A case study for immigration reform: My 27-year journey to becoming a U.S. citizen

Last week, more than 27 years after coming to the United States to attend 9th grade, I was sworn in as a citizen. My twin four-month-olds were super dressed up for the occasion; they could not quite wave American flags, but they were full of smiles. 

In a way, it felt quite anticlimactic - I had lived in the US for so long, I’ve felt that regardless of whether I was a citizen or not, I would “support and defend the Constitution and laws.” 

My immigration story is the quintessential example of a disastrous immigration system in desperate need of an overhaul. Since 1992, I’ve been on a patchwork of visas in a complex effort to stay “legal” in the US (and yes, though this may sound controversial, the right words are legal and illegal). Often I had to make choices that sacrificed career goals and personal life. Staying legal was only possible with the support of a great many people, for which I am eternally grateful. 

Even though I had attended great schools, had great work experience, published a book, and started a company, 10 years ago I still did not have a clear path to a green card. Eventually I had to leave the company I had helped create to find a way to stay in the country. . 

Broadly speaking, if you exclude the so-called “genius” and investor green cards (which are few in number), there are only two paths to permanent residency: family sponsorship (for most people this is through marriage) and employer sponsorship (we award about 140,000 green cards through job skills a year). For me, marriage wasn’t an option (gay marriage was illegal until 2015), and only path was employer sponsorship. This requires a sponsoring company to jump through antiquated job advertising hoops (e.g., placing an ad in a local newspaper, run radio ads) to get permission from the Labor Department to offer a permanent job to a foreigner (a process called PERM). 

When I first went through the PERM processes in the late 2000s, it was at the company I had started (TaxiMagic, now known as Curb). We were a growing startup hiring many people - but none of that would count toward the PERM. Some may argue that this type of system ensures that only the most qualified people get an employment-based green card. In reality, the PERM process was built for the economy of 40 years ago; who today looks for a job in a newspaper ad? 

When TaxiMagic applied for my PERM in 2007, my status as a co-founder got in the way. The PERM application would ask if the candidate owned more than a certain percentage of the company, and if so, it would go through special review and likely be rejected. The argument was that if ownership is high, then the employee controlled decision making, and the application may not be for a real job opportunity. Since my ownership was large enough, the Labor Department rejected my PERM application. I had about 18 months left on my H1b,  lawyers thought another application would have the same result, so I had to quickly figure out an alternative path.  

Eventually I ended up leaving the company I helped start and picked a new job primarily based on how good the new company was at managing immigration issues. Fortunately I ended up at  Google, where we went through a successful PERM and got my green card approved. 

But it would be another seven-plus years before I could get citizenship, thanks to a five year mandatory wait and then a 17-month delay for processing (plus about 12 months’ pause as I was busy running my second startup).

The lesson in all this is that our immigration system isn’t built in a way to get great talent to contribute to our economy and society. In 2007, there was a bi-partisan proposal for a points-based immigration system that would have changed this (while also solving key problems faced by more than 12 million illegal immigrants). Had that proposal, or similar bills in 2013 and 2017, passed, we’d be in a very different place today as a country. Clearly our country and economy has benefitted from immigrant entrepreneurs.   

Of course, we can’t simply start in 2007. For better or for worse (from my POV, worse), President Trump has happened, and he’s likely to be re-elected. Today, the conservative position on immigration enforcement is far different than it was a decade and a half ago. However, the plight of undocumented immigrants is also far greater, and will be even more so if the Supreme Court rules against DACA. The political reality is that there is a compromise that can be achieved between strong enforcement and legalization which will benefit everyone. 

I cherish that we can live in a country and in a time when impossible things are possible. The fact that the majority of the most successful startups only exist because of immigration and almost 60 percent of Sequoia's portfolio companies have at least one foreign-born founder are incredible examples of this. Hopefully both Republicans and Democrats can stop holding people hostage to a terrible immigration system and work together to create a new one for the 21st century. In the meantime, I am really excited that I finally get to vote — specifically for Mike Bloomberg — in the California state primary in March.