Adam D.: What I Did For My Summer Vacation

What I Did For My Summer Vacation
Jun. 25th, 2000

As many of you know, I've been away for a while. Parts of what you're going to read may seem totally fake, but believe me: not a word of this is false. It did actually happen. I often can't believe I experienced all of this. But I did. so here goes...

I left Calgary, where I was living and working previously, on April 26th, 2000. I was headed for Toronto. There, I would apply for a TN Visa, my key to the huge metal gate that is the US Immigration And Naturalization Services. (INS) Best known for not allowing a 6 year old Cuban boy to enter the US, I figured I had better chances than he did, since at least I had a secure job offer. From a great company too! Amazon.com.

That visa application would happen on the 28th of April. The plan was: apply for the visa, then board a plane to Seattle. Sounded fine. I had a support letter from Amazon, an additional support letter from one of the hiring managers, my résumé, the diploma I had earned from Trebas Institute For Recording Arts And Sciences, and my visa application fee.

(At this point, if you would like a further description of the actual Visa I was applying for, click here)

As a matter of preface: I had already made one application for this visa at the Calgary airport. I had been rejected there because the guy I got said that he personally would prefer to see a degree in Computer Science. Never mind that the actual Visa itself doesn't require me to have one. He just decided: I'd like to see that. So it was up to his opinion. This is why they spent more than seven years drafting all the legal wording of the actual trade agreement in the first place, but it still came down to this individual saying yes or no. That was something I didn't understand.

Further detail: I was applying as a "Science Technician / Technologist", working it into the Engineering definition. Which kinda vaguely makes sense given that it's IT / Web based work. This is literally the only category I fit into since I didn't have a Computer Science degree of any sort. There is a category for Computer Systems Analyst, but you require at least a Bachelor degree in Comp. Sci. No go for me.

So up I go.

A guard starts by taking my documents and handing them to a woman who takes them into her private office, where she reads them slowly and carefully. I sit in a waiting room. After about 20 minutes, I am called in. Asked to sit down. I am met with an extremely stern woman. She's direct, to the point. She informs me that I'm being recorded on video and audio. Her name tag says "M. Gach". I am glad I remembered it.

She asks me further questions regarding the nature of the work I have done, what I will be doing at Amazon, what level of training I received to get these jobs, etc. I answer all of them honestly, and briefly, with the exception of the nature of the work I do, since it's fairly abstract. Website Development is a broad term involving the use of a large variety of software solutions. The end result is a website. Well... what's that? That can be absolutely anything. In fact it can now be something read on a cel phone. Or some other portable device, as opposed to a PC in the traditional sense. So anyway I stick to the basics but make sure to include the fine points of what is involved, the steps that one needs to take, etc. She slowly (glacially, in fact) starts typing a rough reduction of what I'm telling her. I see a frown cross her face.

She gets up and leaves me, excusing herself. She leaves me in the room for ten minutes. When she comes back she seems aggravated. Angry with me. Somehow, I have upset her. She tells me about how she's seen hundreds of these applications come across her desk and she knows when there's an obvious case to be made that someone is eligible or not for a TN Visa. She says that not only does she feel that I'm not, under the category I'm applying for, but that she wants me to sign a sworn statement saying I would not ever be eligible for employment in the US under this Visa description.

I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. I ask if I can make a phone call first. Thn she really gets mad with me. "Huffy" was a word I used a lot in describing this encounter. She said "Fine if you don't want to sign a sworn statement then we won't make you sign one." She's shuffling my documents into a pile. She takes them out, presumably to make photocopies but I got the feeling it could just as easily have been to shred them. She eventually comes back and escorts me out. That's strike two.

Amazon's next plan was to send me to Windsor, Ontario. But they needed to regroup, figure out a better way to convince the INS that I was indeed the man for the job. So I spent the next several days (From April 28th until June 12th, in fact) living in a motel in Richmond Hill, a town on the outskirts of Metro Toronto. This is where my good friend Janet Gan and her family live. They were extremely helpful when I first showed up because I had run out of money for Hotels and Amazon couldn't wire me more until after the weekend (this was a Friday.) So Jan came and picked me up and her family made up a room in their house for me to stay until the following Monday. God bless 'em. So that Monday was when I took up residence in the Emerald Isle motel.

The next few weeks were spent waiting for the phone to ring. Excruciating. I ended up with new letters of support from everyone. New letters from my past employers saying that, yes, I did work for them and, yes, I was capable of doing this work some more. And a new letter from a few people at Amazon saying "we need Adam to do this specific work because, you see, he's done it before. Successfully, even." I collect all of these. I keep them organized. I make sure everything is in one huge envelope.

Finally, on June 11th, I take a Greyhound from Toronto to Windsor. Seven hours. Book myself into a hotel. Try to sleep. Can't. Next day, Monday the 12th of June, is my final attempt at applying for my visa. I will have a lawyer present with me this time - an alleged advantage. His name is Mr. Bill Dance.

