The Unbearable Precarity of Being an “Extraordinary Alien” in America
This is about the perils of legal immigration.
Dear United States Customs and Immigration Services Officer 0150,
I understand it may be unwise to write to you, or about you, in a public forum while I have a pending appeal with your office. But as an immigrant visual artist who has spent the last 15 years climbing mountains you cannot imagine, or perhaps have no interest imagining, I felt compelled to write. The specter of illegal immigration is so pervasive in the American narrative today, that one is led to believe its alternative, ie, legal immigration, offers valid, fair, and functional pathways to living in this country.
The reality of it is cruel, illogical, ill-equipped, deeply unfair, and much more expensive than one can imagine.
Officer 0150, I have lived (and paid taxes) in America for nearly 15 years, during which I have held two consecutive F-1 Student Visas, courtesy of some of the most prestigious academic institutions in the world, followed by two consecutive O-1 Alien of Extraordinary Ability visas. Yet somehow, despite the overwhelming amount of supporting documents and credentials, just weeks before Christmas, my application for a talent-based EB-1 Green Card application was denied.
My immigration woes did not begin with you, and they will not likely end with you either. However, the sheer power you have wielded over my life, so unfairly, for the last 13 months, merits a response.
The first time I was pulled aside in an American airport was in Chicago. I had just flown in from a trip to the Middle East: Doha first, for the Art for Tomorrow conference hosted by the New York Times and the Qatar Museums Authority, followed by Dubai for the Art Dubai art fair.
For a Paris-born, Istanbul-raised visual artist receiving his Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a trip to the Middle East for international art events should not have been odd by any means. Except, according to the screen the customs officer was staring at, with his brows furrowed, it was.
Being taken to the “side room” was frightening, like being summoned to the principal’s office with zero explanation, but the stakes felt much, much higher.
After a 14-hour flight, dazed, jetlagged, confused, my first thought was “Oh God, please do not let them put me back on another plane. I cannot take another flight.”
The full implications of what the side room might mean, kicked in a few moments later. Being denied entry to Chicago. Giving up my life in America. Returning to Turkey without even being able to pack up my own apartment, or finishing my MFA degree, for which I had taken out a student loan. Leaving my then-boyfriend with no clear idea of when we would be able to see each other. Leaving my friends without so much as a goodbye.
As I walked in, two customs officers in bulletproof vests yelled about the no phone policy to someone in line, inspiring enough fear in me to keep my cell buried in my pocket. Googling what to do in this situation, or texting someone for help, was evidently not an option. I sat down, uneasy, next to people who I would discover were seeking asylum or being accused of bringing contraband, or violating their visas somehow.
So why was I in this room at all?
After what felt like a lifetime, I was told I was free to go. None of my questions were answered, and I was scared to ask too many.
After that day, I would get pulled to the side room at the O’Hare airport again, and again, and again, over a dozen times, each time without explanation. Sometimes they asked about why I had been in Istanbul or Dubai. Sometimes they asked why I was carrying a French passport if I was Turkish. They always allowed me to leave after a two-three hour wait, and eventually, the fear they inspired was replaced with deep frustration.
When it was time to switch from a student visa to an artist visa, I discovered that this had been merely the tip of the iceberg of the Kafkaesque immigration system. Shortly after submitting all the paperwork, with proof of my qualifications as a photographer, I received an RFE, a Request for Evidence, asking for more proof of my artistic talent.
The RFE asked if I had an Emmy or an Oscar, which was comical considering they don’t give out those kinds of awards for photography. They also asked who I was mentioned with, in the press. Who were my peers in the media, did they matter to the zeitgeist? By sheer luck, New York Magazine’s Vulture had just done a feature on my work, and for about two weeks, the most recent articles listed on the Culture section of the website were about Kanye West, Guillermo Del Toro, and me.
To this day I am certain that a screenshot of that homepage is what got me my first artist visa. After all, it listed me next to a Grammy winner and an Oscar winner, which satisfied their question. Ironically, all of my artistic accomplishments fell by the wayside, evidently meaning very little to an immigration officer who was so removed from my field that they even implied my letter of reference from Artforum did not carry much weight because they did not know what Artforum was (for context, it was the art world equivalent of a fashion designer getting a recommendation from Anna Wintour, on Vogue letterhead).
When it was finally time to receive my artist visa, officially known as the Alien of Extraordinary Ability Visa, I asked the consular officer in Istanbul why I was constantly being pulled to the side at American airports. “You had a red flag, but we took care of it.” was their response. A red flag, which the immigration system, or some kind of algorithm, had generated automatically because I had flown in and out of the Middle East too many times while on a student visa. Because a student going to that part of the world during the school year amounted to a potential threat, nevermind the glaring and obviously queer-coded pink hoodie he re-entered the country in, or the countless naked men he had photographed, which would come up instantly after a cursory Google search. USCIS must have had a very, very generous idea of ISIS recruiters’ attitudes towards homosexuality.
