Take control of your immigration future with an O-1 visa (video)
Transcript:
So a lot of people are here in the US
and they have other Visa types like the
H1B sometimes they they have the student
visa sometimes they have other visas
like tn's or l1s but they want a little
bit more control over their immigration
future and this is totally
understandable because when you are
stuck with an employer sponsored uh
non-immigrant Visa you're really stuck
just working for that employer and in
the age of the internet where everyone
has their side gigs and they want to be
really involved and invest in themselves
it can be really difficult for
immigrants to actually make that happen
just like their US citizen counterparts
can do the O-1 Visa offers a little bit
more flexibility or at least an angle
where you can claim a little bit more
control but it is tricky um because the
01 is also an employer sponsored Visa
the trick to getting the 01 is that a
lot of people will set up their own
companies and then sponsor themselves
through 01 through those companies this
can work in a few different contexts so
let me talk about scenario a where
someone is still working a full-time job
then I'll talk about scenario B where
someone like fully in invests in the
entrepreneurship route I think that a
lot of people right now are are
interested in in pathway a where they
are keeping a full-time job or at least
have flexibility to work a full-time job
and pursue their own side projects
through the 01 Visa this actually
requires dual work authorization so
normally the person will apply for the
o1 first through their existing employer
so if you are a product manager at
Microsoft and you want to apply for an
01 through Microsoft I mean you do have
to talk to their internal immigration
team about getting that approved but as
long as you have a good case and can
convince their legal team you should be
able to move to the 01 Visa once you
move to the 01 Visa with that company
you know that that that category has
already been approved for you personally
so a lot of people can take that
petition and file a very similar
petition through a company that they've
Incorporated themselves that will do
consultancy work in that same area on in
the petition you would have to describe
that it's concurrent employment so it's
employment alongside the normal
full-time job and then as long as that's
approved you would have two full-time
approved o1s one to work for Microsoft
and one to work for um your own
part-time consultancy company the bad
part about that is that it doesn't
necessarily give you flexib ability to
get another full-time job or even
part-time formal employment with another
company unless you file a 301 and a lot
of people will set up consultancy
companies specifically so that they can
work with multiple other companies at
the same time and just frame it as a
consulting or Contracting Arrangement
rather than employment um and I think
that that that Arrangement works really
well it's a lot of work and a lot of
expense to do it this way but it can
work out really well and provide for
some additional flexibility there the
other route so pathway B is full
entrepreneurship and a lot of people are
really successful at this um especially
people who are have gone through some
kind of accelerator program and have
received some funding either Angel
investment or series a um or something
like that and they have the funding to
scale the business hire employees and do
something that's really important within
the US economy usually for these kinds
of Arrangements the person can actually
leverage the fact that they got funding
to get the 01 itself approved um so they
don't necessarily need to show that
they've risen in the ranks and succeeded
at some other third company it's the
startup that matters and kind of
everything is framed around the startup
I really like working on these cases but
I I have found that it's like a it's a
very specific kind of person and kind of
client that goes for pathway B where
most people are actually more interested
in pathway a and pathway a is uh not
something that a lot of attorneys really
think about um but it is possible and
and something that I think a lot more
people should explore in the future
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This post is by Amber G. Davis. She started her career working at a boutique immigration firm before moving on to two different large immigration firms (one of which is one of the largest immigration firms in the world). She’s advised numerous high-tech companies of all shapes and sizes, from startups to top ten Fortune 500 companies, and from nonprofits to companies in the IPO process. She now runs Waypoint Immigration USA, representing only individual employees for EB-1A, EB-2 NIW, O-1, etc. and is well-known on LinkedIn with 7.7K+ followers.
Want to get in touch with Amber? You can reach her at amber.davis@waypointimmigration.org or through a LinkedIn connection note (Amber’s LinkedIn profile).
