How to Get a Talent Visa in the US | Practice Speaking English

Getting a visa to study or to work in the  US can be a really confusing process. I  

recently sat down with entrepreneur and author  Soundarya Balasubramani who has gotten no less  

than 6 visas to work and study in the US. She shared some valuable information I want  

to share with you now about getting a talent  visa to the US. Soundarya can make clear for  

you the best visa to get and how to get it. I’m Rachel, and I’ve been teaching English  

and the American Accent on Youtube for  over 15 years. Check out my free course,  

the top 3 ways to master the American  accent by visiting RachelsEnglish.com/free. 

I’m so glad to be introducing you all to  Soundarya. She is an author and founder  

of Unshackled.club, a community  providing support and resources to  

individuals navigating the talent visa process. First, what is the difference between an H1-B and  

an O1-A talent visa? She recently explained  in a webinar that she did for my students. 

And that's why you should care about talent  because the O-1A which you see seeing on the  

screen here it doesn't have a lottery. It doesn't  require you to go through a process where you have  

to pray that your name gets there. So, that's  the very first difference between the H-1B and  

the 0-1A. They're both work visas, they're both  temporary visas, but these are the differences. 

A few more differences are on an H-1B,  you have to make a minimum salary. What  

this means is someone asked me is the H-1B for  skilled workers. It is for skilled workers, um,  

a lot of people in Tech apply for the H-1B  for example, and the employer has to pay  

a certain minimum salary when you're on an H-1B. On the O-1A, you don't need to make a minimum wage  

and this is great for founders because founders  don't want to take salary out of their company. 

Third difference is that the H-1B, you can  only file during March of each year. But  

the O-1A can be filed anytime from anywhere.  You can also file the H-1B from anywhere um,  

to be clear but the O-1 can be filed at any  point during the year. There's no restriction. 

Finally, fourth, H-1B, you have to have a  direct relationship between your job and  

the degree. What this means is if you had  a degree in say computer science. Your job  

cannot be a life coach or your job cannot be an  artist. There has to be a direct relationship. 

On the O-1A you don't need to have a direct  relationship. Y ou can switch fields. But the  

O-1 does require you to have other things which  we'll talk about. H-1B can only be extended to six  

years. O-1 has no limitation. So, if you get it  once, you can renew it unlimited number of times. 

Last point is that the H-1B, you have  to wait till October. So even if you get  

shows in the lottery, you have to wait  till October for it to be effective. 

But the O-1A is immediate. If you get an  approval from today, you're effectively on  

the O-1 if you apply through that process. Now um, someone asked, Lala asked do you  

need to be employed for filing O-1A? Yes. They're both work Visas so you  

need a sponsor. You can have an agent be  a sponsor for you on the O-1. An agent can  

be an individual not a company necessarily  but they both require you to have a sponsor. 

Soundarya, I know that in your community a lot of  people have gotten O-1A. How easy is it if you're  

not currently employed to find a sponsor like what  you mentioned? Is that a pretty rare road to take? 

This is where I think I need to talk more  about the O-1 first because while the O-1  

has all these amazing qualities that you're  seeing on the screen, it's meant for people  

who are at the top of their fields. So it's  not easy to get. I mean the US introduced  

the O-1 back in 1990 because they wanted talented  people from across the world to come to America. 

Let’s jump ahead to that criteria. How do  you know if you can apply for an O1-A visa? 

We talked a lot about why the O-1 and E-1 are  awesome visas. But the catch is they're meant for  

people once again who are experts in their field.  And the way US decides you're an expert is through  

something called the Eight Pillars. This is also a  page from Unshackled but I thought it'll be a very  

good summary of what the Eight Pillars are. When  you don't have obvious International Acclaim such  

as a Nobel Prize or Olympic medal which you know,  most of or none of us really have USCIS measures  

your extraordinary ability by checking if you meet  three out of eight criteria. They still need some  

way to see why do you think you're awesome in your  field and that's where they came up with these  

eight criteria just to set the expectation they  wrote this this criteria in 1990. 34 years ago,  

they wrote down this criteria. That's why some  of the things would make no sense today but just  

understand that they have evolved with the times  a little bit, not by a lot but the reason some of  

the criteria may seem just not relevant to you is  because it was written many, many, many years ago. 

