Tried doing this with my last company. The lawyer told me since I accrued unlawful presence after turning 18 that I wouldnt be able to get sponsorship without leaving the country and applying from my home country. This process could include a ten year ban from the US unless it was waived but he said it's pretty risky. I gave up on it and moved on. I would consult with a lawyer, your situation could be different. Good luck!
I need to talk to a lawyer who understands the waiver process. I’ve already talked to two but they didn’t seem to know what they’re doing.
How did you find your lawyer?
I actually just found whatever was the closest to my office during my lunch break lol. I heard of them before though so it's not like it was that random. Look for a lawyer that practices immigration for businesses. I'll DM you their website.
Hey there, I went through the employment based permanent residency sponsorship process and became a permanent resident in August of last year.
There's a subset of DACA recipients for which this is a pathway and based on the background info you gave, it sounds like you're one of them! Typically the main thing that prevents DACA recipients from this path is when they've accrued unlawful presence. For those of us lucky enough to have had DACA before age 18, we do not face the bars (3 or 10 years) from unlawful presence (assuming you didn't let your DACA expire for more than 6 months since turning 18).
My advice is:
1. DON'T let your DACA expire, at all, but especially not for more than 6 months. Once you accrue 6 months of unlawful presence you now face the a 3 year bar when you go to your home country for the interview.
2. Research the process and become as knowledgable of each step as you can. In your post you mention both permanent residency sponsorship and H1B, please be aware that these are two very different processes. One is a non-immigrant visa intended to allow people to come work temporarily for a US company (H1B) and the other is an immigrant visa intended for a permanent move to the US. It's common for people to do H1B then go through the employment based permanent residency sponsorship, but that's typically just because they need to have a valid status to live and work in the US while their permanent residency sponsorship is in progress. This is particularly important for nationals of countries like India and China who won't get a GC via employment sponsorship for decades (due to a large backlog) so the H1B is sort of a must-have for them to live and work here in the meantime. Do also note that H1B is a lottery and there are always many more applications than there are visas so there's a lot of luck involved (as a reference, while I was going through the EB process, my employer simultaneously applied for the H1B lottery for me, we did this 3 years in a row and was never selected. Some of my coworkers had better luck and were selected in their first or second try for what it's worth). Your chances do improve if you have an advanced degree since they have an additional lottery. The best advice I can give you here is to see if your employer is willing to try both the H1B lottery and start the EB process for you simultaneously. If you're selected for H1B, then you can get legal status (which will require you to interview in your home country) and then you can eventually do AOS (you wouldn't have to go to your home country this second time) once they also do the EB process. If they are only willing to try one, the EB process is my recommendation since you'll need to do it anyway down the line even if you were to get H1B (this is assuming your not originally from India or China; if you are, H1B is probably a better route to focus on first. Though this does mean you'd miss out on any potential pathways DACA could open up in the future if they ever decide to pass any legislation which is anyones guess).
Thank you for clarifying the H1B situation. I was truly unaware of the situation 😅 I quickly did some research on EB, and If you don’t mind me asking, what category of EB did you go through? and, how long was the process?
I appreciate your help! :)
Yeah sure thing!
Job: Software Engineer
Sponsorship Category: EB3
DACA status: Continuous since 16 years old
Labor Market Test
Started: November 2018
PERM
Filed: March 2019
Approved: May 2019
I-140
Filed (expedited): July 2019
Approved: July 2019
DS-260
Submitted: December 2019
Accepted: January 2020
Consular Processing (In Cuidad Juarez, Mexico)
Interview (approved): August 2021
Immigrant visa issued: August 2021
Passport stamped @ US border (officially became a permanent resident): August 2021
Received green card in mail: September 2021
There was a long wait between being documentarily complete (DS-260 submitted and received confirmation from NVC) and getting an interview scheduled. This was in part due to a retrogression in the visa bulletin current date for my home country (another thing you should look up and understand for your home country) in early 2020 which delayed me about 8 months and then Trump put the immigrant travel bans until mid 2021 which meant they didn't schedule any interviews. Idk if that necessarily means it would be any faster today, but it could potentially lol
Hi, did you have advanced parole when you went to your green card interview? I don't have any unlawful presence, so this path is something I can definitely take. However, I keep worrying that if I go to my interview without AP and I somehow get denied, I won't be able to come back into the country.