Despite having all of my paperwork, despite following all the rules, after two years, I had lost at least two day’s worth of my life waiting in that side room at the airport.
Upon my next arrival, smiling enthusiastically, I handed my passport with the fresh O-1 visa to the customs officer at O’Hare.
“You have an O-1?”
“Yes.”
“Extraordinary ability… What’s your ‘extraordinary’ ability?”
“I… I take photographs?”
“What kind of photographs?”
“Oh, um… I can show you.”
“No! I want you to describe them to me.”
“Describe them to you?”
“Yes.”
If you have ever flown more than half a day intercontinentally, which doesn’t include the four to eight hours of airport time in security lines, gates, and taxiing, you know that your mental faculties are not necessarily equipped for such questions, or any questions. I was able to describe my artworks in a way that seemed to satisfy the customs officer, but I discovered two things that day:
Firstly, that my new visa designation exalted me to the point of inviting cynicism, while simultaneously reminding everyone involved that I did not belong in America, that I was an alien here.
Secondly, that there was no visa I could enter the country with that would spare me this bizarre scrutiny and impromptu interrogation. This presupposition of guilt, of malicious intent, so antithetical to the American code of conduct, would be a part of my life for as long as I entered the country with a visa.
Based on this cursory and shallow interrogation, these officers had the power to deny me entry, trumping any immigration status or paperwork. Trumping any consular decision. They could simply say “Not today” as if they were rejecting people in line for ACME, and upend my life. The sheer precarity of it has an emotional toll that no American can fathom.
A few years later, my artist visa renewal was a different nightmare, one that involved me needing to be back in New York by June 16th, 2022, for my first solo show in the city.
My best friend was getting married in Istanbul in May, and I was officiating the ceremony. Before I left New York for our hometown, I asked about consular wait times, and I was told that for a visa renewal all I needed to do was send my passport in by mail and I would receive it with the new visa in a few business days. So I flew to Istanbul feeling confident about the short wait-time of what was merely a formality.
I got the passport back in the promised timeframe, virtually untouched, and missing the new visa. Instead, there was a note attached, asking me to make an appointment. This was the end of May, and despite my panicked request for an accelerated appointment, explaining my timeline, the consulate in Istanbul responded that their best offer was June 24th. Feeling like I was haggling for a rug in the Grand Bazaar, I told them that that was a week too late, that the opening would happen without me. That I would miss the one thing I had worked towards my entire career (and ironically, what this visa was designed for) by a week.
I was told through unofficial channels that due to the closure of the consulates in Afghanistan, the Istanbul consular offices were overwhelmed with appointments from the region. The subtext of that response was “are you really putting yourself above an Afghani refugee family?”
Feeling horrible, and more than a little perplexed that the burden of failed US Middle Eastern policies was now somehow being put on Turkish people hoping to get a visa, I began to call every single person I could think of, every Turkish company owner who had purchased my artworks and who I knew worked with the U.S. in some capacity. I got nowhere. I called and emailed the Consul General and her assistant, almost every day, until finally the assistant told me that “everyone in the office was aware of my existence” but that they could not do any more than what had already been done.
I managed to unearth the direct line of the cultural attaché in Istanbul, whose predecessor had met with me when I was receiving my first O-1. He was sympathetic and put in a good word for me internally, but told me he was ultimately powerless in this situation. So I called the embassy in Ankara, where the cultural attaché told me she would do everything she could.
Then I called the office of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and emailed her team, since she was on an immigration subcommittee in the senate. Then I emailed the office of New York Mayor Eric Adams. Then the embassies in Paris and Berlin. The visa was already approved and the delay was due to the consulate pulling a 180. This was obviously not a humanitarian emergency, but I had worked for more than ten years to have a solo show in New York. Surely there was something someone could do to help?
I was told to go online and apply for appointments in European consulates that may have an earlier opening, but the catch was, I could only apply for an appointment after paying an application fee, and only then would the system tell me that even though their site claimed availability, for my specific kind of appointment, there were no openings before July. In some cases, they flat out refused to give me an appointment as I was not a citizen of that specific country.
Running out of money, and hope, I finally received word that I could get the visa on June 13th, in Paris. I could not afford a last minute ticket, but I discovered that I had enough frequent flyer miles for a round trip. I took a 10pm flight for an 8am appointment the next day, where they stamped the new O-1, 48 hours before my opening. Back at the Istanbul airport around midnight, sleepless and emotionally exhausted, I cried, then threw up, before boarding my flight to JFK. By the time I landed, I looked and felt like a truck had run over me, but at least I was home.
As an artist who has had two O-1 visas thus far, my artworks, dealing with themes of gender identity, patriarchy, religion, violence, systemic oppression, and artificial intelligence, have been shown quite literally around the world.
