Disclaimer:
This blog is written with some facts and a figment of imagination. People who are trying to seek valuable information here needs to get their brains checked from a neuroscientist (obviously not from someone who got into a college on management quota) and those who are trying to find humor here the possibility is same as meeting some extra-terrestrial life in our life time. Although unintentional humor may appear from time to time. But if you are still looking for humor, here is an immigration joke I borrowed from google.
Q: What is the difference between an illegal immigrant and E.T.?
Part 1:
First, a little bit about my career journey and then we can come back to visa stuff. If you are still reading it means you have enough time to waste. So, let’s press the pedal and start this journey. I started my journey 8 years ago with IT and like every Upadhyay, Tiwari, Mishra and Bansal I had the dream of working onsite in a client location and client location must be outside of Indian Subcontinent. In fact, during my college when I got placed in an IT company which was about to get scam tainted in near future, my father was more excited than me and he bought me a Samsonite laptop cum travel bag. Not only that he made me rush to complete the passport application. As if on my first day they will ask " Sir are you ok to travel to Denmark and ready to earn in Euros as we are seeing a strong euro soon? We will try to send you to USA once you feel a tad comfortable in working in first world countries and can live without pollution."
If you are working in this industry your relatives and family (yes in that order only) will consider you a failure if you have not crossed the sea. And yes, Indian clients and working in their office does not count. In fact, you will be shown pity and many of your relatives may console you and may also judge your caliber. Your relatives will not listen to your bragging if you sit in Madhya Pradesh State Electricity Board office and developing technology solutions for the clientele. But mental strength has always been my forte. I crossed 8 years of listening to taunts without blinking an eye like a true mard. In fact, if you think of me as Geeta Vishwas (knew it’s a bad example but deal with it as I am a "90s kid" who had Doordarshan as the only source of entertainment) my relationship with onsite travel is same as of Shaktiman and Gangadhar to her. Both cannot meet her at the same time. After completing more than 3 years of my career in the scam tainted company I finally had the courage to put papers and moved to a better company.
But yes, we do have a ritual where the manager discusses with his employee and asks why he is leaving the organization and the employee is equivalent to a LAN without whom company literally cannot work. He is the best developer seen on earth and in fact the spot he is leaving will remain vacant till the sun goes supernova and at last he is asked to pull back his resignation and he is assured he will travel to a client location. This is said for each employee leaving the organization. My manager told me he will raise my UK visa. But I knew it was merely a lip service and I didn't want to relinquish the joy of rejecting something. In fact, when in initial phase of your career all you have done is begging for projects, allowances, leaves etc. the one moment of glory where you can refuse your manager's plea can never be missed. This is orgasmic happiness.
Part 2:
Done and dusted with last organization and joined a Big 4 company with more than 100 percent salary of my last company. I did not see any opportunity of travelling in this company. In fact, they teach you to crush your soul with money and smoke it like a coding error you never committed. Here the initial struggle was to survive in a pool of highly talent, charismatic and dynamic people who could sway you away technically, personally and of course politically. It was a circus where everybody was playing their parts and I was the clown. But the money was too good to leave the company. In fact, I endured the company for 3 years and put my papers. Ironically this time I resigned because I was forced to work on a client location in Goregaon yes that’s Goregaon not Oregon. I could imagine my relatives bitching about my work location and consoling me with blessings that something good will happen.
My family, they did not know what I was working and were happy that I used to come home every 3-4 months. In fact, when I explained my father what I do he smirked and ridiculed me that I am paid for doing this. Then I had to shoot some technical and corporate jargons like business continuity planning, business problems solving, Oracle, Cognos, stakeholder’s management, stored procedures, database designs etc. to him to keep him quiet and elevate my work at home. Boy that was some hush work and I am proud of my spontaneity!!
My mom used to talk about my company with other relatives. In fact, it was an epiphany for her that my current organization was way bigger than Infosys and TCS. She used to take pride and ask me if she can send my profile to some girls for marriage perspective. I used to avoid that topic as I was too much enjoying my financial independence, my opulence and my pestering free life. As a matter of fact, when resigning was on the cards for me she scolded that why I am leaving such a good company. I was flabbergasted to this reaction. 3 years ago, she was not aware of IT and now she was upset why I am leaving a certain company. I felt like Farhan from 3 idiots whose Abba never agrees on anything. Eventually I did leave the company.
Part 3:
Finally, I am at my current company. This company is great as I am only of the two developers of my technology stack. My previous company's single office had more employees than my present company total India's workforce. It feels great to live in an ecosystem where you do not struggle to survive but instead dominate and thrive. Fast forward to 6 months I got my first big project here and it went good for next 1 year. It fetched me few accolades from my client and award in my firm. I developed a reputation of dependable, good and adaptive employee. My practice head called me and gave me the news that the company has decided to raise US visa for me. I was chosen for L1 B visa. A visa that is intra company and is for specialized knowledge. I was overwhelmed by this gesture and later shared the news with my wife. She was happy too. In my mind I had already imagined movie Swades and pledged that I will come back to India like Mohan Bhargav and serve my mother land.
