Popagandhi

(A shorter version was originally posted on Mastodon here:)

In September 2018, my wife and I arrived in the United States to build our new lives. After 7 and a half years of paperwork, visa anxiety, job stress, we finally received our green cards in the mail this March.

From the moment we discussed moving to San Francisco, we knew that this was going to be a long game of sacrifices and major life changes. While we had a pretty comfortable life in Singapore, we knew that we had very little of a possible future together there. We don't have the same passport, it was getting challenging for her to get permanent residency in Singapore despite having spent a long time there, despite being half-Singaporean.

In the end, our decision to uproot and start over came down to this: my own country didn't provide any immigration benefits to the person I wanted to spend my life with.

So in 2018, we left. San Francisco was an easy choice due to my deep experience in tech. I found a job, and knew that as long as we were legally married somewhere, she could come too.

Based on the timelines that we knew about, from the experiences and stories of friends and family who had done this before us, we knew we were working with a ten-year timeline to try to get a green card. I'm not one of those people who lived all my life aspiring to live in America: far from it. I really didn't want to go. I had a very comfortable life in Singapore, even as a queer person. My Chinese and economic privilege brought me far there; the first few years of life in America were hell for me and I could not imagine ten years of that.

Ultimately, we took less time than a decade and the 7.5 years went by faster than that. San Francisco and the Bay Area generally started to feel more and more like a home. We struggled a lot logistically; we did not always know that we would succeed.

Here's how we did it.

Most people in my position come to the United States on H-1B. That route is now extremely expensive for employers (more than six figures in total cost, primarily from the new $100K fee for a new H-1B). It was never simple, but it is now it is a huge hassle. Finding an employer who will sponsor a H-1B was already challenging in the last couple of years. It is now, in my opinion, an option that is available only if you have specialized skills that the most innovative and well-funded technology companies need.

As a Singaporean, I have always had access to a different route: H-1B1. I've written before about the H-1B1.

The H-1B1 visa is easier to obtain and renew than H-1B, but it comes with tradeoffs (it is also only available to citizens of Singapore and Chile). It is a shorter duration, non-immigrant intent visa. It is useful (because you're not in the same H-1B lottery, and employers don't have to pay $100K for it, therefore you are technically 'cheaper' than a H-1B worker), and it is also easy to get started (I was typically able to get a new job, go back to Singapore, get a new visa, within a week or two), but transitioning out of this visa into more permanent status is challenging, unlike applying for a green card from a regular H-1B.

As I did not plan to live in the United States permanently at first, I wasn't too concerned about this.

Sometime around 2024, San Francisco and the Bay Area generally felt more and more like home. Due to career growth reasons, I also switched to an O-1 work visa for people of extraordinary ability to give myself more flexibility in this area. In early 2025, I had two green card applications in the pipeline: both the EB-1A and EB-2 NIW green card applications were approved. I self-petitioned my EB-1A, which is one of the few employment-based paths where you do not need an employer, and my previous employer petitioned for the EB-2 NIW for me when I started my full-time role there.

All three paths, O-1, EB-2 NIW and EB-1A are challenging: you have to prove that you have special skills and experience in a specific domain. Due to my 18+ years of work experience in a technical area, I was able to prove in all three applications that yes, I deserve an O-1 visa and also green cards (multiple). Ultimately, as the 'line' for 'converting' my green card approval with my EB-1A application was much shorter than the EB-2 NIW, this is the one that I 'used' to complete the final step: actually receiving the green card. This is called the 'adjustment of status' process. If you are outside the U.S. when this step happens, for example if you're married to a U.S. citizen but living abroad together, you'll do 'consular processing.' When you hear anecdotes like 'people from India / China have to wait deacdes or a hundred years to get a green card', it means they're stuck at this step: they've gotten a green card approval through work, but they cannot actually receive the green card for the next decades or a hundred years, as they are in a much longer line (this line is based on country of birth).

When I submitted my EB-1A paperwork in January 2025, I weighed it as a joke: it was almost six pounds in weight. I was inspired to work on my own EB-1A application as I'd read several blog posts about how to do this, felt I met the criteria, and didn't want to spend 10-20 grand on an immigration attorney for this piece. In my next post, I'll write about my own EB-1A self-petition adventure and how I did that.

For years, our lives were organized around immigration constraints. I felt a deep fear of losing any job, and as jobs started to feel less and less secure through Covid-19 and the poor job markets of 2024- onwards, I started to feel I had to make plans to never be in a position where losing a job meant I had to leave. I like describing this part of my life as, 'as an immigrant, I had to have backup plans for my backup plans.' Indeed, I did.

