Hi! I’m Sylvia Gorajek, the Founder of America Unlocked. Welcome to my immigration story: a tale of perseverance, unexpected turns and, finally, triumph. What you’ll read below, or hear in the episode above, is a 12-year odyssey through the American immigration system that tested our resolve, drained our savings and taught us invaluable lessons about navigating self-sponsored visas.
I’m sharing this deeply personal journey, with all its heartbreaks and victories, because I know firsthand how isolating and overwhelming this process can feel. Every visa denial, every lawyer consultation and every moment of uncertainty shaped not just our path to citizenship, but also my passion for helping others avoid the same pitfalls.
This is why I founded America Unlocked: to create the resource I desperately needed during those challenging years. As you read about our rollercoaster ride, remember that your journey doesn’t have to be this hard. America Unlocked gives you the support and practical knowledge I wish I’d had.
Now grab a cup of coffee and settle in. This story has its tough moments, but I promise a happy ending!
P.S. There’s a TL;DR version as an Instagram carousel at the end!
🇺🇸 No Invitation, Just Determination
My husband and I arrived in the U.S. in 2012 on a tourist visa. We had visited America several times before, and during this stay we decided to explore ways to stay longer, legally, and contribute to America’s economy.
Our visa journey was the “hard way”: no job offer and no family sponsorship. Simply put, no one invited us to the USA.
We relied only on our foreign business and artistic experience producing commercial films in Poland, plus our motivation and goal-oriented mindset.
Was there a visa route for us? If we started a company, would we qualify for a visa? We had countless questions and desperately looked for someone to answer them.
📍 San Jose, CA, November 2012 🤯 Dead Ends and Dollar Signs: The Lawyer Maze Begins
Our first calls to a recommended Polish lawyer were a miss. She said she didn’t see a way. She specialized in family visas, so maybe she didn’t know, I thought. A second call, to another lawyer in San Francisco, found no path for us either. Both consultations were paid. Lawyers charge around $300 to $400 for 60 minutes of conversation. Phone calls were a challenge too. We were new in the USA. A big part of American vocabulary was completely foreign to us, and legal terms were a beast! We tried to take every call together, sharing the phone, one of us talking and the other taking notes, and then we analyzed everything together.
Then a call to a recommended business visa lawyer in New York. We heard: “A tough case. One of you would have to be employed by a well-established company in the USA, and both parties would have to meet specific conditions.” We didn’t know any entrepreneurs, and we didn’t want to force ourselves to work for someone else and be dependent. We wanted to make our own films and commercials. The only business owners we knew were other filmmakers, and their companies were too small to sponsor an H-1B visa.
💰 The E-2 Gamble: High Stakes and Higher Costs
After a few weeks, we ended up with a San Francisco firm that saw just one chance: the E-2, the so-called “investment” visa.
According to them, we would need to invest tens of thousands of dollars in a new U.S. company producing commercials. “But we don’t have tens of thousands of dollars for something like that!” we replied.
“It’s not just cash that counts, but also company equipment. Besides the investment, you also need a good business plan. Come back to us with one.” A $2,000 retainer, and off we went.
A business plan… how do you even write an American business plan? That’s weeks of intensive work on the plan alone. We didn’t have that time while in the USA on a tourist visa. The clock was ticking, and we needed to make contacts and build an action plan. So we posted an ad on Craigslist. For some reason (probably the price 😉), we picked what turned out to be a forest man from Santa Cruz (gosh, we were running around like headless chickens!). He lived in a cluttered apartment near the ocean. But he was American, and he seemed to know what he was talking about. He proposed a plan and an overall outline.
A month passed and the business plan was written. All the Polish papers about the investment transfer were collected and ready for translation.
Then the law firm suddenly went silent. Time was running out. An email arrived: “Upon further analysis, we find that this is not a strong enough case for an E-2 visa. We don’t see clear chances of getting it and…”
…and, basically, good luck. We couldn’t believe it and got hot flashes 🥵. The firm dropped us after almost two months of working together? Our tourist visa would expire in two months, and then what? 🤯
They returned part of the payment, but we had still wasted money and valuable time. So the E-2 wasn’t right for us? They had all our information from the start. The whole job was just putting it together. How were we suddenly not eligible?
We shook it off. All we could do was look for another lawyer and another way 🤷♀️
✨ A Ray of Hope: Discovering the O-1 “Extraordinary Ability” Visa
Through a Facebook recommendation, we learned about the O-1 visa for people with extraordinary ability, a promising option for Kuba’s filmmaking career in the U.S. The O-1 is granted to people with exceptional artistic, sports, scientific or business achievements at a national or international level. “That’s something new.” We dug deeper, and it did look promising! Maybe not a straightforward path, but if we presented the evidence of Kuba’s commercial film projects from Poland well, then maybe?