No matter what the company offers but I will never sell my gratitude to my mother land for a piece of silver. This ephemeral mental melodrama came to a halt when my colleagues called me for a tea break. I was back to my materialist beast mode. All I could sense was an opportunity to earn some good money and a silver lining of clearing my debts. This ends my career journey. Let’s move ahead and understand the US visa process.
Step 1:
First step was my manager raised a work permit request on my company's mobility portal. His job ends here, and I had to take forward the case from there. I filled in all the information to complete my profile for the work permit request. Then the realization came that my passport which was travel virgin for almost a decade is about to expire next year. I made the passport lose its virginity to Indonesia when I traveled to Bali last year. When others proceed to Step 2 I had to go back to Step 0 and applied for passport renewal. Those who have the passports can skip the below part of the blog.
Passport renewal in a nutshell:
My passport came in a month finally. I went back to step 1 and uploaded the new passport copy to the portal and submitted my assignment request.
Step 2:
Once my information was updated fully in my company's mobility portal, my company's travel desk team raised L1 B blanket application to a designated law firm to create my petition. You must be wondering what are these 2 words blanket and petition?
Blanket: Blanket visa allows a company to file L1 visa for multiple employees under a single petition. The advantage here for the company is they don't have to file individual petition for each employee they are planning to send instead all employees can file individual applications under a single petition.
Petition: A petition is a formal request by an employer in US for the employee residing in India to the US Citizen and Immigration Services to allow them to work in USA.
I hope these 2 visa lexicons are clear. Let’s move ahead. Now from here onward the employee directly deals with the law firm.
Step 3:
1) We get a welcome mail from the law firm and we need to sign a consent form and authorize them to create our visa application on the blanket petition.
PARANOIA
The mobility team did give me some sample questions which are expected to be asked during the interview. I received my petition package from the law firm and found some vital information missing. I had an interview in 5 days and it was total chaos. I contacted the law firm and they declined any help. My practice head had no idea what had to be written. On top of this I had no preparation interview with the mobility team about how the visa process would follow. There I go, out of the frying pan into the fire.
I was searching for some colleagues who had aced the L1 interviews. Finally, I did find a couple of them. One gentleman was nice enough to help me out during a coffee break. Here a thing about people when you seek help from them. If they are in a coffee table even their sidekicks chip in with their unsolicited advice. The sidekick was more disappointed with my profile than the actual gentleman. Everybody was like you can only crack the visa interview if you can showcase you are irreplaceable. If they can't hire anybody in US, then only they will look for you. You should hold that level of expertise in your field. I wish I hadn't meet these people. The cranky bunch dented my confidence more than I had expected but I did take couple of learnings from their experiences.
On the other hand, I was relentlessly pestering my practice head, mobility team and eventually the leadership team to seek out the required information for my visa interview. The day before I had to fly to Chennai the mobility team came out of their slumber. They asked me to join them for a mock interview to boost my confidence, body language and alertness for the actual interview. I went and was trying to heap confidence. Out of nowhere the interviewer told me he will be recording this interview and it would be played to everyone in future who will apply for L1 visa. Do they have anything left in their Pandora box to baffle me? I took a deep breath and controlled myself. Generally, I don't sound crystal clear on phone or any electronic device and this made matter worse. He explained me the entire L1 visa process, its purpose and its limitation. It was followed by a set of questions and my feedback on the answers I gave. Even though I got a good feedback I felt mumbled during some answers and spoke a bit faster. Anyway, I didn't want to carry any baggage. I was done for the day. Rest of the day was spent in arranging the documents folder I needed to carry for interview.
Chennai here I come!!!
Chennai a city where half of the places have names end with salai or bakkam. I was eager and anxious not only for visa interview but also for Chennai. It was the first time I was entering Chennai. I still have vital information left to obtain and tomorrow I had to fly. This didn't help me in having sound REM sleep. It felt as if I had just rested my head on my pillow and in 5 min it was 4:30 AM. I casually checked, and the airport was in one bakkam and my hotel in another.
Wednesday
I fly as often as India wins medals in Olympics. Our frequency matches I guess that's why I feel so associated to sports. Anyway, I forgot what the procedure was. Mansi again explained to me, this time without losing her cool. I started for airport in OLA cab. I reached way before time. The flight was scheduled at 7:30 AM and I was into the airport at 5:45. As the documents, laptops and clothes stacked up my luggage I had to bring two bags. I wanted everything to in cabin luggage. I was feeling the bags were heavier than usual. Then I laughed it off thinking it might be due I didn't have proper food for the last 2 days. I might have lost some weight and that had resulted in some weakness.
The happiness was ephemeral. I confidently went to the baggage check in counter. I told him keep everything in cabin luggage no check in baggage please. He told me are you sure its 7kg. I confidently told him its less than 7kg. Come on !! you can only carry the confidence in interview if you have that attitude from at least 48 hours. He widened his eyes and gazed at me. "Could you please check the weight on display"? It was 8.4kg and I lost the dual.
