This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Dec. 25, 2012 - This summer, Wei-Jen Chua Yankelevich left St. Louis for Washington, D.C., joining her husband and starting a new phase of her life.
Now, she’s working for the FDA and living in Bethesda, Md. But some things haven’t changed.
Yankelevich, originally from Taiwan, came to St. Louis in 2005 to study immunology at Washington University. As she applied for jobs and looked for ways to stay and work in the U.S., she found herself in an endless maze of paperwork with the immigration process.
This experience was documented in the second part of the Nine Network’s documentary, Homeland: Immigration in America, which focused on jobs.
Since the segment aired, Yankelevich married a U.S. citizen, but since the two were living apart as Yankelevich finished her studies, they were advised to wait until they were living together to apply.
And now, nearly half a year later, she’s still in an endless maze of paperwork.
“We just submitted our paperwork about a month ago,” Yankelevich says.
For months, she and her husband were stuck on several details of her application to change her status from a student visa to a legal permanent resident, which she can do based on her marriage. When she saw a local library offered immigration counseling from lawyers, she and her husband arrived early, stood in line, and in 15 minutes cleared up the questions they had.
Now, she has receipts assuring her that her paperwork is in process, but she has no idea how long that will take, or what happens next.
If anything, the maze she found herself in as a student seems even more vast now as the wife of an American citizen.
Yankelevich is currently working on a J1 visa, which is a worker exchange program. The FDA doesn’t apply for H1B visas for their employees, Yankelevich says, and so, for now, she has less than six months left to legally work in the country. After that, she’ll be able to stay in the country, she thinks, since her paperwork is in process. But she won’t be able to work.
“As of today, I will only have five months, so I’m crossing my fingers that my employment authorization card will arrive before May.”