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

18,343 views ・ 2024-11-12

Rachel's English


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Getting a visa to study or to work in the  US can be a really confusing process. I  
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recently sat down with entrepreneur and author  Soundarya Balasubramani who has gotten no less  
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than 6 visas to work and study in the US. She shared some valuable information I want  
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to share with you now about getting a talent  visa to the US. Soundarya can make clear for  
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you the best visa to get and how to get it. I’m Rachel, and I’ve been teaching English  
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and the American Accent on Youtube for  over 15 years. Check out my free course,  
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the top 3 ways to master the American  accent by visiting RachelsEnglish.com/free. 
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I’m so glad to be introducing you all to  Soundarya. She is an author and founder  
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of Unshackled.club, a community  providing support and resources to  
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individuals navigating the talent visa process. First, what is the difference between an H1-B and  
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an O1-A talent visa? She recently explained  in a webinar that she did for my students. 
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And that's why you should care about talent  because the O-1A which you see seeing on the  
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screen here it doesn't have a lottery. It doesn't  require you to go through a process where you have  
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to pray that your name gets there. So, that's  the very first difference between the H-1B and  
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the 0-1A. They're both work visas, they're both  temporary visas, but these are the differences. 
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A few more differences are on an H-1B,  you have to make a minimum salary. What  
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this means is someone asked me is the H-1B for  skilled workers. It is for skilled workers, um,  
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a lot of people in Tech apply for the H-1B  for example, and the employer has to pay  
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a certain minimum salary when you're on an H-1B. On the O-1A, you don't need to make a minimum wage  
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and this is great for founders because founders  don't want to take salary out of their company. 
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Third difference is that the H-1B, you can  only file during March of each year. But  
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the O-1A can be filed anytime from anywhere.  You can also file the H-1B from anywhere um,  
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to be clear but the O-1 can be filed at any  point during the year. There's no restriction. 
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Finally, fourth, H-1B, you have to have a  direct relationship between your job and  
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the degree. What this means is if you had  a degree in say computer science. Your job  
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cannot be a life coach or your job cannot be an  artist. There has to be a direct relationship. 
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On the O-1A you don't need to have a direct  relationship. Y ou can switch fields. But the  
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O-1 does require you to have other things which  we'll talk about. H-1B can only be extended to six  
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years. O-1 has no limitation. So, if you get it  once, you can renew it unlimited number of times. 
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Last point is that the H-1B, you have  to wait till October. So even if you get  
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shows in the lottery, you have to wait  till October for it to be effective. 
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But the O-1A is immediate. If you get an  approval from today, you're effectively on  
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the O-1 if you apply through that process. Now um, someone asked, Lala asked do you  
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need to be employed for filing O-1A? Yes. They're both work Visas so you  
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need a sponsor. You can have an agent be  a sponsor for you on the O-1. An agent can  
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be an individual not a company necessarily  but they both require you to have a sponsor. 
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Soundarya, I know that in your community a lot of  people have gotten O-1A. How easy is it if you're  
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not currently employed to find a sponsor like what  you mentioned? Is that a pretty rare road to take? 
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This is where I think I need to talk more  about the O-1 first because while the O-1  
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has all these amazing qualities that you're  seeing on the screen, it's meant for people  
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who are at the top of their fields. So it's  not easy to get. I mean the US introduced  
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the O-1 back in 1990 because they wanted talented  people from across the world to come to America. 
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Let’s jump ahead to that criteria. How do  you know if you can apply for an O1-A visa? 
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We talked a lot about why the O-1 and E-1 are  awesome visas. But the catch is they're meant for  
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people once again who are experts in their field.  And the way US decides you're an expert is through  
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something called the Eight Pillars. This is also a  page from Unshackled but I thought it'll be a very  
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good summary of what the Eight Pillars are. When  you don't have obvious International Acclaim such  
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as a Nobel Prize or Olympic medal which you know,  most of or none of us really have USCIS measures  
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your extraordinary ability by checking if you meet  three out of eight criteria. They still need some  
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way to see why do you think you're awesome in your  field and that's where they came up with these  
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eight criteria just to set the expectation they  wrote this this criteria in 1990. 34 years ago,  
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they wrote down this criteria. That's why some  of the things would make no sense today but just  
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understand that they have evolved with the times  a little bit, not by a lot but the reason some of  
