These past few weeks a lot of people have been asking me how things are going, and I have found it very difficult to walk everyone through everything that has happened and what I am doing now.

Background

I was born in Italy, which makes me an Italian citizen. My mother and I moved to the United States, specifically to Greenville, South Carolina, halfway through 7th grade. I will write about why one of these days, but that’s beside the point for now. This matters because, on a basic level, I am a non-permanent and documented immigrant from Europe, even though I grew up and lived in the US for almost a decade.

Applying to College as an International Student

When people like me apply to college, they have to apply as international students, even though they have lived in the US for a huge chunk of their lives. This poses a few challenges:

International students are put into a separate pool for admissions (since American colleges mainly admit American students, which makes total sense) so the odds are already lower.
Almost all American colleges (except for Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Dartmouth, and Amherst) are “need-aware” for admissions. That means that during the admissions process, the financial aid requested by the student is a factor in admissions. To what extent that impacts the overall admissions decision no one knows exactly and it depends on the college. Overall, the established trend is that it makes really hard to get in if you need anything close to a full ride.
There is a lot of additional paperwork involved in the application in terms of VISAs and that sort of thing. It’s especially weird for an international student living the US since the process assumes that we live our countries of origin so often you have to send additional info clarifying you actually live in the US.

The Results of Applying the First Time

When I applied back in December of 2013, I used QuestBridge: one of the most prestigious scholarship programs for high-achieving and low-income students. If you get it, it allows you to apply to college for free and gain special consideration during the process. Many students end up at Ivys and other prestigious colleges on full rides, yet most of those students are US Citizens.

I applied to 21 colleges, which included all the Ivys but Columbia (they have a ratchet website) along with MIT, Stanford, Vandy, Georgetown, Duke and a few “safety” schools. I wanted to diversify my chances, so not only I applied to a substantial number of colleges, but also to colleges with very different admission rates. I mean, what are the chances of getting reject from every single college right? Yet I got rejected from 19 and waitlisted at 2, which by that time no longer offered financial aid.

Why did this happen? I mean, I was a high achieving student in extra-curriculars, I was pretty good academically but not great. Maybe that’s why, but since then I have met many other students, far more academically impressive than I ever was, that suffered a similar fate. Generally, the theory among the immigrant community is that the results of the college admissions process have do to with the challenges laid out earlier.

The Entrepreneurial Adventure

All of this is fine of course, because I ended up going through The Iron Yard’s Web Design program and founding Alpha-Sci. We even expanding to 5 people, I moved to Palo Alto and even became a semi-finalist for the Thiel Fellowship. Therefore it wasn’t that bad at all! We were going strong until the variables changed drastically, and I am talking about the immigration system.

My Current Status

My mother is here in the US under an E2 VISA, which by extention gives me one as her dependent, as explained by Wikipedia

“Spouses and unmarried children under 21 years of age, regardless of nationality, may receive derivative E-2 visas in order to accompany the principal alien”

It’s really awesome and all, except for a little thing I never really thought about growing up, which is that

“Children under 21 cannot apply for work; only the spouse of the E-2 holder can”

This has worked very well for years, and I am covered under this VISA until I turn 21. The initial plan was that by the time my E2 VISA would expire I would be in college and would thus be covered instead by a 4-year F-1 VISA. Clearly that was not an option, but that’s fine because now I just turned 19 so it gives me time to figure stuff out.

Working in the US

As mentioned earlier I am not allowed to work, because the only way an immigrant without a greencard can work is through an H-1B VISA and those are hard to come by these days:

The current law limits to 65,000 the number of foreign nationals who may be issued a visa or otherwise provided H-1B status each fiscal year (FY). Laws exempt up to 20,000 foreign nationals holding a master’s or higher degree from U.S. universities from the cap on H-1B visas. In addition, excluded from the ceiling are all H-1B non-immigrants who work at (but not necessarily for) universities, non-profit research facilities associated with universities, and government research facilities

Of course, far more than 65,000 foreign workers apply for H1B VISAs every year, which has turned the sytem into a lottery: basically if you apply, the USCIS randomly picks 65,000 people that actually meet all the requirements. The guy that developed new cancer treatments gets the same chances as the average biology college grad, so the lottery is kinda of intese, which is why Silicon Valley is pushing for the removal of the cap.

