just not that free and easy. I mean, honestly, he should have gotten his Green Card before leaving the… I hate to say that, that’s awful to not see your family for so long, but that’s what happens.

For which countries is it more difficult to obtain a US student visa? [27:15]

I would say the African countries. Australia’s super easy. They’re great. I mean, any country that had been in the British Commonwealth, Canada, Australia, UK, and most of Western Europe is very easy. For South America it’d be harder. The poorer the country is the more difficult it is, unfortunately. I had a client who’s Canadian, but was originally from Nigeria. She had an awful time. It was known in immigration circles that there was a lot of fraud committed by people coming from certain countries and one of them was Nigeria. Even though she was Canadian, they saw she was born in Nigeria. So they just wouldn’t accept anything at face value. We had to have every document certified more than other people.

What if one previously had an infraction in the United States when visiting, for example, a DUI or overstaying one’s tourist visa. You then return to your home country and now you want to study. Are you toast? [28:19]

So let’s talk about those two different options. They present different challenges. So one is an immigration violation. You stayed here too long, there’s no criminal activity or anything, but you overstayed. Now it’s a matter of how long you overstayed for. If you overstayed your visa, so if you came in as a visitor and you had, it wasn’t a visa waiver like Western Europe, but say you had a six-month visitor visa, which is what most people in the world get, you’re able to be here legally for six months. If you go over that by a few days or a few months, and then you get an F-1, you go through the process properly, it should be fine. They might give you a little bit of a harder time, but you should be able to get your visa. If you overstayed by at least 180 days, you are not eligible to come back into the country for three years. There’s a bar for reentry for three years, and if you overstayed by at least a year, there’s a 10-year bar. It depends. So if you’re coming to go on F-1 status, this has to be over the age of 18, you don’t have any bar against you even if you overstayed before, that is considered your parents doing not your own. But at the age of responsibility, then it’s on you. So after 18, so if it had been three years already, then you’re fine, but if it hasn’t, you’re going to have to wait that extra six months to come in. There is a waiver available that you can get, but it’s usually not for people coming for non-immigrant to study in the US. It’s unlikely that you would get it to come and study.

And now the situation with someone who commits a criminal offense, it depends on what the offense is. So what ends up happening, say a DUI in the US, and it depends on the state it’s in. I think it’s mostly a misdemeanor charge, but they usually will look at every type of criminal activity and they want to get the complete court and sometimes police records as well. But for sure the court record and the disposition. When I’m asked to work on these cases to apply for a waiver of some sort of criminal inadmissibility, you’re inadmissible if you had a situation that requires… Now statutorily requires someone to spend over one year in prison. If that’s the situation, even if you weren’t sentenced to that, if that is a typical what the guidelines say, then you will be inadmissible to the US and you would have to remain outside until you can get a waiver and the waivers can be a non-immigrant waiver. So not because you’re immigrating here just to come and set foot on US soil, you’re going to need that waiver.

It doesn’t go away. Just because you may have been pardoned in your home country, it doesn’t matter. You still are going to need that waiver and they know about it, just don’t expect that they don’t, they generally do. If the case is pending against you, and if there hasn’t been a final disposition, they’ll sometimes say, we need to see how this case is going to be resolved before we can allow you to come into the US. So you have to wait until and see what the final disposition is.

What if somebody has a criminal record in their home country? [31:45]

That’s equally a problem.

Again, they’ll need a waiver and all of that? [31:51]

Yeah.

What would you say are the most common mistakes that student applicants make when applying for a visa to the United States? What are some pitfalls to avoid? [31:55]

The F-1 area has so many rules. It’s pages and pages and pages with the CPT and the OPT and all the documentation and SEVIS and everything that’s involved. Don’t feel like you’re bugging your DSO. That’s what they’re there for. Call them on a daily basis if you need to, make meetings with them, just understand and do research yourself, understand what the rules and obligations are for when you go from finishing your program to getting onto OPT. There’s a specific timeline you have to follow. So you can apply up to 90 days before the end of your program, but no more than two months past your program. So you have a five-month window to get that job, and then apply for your employment authorization document. If you don’t do it within that timeframe, then you don’t get your OPT. And some people were like, what? I didn’t know.

