Originally Posted by
bangaloreboy
Hello All,
We finally received our green cards!
It truly feels like a weight has been lifted.
The day my status got updated, it took me by surprise, which is strange since I had been waiting 11 years for it! Possibly because we didn't receive RFEs nor interviews. My wife's GC got approved before she could get her EAD.
I had landed in the US as a student in Jan 2003, without making proper accommodation or pickup arrangements. That was quite stupid, a sentiment that I attribute to my GC journey too.
At the airport was Mark, an American who had been helping pickup students out of sheer kindness.
He had invited me for dinner and had introduced me to other American families, who had welcomed me into their homes with open hands.
I have also been subjected to racism, when an American said 'why don't YOU guys go back to where you came from?' at a gas station. And some stares at Walmart could only be called racist.
I have lived on both sides of the coast and places in between. In general, this country has been very kind to me, and the people kinder.
As I mentioned earlier, my GC journey could have been a smarter one.
It was ignorance that prevented me from initiating labor certification when my employer was eager to do it. That was 2008. This is a familiar story like many of us on the forum; those colleagues who went ahead in 2008 got their GCs by or before 2013, while some of us who applied in 2010 and later are still waiting or finally getting approved.
H1 renewal period is when nervousness and anxiety automatically set in. There was a particular period when we had planned to pack up too, if things went south.
Even a dull megabus ride near Rochester NY was interjected by ICE looking for H1 documentation. Luckily I was able to convince them by showing a scanned copy of H1 approval notice.
The wait got so frustrating that my wife, who is a research scientist with a masters degree, decided to pursue EB1 qualification on her own. She had several papers with 1st and last authorship already, and had racked up 100+ citations. Now she had to build her case further. Life had gotten very exasperating. That's when it got worse. My wife who had complained ear and balance problems, decided to change her ENT specialist. He didn't prescribe steroid injections like the previous one but suggested she get an MRI. That day my wife drove to the MRI center while I fed our 6 month old. A call came that I would need to pick up my wife because she wouldn't be allowed to drive. It was brain tumor and really big one pressing the stem. We were shaken to the core wondering what had hit us. My wife went through hell, and the situation was made worse by covid. Though her 14 hr surgery was successful, she still has tinnitus, neck and head aches almost everyday.
To add to all the madness was yet another H1 renewal. 3 of the 6 colleagues who had applied with me had gotten rejections. The adjudicator must have somehow had an inkling about our personal life plight and renewal came through. And when we finally got a chance to file 485 last year, my wife's file was rejected for a trivial checkbox issue that the new administration thankfully fixed. I had tried to shield her from her application upheaval but when she looked up the status herself, it stressed her out like never before.
So when we finally saw GCs in our hand, it was true relief and exaltation.
I also went back to my 15+ year checklist in gmail and was very pleased to finally mark GC as done.
My biggest regret out of this is that I could have sponsored my parents by now if I had acted sooner.
Q blog is a portal I visit just as frequently as news/sports/stocks portals. Its right up there in my favorites.
For me, this forum is a place where I found meaningful information and a sense of commonality. When a lot of my colleagues got irrationally exuberant in the past, I would be more circumspect; spec's somber analysis always sounded right.
A lot of the members here can put some immigration attorneys in the shade. And that's without a law background.
Hats off to you Q for starting this forum which I am not sure you expected it to turn into this.
Thanks to all the topnotch contributors like Spec, Kanmani, Idli, Ace, YT and others I missed who have been the pillars of this forum.
Wish everyone who is waiting a speedy approval.
Now its time to take our 2 year old to the beach and celebrate before it starts getting colder!