The odds are getting worse and worse, because sometimes you don’t even get to participate in the lottery. This past year they closed applications after 6 days from the start date because USCIS received 233,000 petitions…far more than the 65,000 + 20,000 total H1B VISAs available. A quick math check shows that the chances of getting an H1B are at a very comforting and encouraging ~36%. Let me repeat: 36%!

Change of Plans

My initial plan was to grow out the company as an “unpaid intern” (my VISAs allows me to do that) until we were big enough to file my own H1B VISA (thanks to the Obama Administration it’s now a possibility). However the odds tanked this year and since immigration reform appears very unlikely (since legal and labor-related immigration reformed is packed into highly controversial reforms for undocumented immigrants) the projects will only get worse as time passes by.

In order to solve this proble, here a few things to keep in mind:

Having a Master’s Degree makes the most sense now, because it increases your chances to ~70%, otherwise you are stuck with the 36%.
The caliber of the school has no impact whatsover over your odds, since it’s a lottery.
Speed is of the essence, since the situation only gets worse every year, so the regular route of college + maters makes little sense it takes 5 years.
STEM is the way to go, and Silicon Valley is the place where companies are not only welcoming towards high skilled immigrant workers, but they are also used to dealing with the immigration process.

For this reason, the team and I decided to close shop. My co-founder recently became a father, and one of our engineers and I need to really focus on getting this immigration situation sorted out.

The Paths and Options Available

Before showing you my plan, I am going to layout what’s possible and pro/cons of each option:

Going back to Europe -> graduating from college there -> working in Europe for an American company -> get sponsored by the American company to come to work in the US
- PRO
  - Pretty easy to do
  - Relaxed lifestyle European style
  - Super cheap college tuition
  - A friendly as opposed to a hostile system
  - Almost unlimited opportunities to work
  - Potentially being a big fish in a small pond
- CON:
  - No actual gurantee I will ever actually be able to come to the US
  - A culture and society unfriendly to entrepreneurship and ambition
  - Smaller talent pool to tap into for ambitious technological projects
  - Increased difficulty to build a family and lifestyle in America (which is really important to me)
Going to community college -> transfer to an affordable 4-year university -> applying for an H1B
- PRO
  - Living in the US
  - College parties and social life
  - Quasi-affordable education
  - Learning academic concepts from humans as opposed to only digital auto-didactism
  - Facilitated envirorment to find a wife
  - F-1 VISA
  - Time to think about what to do
  - Potentially being a big fish in a small pond
- CON
  - 4 years means even lower chances on an H1B VISA
  - Lots of time spent taking classes I don’t need or I am interested in
  - Still kind of expensive
  - Limited opportunity to work
Going to a 4 year college -> getting a Masters degree -> applying for an H1B
- PRO
  - The traditional college experience which is fun
  - Larger safety net since a 4-year degree from a traditonal university carries some economic signaling power for the job market
  - Much higher changes of an H1B visa since Masters Degree holders are put in a separate pool
  - More time can mean higher chances of immigration reform passing
- CON
  - Ridiculous cost, both financial and temporal since we are talking about 5-6 years of my life
  - More time passing by increases the chances of even the special H1B pool becoming oversaturated
Get a bachelor online in a year -> get a Masters in a year from a traditional university -> apply for the H1B
- PRO
  - Saves a lot of time and money
  - Reduces my risk exposure to the possibility of the Masters H1B pool becoming oversaturated
  - Very hacker-like
- CON
  - Online degrees are great but not yet as acccepted or economically powerful as regular degrees (although this would be offset by the traditional Masters)
  - Limits my ability to benefit from potential immigration reform 3 or more years from now
Get married -> Get a Greencard
- PRO
  - Long-term solution because it’s a greencard and not a VISA
  - Pretty inexpensive from a financial standpoint
  - No caps or risk of not getting it
- CON
  - It’s hard to find women in Silicon Valley, especially women who reciprocate my interest in them
  - Getting married is a committment I take very seriously
Invest $1m in an American business or $500k in a business in an economically depressed area -> Get a Greencard
- PRO
  - Long term solution
  - I get to create jobs and make America better
  - Almost no cap (unsurprisingly this is the most under-granted Greencard in the program)
- CON
  - Expensive AF!!!!
  - If I haven’t said this already, it’s expensive AF!!!!

Which option would you go for? I don’t really care, because I already decided on option #4, hopefully later on in my life doing either #5 or #6.