So I go. Bright and early. I'm at the border by 9:00am. I wait for an hour before Mr. Dance and I go up. In that time, I can see everything going on around me. It's nowhere near as private as the other times I have applied. You see everyone's attempt, the discussion, and the result. I made a headcount, just out of interest's sake. 42 people when I sit down. More than half of these people have stacks of degrees - framed - in their arms. The rest have thick envelopes containing their documentation. They all appear very sincere (which I know is subjective.) The whole process per person appears to take an average of 25 - 35 minutes. In the whole time I wait, I don't see one person get approved. I have no idea what specific Visas they are applying for individually but they are all summarily escorted out of the building. Three of them are told - loudly - that they will not be allowed entry to the United States at all. It's incredible the way they handle these people. Extremely aggressive. Out of those three, two are some of the ones with the stacks of degrees.

Before we go he preps me. He says that the only chance we really have is a letter I have from a Web Developer who would be working above me - a Mr. Lopez - which outlines that he's aware of the specific nature of this work, that he has an engineering degree and a computer science degree (PhD. and a Masters) and that he feels I have representative skills in the work I've done. Fine.

Up we go. We meet with a fairly uninvolved man whose name I do not know, nor do I ever try to remember. (Mind you, I don't remember ever seeing a name tag.) Right off the bat he seems unimpressed. There's a lot of shaking of his head, shrugging of his shoulder. The lawyer does most of the talking at the beginning. Then I am asked about why I feel that Web Development is a form of engineering. I make the claim that it involves not just computer skills, but to a certain extent a mixture of design skills, layout ability, some programming, some database skills, and the ablity to operate a computer in a very specific way. In many cases, I continue, people these days can make websites that function perfectly well without a moment of knowing how to actually write anything like HTML or XML. They do it visually, the software spits it out. In those cases, I say to him, it's usually a non-professional doing it. But you're still incorporating a wide range of different technologies in order to come up with a specific result. If one were an architechtural engineer, one wouldn't necessarily need to be a bricklayer. One would need to know about bricklaying in order to decide whether certain bricks were appropriate for a type of building, etc. One would also need to have knowledge of drafting, design, maybe - to a certain extent - history. That is still considered a valid definition of engineering. It's also pretty abstract in some ways.

So he started nodding his head, left us. Came back. Asked if I had any documentation stating what salary I would be making. I said it was in the letter from Amazon's immigration specialist. And it was. He takes it back again, disappears into a room somewhere in the back. Mr. Dance asks me if I have anything else with my salary and benefits outlined on it. I say yes I do, but it's my hiring letter. He asks to see it. I show it to him. His first words: "This is a bad letter. You don't know that, but this is a bad letter. It makes it look like you're trying to work there permanently. We can't show him this." (Which I thought was the point. They're moving me there, for God's sake.)

Out comes the INS guard. Right away the lawyer shows him the hiring letter. (!!!!!) Literally ten seconds before he was telling me how damaging this letter would be to my case, then he shows it to the INS guard. He immediately takes it and walks back again. So much for the lawyer being beneficial. I am officially freaking out and I also realize at that moment that there is no way in hell that I am ever working for Amazon.com (let alone anywhere else in the U.S.) Sure enough: 15 minutes later I am officially escorted out of the building, loaded onto a returning bus, and deported from the US.

At this point I am kind of tense, kind of angry, and kind of relieved. Because at least I don't have to endure this excruciating process anymore. I get back to Windsor, and then have to wait for some more money to be wired to me in order to pay for my hotel. In the meantime, I must wait in whatever place I can find. Bus shelters, restaurants, lobbies, bookstores, you name it. I am constantly checking my bank balance. The money was supposed to be in my account by close of business in Calgary. It's now an hour past that. What now? Amazon's relocation people say there isn't anything they can do. So it looks like - to add insult to injury - not only am I not allowed into the US, I'm not allowed a place to sleep for the night.

Out of the blue, while I'm on the phone checking my bank again, a vaguely familiar man walks up to me. He was at the border crossing too, applying for a TN Visa as well. He says "I saw you at the border. I got rejected too. Could you use some help?"

I can't believe what I'm hearing. He offers to pay for my hotel room. I'm blown away. He does that, and takes me for a beer. His name, he says, is Russell Zack. We trade war stories and business cards. He was hired by a wireless internet company. He was apparently a very crucial member of their team. He had been going back and forth between Detroit and Windsor for a while and had his eyes on a house in Detroit, since it had become clear that he would be working for a Detroit-based company. He was refused entry for making it appear as though he were abandoning Canada by not maintaining a Canadian address. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but if one is hired to work in the US, and one is preparing to do so, shouldn't one actually live in a US address in order to do so? Isn't that the point? If it weren't: What should I be doing? Commuting to Seattle from Calgary? It takes 3 hours to fly there. I don't think I'm the only one who feels that that is misguided to say the least.

He continues and says that from the moment he saw me get escorted from the INS office, immediately all of the interviews going on seemed to take much less time, an literally everyone was refused. When I entered: 25 - 35 minutes (roughly). After I left: 5 - 10 minutes per. Some not even that. A brief look, no discussion. No. Out they go. We talked about this a bit. Out of the 42 people I saw when I entered, I had only seen one get approved. I had no idea what specific kind of Visa he applied for (his accompanying friend was also not approved.) Russ said he saw that one, and one more while I was being interviewed. All of the rest - including ourselves - were refused and escorted out. I saw five who were denied further entry to the US ever again.

