15 Years Journey towards U.S. Citizenship
Today I took the oath and became a U.S. citizen. My brain is completely blank now except one word: Freedom!
F-1 Student Visa Period (2006–2008)
It was a warm summer night in August 2006, I landed in St. Louis, Missouri with 2 overweight luggage and a few thousand dollars which I tied tightly to my stomach and tugged under my T-shirt. We grew up in poverty so my parents had no savings. Those few thousand dollars were borrowed from my aunt. My aunt was a janitor so that cash was her entire life savings. I kept rubbing my belly every now and then to make sure that the money was still there. I knew that if I lost it, not only that I would become the first homeless Chinese in the United States, but would also screw up my aunt’s retirement plan.
Back then, I had only one word in mind: Survive!
I came to the United States to pursue my master degree in architecture. Even though the scholarship covered half of my tuition fee, I still had to figure out how to pay for the other half, not to mention the relatively high living expenses in the United States compared to China. As an international student, I was allowed to work in the campus up to 20 hours a week, so I maxed them out by taking up 3 jobs. I was a librarian, a teaching assistant, as well as a laser cut monitor (a job that helps architectural students using the laser cut machine for making physical presentation models).
To be honest with you, one reason that I came to the United States for my master degree was because there was a general misconception among the Chinese that American college students were lazy and stupid, thanks to popular western movies like the American Pie. I couldn’t be more wrong! In our design studios (where architectural students work on their design projects), everyone, regardless of nationality, skin color, or body size, was burning midnight oil to the very last second. The architectural school was the only building in the campus with lights on 24/7, even during Thanksgivings.
Since I was required to maintain a decent GPA in order to secure my scholarship for the subsequent semesters, I had to work as hard as, if not harder, than my fellow American classmates. Together with my 3 part-time jobs, on average I only slept for about 4 hours a night during the entire time in school. It’s the toughest 2.5 years in my whole life. I was literally on a survival mode. According to author Matthew Walker in his New York Times bestseller book “Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams”, he stated that based on a study, the less sleep you get, the smaller your testicles become! I know what you are wondering now, but let’s just leave it like that…
Anyways, everything worked its way out and I graduated in December 2008. I survived what appeared to be impossible when I first came to the United States.
Job Hunting Period (Early 2009)
It’s just my luck… When I graduated, America was in the worst recession since the Great Depression, which was triggered by the subprime mortgage housing bubble. Because the architectural industry is a close relative to the housing industry, it got a really hard hit. Half of the architects that I knew got laid off.
I attended a career fair roadshow organized by my university in January 2009. We visited multiple prestigious architectural firms in New York, half of the desks in their offices were empty. All of them told us that their firms had froze hiring. I offered to work without pay, thinking that I could just wash dishes in the back alley of a Chinese restaurant at night, or prostitute myself to middle aged sugar mamas, but was being turned down by all of the firms because unpaid internship was considered unethical, if not illegal, in the architectural industry in the United States.
Knowing that it would be hopeless to find a job in the East Coast where I had to compete with the elites from Harvard and MIT, I shifted my focus towards the West Coast. After submitting more than 200 applications without any reply, I decided to change my strategy. “If no one is hiring a fresh graduate, what if I apply for a senior level job that I am not yet qualified for?” I knew it’s a long shot, but time was running out for me at that moment. For international students, if we cannot find a job within a few months after school, we have to leave the United States, or we will be considered as illegal immigrants.
One day in late January 2009, I found online that a local architectural firm in Los Angeles was looking for a job captain with at least 5 years of working experience to lead a transportation project, I applied to it regardless, simply out of desperation. To my surprise, the Principal of the firm replied to my email and asked me to come over for an interview.
I knew that it was my very last shot, if I didn’t want to end up working illegally in a foot massage parlor in China Town for $8 an hour before tips. I spent every single waking minute fine-tuning my best drawings and renderings. I practiced my presentation speech over and over again. I memorized as much details as humanly possible for all the projects that the company had designed since it was founded in 1980. I tried to anticipate every possible question that I believed the Principal might ask and prepared my answers beforehand. If you need something very badly, there is nothing called “over-preparation”.