Well it was a crazy morning. I was very apprehensive of my bag which I could see was dancing its way to conveyor belt. The bag had all my marksheets, degrees, passport. Basically, all the original documents I earned myself or I can say all my possession which were not on credit. I went to the security for quick clearance to save time. As I approach the queue I put my mobile wallet, charger and laptop on a tray. When my turn came the security personal asked me to remove my shoes and put it on the tray for separate clearance. This was the first time I was asked to remove shoes in an airport frisking. Fortunately, I didn’t have diamonds, gold, silver or drugs in my socks otherwise the trip would have been in jeopardy, I would have been detained in airport and USA would have missed a brilliant engineer. Ok enough of melodrama and day dreaming. Security clearance was completed and I waiting near my designated gate. The flight took off on time. Again, I was frightened as the plane started to roll on the airport and I controlled my squeal when the Boeing airbus took off. I resorted to watching movie to divert my mind. The only movie I had on my mobile was Bahubali. I watched it for some 15-20 min and slumber took over me. I dozed off quickly and woke up just minutes before landing. An airhostess came and offered me box of cashews and a Paperboat juice tetra pack. Since it was a corporate booking I was given this small refreshment. I slipped them inside the bag and focused on completing the rest and enjoying the landscape. I could not figure out the exact landscape. Cloud were not there so we were not at a high altitude, but I couldn’t see human colonies as well. It means we were somewhere in between of nothing. When the plane started to take its final descent, then it hit the scenery I was enjoying was nothing but mighty, beautiful and serene Bay of Bengal and to be more precise it was Marina Beach. It seemed the airplane caressed the sea while landing.
First thing I was worried about upon landing was not one thing. It was a cornucopia of thoughts. I was fretting over my check in baggage, at the same time I was hungry and on top of that I was getting an urge to use the restroom. Well the checkin baggage took the priority and I headed towards the conveyor belt. I was elated to find my precious bag. It was already 9:35 AM and I had to reach hotel and reach the center for finger printing at 2:45PM. Being a first timer in Chennai, I could not take my chances.
As I moved out of the airport I noticed the metro rail going above my head. The city was well planned and had proper public transportation for modest income group as well. Now between my appetite and hotel I chose to reach my hotel as soon as possible. The dedicated OLA point helped in speeding up the process of booking and boarding the cab. The first person with whom I had a decent interaction was Gopinath the cab driver. When the trip started Gopinath hinted that he is indifferent to me, my language and my appearance but that didn’t stop him from initiating the conversation in Tamil. I suggested I know a bit of Telugu and we can have half-baked conversation in Telugu. Gopinath nodded positively. I was mumbling Telugu words and was hoping they would connect to form meaningful sentence. Gopinath was replying in Tamil. We spent the next half an hour making each other linguistically uncomfortable.
The city had a peace in itself and the traffic was also lesser than Mumbai. I could imagine at some point the city was planned and built in a structured manner. In between Gopinath missed a turn and the journey became longer which meant the language barrier stayed for a longer duration. By now Gopinath was sure I was here for visa interview. His English efficiency and my Telugu efficiency were exactly matching. Broken English and hand gestures were his true allies. He taught me some tricks. E.g. go by ola auto only if you have cash as auto drivers don’t accept ola money. Also, if I am Chicken lover he suggested a place which I don’t remember now. It was very near to my hotel and to his heart as his lip smacking gesture and two thumbs up suggested. I was more concerned about reaching the hotel early and calm my nerves and was mostly ignoring his jibber jabber.
But since the trip was anyway going to last 30 more minutes. I asked about the places I can visit as a tourist while I am here. He suggested Marina beach and Mahabalipuram beach. Mahabalipuram beach will take 2-3 hours to reach. He asked me till when I will be staying here. I told him by tomorrow evening I will leave. He felt he wasted his precious energy on explaining me tourist destinations when I do not have enough time. He responded with a big huh and slapped his forehead. For the rest of the trip he did not know show any enthusiasm. I got off the cab and checked in to the hotel.
THE KINGs HOTEL
Well nothing tires me out more than speaking and the trip with
Gopinath had taken a toll on me. I wanted to complete my sleep and eat in no
order. Well I had very low expectations from the hotel as it was a 2-star hotel.
The hotel did look shady. I was apprehensive of the security. The horses of my
imagination started running wild again. I was just hoping police does not raid
this place and I am taken to nearby police station with my head masked in black
cloth on the charges of smuggling, adultery, drugs and what not. Fortunately
nothing of that kind happened. The manager was polite and started my check in.
I checked in and there was no concierge to accompany me to my room. The room
was small and the bed sheets were smelly and dirty. I didn’t want to divert my
mind from such things. I changed and freshen up and slept for some time. When
the clock ticked 1PM I ordered lunch. The concierge waited for some time after
he delivered and presented the lunch on table. I was not going to tip him
anyway. The wait was a futile exercise. I had full meal and started arranging
the documents folder for one more time.
To be continued……….
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