As someone who immigrated 3 times in my life, I am part of a group that I call professional immigrants. Meaning, I am really good at navigating the steps needed to pick up my life and move to another country where I don’t know anyone, and build a professional career and life there.
I can also call myself a professional immigrant because I am considered to be highly skilled and highly educated. I worked at top consulting companies in the world, where I received accelerated promotions. I was a corporate finance director at a top-3 Canadian bank where I managed a portfolio of over 1 billion dollars and received an accelerated promotion and an award. Myself, Michael, and our incredible team run a very influential business that moves forward strategy thinking and management consulting profession around the world. Very few people can say that when they speak to competitors, they can see their books on the competitor’s bookshelf and where a competitor is telling you how much your books or book helped them in their business. This happened to me multiple times.
What makes professional immigrants exceptional leaders
We are often highly trained and highly motivated, and highly educated professionals who leave behind everything, to take huge risks to have a better life, bigger opportunities, and earn more for ourselves and our families. We make the journey alone. We are not kids following our parents who protect us. We have no protection. We were not born in the countries we end up calling our homes. We often are from poorer countries. We leave behind our families, often not seeing them for a decade or more. At the time of writing, I have seen my parents and brothers only twice in over 20 years and my sister 3 times in over 20 years.
We leave our friends. We leave all the comforts of home: our language, our reputations, our friends, sometimes our credentials, our food, our culture, and our safety net. We have dependents, our extended families, before we have children. Some of us decide not to have children or have only one while we would love to have more, because the level of responsibility we already have for our extended family makes it very hard for us to add another dependent.
We are often the most hardworking members of our family. Millions of us are stuck in limbo around immigration rules.
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My immigration journey
I moved for a better life four times. I first moved to Moscow, which is hard to do without the right residency permit even though I am Russian. That was not a successful trip at all but I kept at it. In fact, it was harder than any of my 3 moves to another country. I then moved to Africa and then to North America. And within North America from Canada to the USA. And I also moved between cities within some of those countries. For example, in the US I lived in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Diego.
I had no relatives in any of those countries, no mentorship or guidance and no support. I had no friends to meet me at the airport and no community on which to rely. When I first immigrated, my pianist diploma was not even recognized and could not even be found in the educational certification database. It was as if I did not have any education, and I had to start from scratch.
Even the paid legal help was often a nightmare, which ended up costing me time and money to fix. Yet, I had to do it because I had to take care of several family members. When I started my journey, there were times when I did not eat lunch to save money and wore older clothing with holes, including shoes. I still remember the burgundy shoes I had in Africa with holes in the sole. No one could see the holes, but I could feel them.
H1B / green card
Quitting is often not any easier. Moving back to our home countries is often a difficult option. Many immigrants study in the West, like me, and often take on expensive student loans. They need to stay and work in the West to pay down these student loans since their employment prospects in their home countries do not pay enough.
In the US, the H1B visa is a lottery. It’s a competitive process where most will not get a visa. Those who do get it often need to stay with their employer. Their employer may or may not file a green card application. The green card approval may take up to twenty years. I read that 200,000 Indians will die of natural causes before their green cards are approved.
Think about that. 200,000 talented and generous professionals who are very hardworking and making tremendous sacrifices to care for their immediate and extended family will not live their full lives.
Many cannot buy homes for fear of having a firesale so that they can leave the country within the time limit, should they lose their jobs, to avoid being banned. For this reason, I rented for a long time. By renting and not buying, we give up the primary method to build wealth: equity growth in a home. We have to build wealth with the best option often out of our reach for a very long time. Children may age out of the process. Spouses often cannot work. It’s tragic that most H1B holders who lose their jobs did not do so due to poor performance. Technology companies, for example, simply changed their strategies and decided to cut costs in the face of rising interest rates.
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Here is an email we received today from one of our amazing long-term coaching clients:
“Hi Kris,
Happy holidays! I wanted to take a moment to thank you and Michael for the work we did together. The skills I gained, especially through the communication and Masterplan programs, have made a real difference in my life.
At work, I feel more confident and able to command attention in meetings while getting to the “so what” faster. Outside of work, I’ve taken on a strategic role with a nonprofit that will have a lasting impact, and I’m exploring opportunities to purchase and grow my own business.
I feel more focused, energized, and excited each day, and I’m so grateful for your guidance in helping me achieve these shifts.
Cheers,”
The proof is in the pudding!
Recruitment for professional immigrants
In Canada, I was told I needed professional Canadian work experience to break into professional ranks. Yet, very few wanted to give applicants this experience. I had to get an MBA from a top school, with distinction on the deans’ list, to break into the top bank, and then a major consulting firm. In two separate countries, I had to study again just to break into the professional ranks.
Most professional immigrants cannot afford to study again or have their previous degrees and credentials accredited. As I mentioned earlier, at one point an accreditation body could not find my Russian school in their database. I gave up that process and studied again. I know taxi drivers who were doctors, lawyers, and architects in their home countries who cannot afford the re-certification process. They drive a car to care for their spouse and children, and families in their home countries.
