 I got my green card two weeks ago and I was also stuck in China twice on H1B and it changed jobs three times on H1B. This is Dr. Nancy Lee, director of product. I help engineers and international professionals transition from worker B to a product manager and business leader. To learn the most effective way to land a product manager job, you can subscribe to my channel and hit the bell button so that every time you will be notified when I post a new video every month. Today, we talk about green card. Yes, as you know, if you follow my Instagram, I got my green card two weeks ago. Time to celebrate. And yes, I've been in the US for 11 years. That's a very, very long time. I got my green card through the EB1B category. Today, I'm going to tell you how exactly I get into this EB1 employment-based green card and what mistakes I made and how can you learn from my mistakes and come up with the right strategy and get your green card fast. Let's get started. In 2009, I moved to the United States with only $800 in my pocket. I received a scholarship to study the material science engineering in the school. If you want to learn how did I get my PhD in three and a half years, you can check out video here. As soon as I got my PhD and then realized, well, the youngest engineering PhD are getting unemployed. So I started to figure out what's the best strategy to land a job and eventually I got three jobs, actually two of them in the Fortune 500 company and it became engineer systems engineer. That was in 2013. However, when I got my first job, that was already in May and we already missed the date, which is in April. People apply for H1B and at the time H1B is already full. So therefore I waited until 2014 to apply for my H1B. So after I got my H1B, there is a long period before I applied for green card. I changed jobs three times during this H1B period. And that was also stuck in China twice. Each time two months, it's crazy. So lots of scenes went around when I went back to China. They want to check my background. If you're also stuck in the past in your home country because H1B on visa issue, comment down below and said stuck. So they also know that you felt the same thing I had felt before. So when I was stuck in China, actually my employer hired a lawyer trying to get back to me, but there is nothing they can do besides wait for the US embassy to do background check. Eventually two months later, I was able to come back to the United States. And during this H1B phase, something crazy is that in 2014, actually because I got a PhD, I was able to go through the higher chance of category to get H1B. But still, the likelihood for people with PhD or master degree to get H1B in 2014 is about 50-50 half-half. So I was lucky I was able to get it. And I believe right now it's even more competitive to even get an H1B. After my first job as engineer, I really wanted to make some career change. So I wanted to become a product manager and eventually I got three product manager offers in 2014. And I started work on using AI and machine vision in 2016 to help cities reduce car crashes and truly love the type of new job as a product manager. If you want to learn how to make a transition into product management, you can check a video here. Another thing I forgot to introduce to you is an EB1 type of category employment based green card means that it's something called actual ordinary green card. So capabilities. So which means you need to do something extra and several things that you are able to qualify for that, especially with someone with a PhD background. Actually, I published 14 different papers. I also had like two patents. The way you qualify for actual ordinary and EB1 is to review lots of papers as a judge. And on top of that, you also need to publish lots of papers. And I was also like reported in some articles for the product I built before. So any kind of national like impact showing that very deep into the type of tech you feel you have worked on is going to help you to be qualified as an outstanding researcher or like EB1, actual ordinary capabilities. So if you're looking for a great law firm to talk to, I highly recommend Fragment. They are my lawyer. I really love them. And after Fragment and I came up with this like new safety based green card case for EB1. We submit our application for the green card in 2017. Eventually my case was approved in December 2017. And something we did was called premium processing. I recommend all of you guys pay extra money. I think it's about $1,000 or so extra money to get premium processing. So that is able to help you accelerate the decision making process from the government from seven months into two weeks. So I was notified that my case was approved within two weeks of submission. That was in December 2017. As soon as approved, we submit 485, which another form to request for them to print out green card to be a simple term. When we submit 485, which is in January 2018, my case at the time my priority date was still current, which means I was supposed to get my green card within like a month or two months, maximum three months, because what's current, I don't need to wait. However, there's a new policy introduced during that period. And USCIS started to put in a new process called green card interview for employment based green card, which means everybody, as long as your case was approved, you