The general rules were:

1. Keep employment stable enough to avoid being in a position where we had to leave suddenly
2. Plan around the 60-day layoff clock: if that could not be avoided, we needed to have a backup plan immediately
3. Retain excellent legal counsel: your employer's attorney isn't your attorney, so best to get yourself one, even if it's expensive, it's worth every penny
4. Keep personal copies of everything: every visa stamp, every passport, every I-539, every I-797C, every communication from USCIS (all of these acronyms will make sense to you when you are in the process)
5. Budget for filing costs, travel, and uncertainty: a few times, we had to leave the U.S. to get back to Singapore to get a new visa by a specific time.
6. Use almost all of my American paid vacation time (I was lucky to have jobs with paid vacation time!) to return to Singapore to procure new visas, visa stamps, stay in status always and never overstay

On 3: we always had to prepare enough resources to retain my own immigration counsel. Immigration attorneys provided by employers are there to provide immigration advice primarily for your employer: they don't need to have your best interests at heart. I needed someone whose only job was to watch out for our immigration interests and our household's stability. That was money well spent, because when it came time to do the 'adjustment of status', we could show that we followed the law and did everything right. This would have been extraordinarily difficult without additional counsel.

For the first few years, our lives were defined by the work visa renewal grind. Your mileage may vary, as if you're on an O-1, H-1B or L-1, it might feel less.. grindy. (The tradeoff of getting an 'easy' work visa is also that I had to spend more time and resources getting it renewed more often, as it was much, much shorter. They were valid for 18 months at a time, and you get 'stamped in' to the country for 12.)

For this entire period of 7 and a half years, we lived on one income. My spouse could not legally work during this stretch. We knew this going in, and we planned around it: she completed college and grad school while we lived frugally in our Tenderloin apartment. We traveled mostly by transit and on foot and bike.

Now that we no longer have those job restrictions, she can take any job in her field. Just in time, too. As a newly minted psychotherapist, she has plenty of job opportunities in the Bay Area that she now does not need a visa for.

We did everything 'right'. I'm proud of it. But it's still one of the hardest things we've ever done logistically and emotionally. Many days, I felt like giving up.

Any form of international immigration is challenging, hard and difficult. Any form of international immigration also requires skills, planning, paperwork, privileges and resources. The simple and unfair lottery of birth also factors in a major way, no matter where you are from and where you are moving to.

Some things that helped me:

1. I was not born in a country with extreme visa backlogs (like India, China, Mexico, the Philippines).
2. I had a passport that was generally treated with low suspicion.
3. I had never previously been denied a visa.

Some things that did not make it easy:

1. Being in a queer cross-national marriage in systems that were not built for us. Even to get married at all, we had to have the resources to go to another country (New Zealand) in order to get a visa for another country (the U.S.)
2. Living in constant fear that losing a job or missing a procedure or making a visa mistake could cost us months or years, or worse, disqualify us entirely.

In 2022, one of my last work visas was approved in Singapore but my spouse's was not. We were separated for months with no clear plan or path for reunification. One day, I'll write more about this in detail, but it showed me that immigration dysfunction in the U.S. is truly a bi-partisan issue, and I am skeptical of anyone who thinks otherwise.

While trying to navigate all of this, I was thankful for some of my privileges and resources, but I also saw how immigration issues can separate families, create life-changing anxiety, and prevent people from starting or continuing their lives with their loved ones. It got me to dive into how 'legal' immigration was also being suppressed and reduced, even though claims were being made about how 'they' were 'only' against 'illegal' immigration. That's another story for another time.

There are many things about the U.S. that feel deeply broken. But this was still the first place that gave us a legal foundation to build a shared life as a queer couple from two different countries that both didn't recognize our marriage. We looked at some Singaporean-foreigner queer pairings back 'home' and acknowledged that we did not want a future full of no legal recognition, and forever visa runs. We felt especially justified in this decision when, in early Covid-19 times, many of our straight and queer friends who had foreigner spouses with different visa statuses, lost jobs and had to leave and they were separated for many months or years, during that horrible period of no international travel anywhere.

Did we have other options and opportunities? Probably. For various reasons, this one still felt the one where we could both thrive in, after the initial period of logistical and emotional suffering. It felt like a hazing period but with a clear view of what could happen after that. I don't say this lightly. I don't recommend it for everyone, but it felt like that for us, and we still chose it.