I was picked up straight out of my MFA thesis exhibition to show with one of the oldest galleries in Chicago, and invited to a museum show in Copenhagen the same year. I have had museum shows since the age of 20, and over a dozen solo exhibitions in Chicago, New York, Düsseldorf, Istanbul, and Dubai. I have given lectures in universities, received awards for my work, been on boards for art fairs and judging panels for art awards, collected by museums and private institutions, been published in GQ and The Art Newspaper, been written about in The New York Times, ArtNet, Artsy, Ocula, The Guardian, The Advocate…
More importantly, I accomplished all this while navigating death threats from Turkish relatives who wished to send me to hell by stabbing me to death on the street (their words, verbatim), taking care of my sick mother, and the discovery that I was living with a (so far, benign, but also, inoperable) brain tumor. Bonus: the Turkish government raided my Istanbul gallery just before the pandemic on the grounds that my work was “offending the legacy of the Ottoman Empire.”
In other words, Officer 0150, I am tired.
I am tired of running uphill. Of juggling a million things and finding the silver lining in difficulties and using it all as fuel for my art because that is the only thing justifying the absurdity of the obstacles I have had to face.
Despite all the hurdles, for all intents and purposes, my CV is exemplary of what an EB-1 Green Card, the so-called talent Green Card, qualification should look like. I have consulted with multiple lawyers, foreign service officers, and art world professionals who all unanimously agree that I qualify for the Green Card you denied me.
So I can’t help but wonder if I was denied because you genuinely saw a lack of merit, or if you simply didn’t feel like granting my particular folder a fair chance. Was it a bad day in the cubicle? Did you not like that I was gay and critical of oppressive governments? Am I too young? Am I too old? Perhaps you’re not into photography? Was it that I was a cat person, and not a dog person?
Because, and I am genuinely asking this: After 15 years of living and working in America with a stellar record as a visual artist, if I do not qualify for the EB-1, who does?
When you responded to my application with a request for more evidence, in which you said that the New York Times article mentioning me was not enough because it also mentioned other artists, were you saying that to be petty, or to make it clear that no amount of evidence would convince you to grant me the EB-1?
Does it even occur to you, or the architects of the broken system you work for, that when you are empowered to judge and dismiss my life’s work, without the qualifications to do so, it strips me of my dignity?
Does it even cross your mind that this is my life?
I recently discovered that there is a national database of immigration officers kept by immigration attorneys, where your specific number, 0150, has a growing tally of negative immigration decisions next to it. Did you know that you are known to deny applicants who are qualified to receive the EB-1?
With your gift that keeps on giving, I have now filed an appeal, which I have been told will cost me around $5000 and buy me between 6–12 months, although it will likely not change the decision. Online forums and my attorney both agree: The US Government does not like to admit its mistakes, and Green Card appeals are almost always rejected.
This means that in addition to the $5000 appeal, I have to spend about another $5000 to apply for the same Green Card, yet again. But it doesn’t end there. In order to be able to switch to a Green Card, assuming it gets approved, I need to either be living outside the country for the next 12 to 24 months as your office takes its time considering me yet again (although it could consider me faster, for an additional fee), or I need to have a valid visa. Except my last O-1 expired while I was waiting for this decision. So I also need to apply for my third artist visa, which is entirely superfluous, just to have a “status” in America to transition from.
Another $5000 for that. Plus processing fees.
All of this is to say that you, specifically you, are the reason why I now have to stop my work and devote my life to filling out papers and forms and meeting with my lawyer and traveling to a consulate (which, with my luck, should be interesting) and coming up with around $20,000 that I had not budgeted for, that most artists, no matter how successful, do not ever have the luxury to budget for.
If the reason why these talent-based immigration paths exist is to make sure the US attracts and hosts talented people, isn’t it more than a little insane that the broken immigration system is the reason why I cannot and will not be able to make art in peace or even go to my own international exhibitions due to an inability to re-enter the country? That your flawed decision is sabotaging my artistic career, and my life, for more than an entire year?
It is terrifying to think that I will somehow be punished by the Immigration system for daring to criticize it. For daring to ask why a customs officer in an airport, or an unnamed, faceless employee in a cubicle farm gets to determine the course of my entire life without any context.
I do not write any of this to insist on one particular type of immigration. I know enough Americans who do not have “extraordinary” abilities or who do not contribute to society in the way immigrants are expected to, to support the immigration rights of anyone wishing to live here. But in the meantime, since so much of the narrative is about distinguishing people who do things illegally versus by the book, here I am: someone who has done everything by the book for 15 years, who now has to jump through impossible hoops and come up with a surprise $5000 just days before Christmas, or get deported the day after New Year’s Eve.
So consider this an addendum to my appeal, Officer 0150. One that my attorney would have never sent, but I would not have been able to sleep without sending.
Sincerely yours,
Sarp Kerem Yavuz
Alien of Extraordinary Ability