So there's eight criteria just because the height  of this pillar is top higher than this doesn't  

mean this criteria is more important. Don't think  of it that way. We just did that for it to look  

nice. If you meet any three criteria of the eight,  you have a shot at getting the O-1A or the EB-1A.  

O-1 and EB-1 have the same criteria essentially.

Unshackled is Soundarya’s book that she wrote  

to explain everything about getting a talent  visa to the US, and you can get your own copy  

by following the link in the video description. What's your current job role? Can you guys just  

write down what is your job role?  What's your area of specialty like  

are you a software engineer? Product manager?  Artist? Just write down what you currently do. 

Okay, a lot of software Engineers  which is good to know actually. Actor,  

very interesting. Journalist, professor,  engineer, engineer, engineer, engineer.  

Here's the good news. I think a lot of the O-1  criteria applies to people in Tech, engineering.  

It doesn't mean it doesn't apply to the rest of  you who’s an actor and architects and teachers,  

it definitely applies to you as well. Let's assume that you, I'm just going  

to take a software engineer for example. Let's  also assume that you work at a company where you  

play kind of an important role. If you do  that, then you probably satisfy the number  

eight over here that says critical capacity. So,  critical capacity essentially means you play an  

important role in a company that is reasonably  distinguished. So, let's take for example um,  

Airbnb. You're a software engineer at Airbnb  and you worked on a feature or a product that  

helped increase the revenue for the company  by several million dollars. I'm just giving an  

example. If you can get a letter from your manager  stating this in word, then it might help you in  

satisfying number eight, critical capacity. Now, let's also assume that you get paid a  

pretty good salary at your company. Number  six, high salary essentially means you are  

paid in the top 20-25% of people in  your job role and in your location. 

If you're in Colombia and in Colombia you're  in a very specific city. Go and check what is  

the average salary that a software engineer  gets paid in that city. And if you can show  

that you're in the top 20%, 10%, then you can  say that, hey, I'm getting paid a high salary. 

Another common example I see for  software Engineers is number three,  

Judging. So, number three: Judging. Judging essentially means as an engineer,  

you have judged the work of other people  other engineers in your field. So,  

let's say that you went to a hackathon and  you were one of the five judges. If you can  

get a letter or even an email that says you were  invited as a judge you can show that as evidence. 

And I'll talk about just maybe one more. Number  five, Authorship. Authorship is about you showing  

that I have published articles or papers or books  in my field and it went through an editorial  

process. For a software engineer, this could mean  publishing an article in a famous cyber security  

blog, if you're a cyber security engineer. If  you can just show that my article went through  

some process before it got published, then  you could show that as evidence of authorship. 

So, like this, there's eight criteria and you  have to show evidence for at least three of the  

eight criteria. Ideally, people show evidence  for at least five just because you want to,  

you know, build a very strong profile in front  of the officer, but you have to at least show  

three, that's the bare minimum. I can go  through the other criterias but honestly,  

what I would love for you all to do is to  go and read about this in more depth after  

the call. Like go Google O-1A criteria and  read about what each of the criteria mean. 

There, you heard me mention a student  Scholarship. This is for students who  

want to join Unshackled.club to work towards  getting their own talent visa. If you go to  

RachelsEnglish.com/visa and scroll down  a bit, you’ll find a section on how to  

apply for the student scholarship.  At rachelsenglish.com/visa you can  

also learn more about Unshackled.club,  the community that Soundarya founded,  

which includes lawyers and people who have already  been successful in getting their talent visas.

Thank you so much for watching and  learning with me. Don’t forget to  

visit RachelsEnglish.com/free for my free course  on the American accent that will give you some  

real training to sound more natural  speaking American English. Keep your  

learning going now with this video and don’t  forget to subscribe with notifications on,  

I love being your English teacher. That’s it  and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.