Credit scores are not transferable between countries. Not even between Canada and the US. Even Canadian checks are often not cashable in the USA. I found that out the hard way. Buying a car and home is difficult, especially if you do not know when you will be asked to leave. Travel is very hard. There is always the lingering fear that some administrative error will lock you out or the laws may change while you are traveling. Some professional immigrants, like those on the H1B, are stuck to one employer and often for the same role. They cannot try new things nor can they accept promotions to better, but different, roles. The mind frays when it is not challenged. Often, in our peak years, most immigrants are stuck in the same careers
A mountain of paperwork
We become knowledge management experts as we have to keep a mountain of paperwork and original documents to support our movement. Our entire lives are archived and indexed in color-coded folders. We keep meticulous notes on all our travels. We keep all passports and even hundreds of pages of utility bills to prove we were where we said we were.
In just about every professional immigrant’s home there is a cupboard filled with legal documentation. This is often more valuable than their retirement accounts. It’s hard to open and keep retirement accounts knowing you could be forced to leave at any time, often selling at the wrong time. Planning is hard. It is based on the renewal of documents and visas.
Supporting extended family
It is not uncommon for children of immigrants to never meet their grandparents in person. I have seen my nephew only once in my life.
Most Western countries have rules, benefits, and perks that are not designed for cultures with extended families. I have seen many colleagues with kids allowed to leave early, while those without kids have to carry the weight. Yet, I also have many dependents, even if I do not have kids. Even bonuses and retrenchments take into consideration if employees have a partner and children. It almost never takes into consideration if you support numerous family members in your home country. Payments into your 401K are tax-deferred or tax-free for a Roth IRA account. Yet, the money I send home monthly often has the highest fees, going up to 30% in some cases. A professional immigrant’s definition of a family is usually much larger than the Western definition.
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Anxiety & sacrifices
Lack of certainty causes anxiety. Knowing we have so little control over our ability to care for ourselves and our families has negative health effects. Fear of losing our jobs and having to leave forces us to not rock the boat at work. I would come to work early and leave very late to constantly prove my worth. I would have done it anyway, but the pressure of being an immigrant creates this constant sense of instability in your life. Professional immigrants often see their talented spouses staying at home and missing their peak earnings years. Simple things like getting and keeping a driver’s license are difficult.
There is little financial freedom.
There is little future stability.
There is little flexibility.
The professional immigrant experience is a special experience. It is painful, and sometimes tragic, and it’s often our families who gain the most from our efforts. We sacrifice parts of ourselves to give them something better. We rent, so our parents can buy a house. We delay children, so our nieces and nephews can afford the experiences we want for our children. I do not think many people in the West can understand this. We are expected to fight so hard on so many tiring fronts.
Taking care of so many people is hard and expensive. In both banking and consulting, I would have had to have been a senior person at the top end of the pay scale to care for my family. And it would have taken years to achieve with little guarantee of it happening. Did I really want to work so hard for so many years hoping to make enough to support my family? And that is not even having a good life. It would have meant working flat out just to stay afloat and maybe get a Sunday off.
Another path to green card
If you want to explore following an alternative, faster path to green card and would like our support to significantly increase your chances to qualify for EB1A or a similar green card, you can either:
1) Join as a Legacy or Insider member and immediately start working through USA Immigration/Citizenship Best Practices From Our Most Successful Clients program. We recommend not delaying this, given the changes in immigration laws across the world. Start implementing what you learn right away while waiting for the upcoming EB1A Insider program to come out. The insights can also be applied when applying for a similar visa in other countries.
2) If you don’t want to be alone while doing the monumental mental work required to figure out a path to meet eligibility requirements, plus navigate all the obstacles along the way, you can apply to work directly with us as part of a 1-year program. In this executive coaching program, we figure out the critical path with you and work together to guide you through the critical path. In other words, we select the criteria we should work on meeting, design a critical path for you to become eligible, and then guide you as you progress through the critical path.
If you know anything about working with Michael and me, you will know that we often find solutions/ways for you to move forward that you haven’t thought about that can give you a real edge in life. Email [email protected] with additional details about your situation and your resume (in any format currently available) to start your application.
Please note that the objective of this executive coaching program is not to explain your achievements or merely compile documents. This is what lawyers do. If we work together, our role would be to help you create and achieve those things that would meet the conditions for the green card. Please note that we are not immigration lawyers and clients must use common sense and consult legal counsel when making decisions.
Learn more about the upcoming Insider program and executive coaching program here (please kindly note that due to some bug on the site that we just noticed and are working on fixing, the page takes longer to load): EB-1A Green Card – An Alien of Extraordinary Ability program.
Take care,
Kris Safarova
P.S. Access Insider or Legacy membership materials (our in-depth video/audio training library) on StrategyTraining.com (scroll down to membership options).
P.S.S. Would you like reading materials, too? Access the Strategy Control Room Advanced.