Why didn’t the previous lawyers mention this, knowing Kuba’s career history?!
The next day we went looking for an O-1 lawyer. After a consultation with a Los Angeles lawyer who charged $4,000 for the entire application, we began the intense process of gathering documents, recommendation letters and proof of Kuba’s achievements. Our O-1 lawyer said Kuba had a strong case, and that if we pushed hard, we’d make it in two months. We wanted to file while still in the USA so that, if we were refused, we could appeal and stay. Technically, it would be a change of status, not a visa. Meanwhile, we would grow our contacts and get to know the market and the industry.
But even with our lawyer’s super speedy responses, we didn’t make it within two months.
The tourist visa expired, and we went back to Poland to recover financially and mentally while we kept working on the application.
📍 Warsaw, Poland, April 2013
Loads of work, almost daily. We gathered dozens of recommendation letters from film and TV experts, and, unbelievably, one from director Agnieszka Holland, the Polish Oscar nominee herself! She said yes to our request for support. Working with Ms. Holland was one of the most pleasant experiences of the whole process, and she probably understood our pain and effort best. Many others in the industry were afraid to sign a recommendation for us. They didn’t want to deal with the American immigration office.
After four months in Poland, the application was ready. Our lawyer filed it with expedited processing, which cost an extra $1,500. Otherwise, we would have waited up to six months for a decision.
Two weeks later, a letter arrived saying USCIS needed more evidence ☹️
They didn’t accept the expertise in the recommendation letters. In other words, the letter writers weren’t qualified enough. How was that possible? Oscar-nominated Agnieszka Holland isn’t expert enough? And the TV networks, the institutions, the other filmmakers? They also questioned a few other pieces of evidence. We updated and added to the application.
Meanwhile, the Depeche Mode concerts in the USA we’d bought tickets for long ago were coming up. Determined not to miss them, we flew back to the USA as tourists.
📍 San Francisco, CA, December 2013 😭 Crushing Disappointment: The O-1 Denial
While in the USA, we sent our response to the RFE (Request for Evidence), pulling our hair out. What if they denied us? Every day, with a heavy heart, we checked the status online.
And then it came… a denial! 😭
We were devastated.
It meant we had only a few more months on a tourist visa, and we kept spending money on our stay without being allowed to work.
Our lawyer said there was nothing else he could do. So much time, so much work. By then we had been at it for about a year. And now what?
There had to be a way! Maybe our lawyer just wasn’t a good one? Giving up was not an option. In a panic, we looked for yet another lawyer.
A new San Francisco firm suggested the L-1 visa for managers transferred to a U.S. branch of their company, a solution nobody had mentioned before. Since we had a company in Poland, the lawyer said, we could transfer Kuba to the USA to open a new branch. That sounded logical. Why hadn’t anyone told us about this earlier? We paid yet another $2,000 retainer and started on the basics of the L-1 application with this new firm.
Meanwhile, the printed O-1 denial arrived. We couldn’t believe our eyes 🤦♀️ 🤦
The denial covered many more issues than our lawyer had told us. He had simply kept part of the immigration office’s reasoning from us! We realized some of the objections could have been fixed easily. Why hadn’t he told us about them? Didn’t he know we would get our own copy?
I called him and accused him of fraud. He defended himself, saying it wouldn’t have changed anything, but he immediately agreed to work for free on improving the application and filing it again. This time, I knew exactly how to fix several of the arguments. He made the corrections, and everything started to come together.
🎉 Victory at Last: The O-1 Approval Brings Tears of Joy
A month later, we got the O-1 approval! I sobbed the whole evening! 😭
We got a change of status to O-1 for two years. We couldn’t leave the USA without losing it, since it was a change of status and not a visa in the passport. But it gave us plenty of time to grow our network and look for another way. Kuba partnered with a local filmmaker, and we could cover our living costs in the USA.
📍 Redwood City, CA, April 2014 🌱 New Beginnings: My Tech Startup Takes Off in Silicon Valley
Meanwhile, my mobile app idea, Spray, took off in Silicon Valley. We found a partner, developed the concept, set up a company and secured our first $100,000 investment (from Netflix’s co-founder). But we needed a new visa to work on it. The O-1 covered a different kind of work and only applied to Kuba. To be on our new startup’s payroll, we needed a different visa. Jeez…
We kept checking our results in the visa lottery: not selected ❌. Since I was running a fairly popular blog about starting out in the U.S., at least a dozen people wrote to us asking for advice because they had won green cards and weren’t sure moving to the U.S. was worth it. My heart dropped again 💔
🔄 Visa Carousel: From O-1 to E-2 and Back Again
Six months after getting the O-1, we started working on an E-2, ironically, the investment visa. This time, Spray met the conditions perfectly: investment money, American employees, an office and so on. The visa holder could work only for Spray, and the spouse could work anywhere. So it was enough for one of us to hold the visa. It fell to Kuba.