I flew to Los Angeles in the first week of February 2009 to meet the Principal of the firm. The interview went as smooth as I could possibly imagine. One hour into our conversation, when he started sharing with me about his vision for the future of the company, intuition told me that he was on the hook. Thanks god I was right. One week after the interview, I got an offer email from him. That email forever changed the trajectory of my life.
H-1B Working Visa Period (2009–2016)
I started working for the company in March 2009. It sponsored my H-1B working visa petition as agreed upon in the employment contract, but I had to find my own attorney. A coworker in the company recommended his friend’s father to me whom helped him on his working visa application as well. So I hired him, but it turned out to be a huge mistake.
Not sure whether he filled out the application form himself after taking cocaine, or he had a 6 years old paralegal kid helped him doing that, I found over 20 mistakes on the form. He even copied my passport number wrong! “How could a professional make such fatal mistakes? Did he intentionally try to screw me up?” I wondered. Imagine if your surgeon made over 20 mistakes during your circumcision procedure, how would your manhood look like today, if it’s still functional at all? At that moment, I started to understand why the general public hate attorneys more than architects. At the end, I completed the application form all over again from scratch by myself and simply paid for his signature to represent me as my attorney. It was my understanding that the chance of getting approval from USCIS (United States Citizenship & Immigration Services) was much higher with an attorney than without.
The whole application process took over 6 months and I got multiple RFEs (Request for Evidence). One RFE was to take photos of the office areas including but not limited to entrance, lobby, working desks with staffs, toilets, etc. I was wondering, should I take a picture of my direct supervisor peeing in front of the urinal to prove that it was indeed our office toilet instead of a stock photo that I randomly grabbed from the internet? It sounds funny looking back from the rearview mirror now, but it was tremendously stressful at that time when your future was fully depending on some unknown variables beyond your own control. Fortunately, my H-1B visa was finally approved in October 2009.
One year with the company, I passed all my AREs (Architect Registration Examination) and became a licensed architect in 2010. I was promoted to be the Job Captain which was the position that I was not qualified for the year before but still applied to anyway. The Principal put me in charge of the new Metro subway station project that the company just got awarded. Life started looking up from that point onward.
After successfully delivered the design package of that Metro project and helped the company secured another Metro project with multiple stations in 2012, I knew that I had earned the ticket for my green card application. I requested it and the Principal approved without any hesitation.
The line for green card application is based on your birthplace. Since I was born in China, even with a master degree, the waiting time was roughly between 3 to 6 years depending on when the application was submitted. Since I learned a lesson the hard way from my H-1B application, this time I did my own due diligence and hired my own immigration attorney. He was very knowledgeable and professional. Not trying to be stereotypical, but the fact that a white attorney has a beautiful Asian wife gave me full confidence that this guy was the real deal (I noticed that from the family photo in his office during the free consultation meeting). He proved me right!
Green Card Period (2016–2021)
My green card application was finally approved in March 2016 and I became a permanent resident in the United States. It’s a major milestone for me as my legal status was no longer contingent upon my employment. That means, even if I lost my job, I wouldn’t have to rush to find another job in order to maintain my legal presence. That also means that I could start climbing the corporate ladder and pursue my ultimate American dream!
My first company was a small business entity. We only had 5 staffs and I was the youngest one. The median salary of an architect in the United States was about $80k per year in 2017, but my annual salary was already above $100k. My direct supervisor, whom had signed a life contract with the Principal, worked for the company for over 35 years, and already started taking social security that year, was not making much more than me! I felt that I had reached a plateau in the company, that’s why I decided to leave and join a corporate firm. The green card essentially eliminated all the legal hurdles that I had to cross for switching jobs.