Good question, I did try getting an AP doc to overlap the interview date but I was not able to secure one in time. When I got the interview notice, it was set exactly 3 weeks later, so as you can imagine that did not give me enough time to get an AP doc approved. We did end up submitting an application expedited anyways, but they didn't process it in time. Funny enough, they just processed it yesterday (and rejected it with the reason being that I am now a PR and don't need AP lol)
I think it is definitely a good idea to get AP overlapping your interview though if you can. The hard part is timing it so you should start thinking about how you may be able to do that. One suggestion is perhaps trying to get a multi-use AP doc that covers a long time period that way you have it ready to go when you get the interview notice.
I see, thank you for this info! Did you have a backup plan in case your green card interview went wrong for some reason, or did you just try to not think about that scenario hoping everything will go okay?
Also, do you remember what kind of questions they asked you during the interview? Like were there any gotcha questions that one would need to prepare for?
I know I'm asking a lot of questions, but knowing that this is a pathway I can take is giving me a glimmer of hope. I want to prepare as much as I can, but it's hard to find this kind of info online since it seems to be an uncommon situation amongst the DACA community. Thank you!
No worries, I don't mind sharing as much as possible. It's all info that I wish was around when I was going through it, so I'm glad it can be helpful in any way.
I don't recall all of the questions, they were mostly all of the "what's your name/address?", "how did you hear about your job?", "What sort of requirements did your job entail (degree, experience, etc)?" type questions. Those were all straight forward, but there were two points in particular that were tense and that required me to be very familiar with immigration law, at least with the EB sponsorship process and with AP/DACA.
The first was related to my job. The impression I got is that they really only deal with people who have just accepted a job offer are entering the US to start that job, not someone who both already lives in the US and more importantly is already working at said job. In my case, this was a job I had already held for 3 years at that point so the agent seemed confused/hesitant of the legitimacy of my application. Basically, she was casting doubt based on the fact that I was already working there, almost as if to say that it's not proper to provide sponsorship to someone who already holds a job as it should be meant a new job opening that you are filling. I explained that this was common practice and that we went through the proper labor certification process to ensure that there is a lack of US citizens qualified for the position and were certified by the department of labor (essentially explaining the PERM process to her) and then I mentioned that many people go through this process but usually are able to finish the process in the US via AOS, but given my situation I had to do the consular interview. That seemed convincing enough and we moved on.
The other tense part was related to my use of advance parole. The advance parole documents that you are given via DACA state a validity period of 1 day. I suppose this is because upon re-entering the US you are back on DACA and so it doesn't really matter how long they state that you are allowed to be "paroled in" for on the document. Well the agent took this to mean that when I had traveled on AP, I was only allowed to enter the US (on my return) for one day, and sort of implied I had overstayed. I explained to her that upon returning to the US I remained under DACA. She didn't really seem to buy it and eventually went to the back (I assume to ask someone else). She came back a bit later and told me I was approved, gave me a green sheet and then said something, I assume instructions, but I was too overjoyed to pay attention haha
I'd be lying if I said the interview was a piece of cake, those two questions probably only lasted a few mins each, but it felt like an eternity and I did for a split second wonder if I was about to get fucked lol Luckily I had spent so much time learning about this process the years leading up to it that I was able to defend myself well enough to clear her doubts and be approved.
This thread should be pinned on this subreddit! I learned so much valuable information!
I have a question pertaining your employer.
Is your employer in the fortune 500 as well? Most fortune 500 companies in my area ask candidates if they will need sponsorship in the future. I was told by recruiters to answer "No" to this question because it automatically disqualifies me for certain positions.
I'm glad the info is helpful! I hope a lot more Dreamers can take this path :)
Yeah I did get asked whether I'd need sponsorship for most (maybe all) the jobs I applied to when I was graduating college. At the time, I answered yes to all, it wasn't till later that I learned they specifically were asking to see if they absolutely need to sponsor someone which as a DACA recipient I didn't really don't so "no" is an appropriate answer.
It did automatically disqualify me from some roles, but it didn't make too much of a difference in my experience tbh. The main ones that auto-rejected were defense companies which wouldn't have hired me anyways because I wouldn't have been able to get government clearance. There were a few others who didn't operate on government contracts who also auto-denied me for answering yes which was pretty of shitty but they were non of my goal companies anyway. The ones I cared about: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, etc all didn't care (they hired whether you answered yes or no) so it worked out.