need to get an interview. Then I suddenly lost my competitive advantage as EB1 category. As you can imagine, EB1 category in general, the pipeline is shorter, there are fewer people qualified for EB1 and the more people in EB2 or three or four or five. But when all of us going through this interview process and everybody needs to go back to one pipeline and EB1 no longer get competitive advantage for getting the interview date faster. So which means all the EB1, two or three, four, five need to go through the interview like funnel together. Then I suddenly slowed down my process significantly. So therefore, within half a year, they finally scheduled my green card interview. So I did my interview in August 2018. However, by that time, my priority date is no longer current. So which means even if I pass the green card interview, I still need to wait for a very long time. And then my priority date didn't become current until two years later. During this long period of waiting, during these two years, lots of things happened. And first of all, I immediately applied for EAD because during this period, you are authorized to use this new like work certification. So you're able to use that to travel in other country without getting stuck in China. You can also change your employer. So apply for this EAD card right away. I got my EAD in January 2018 as well. Because the two years period is so long, my EAD actually expires. I renew my EAD during this two years period. On top of that, I also changed my employer during this process. And I also had a fingerprint. Everybody needs to have fingerprints. And then you need to submit your physical exam because it's two years pipeline is so long, my physical exam expired, I need to do that again. So finally two years later, I got email that my case was approved. And two weeks later on September 4th, and I got another email saying that finally your card was printed and in the mail. And three days later, I got my green card in my mailbox. All the beauty influencers will do a safara makeup unboxing. Today I'm going to do a green card unboxing video as well. You can check out video here after unboxing. Actually, this is my passport holder. One of my best friend gave it to me as a gift a few years ago, finally get to use. And I have like so many different kind of cars in it. Of course, my Chinese passport, those are all my old EAD cars. And my green car actually look like this. Let me block all the information. Yes, there's a picture of me up there. You're right. I just realized that the car, the green car was because the car was green. Yeah, the car was green. Also have my fingerprint on that. Yeah, just like three different ways have like fake ID potentially can like make sure this is a real green card or not. In this green card experience, I have three top advice that I want to give all of you guys. And first of all is apply early. I made a big mistake not applying early was because I really didn't like my first company. I felt like I want to get into the ED1 category. And if I apply for the green card, I need to wait in my first company for a little while until my green card was approved. I really didn't like my first company. So I decided not to apply for green card until I got a new job and become a product manager. And if I can redo that, what I would do is that even if I didn't like my first company, I'm going to apply for the green card regardless so that I can get my priority date in as early as possible. And then for my second employer, I can ask them to sponsor my green card again, then they can use the earliest priority date so that I can get my green card way faster. And the second is that set your goal very clearly and has a perseverance to check with multiple lawyers until one of them are ready and qualified to help you. If you're interested in learning how to do goal setting and get to go fast, you can check out my video here. The third advice I want to give all of you guys is about select the right employer. I can see day and night difference in my first and the second employer in terms of getting green card sponsorship. My first employer, somehow they're very interesting. They were like, Nancy, you're not qualified for EB-1. You can only do EB-2. I was like, I got 14 publications and two patents. I can only do EB-2. Why you even get a PhD if you want me to do EB-2? They're like, no, you got to do EB-2. My guess was a guess. My guess is that my first employer just want me to stay in the company for a long period of time, try to slow down the process. And it's clearly EB-1 is faster than EB-2. That's what I guess. I don't know. But it's also speak to my feeling that I really do not like them how they deal with international professionals. If you also want to know about how can you become a product manager on H1B visa and more than happy tell you all the tips and trips behind it, you got to comment down below and let me know if it's something interested to you. If you want to join a community of aspiring product managers just like you, I have a secret society where I post the latest product manager referral jobs and recruiting event. You can join my Facebook group and WeChat group here. And of course, finally, please smash the like button if you want me to make videos like this. I wish all of you guys good luck and get your green card and she will go faster. I'll see you next time. Bye.