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the criteria may seem just not relevant to you is  because it was written many, many, many years ago. 
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So there's eight criteria just because the height  of this pillar is top higher than this doesn't  
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mean this criteria is more important. Don't think  of it that way. We just did that for it to look  
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nice. If you meet any three criteria of the eight,  you have a shot at getting the O-1A or the EB-1A.  
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O-1 and EB-1 have the same criteria essentially.
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Unshackled is Soundarya’s book that she wrote  
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to explain everything about getting a talent  visa to the US, and you can get your own copy  
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by following the link in the video description. What's your current job role? Can you guys just  
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write down what is your job role?  What's your area of specialty like  
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are you a software engineer? Product manager?  Artist? Just write down what you currently do. 
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Okay, a lot of software Engineers  which is good to know actually. Actor,  
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very interesting. Journalist, professor,  engineer, engineer, engineer, engineer.  
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Here's the good news. I think a lot of the O-1  criteria applies to people in Tech, engineering.  
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It doesn't mean it doesn't apply to the rest of  you who’s an actor and architects and teachers,  
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it definitely applies to you as well. Let's assume that you, I'm just going  
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to take a software engineer for example. Let's  also assume that you work at a company where you  
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play kind of an important role. If you do  that, then you probably satisfy the number  
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eight over here that says critical capacity. So,  critical capacity essentially means you play an  
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important role in a company that is reasonably  distinguished. So, let's take for example um,  
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Airbnb. You're a software engineer at Airbnb  and you worked on a feature or a product that  
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helped increase the revenue for the company  by several million dollars. I'm just giving an  
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example. If you can get a letter from your manager  stating this in word, then it might help you in  
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satisfying number eight, critical capacity. Now, let's also assume that you get paid a  
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pretty good salary at your company. Number  six, high salary essentially means you are  
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paid in the top 20-25% of people in  your job role and in your location. 
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If you're in Colombia and in Colombia you're  in a very specific city. Go and check what is  
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the average salary that a software engineer  gets paid in that city. And if you can show  
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that you're in the top 20%, 10%, then you can  say that, hey, I'm getting paid a high salary. 
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Another common example I see for  software Engineers is number three,  
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Judging. So, number three: Judging. Judging essentially means as an engineer,  
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you have judged the work of other people  other engineers in your field. So,  
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let's say that you went to a hackathon and  you were one of the five judges. If you can  
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get a letter or even an email that says you were  invited as a judge you can show that as evidence. 
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And I'll talk about just maybe one more. Number  five, Authorship. Authorship is about you showing  
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that I have published articles or papers or books  in my field and it went through an editorial  
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process. For a software engineer, this could mean  publishing an article in a famous cyber security  
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blog, if you're a cyber security engineer. If  you can just show that my article went through  
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some process before it got published, then  you could show that as evidence of authorship. 
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So, like this, there's eight criteria and you  have to show evidence for at least three of the  
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eight criteria. Ideally, people show evidence  for at least five just because you want to,  
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you know, build a very strong profile in front  of the officer, but you have to at least show  
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three, that's the bare minimum. I can go  through the other criterias but honestly,  
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what I would love for you all to do is to  go and read about this in more depth after  
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the call. Like go Google O-1A criteria and  read about what each of the criteria mean. 
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There, you heard me mention a student  Scholarship. This is for students who  
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want to join Unshackled.club to work towards  getting their own talent visa. If you go to  
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RachelsEnglish.com/visa and scroll down  a bit, you’ll find a section on how to  
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apply for the student scholarship.  At rachelsenglish.com/visa you can  
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also learn more about Unshackled.club,  the community that Soundarya founded,  
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which includes lawyers and people who have already  been successful in getting their talent visas.
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Thank you so much for watching and  learning with me. Don’t forget to  
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visit RachelsEnglish.com/free for my free course  on the American accent that will give you some  
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real training to sound more natural  speaking American English. Keep your  
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learning going now with this video and don’t  forget to subscribe with notifications on,  
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I love being your English teacher. That’s it  and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.
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