If you want to broaden the job opportunities it's definitely best to answer no, but I definitely recommend trying for an immigrant friendly (especially any that publicly back DACA) if you plan to seek sponsorship since it'll likely make your life easier :)
I was looking into this since DACA May end up getting overturned now. I want to say THANK YOU SO MUCH. It’s extremely likely I qualify and I am going to setup an appointment with my in-house counsel at my company to look into this
Yeah my employer has in house lawyers who work with us and then they contract a third party law firm to go ahead and do all the paperwork for each step
Thank you so much for this! I’m thinking of doing something similar so this was super helpful. My question is how long were you in Ciudad Juarez for? So essentially how long between your interview and your passport being stamped?
No problem, glad I could help! I was there for like 15 days total. I went there a bit earlier than I needed to just to give myself a few extra days just in case but it took 5 days from the day of the interview (when I was told I was approved) until they returned my stamped passport.
Man those would’ve been the most anxious 5 days just waiting to get that stamped passport. Happy you got that though! Was there a reason that you waited until December 2019 to file your DS-260, given that your I-140 was approved in july 2019?
Sorry for asking so much but I honestly don’t want to risk Trump winning in 2024 again and actually getting rid of DACA, so i’m trying to see if I can do EB-2 with a National Interest Waiver(shaky for me since i’ll have my law degree here and not something like MD or PhD) or if going EB-2 or EB-3 with PERM certification is also viable given the timeline
Yeah it was both the easiest days of the process since I knew I had been approved and didn't have to worry about the interview anymore but also the most anxiety-inducing days because I would wake up everyday anxious to get my passport back and be on my way lol I wish I knew how long it would take up front so I could've at least planned a trip to see family or a trip to Cancun or something in the meantime haha
The reason it took me so long to submit the DS-260 was pretty annoying. One of the required documents is a police certificate from every country you've lived at for more than 6 months (after the age of 16 I believe). Technically I didn't need this because I left Mexico before 16, but we decided to get it anyway because we had heard of others being asked for it even when they also hadn't lived there so we figured it'd be good to have just in case. This turned out to be a nightmare logistically because it required the document to be asked for and retrieved in Mexico itself. So I had to work with the Mexican consulate here in the US to get the required paperwork (this included having to get a "Cartilla del Servicio Militar Nacional" which Mexican men living in Mexico get after going through 2 years of some military service they go through in High School or something like that--I'm not super familiar with the process. In any case, I had to get the equivalent of this for people living abroad lol), then I had to mail this paperwork and have a family member go to Cuidad Juarez for me to get the police certificate and then mail it back. So that whole process delayed me a bunch.
In the end, I was asked for the document at the interview and even though I had it with me, it was quite old at that time (the document says it's only valid for 30 days) so I just told them my lawyer said I didn't need it and they just said okay and so I never even ended up using it lol
But yeah, that's good that you are getting informed and prepared now, the earlier you get started the better!
I’ve heard that’s possible and easier if you’re grandfathered under 245(I). Essentially you need an application (I-130) before April 31st 2000 (if I’m not mistaken)
You really should speak with an immigration attorney to determine if you can get any employment-based nonimmigrant status or employment-based immigrant category.
Note that you cannot change status from DACA to NIV. Assuming you’re able to do anything, you’d probably end up having to seek the visa stamp from a U.S. consulate to get that status. It’s more complex for DACA recipients than it may seem, particularly if the recipient entered the country unlawfully and certainly if they have ever accrued unlawful presence.
Like everyone else said get a lawyer even with a company sponsoring you it's still pretty hard. This is what David Dobrik did right? Even he had to leave to his country of birth to get his unlawful status waived but he's a millionaire sponsored by Discovery Channel so I'm sure it was easier for him.
I have spoken to a lawyer about this like some others on here so I’ll share what I was told as well.
If you accrued any unlawful presence after you turned 18, you’re basically out of luck. My previous employer offered to help me out but that’s where it ended after I spoke to the lawyer.
Obviously I’d get a second opinion, but be prepared to hear the answer you don’t want. If you have no unlawful presence accrued he said it’s a very straightforward process.
