To live is to suffer. And then we got our green cards.

8 long years.

We came to the US in 2013, on an H1B visa. Four kids, a couple of pets, lots of suitcases.

During my two years (2005–2007) at business school in Boston — we were a smaller family then — we greatly enjoyed our time in America and knew we’d want to be back. But back in the day, I was really in love with Russia and Moscow and the Russian economy was really hot so I went to Russia. But not everything worked out, and we eventually decided to leave. Not that our lives in America have been all success and joy, but we’ve never looked back.

The immigration journey through… Ah…. It’s hard to describe how difficult it’s been. At my first job in Silicon Valley, my company was going through restructuring. I wasn’t affected but they’d stopped sponsoring green cards. I changed jobs but got fired less than a year later. If you get fired, you only have a limited period of time to transport your visa, so I had a nerve-racking summer — it was 2015. Fortunately, I was able to find a part-time job.

Then I pursued entrepreneurship. That chapter of my life wasn’t successful either. Painful actually but I don’t regret it — it was a genuine effort, we had big goals and tried our best.

Years went by. We were not approaching our green cards. Numerous extensions, new filings, responding to requests for additional information, looming deadlines, delays, and so on. It’s not just the uncertainty that was daunting but on many…