Before coming to the U.S., I was aware of friends who were in the green card process and therefore could not leave at all, sometimes for years. As I used to travel internationally for life and work a few times a month (or week?) I found this unusual. I used to ask them: is America worth it?

In 2026, my answer is yes, with caveats.

It was brutally difficult. It was grossly expensive. It caused us a great deal of stress. But now, coming out successfully on the other side, it was worth it for us. It may not be for you.

My wife is about to graduate and become a psychotherapist after world-class training at a great public university that we could afford here.

I am about to start another software company, and permanent residency status changes what I can build and how I can build it. We can now plan life in years, not visa cycles. I've never started a software company in San Francisco, and I suspect that now that I can do this easily, that already impacts (positively) many possible outcomes for the company I'm about to start. (I'm being cryptic, but it's a software company in a space that is 'hot' right now, that aligns my passion and values, and where the majority of funding for this type of work is happening right here where I am.)

I still think, often, about what we left behind. What I left behind, specifically, as a person from a 'good country' with a 'good passport' who had all of the comforts and privileges of being able to have any job I want, do anything I want, back there. But that utopic ideal of my 'home' was also a mirage: none of it was a vision of life that included my spouse in it.

So this is really our life and our home now. It really, really sucks in some ways, but it means the world to me that we have emerged from the other side of a very long and seemingly unending tunnel.

1. We celebrated Lunar New Year a few weeks ago, and as usual, I was 8000 miles away from home. What does home even mean now?

2. I have not left the U.S. for three years. That must be some kind of record for 'no international travel' for me.

3. This month feels like the start of a new season of life. Our 8 years of 'visa anxiety' has come to an end. The pets we started our lives here with are no longer here.

4. Sabrena is done with grad school soon; we can finally travel

5. In a bit of a 'life reset', the events of no 3 also mean that I now have a lot more control over my life

6. I seem to have promised a variety of friends, trips to see them once we were done with our paperwork

7. Right now, that list comprises: Mexico City, Guadarajala, La Paz, Mumbai, Surabaya, Kuala Lumpur, Kathmandu, Bangalore and Chennai

8. In short, I'm right back where I started!

In a world that feels like it is coming undone, I find a lot of solace in making things with my hands. The biggest breakthrough I developed was when I decided I don't need to be good at everything that I do. I can just.. do things.

That goes against my programming as a competitive over-achiever, but it was ultimately what gave me the mindset I needed to.. do the things I need to feel less shitty about the world.

Things I did:

• Attended an intro to pottery class
• Started a doodle notebook
• Picked up a water brush and a palette of colors
• Learned how to develop film (black and white, and color) at home
• Learned how to print film negatives of various sizes in a darkroom (black and white, as well as color)
• Fold origami
• Code this website entirely by hand

Some things stuck more than others. I'd like to learn bookbinding, as well as to go deeper into pottery. Like I love saying: my hobby is having hobbies. I don't want or need to ever hustle with my hobbies.

I think I am just done with hustle, full stop. I enjoy making and building things, whether it is software, or a thingamajig. That is enough for me.

In late April 2025, I had the opportunity to talk about my interesting career trajectory 'From Fintech to Fin Tech'.

If you told me a decade ago that I would be working at an aquarium, I don't think I would know what to think. I hadn't discovered my love for marine life, puns, or marine puns at the time. My life is so much richer now.

Here's the video.

In January this year, I wrote this about how I felt being away from 'home' for the Lunar New Year again:

This lunar new year eve, I am usually home in Singapore.

I am seven years old, and I wake up to the smell of roasted chilli, poached chicken, and cabbage soup.

There’s a bustle in the kitchen. My grandpa is stirring a pot, making his signature chilli paste that we all won’t eat our food without. My grandma is fussing over the roast duck, soy sauce chicken and whole fish and prawns.

I walk into the kitchen, in search of a snack. No matter how busy they are, they always have time to feed me.

Have some hae jor, beancurd rolls stuffed with pork, shrimp and chestnuts. Have a bit of everything.

My grandma calls me her ‘little baby mouse’, because I eat so slowly and carefully.

I watch TV until my cousins arrive. I put on my good clothes (but I have to be forced to do it). I greet everyone: first in Teochew, then Mandarin, then English.

Happy new year! Happy new year! Happy new year!

Eat, rub my tummy, smell everything, laugh and poke my grandpa’s tummy. I do that every day, but especially on lunar new year, he is especially jovial and happy. I tell him he looks like a fat Buddha, and he laughs.

If you hold your chopsticks that way, ah girl, you are going to move very far away from home. Very far away from me.

How right he was.