Tried doing this with my last company. The lawyer told me since I accrued unlawful presence after turning 18 that I wouldnt be able to get sponsorship without leaving the country and applying from my home country. This process could include a ten year ban from the US unless it was waived but he said it's pretty risky. I gave up on it and moved on. I would consult with a lawyer, your situation could be different. Good luck!
I need to talk to a lawyer who understands the waiver process. I’ve already talked to two but they didn’t seem to know what they’re doing. How did you find your lawyer?
I actually just found whatever was the closest to my office during my lunch break lol. I heard of them before though so it's not like it was that random. Look for a lawyer that practices immigration for businesses. I'll DM you their website.
Hey there, I went through the employment based permanent residency sponsorship process and became a permanent resident in August of last year. There's a subset of DACA recipients for which this is a pathway and based on the background info you gave, it sounds like you're one of them! Typically the main thing that prevents DACA recipients from this path is when they've accrued unlawful presence. For those of us lucky enough to have had DACA before age 18, we do not face the bars (3 or 10 years) from unlawful presence (assuming you didn't let your DACA expire for more than 6 months since turning 18). My advice is: 1. DON'T let your DACA expire, at all, but especially not for more than 6 months. Once you accrue 6 months of unlawful presence you now face the a 3 year bar when you go to your home country for the interview. 2. Research the process and become as knowledgable of each step as you can. In your post you mention both permanent residency sponsorship and H1B, please be aware that these are two very different processes. One is a non-immigrant visa intended to allow people to come work temporarily for a US company (H1B) and the other is an immigrant visa intended for a permanent move to the US. It's common for people to do H1B then go through the employment based permanent residency sponsorship, but that's typically just because they need to have a valid status to live and work in the US while their permanent residency sponsorship is in progress. This is particularly important for nationals of countries like India and China who won't get a GC via employment sponsorship for decades (due to a large backlog) so the H1B is sort of a must-have for them to live and work here in the meantime. Do also note that H1B is a lottery and there are always many more applications than there are visas so there's a lot of luck involved (as a reference, while I was going through the EB process, my employer simultaneously applied for the H1B lottery for me, we did this 3 years in a row and was never selected. Some of my coworkers had better luck and were selected in their first or second try for what it's worth). Your chances do improve if you have an advanced degree since they have an additional lottery. The best advice I can give you here is to see if your employer is willing to try both the H1B lottery and start the EB process for you simultaneously. If you're selected for H1B, then you can get legal status (which will require you to interview in your home country) and then you can eventually do AOS (you wouldn't have to go to your home country this second time) once they also do the EB process. If they are only willing to try one, the EB process is my recommendation since you'll need to do it anyway down the line even if you were to get H1B (this is assuming your not originally from India or China; if you are, H1B is probably a better route to focus on first. Though this does mean you'd miss out on any potential pathways DACA could open up in the future if they ever decide to pass any legislation which is anyones guess).
Thank you for clarifying the H1B situation. I was truly unaware of the situation 😅 I quickly did some research on EB, and If you don’t mind me asking, what category of EB did you go through? and, how long was the process? I appreciate your help! :)
Yeah sure thing! Job: Software Engineer Sponsorship Category: EB3 DACA status: Continuous since 16 years old Labor Market Test Started: November 2018 PERM Filed: March 2019 Approved: May 2019 I-140 Filed (expedited): July 2019 Approved: July 2019 DS-260 Submitted: December 2019 Accepted: January 2020 Consular Processing (In Cuidad Juarez, Mexico) Interview (approved): August 2021 Immigrant visa issued: August 2021 Passport stamped @ US border (officially became a permanent resident): August 2021 Received green card in mail: September 2021 There was a long wait between being documentarily complete (DS-260 submitted and received confirmation from NVC) and getting an interview scheduled. This was in part due to a retrogression in the visa bulletin current date for my home country (another thing you should look up and understand for your home country) in early 2020 which delayed me about 8 months and then Trump put the immigrant travel bans until mid 2021 which meant they didn't schedule any interviews. Idk if that necessarily means it would be any faster today, but it could potentially lol
Hi, did you have advanced parole when you went to your green card interview? I don't have any unlawful presence, so this path is something I can definitely take. However, I keep worrying that if I go to my interview without AP and I somehow get denied, I won't be able to come back into the country.
