It’s been 2 weeks since I landed in India now. I’ll never forget how I felt in the first few hours after landing though. A single thought kept running through my head: god, I want to return back to America.I expand more on this, and how the rest of my first day in India went, in the second edition of “Life In India” series.Before we jump in, let’s welcome 63 new subscribers to our newsletter since last week, including Arun, Akhila, & Rahul. Welcome, folks! And thanks to everyone who forwarded this to a dear friend last week. 🙏

Immigration is a complex world. So every Wednesday, I try to simplify that by sharing top stories, curated resources, & fun tweets from the internet. I also sprinkle it with updates on my book, Unshackled, at the end. If you want to get this straight to your email inbox, come sign up! You can read all past editions here. 💃

This week's TL;DR

• USCIS announces premium processing for EB-2 NIW & EB-1C - a move that could fast track your applications
• India & UK sign the Young Professionals Scheme, to allow 3000 professionals to live and work in UK without a sponsor or a job offer.
• Unlimited lawyer consultations at $49/month with "Ask My Attorney" program by Boundless.

📌 Stories you should know about

🎉 Wohoo: USCIS announces premium processing for EB-2 NIW & EB-1CStarting Jan 30th, 2023, you can file for premium processing (45 days though, not 15 days) when you apply for an EB-2 NIW and EB-1C green card. But but, this doesn’t mean you get the green card in 45 days. It only means that they’ll review your application & decide to approve or not approve your I-140 within 45 days. You still have to wait a while after that to get your I-485 approved (which is the actual green card). Tess Douglas wrote a simple LinkedIn post on this. Finally, they also plan to introduce premium processing for F-1 OPT and STEM OPT soon enough!👀 Canada sets an immigration record in 2022 with 431,645 new permanent residentsCanada just welcomed a whopping 431,645 new permanent residents in 2022, making it the largest number of newcomers the country has ever seen. By the end of 2025, they want this number to be 1.45 million. Canada is focusing so much on welcoming immigrants since they account for almost 100% of Canada's labor force growth. In fact, by 2036, immigrants will make up 30% of Canada’s population! It’s a good time to move to Canada if you’re thinking of it.🗒️India & UK sign the Young Professionals Scheme: No sponsor or job offer needed!Talking about other countries, here’s more good news: India and UK just signed the Young Professionals Scheme (YPS) that allows 3,000 individuals aged 18-30 to live and work in the UK for 2 years without a sponsor or a job offer. With this, India joins a select few countries that enjoy this privilege in the UK. Although 3,000 is a drop in the ocean for the Indian population, it’s a start towards unlocking global mobility, especially for developing countries.

🎁 Resources curated for you

5 words or phrases to NEVER use in your immigration application.Although USCIS is littered with legal jargon, they like it when you use simple language while putting in your application. Check out the 5 words / phrases to never use!Webinar: Life after graduation - Immigration 101 (Jan 18th, 1 PM EST)If you just graduated from college or are curious about the paths, you can take post-graduation, head over here! The webinar is happening in a few hours from now.Book unlimited lawyer consultations per month for $49Boundless, a Seattle-based immigration startup, has an interesting program called “Ask My Attorney.” For $49/month, you can book unlimited 15-min consultations with a lawyer. They focus primarily on marriage-based visas, but the lawyers are also familiar with O-1s, EB-1s, and the likes.

📕What's the latest on Unshackled?

I met my designer, Komal Telagavi, who I’ve been working with for the last three years, finally in person last weekend!

We spent the entire last weekend in Bangalore, at my close friend Rishabh’s place. Rishabh, Komal, and I sat together for two whole days to build the design system for Unshackled. We spent hours reviewing dozens of typefaces, color palettes, and icon sets to find something that was just right for the book.And we did! I can’t wait to share the output with you soon enough. :DI know I can just publish a black-and-white book, and not spend hundreds of hours designing every single page.But, the reason I want to do it is simple: I want you to feel proud when you hold the book in your hand. The illustrations in there should make you feel, “Huh, yes. Someone gets what I’m feeling!” The infographics should simplify the complex legal jargon. And when you open a page at random, you should feel invited by the book to keep reading it.If that sounds like your kind of book, come join 746 others to pre-order Unshackled. 👇Get UnshackledThank you so much for reading till here,Until next week, stay cozy.Yours truly,Soundarya 💚

👀 Fun corners of the internet

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When you meet another immigrant who finally understands your struggle.😢