The ‘extraordinary alien underground’ helping tech’s skilled immigrants grab visas
For the talented strivers of tech, the visa struggle is real. A network of free advice-givers and paid consultants looks to lend a hand.
Two months ago, Sigil Wen began selling “visa drip”—fashionable $60 black hoodies emblazoned with the slogan, “Alien of Extraordinary Ability.”
Wen, a 20-year-old senior AI engineer at Airchat, a social audio app in San Francisco, said he’d hand-delivered 30 free hoodies to recipients of O-1 visas, the U.S. visa granted to exceptionally talented immigrants. It’s a passion project, he said—he knows firsthand how stressful the visa trenches can be. Last year, Wen, a Canadian national, spent nine lonely, anxious months holed up with his parents in Toronto, before his own O-1 visa was approved.
In January, Wen published a 20-minute how-to video on X providing a tutorial on obtaining an O-1 visa, which has received more than 268,000 views. “Many people who are talented enough to move here don’t actually know because the visa process is so unclear,” he said. “I want to demystify the skilled immigration process.”