I was starting to tell you before about this individual who had graduated from Columbia and she didn’t find a job right away. So she said, “Well, I’ll take this time and go home and visit.” So she hadn’t filed for the EAD and she left the country and now she was saying… I think she came back in as a visitor because they were not letting her come back in as an F-1. They don’t always know, by the way. The borders don’t always know what they can and can’t do. They’ll send you to secondary, I hate to call it an interrogation, but it’s like secondary inspection, that’s what they call it’s kind of a room to the side where they have officers who will keep you there as long as they feel like it. So just know what you’re doing before you go in, especially for anything that’s irregular like that. So because she didn’t apply for that EAD (Employment Authorization Document), and then she left the country. You need the EAD to actually be able to work on the OPT. Once you get a job offer and the I-20 says you can. That’s just the first step. The next step is actually getting that document from USCIS that shows your employer “I have this card. I’m able to work here.” Plus you’re able then to go to the social security office and get a social security number, which the employer will need to give you to put you on payroll and for you to get a driver’s license. If you don’t have one already. Yeah, you can get one as an F-1 too, but this allows you to get one into your working years here.

So those are all important things. Just know what you’re doing. Don’t leave the country. Call me, book a short consultation just to find out if you think something’s a little off, just find what your rights are first, because this woman could have still applied. She was still within that two year period, she could have been on track and then there was a question, how can she do that in the US from a bachelor… not even a bachelor’s, she finished her F-1, she’s now a visitor. So the easiest way to be able to start soon is to go back to the border and reenter. But the question is your visa stamp still valid?

So the visa stamp technically was still valid. She shouldn’t have had to go back to the consulate, but the airport wasn’t aware of that. They don’t always know the rules. It’s unfortunate that they don’t. These rules are super technical in every little situation and differences create a whole new set of guidelines, and they’re not necessarily experts. Sometimes you need to have a lawyer write you a letter with citations to specific laws, quoting the language, showing how it applies, and you bring that with you when you go.

What would you have liked me to ask you? [35:59]

I think we covered it. I think I made the point fairly well to start early with the H-1B process. If you’re planning to stay or you’d like to stay, start as early as you can because right now those categories are retrogressed. So when we’re talking about filing that PERM application with the Department of Labor, the date that that’s filed… And that doesn’t come very early in the process by the way. First you have to wait for the prevailing wage determination for the Department of Labor to tell you this is how much this job in this area needs to be paid. You can look up what the wage range is, but they tell you what level you’re at. Are you at a very junior level? Are you a senior level? And you can kind of suggest to them, but they make a determination that then you use to apply. So you generally are going to need that before you go further. That takes, I think, six months, eight months to apply, six, seven months to get that back. So then after you get that, then you start advertising. Advertising takes 60 days minimum, usually longer because no one’s that organized with all the different forms of advertising they have to do. Then advertising.

Then if nothing came back and there’s no eligible candidates, then the PERM is filed. Once that PERM is filed, that’s your priority date, then, okay, you’re still not ready. You can’t possibly immigrate yet, but that’s your priority date. That priority date is always compared then to the visa bulletin for any particular month. That’s put out by the Department of State, but it’s used internally to by Customs and Border Protection and Department of Homeland security. And that determines that for any particular category. For people in the EB-2 category, which were someone with a master’s education that’s going to work at an advanced level for a US company, that’s the level. You have to see what the date is that’s posted there as to the earliest priority date they’re accepting applications for.

You can’t file your Adjustment of Status, which is the package, so it’s complicated, but that’s the package that allows you just to be able to stay in the US on H-1B status, and move to Green Card seamlessly without having to go to an interview at your home consulate, which is highly preferable if you’re already living in the US. It’s just much less fraught, let’s just say.

And in order to do that, you need that priority date, but now it’s a couple years behind in that category, in the EB-III category for people with bachelor’s degrees, it’s even further behind. So it’s just you got to start early so you can keep getting those extensions on H-1B status because you’re going to need it. There’s no category for you to come in under.

I hear universities constantly say that if you’re applying for the F-I, which is the one that any international student will need, it’s important that you start that process the minute you get an acceptance. [38:58]

Right. That’s why I said: call that DSA.

That sounds like a very good warning. Marla, this has been wonderful, very informative. Thank you so much for joining me today. I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you. Where can listeners learn more about you or seek your assistance with their visa and immigration needs? [39:48]

My website is getausvisa.com.

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