I didn’t choose to be a transportation architect. It was the only option that I had after my graduation. But it seems that luck is always on my side, at least profession-wise. Because transportation is such a specialized niche, transportation architects in general get paid way more than most other architects. For an architect who is not a partner of the firm, he or she can make around $200k per year at the peak of his or her career as a project director. But for transportation architects, some are making between $300k and $400k a year. I knew that because I was the one who mailed the paychecks to them (They were put under our small company by the corporate prime to meet Federal funding requirements). I was also the one who put the fee proposals together which gave me full transparency to the pay scale of everyone in a mega transit project. Based on statistics, the top 5% earners in the United States are making an average of $309k a year in 2018. The transportation field provides me the window of opportunity to squeeze myself into the top 5% when I reach my golden age, if I work hard enough.
In 2018, I jumped to another corporate firm. For every jump, I got a pay raise of about 15%-20%. Because I grew up in a slum, money was my biggest drive. My goal was to reach an annual salary of $200k at 45, $300k at 55, and $400k at 65. The concept of retirement doesn’t really exist for architects. We work until our very last breath.
However, even with a bigger paycheck, I didn’t feel happy at all. In fact, I felt extremely stressful. When you are at the bottom of the food chain, as long as you finish your assigned tasks on time, everyone’s happy. But it’s a completely different story when you are higher up. Office politics always kick in no matter which corporate firm you work for. Different faces, same story. You want to out-perform others so that you can get noticed by the upper management, but you also have to walk a fine line not to outshine your master nor upset your colleagues. You try to be nice to everyone, but there will always be someone who is ready to stab your back when the opportunity presents itself. That made me wonder: Does it really worth it to put up a poker face and endure all these bullshit everyday for a bi-weekly paycheck for the rest of my life?
In late 2018, I decided to quit climbing the corporate ladder for good. I took a pay cut and joined a tech startup to become its in-house architect. I still have to report to a supervisor, but since I am the only architect in the firm, I have full autonomy of what I want to achieve. I define my own scope of work. I don’t need to compete with anyone anymore. It’s the first time in my life that I am no longer money oriented. Human desire is unlimited so chasing money is just an endless goal. All it takes is just one simple word to stop it: Enough.
U.S. Citizenship (2021 - ♾)
In March 2021, 5 years after I got my green card, I became eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship through the process called Naturalization. 6 months after I submitted my application, I got an interview scheduled with an immigration officer last week. After checking in, I waited anxiously in the common area for about an hour with many others in the Federal Building in Downtown Los Angeles, before I was called by an immigration officer to follow him to his office.
The officer looked at my driver license, then looked at me. Afterwards he looked at my green card, then looked at me again. And he said: “You gained weight.” I replied: “Yes Sir. It’s my 18-months-work-from-home weight.” He laughed, even though I found my weight gain a sad reality. His laughter turned something which was supposed to be a nerve wracking experience into a joyful conversation. At the end of the interview, he gave me an appointment letter for the Naturalization Oath Ceremony scheduled for the following Tuesday, which is today.
This morning, I fully dressed up for the first time since the pandemic hit us in early 2020. It took a lot of effort to squeeze my 38" belly into a waist 32" pants. I even put on a tie which architects usually hate doing, because to us it is a symbol of conformity, instead of creativity. But today is my special day, so any subjective feeling should be taking the back sit.
Because we are still in the middle of the pandemic, the oath ceremony was carried outside the Federal Building. There were about 50 people in the line. I saw a few whom were in the same waiting room as me the week before. We took the oath roughly 10 people as a group. After the oath ceremony, each new American citizen received the Certificate of Naturalization. Looking at the certificate, my brain went completely blank except one word: Freedom!
Everyone’s journey is different. Mine is just one of the one-million stories happening in the United States each year. I am sharing it not because it’s something special, but because I hope that it can serve as an encouragement for those who are either in the middle of the bridge or still on the other side of the bridge - that you are not alone. It’s a journey full of hurdles and obstacles, both legal and personal, but you will get there eventually. Some people lost their lives pursing this journey. The fact that we are the ones who are still breathing is the strongest evidence that we are the lucky ones, no matter what we had been through or currently going through. If you truly feel that this is your permanent home, trust your instinct and make it happen. After all, America is the country of immigrants.
