The story begins with me, V, receiving an offer from a big company after graduating from school. According to US law, I needed to apply for an EAD card, a proof of authorization to work in the United States. After filing all the necessary paperwork with the visa bureau, I found myself in a nerve-wracking waiting period that stretched on for weeks.
As the employment start date approached, I still hadn't received my EAD card due to the slow processing within the bureau, which meant I couldn't legally start working. Faced with this dilemma, I decided to take action. I found some suggestions online: one was to have the company HR write a letter emphasizing the financial loss if I couldn't start on time, and the other was to write a letter myself, stating my financial difficulties. However, the company's HR, indifferent to my plight, left me with only the second option.
Upon further research, I discovered that writing a letter about financial difficulties was essentially futile. The visa bureau would simply respond with a boilerplate rejection, citing the financial affidavit I had submitted with my student visa application. This left me with no choice but to postpone my employment start date by two months, losing a significant portion of my unemployment grace period. The rejection letter felt like an insult, leaving me angry and frustrated, yet unable to pinpoint the exact source of my anger.
5 Years later, I read an article explaining that the US immigration system is deliberately complex, making it easy to exploit immigrant labor. This revelation helped me understand my anger: I felt exploited by both the government and my employer. The HR's refusal to assist, the company's lack of daily orientation, and the two-month postponement despite my EAD card arriving only ten days late were all contributing factors to my sense of helplessness and insult.
