About VisaBuilder
About
VisaBuilder is dedicated to helping you, the tech professional, founder, maker, engineer, to –
Take control of your own US immigration process, instead of passively awaiting a visa status at the whim of employers, sponsors, or the government.
Build a solid “extraordinary ability” evidence portfolio, that you can use to get an O-1 work visa, or an EB-1A green card, or both.
Work legally in the United States for your own company in O-1 status.
Fast-track your EB-1A “extraordinary ability” green card.
Live your American dream.
Come home, finally, to the place where you belong.
About You
Are you a tech industry professional with a dream of building an amazing product, contribution, or company in the United States?
Are you discouraged by the outmoded immigration barriers, that make it impossible to make any long-term plan here?
If you’re here in the US, is there a part of your brain that’s always on guard, even with a work visa? That can’t ever relax 100%? That’s constantly calculating a Plan B, because the life you’ve built here has such a fragile foundation?
Does your American dream feel like it’s on hold, maybe forever?
About the System
It’s a frustrating time for innovators. It’s not your imagination. Our antiquated U.S. visa system is slamming the door on the best and brightest of your generation.
But as a tech professional, you have a hidden advantage. There’s a good chance that you’re a systems person. You like analyzing structures. They intrigue you. You like to take things apart to see how they work. Systems make you curious.
U.S. immigration law, as crazy and cruel and fossilized as it is, is still a SYSTEM. It has its own bizarre internal logic. Like Cobol and Fortran, it’s basically an ancient legal codebase (and it dates from about the same era).
Like any system, it can be broken down into variables, decoded, analyzed, worked with, and used to make things. This is true even if the system is 20 or 30 or 40 years old. Even if it’s never updated. Even if common-sense immigration reform NEVER happens.
Are you the kind of person who can do this? If you can hack a solution from what’s available NOW, as ugly and imperfect as it is, then you can get to work right away.
You can take action. You can reclaim your agency. You don’t have to wait passively for a job offer, a sponsorship, or some fantasy of a “fair” immigration system.
The rewards can be rich. All the vast resources of the U.S. tech ecosystem can be at your fingertips. You’ll be welcomed with open arms by everyone who matters.
Your American dreams can take root and thrive. You can truly feel that you’ve come home at last.
About the O-1 and EB-1A “Extraordinary Ability” Visas
So what variables might make this possible? Let’s inspect our “ancient legal codebase,” Title 8 of the US Code and the Code of Federal Regulations.
The most striking thing we notice about all these archaic visa options, is that they mostly require someone ELSE to do something. Sponsor you, offer you a job, marry you, pick your name in a lottery. You’re the passenger, not the driver.
This is weird, right? Aren’t there any categories that reward the “American dream” qualities of initiative-taking, self-determination, and personal agency? That put YOU in the driver’s seat?
Surprisingly, there aren’t many. But underneath the complexity, there are a few hidden gems, including the O-1 “extraordinary ability” work permit and the EB-1A “extraordinary ability” green card.
Maybe you’ve heard of other tech professionals who structured their own O-1 or EB-1A case. You know, a “genius” visa.
They get to … aah, deep breath … relax. Stay in the US. Work for their own companies. Travel home and back, without heart-pounding fear. Breathe free. Live the dream.
That’s nice, right? But it’s hard to pin down how they did that. There’s a lot of dumb media hype about these so-called “genius visas” or “Einstein visas,” and not much practical information.
They’re impossible. So mysterious. So complicated. So expensive. They’re only for Olympians or Nobel Prize winners.
This is silly. The O-1 and EB-1A visa categories can be for YOU too. There’s a perfectly straightforward extraordinary-ability template for tech professionals. It’s not that complicated, once you know how to do it.
You don’t document your evidence package backwards. You build it forward. Give your adjudicator a LOT of exactly what they want. And optimize your presentation for a quick approval.
I’ll be asking you to do 7 things to build a winning extraordinary-ability evidence portfolio.
- Plan your case in detail, develop a storyline, and define your “field of endeavor” strategically.
- Create an awesome product, service, or contribution.
- Document the specific impacts of your thing upon the world at large.
- Publish some articles.
- Judge some competitions.
- Document your corporate leadership roles or your high salary.
- Win a competition, score a media interview, or apply for an exclusive membership.
Seven things. That’s it. 7 practical, concrete things that are 100% within your control. If you can create a successful product, service, app, or website, you have the skills you need to compile a winning evidence package for your O-1 or EB-1A visa.
