Hi,
I was wondering if there’s any other options out there, or marrying a USC is my last chance to get legal?
Here’s my story. Came to US in Dec07 with an H2B visa. In Apr08 extended it with a new employer (a housekeeping company subcontracted by a big resort). After 2 weeks convinced him of switching me to a higher position (office), since I wasn’t comfortable working physically. There I advanced fast, developed new methods and basically was doing in minutes what other 3-4 employees were doing in hours.
In Nov08 extended my H2B visa again (it was now valid till Apr08).
My employer applied one more time for an H2B for me, and we were already planning to start switching to an H1B and apply for an employment based GC.
The deadline approached, but there was no answer from DHS. I was checking their website daily, but all I could find was DHS’s director’s apologies for the delays due to high workload and stuff like that. Then, around late Jun08, DHS sent a letter informing us about my visa extension being denied .It was around the time when recession hit US and there were lots of talks about americans losing their jobs and the decreasing need for guest workers. It was also around that time that everybody giving high chances for CIR to be passed, so I took no actions.
Right now the situation at my job is as follows: there are 2 competing housekeeping companies (one small, which I’m employed with, and another big one). The big boss from the resort likes the other company, and would get rid of us on the first occasion. But his bosses don’t let him, because according to statistics and scores, we’re outperforming the big company big time in terms of accuracy and timing, mainly because of me. There’s some accounting/IT stuff that I developed, and tried to teach other people how to do it, but they just can’t get it, it’s too complicated for them. And I have to do it every single day. Even on my days off I spend around 1-1.5 hours preparing those reports online. I’ve been doing this for the last 3 years. If I’ll miss a single day, the consequences will be drastic.
In this way, since, in case I’m deported, the company most likely won’t be able to stand the competition and will lose the contract, which will contribute to the creation of another 100+ jobless americans. Moreover, resort's overall rating will decrease.
I’m from Eastern Europe. White male, 29, unmarried, no criminal record.
So I was wandering, in this circumstances, can I apply maybe for a deferred action or something else, that would adjust my status, and would allow me to continue my H1B path to GC?