He said, further, that one person was being refused their application because one page of their passport was a little crumpled. My jaw hit the floor. So you mean: you can have a valid passport and all of the proper documentation, degrees coming out of your ears, and you can still risk being refused due to a single page of your passport being crumpled? What else? Shoes untied? Shirt not tucked in?

Here's where I have a problem. Where we both had a problem. All year long, and particularly while I was being scouted by Amazon, all I hear and read about is the severe lack of tech workers in the US. How they simply cannot find enough people to fill these positions. Statistics apparently point to it getting worse before it gets better and the fear is that the US may lag behind in the Information Technology playing field. Fine. Further: I keep hearing about the big Canadian "Brain Drain", which is sucking away Canada's finest doctors, lawyers and IT workers. Fine again.

How is it possible to ever get into the US? There are a lot of statistics pointing to a lack of Computer Science graduates on both sides of the border, yet there are tons of people without that degree who still build the websites, maintain the servers and administer the databases that feed the Internet. Some of them are still in high school. Some of them are high school drop-outs. (In particular: Witness the gentleman who created Napster, the music industry's biggest overall threat.)

The problem I have is that there is no job description in the Nafta Visa information which begins to describe IT jobs properly. When your only option is "Computer Systems Analyst" and "Science Technologist", you are not going to get in using a TN Visa application. The problem with that is that there are monstrous caps on the more popular H1-B and H2-B visas. They had already been reached, the criteria is much more rigorous, and the odds of getting them are even slimmer. (Which is why they have those odd lotteries every year, now not available to Canadian citizens.) TN Visas often represent the only way for an American company to even think of filling their IT positions. And they simply won't be able to. Recruiters do not seem to be aware of this crucial shortcoming. They assume anyone who can build anything web related at all should be hirable under the blanket of TN Visa status. I think that's a crucial flaw in the international law that went into making the NAFTA Agreement. That's my opinion, but given that I had been refused already based on someone's opinion, it must carry at least a little weight.

So there it is. I spent the next several days trying to find my way into hotels again and again (my money didn't make it for another full day. My bank decided to reject the wire being sent. Why that is, I will never know, since they had already received four such wires. Whatever.) It was very caveman. Living on the street for the whole day, praying for something positive to happen. Baking in the 39 degree heat (Celsius. That's 102 F.) Unable to buy food, etc. I hope I never go through that again, no matter who is hiring. I eventually did get the money. Then arrangements were made to fly me back to Vancouver, which is where I am now writing this. I arrived on June the 14th, a total of 47 days after I first left Calgary.

The sad thing is, I have had more US companies make me offers of employment since I returned - and it's only been a couple of days. I now know officially that I'm flat-out ineligible to take them up on their offers. Not because I can't do the job, but because the INS feels that I don't meet their separate, inadequate and ultimately more decisive, criteria for that job. The recruiters I have told my story to can't believe it. All of them said they thought it was really easy to get a TN Visa. I told them about the numbers of people I saw being turned away for Visas of all flavors. Many of the recruiters I have spoken to said they hadn't actually used the TN Visa to get people in, but now they had to consider it because the number of Computer Science graduates was beginning to dwindle. So they knew there were talented people out there without degrees, and were assuming that it was a no-brainer to get them in on a TN-1.

I am in the process of disputing the results of my applications, since that is now part of my permanent record with the INS, and in fact with any border guard at US Customs. That means I now may have difficulties the next time I want to go to, oh, Disneyland or something. So we'll see what happens with that.

In the meantime: I plan on eventually putting up my photos from this trip, and the one I took to Japan. But that's another story....

Adam Drake's résumé is available online.

(May 8th, 2001)

This page has been seen by quite a few people and I've gotten quite a bit of feedback about it. In the year since all of this began, we have all witnessed the demise of the "dot com" industry and as I write this several major players have seen their hard work and investment of time, money and effort turn into lost money, laid off employees and a significant drop in the stock market (or worse: dissolution of their business.)

When I was first "hired" by Amazon, their stock was at a lofty 60.3. Today's quote (via Yahoo) is 15.49, which is actually up from a low two months ago of 8.3. That is a huge drop. Many people I know who did succeed in achieving visa status in the U.S. are still happily employed there, but very tense about their future prospects as a contining employee at the companies they work for.

I will continue to provide information at this site pertaining to tech immigration issues. I don't expect these things to change, and in retrospect I still have no aspirations of working in the United States. That "welcome mat" was particularly unwelcoming. I'll still visit though. If they'll let me.

In the time since that whole process began I went from Calgary to Toronto, then to Windsor, then Toronto to fly to Vancouver, and ultimately moved to Toronto. As it turns out the whole experience of being "stuck waiting" in Toronto showed me that it was a great city to live in. So here I am.

Here are a few related stories which I found interesting and which you also may find instructive regarding the present situation with the tech / Internet industry in the U.S. and how it relates to Immigration law in general.

As always, I .