With a proper E-2 visa in the passport, we could travel. The downside? The E-2 would be granted for only one year. If we left the U.S. after it expired, we would need to reapply. Challenging, but it was our only option to build Spray.
Our investment advisor recommended another San Francisco firm. Compared with the torment of earlier applications, this felt like a piece of cake: all our documents were ready and in English.
We prepared and filed the application in two months. Our business partner flew to Warsaw for an embassy interview and got the E-2 in five minutes.
📍 Poland, January 2015
Our first visit to Poland since 2013. While there, we set up an office for the Polish Spray team in Warsaw and appeared on national TV, on the morning show Dzień Dobry TVN.
We went to the embassy, and there… the consul questioned Kuba’s eligibility for the visa 🤯 They needed up to seven days to decide. We couldn’t believe it! I was sick to my stomach 🤢
Several times a day, with a heavy heart, we checked the online system to see whether we could return to the USA. After three days of mental torment, we checked again, and there it was. Granted! We counted our blessings and flew back to the USA as planned.
Less than a year later, Spray fell apart when our business partner screwed us over. We mourned and moved on (a lot happened, but that’s a whole other story).
📍 San Francisco, January 2016 😱 Nightmare Déjà Vu: Another Visa Setback
Soon after, inspired by everything that had happened, I started the talk show Valley Talks. I also started working at Apple, and Kuba immediately launched a new startup, UnStock.
And once again… we needed a new visa. The current one was tied to Spray. Still no luck in the visa lottery. Luckier acquaintances checked in with us. They had been selected and wanted to know what we were doing with our lives.
Apple wouldn’t sponsor my visa, but UnStock quickly gained traction. With investment from Poland and employees in place, everything looked perfect again. Kuba worked on a new visa application with the firm we had used for Spray, since that process had gone relatively smoothly. After about six months, he was nearly done with the application. Meanwhile, I moved from Apple to Netflix.
Then… a nightmare déjà vu.
While preparing the papers, the immigration lawyer said we would probably NOT qualify for the E-2 after all. He suggested we go back to Poland and apply for something like a student visa from there.
WTF??? 😮
We had paid a $5,000 advance, the timeline had dragged on because of him, and now we were hearing it was a hopeless case? It had to be a joke.
We had lived in the USA for over three years and rented the same house for two. I was working at Netflix, Kuba’s startup was growing, and supposedly we had no chance and had to pack up???
Oh, and another year passed, and we weren’t selected in the visa lottery again. Time was running out.
With tears in my eyes, I called the only contact we had left: the Polish lawyer in New York. I begged him to take our case.
First, we worked on changing Kuba’s status to E-2 for UnStock. That kind of approval would let us stay legally without flying back to Poland.
But luck was not on our side. A-gain.
A denial letter arrived in the mail, saying we had 14 days to leave the USA. We couldn’t believe our eyes.
I switched into survival mode, getting through one day at a time 😞
📍 Poland, February 2017 ✈️ Back to Square One
The next step was to fly to Poland, file a similar application at the U.S. embassy in Warsaw and apply for the right visa there. Changes of status are reviewed by a different office than applications filed at embassies, so there was a chance of a better outcome.
If we didn’t get the visa in Poland, it would take us several months to apply again.
We ended our house lease, sold the furniture and rented a storage unit for the rest. We moved out. What choice did we have?
If we got stuck in Poland for half a year, we couldn’t afford housing back in the U.S.
We arrived in Poland in February 2017, with no idea how the embassy visit would go. Dzień Dobry TVN invited us back to the studio, but unfortunately it was at the same time as our embassy appointment.
With heavy hearts, we went to the interview. We were received by the Consul General himself, known for driving a tiny diplomatic Fiat 126p. I complimented his cheerful pink jacket and admitted I had an invitation to DDTVN at the same time. He smiled and said he had recently been on DDTVN too. We chatted about television, the blog…
…until finally, the Consul General told us Kuba’s visa was granted!
What a relief. Tears came to my eyes 🥹 Was it a dream or reality? 🤩 WE. COULD. RETURN! 💪
📍 San Carlos, CA, April 2017 🏡 Home Again: Rebuilding Our American Life
We looked for an apartment again, bought furniture and started over, but this time it was pure pleasure! At first we were shocked by the huge rent increases, about $1,000 more per month than just three months earlier. Luckily, we found a wonderful apartment in the hills. We started again. I continued Valley Talks and went back to my roots producing commercials for startups, and meanwhile, UnStock began receiving acquisition offers.