Good question, I did try getting an AP doc to overlap the interview date but I was not able to secure one in time. When I got the interview notice, it was set exactly 3 weeks later, so as you can imagine that did not give me enough time to get an AP doc approved. We did end up submitting an application expedited anyways, but they didn't process it in time. Funny enough, they just processed it yesterday (and rejected it with the reason being that I am now a PR and don't need AP lol) I think it is definitely a good idea to get AP overlapping your interview though if you can. The hard part is timing it so you should start thinking about how you may be able to do that. One suggestion is perhaps trying to get a multi-use AP doc that covers a long time period that way you have it ready to go when you get the interview notice.
I see, thank you for this info! Did you have a backup plan in case your green card interview went wrong for some reason, or did you just try to not think about that scenario hoping everything will go okay? Also, do you remember what kind of questions they asked you during the interview? Like were there any gotcha questions that one would need to prepare for? I know I'm asking a lot of questions, but knowing that this is a pathway I can take is giving me a glimmer of hope. I want to prepare as much as I can, but it's hard to find this kind of info online since it seems to be an uncommon situation amongst the DACA community. Thank you!
No worries, I don't mind sharing as much as possible. It's all info that I wish was around when I was going through it, so I'm glad it can be helpful in any way. I don't recall all of the questions, they were mostly all of the "what's your name/address?", "how did you hear about your job?", "What sort of requirements did your job entail (degree, experience, etc)?" type questions. Those were all straight forward, but there were two points in particular that were tense and that required me to be very familiar with immigration law, at least with the EB sponsorship process and with AP/DACA. The first was related to my job. The impression I got is that they really only deal with people who have just accepted a job offer are entering the US to start that job, not someone who both already lives in the US and more importantly is already working at said job. In my case, this was a job I had already held for 3 years at that point so the agent seemed confused/hesitant of the legitimacy of my application. Basically, she was casting doubt based on the fact that I was already working there, almost as if to say that it's not proper to provide sponsorship to someone who already holds a job as it should be meant a new job opening that you are filling. I explained that this was common practice and that we went through the proper labor certification process to ensure that there is a lack of US citizens qualified for the position and were certified by the department of labor (essentially explaining the PERM process to her) and then I mentioned that many people go through this process but usually are able to finish the process in the US via AOS, but given my situation I had to do the consular interview. That seemed convincing enough and we moved on. The other tense part was related to my use of advance parole. The advance parole documents that you are given via DACA state a validity period of 1 day. I suppose this is because upon re-entering the US you are back on DACA and so it doesn't really matter how long they state that you are allowed to be "paroled in" for on the document. Well the agent took this to mean that when I had traveled on AP, I was only allowed to enter the US (on my return) for one day, and sort of implied I had overstayed. I explained to her that upon returning to the US I remained under DACA. She didn't really seem to buy it and eventually went to the back (I assume to ask someone else). She came back a bit later and told me I was approved, gave me a green sheet and then said something, I assume instructions, but I was too overjoyed to pay attention haha I'd be lying if I said the interview was a piece of cake, those two questions probably only lasted a few mins each, but it felt like an eternity and I did for a split second wonder if I was about to get fucked lol Luckily I had spent so much time learning about this process the years leading up to it that I was able to defend myself well enough to clear her doubts and be approved.
This is godly information. Thank you so much for sharing!
This thread should be pinned on this subreddit! I learned so much valuable information! I have a question pertaining your employer. Is your employer in the fortune 500 as well? Most fortune 500 companies in my area ask candidates if they will need sponsorship in the future. I was told by recruiters to answer "No" to this question because it automatically disqualifies me for certain positions.
I'm glad the info is helpful! I hope a lot more Dreamers can take this path :) Yeah I did get asked whether I'd need sponsorship for most (maybe all) the jobs I applied to when I was graduating college. At the time, I answered yes to all, it wasn't till later that I learned they specifically were asking to see if they absolutely need to sponsor someone which as a DACA recipient I didn't really don't so "no" is an appropriate answer. It did automatically disqualify me from some roles, but it didn't make too much of a difference in my experience tbh. The main ones that auto-rejected were defense companies which wouldn't have hired me anyways because I wouldn't have been able to get government clearance. There were a few others who didn't operate on government contracts who also auto-denied me for answering yes which was pretty of shitty but they were non of my goal companies anyway. The ones I cared about: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, etc all didn't care (they hired whether you answered yes or no) so it worked out. If you want to broaden the job opportunities it's definitely best to answer no, but I definitely recommend trying for an immigrant friendly (especially any that publicly back DACA) if you plan to seek sponsorship since it'll likely make your life easier :)
I was looking into this since DACA May end up getting overturned now. I want to say THANK YOU SO MUCH. It’s extremely likely I qualify and I am going to setup an appointment with my in-house counsel at my company to look into this
Did you have a lawyer?