As a US immigration attorney, extraordinary-ability specialist, veteran legal decoder, and long-time inhabitant of this bizarre alt-universe, I can teach you how to do this.
The key to making it work, is that you will in fact become “extraordinary.” You’ll build an excellent portfolio to prove it. If you’re partway there, I’ll show you how to go that last mile to optimize your chances of success.
For most high achievers, becoming extraordinary isn’t that difficult. It’s not a quick fix. It’ll take some patience, time, and effort. But compared to the other visa options presently available to you, it’s probably your most efficient route from Point A to Point B.
About Me
Hi, I’m Mary. I’m a corporate immigration lawyer and longtime “extraordinary ability” specialist. In the last few years, I’ve taken a break from active law practice. I’ve spent that time organizing my giant database of O-1 and EB-1A libraries, into a system that might help tech professionals tackle their toughest U.S. visa challenges. My background:
25+ years as a corporate immigration attorney, specializing in O-1 and EB-1A extraordinary-ability petitions for corporate executives, the tech and financial services industries, engineers, entrepreneurs, athletes, and the international sports industry.
7+ years as Counsel at Wolfsdorf Rosenthal, a top-ranked US corporate immigration practice in Chambers, US News, and Who’s Who Legal.
7+ years as Founder at SportsVisas, my own solo law practice providing US immigration solutions for Olympic and World Champion athletes, sports teams, owners, sponsors, governing bodies, and other members of the international sports industry.
7+ years as Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Trow & Kearney, a corporate immigration law practice serving AmLaw 100 and Magic Circle law firms, Fortune 500 companies, multinationals, and financial services firms. Head of the firm’s practice groups for audits-investigations, senior executive visas, and the sports industry.
5+ years as a federal litigator at Cadwalader, the oldest law firm on Wall Street, representing heads of state, foreign sovereign governments, international organizations, and even a sitting U.S. president, as well as Fortune 100 companies.
J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, serving as Notes Editor of the Virginia Journal of International Law.
Current member in good standing of the DC, MD, and US Supreme Court bars.
About My Database
Of all my cool experiences as an attorney, my favorite thing has been filing extraordinary-ability petitions. I love showcasing the amazing accomplishments of my clients, and showing THEM, as well as USCIS, how awesome they are.
My second-favorite thing is building systems. Evidence design systems. Immigration forms systems. Law firm back-office systems. Case tracking and billing systems. Library systems.
And, naturally, an extraordinary-ability system. This is a database to collect and analyze the critical components of successful O-1 and EB-1A cases. It’s captured, with ever-increasing accuracy and efficiency, the factors most predictive of quick approvals in extraordinary-ability cases.
The insights are fascinating, surprising, and remarkably consistent over many years of data collection.
These proprietary methodologies are the foundation of the VisaBuilder framework. Because I no longer file individual cases or enter appearances, I’ve got the energy to scale this knowledge – to share with you, the systems I’ve built, over many years of filing winning O-1 and EB-1A visa petitions.
I’ve updated them, obsessively, so that they’re current up to the minute (although USCIS isn’t exactly on the 24-hour news cycle – more like the 24-year news cycle).
I’d like to share the data and the methodology with you, and show you how it works. Then I want you to compile your own great evidence package.
About You, Again
Why focus on founders and engineers and tech professionals? I believe in you guys. I love your spirit. Your work ethic. Your energy. Your excitement when you arrive. Your certainty that you’ve finally come home. Your commitment to the ideals of the American dream.
You don’t have many visa options for the things you want to do. I want to make it a little easier for you, to build things in the United States. I want to help as many of you get here as I possibly can.
Please come. We need you here now, more than ever before. We need your energy, your ambition, and your ideas. We need your affirmation that YES, the American dream is real. It’s alive. It stands for everything that’s good and positive and productive in the human spirit. It means freedom, and innovation, and the opportunity to be the best you can possibly be.
Above all? We want to welcome you home, as soon as we can.
About Me
Hi, I’m Mary. I’m passionate about helping tech professionals build world-changing things in the United States.
After 25+ years as a practicing immigration attorney and extraordinary-ability geek, I’m creating VisaBuilder to scale my knowledge of how to win these cases – and how to navigate a broken system.
I’m excited to share my expertise in O-1 and EB-1A extraordinary-ability cases. My goal is to help you make your American dreams a reality.
More about me here.
Please come to the United States. We need you here more than ever. We need your passion, your initiative, your vision, and your ideals. I believe in you 100%, and I can’t wait to see the American dream you build.