At the same time, something unexpected was happening… 👀
It was the last thing we expected. Valley Talks and everything around it, from press interviews and conference talks to judging in Silicon Valley, met the criteria for a green card for me! On top of that, my role at Netflix, where I oversaw Netflix’s readiness for its launch in Poland, met another major requirement.
📚 The Ultimate Application: Building the EB-1A Case
A green card would let us work and travel legally without restrictions, and after 5 years we could apply for citizenship. It sounded like a DREAM! 💫
We were recommended a lawyer from Miami. He confirmed it would be a strong application in the EB-1A category, an employment-based green card that doesn’t require an employer or sponsor. Sometimes called the “Emmy Award of immigration,” it sounded impressive, and the application itself was quite something: a several-hundred-page book about your achievements of recent years!
This gave us hope for a green card. A passion project and hobby would finally end this years-long, unequal visa battle!
Out of curiosity, I asked our previous lawyer in NYC, the one who had helped us fight the last battle for the E-2, whether he thought I had a chance at a green card this way.
He replied: “Absolutely not. That’s for really outstanding people.”
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if he had been the only person I asked. What if I hadn’t gotten that second recommendation? Luckily, after five years of experience, we were wiser and kept pushing forward.
Preparing the application took about four months: an intense stretch of gathering evidence, documents and recommendation letters, and digging through archives. We filed the EB-1A in May 2017.
Meanwhile, surprise, surprise: we weren’t selected in the visa lottery again.
Two weeks later, with a pounding heart, we got the news: “APPROVED!” I burst into tears on the phone and cried all day. What a relief. Finally! 🎉
👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏
The hardest part was behind us, but not so fast… Normally, the next step (Adjustment of Status) is a stress-free formality, with the green card arriving within 3 to 6 months. Instead, because of new regulations under the new administration, I had to attend an interview at the immigration office in San Francisco and essentially defend the application, showing that I was continuing the work described in it 📁.
Wait times were growing because the rule was new. I waited for my turn, with no sign of an interview date. In the meantime, we applied for advance parole, a travel document that let us travel internationally while we waited. Kuba’s startup was bought by a company from Israel, and he had to fly abroad. Using the same document, we flew to Poland in February 2018. When we came back, border officers examined our temporary pass several times from every angle. We were taken for additional screening, which was stressful but fortunately went without a hitch.
Finally, in June 2018, we received a letter: our interview at the immigration office was scheduled for July 2018. We got anxious again.
Well prepared, with a binder full of new evidence, I went to the interview with Kuba. Fortunately, it went smoothly. I had to answer questions about my current and new achievements clearly and specifically. The officer kept copies of a few new documents. He said everything was OK, that formal confirmation would arrive within two days, and that the cards would follow in about two weeks.
🟩 The Golden Ticket: Green Cards Finally Arrive 🎊
AND THERE THEY WERE!!! 🟩
The approval appeared in the system, and the cards arrived by courier about a week later. This was the moment we had fought for over six long years. It felt strange. Was it really not a dream? Had we really made it?
There was immense joy, but also enormous exhaustion. I didn’t know if I could have handled another year.
We sat on the couch, trying to sum up this incredibly bumpy road, but everything blended into one. Those years were filled not only with visa struggles, but also with business decisions dictated by visas, getting back on our feet and so much more.
Phew! (to say the least).
To celebrate, we went to New York, and from there, as proud green card holders, flew to South Africa for a business meeting. After we got back, we went to Lake Tahoe, followed by a week-long road trip through California.
We were so happy, but it was still hard to process the traumatic journey we had just been through.
So now do you understand why I’ll never take “IT’S NOT POSSIBLE” for an answer? 😉
Life can surprise you 🫵
Don’t give up on your dreams! Fight for them and do everything your heart and intuition tell you to do. One day, you’ll see: it’s worth it!!!
👋 If you want to skip all the drama I went through and tap into my experience and our whole community’s, join America Unlocked today!
Update: 📍 Los Angeles, December 4, 2024 🇺🇸 American Dream Achieved: Becoming Citizens After 12 Years
WE ARE FINALLY CITIZENS!!!
Our journey to this goal took 12 years. It seems unbelievable, but it’s finally behind us.
We always believed the blood, sweat, tears and negative bank balance would pay off one day. It was the greatest investment we could have made: in our future, our life and now our 3-year-old child’s life.
Today, we’re grateful to our past selves for never giving up and always choosing to move forward, no matter how hard it got.
And to you, dear reader: if you find yourself at a similar crossroads, we have your back. Your journey will be worth it, too.