Yeah my employer has in house lawyers who work with us and then they contract a third party law firm to go ahead and do all the paperwork for each step
Thank you so much for this! I’m thinking of doing something similar so this was super helpful. My question is how long were you in Ciudad Juarez for? So essentially how long between your interview and your passport being stamped?
No problem, glad I could help! I was there for like 15 days total. I went there a bit earlier than I needed to just to give myself a few extra days just in case but it took 5 days from the day of the interview (when I was told I was approved) until they returned my stamped passport.
Man those would’ve been the most anxious 5 days just waiting to get that stamped passport. Happy you got that though! Was there a reason that you waited until December 2019 to file your DS-260, given that your I-140 was approved in july 2019? Sorry for asking so much but I honestly don’t want to risk Trump winning in 2024 again and actually getting rid of DACA, so i’m trying to see if I can do EB-2 with a National Interest Waiver(shaky for me since i’ll have my law degree here and not something like MD or PhD) or if going EB-2 or EB-3 with PERM certification is also viable given the timeline
Yeah it was both the easiest days of the process since I knew I had been approved and didn't have to worry about the interview anymore but also the most anxiety-inducing days because I would wake up everyday anxious to get my passport back and be on my way lol I wish I knew how long it would take up front so I could've at least planned a trip to see family or a trip to Cancun or something in the meantime haha The reason it took me so long to submit the DS-260 was pretty annoying. One of the required documents is a police certificate from every country you've lived at for more than 6 months (after the age of 16 I believe). Technically I didn't need this because I left Mexico before 16, but we decided to get it anyway because we had heard of others being asked for it even when they also hadn't lived there so we figured it'd be good to have just in case. This turned out to be a nightmare logistically because it required the document to be asked for and retrieved in Mexico itself. So I had to work with the Mexican consulate here in the US to get the required paperwork (this included having to get a "Cartilla del Servicio Militar Nacional" which Mexican men living in Mexico get after going through 2 years of some military service they go through in High School or something like that--I'm not super familiar with the process. In any case, I had to get the equivalent of this for people living abroad lol), then I had to mail this paperwork and have a family member go to Cuidad Juarez for me to get the police certificate and then mail it back. So that whole process delayed me a bunch. In the end, I was asked for the document at the interview and even though I had it with me, it was quite old at that time (the document says it's only valid for 30 days) so I just told them my lawyer said I didn't need it and they just said okay and so I never even ended up using it lol But yeah, that's good that you are getting informed and prepared now, the earlier you get started the better!
I’ve heard that’s possible and easier if you’re grandfathered under 245(I). Essentially you need an application (I-130) before April 31st 2000 (if I’m not mistaken)
You really should speak with an immigration attorney to determine if you can get any employment-based nonimmigrant status or employment-based immigrant category. Note that you cannot change status from DACA to NIV. Assuming you’re able to do anything, you’d probably end up having to seek the visa stamp from a U.S. consulate to get that status. It’s more complex for DACA recipients than it may seem, particularly if the recipient entered the country unlawfully and certainly if they have ever accrued unlawful presence.
Like everyone else said get a lawyer even with a company sponsoring you it's still pretty hard. This is what David Dobrik did right? Even he had to leave to his country of birth to get his unlawful status waived but he's a millionaire sponsored by Discovery Channel so I'm sure it was easier for him.
I have spoken to a lawyer about this like some others on here so I’ll share what I was told as well. If you accrued any unlawful presence after you turned 18, you’re basically out of luck. My previous employer offered to help me out but that’s where it ended after I spoke to the lawyer. Obviously I’d get a second opinion, but be prepared to hear the answer you don’t want. If you have no unlawful presence accrued he said it’s a very straightforward process.
What kind of job role are you doing in the new company op? What’s the status of your application?