Migration in Dialogue – Po Yu Chen and Yue Jiang

Courtesy of Po Yu Chen and Yue Jiang.

Filmmakers Po Yu Chen and Yue Jiang went on their first date on November 8, 2016—election day—while they were students at Columbia University’s Graduate Film Program.* They had no idea that the beginning of their relationship would coincide with one of the most trying periods for international couples in recent history. 

To commit yourself to someone from another country nowadays means to immerse yourself in an alphabet soup of visa procedures and to make decisions about your future together based on government decrees. The process is often challenging, exacerbated by the pandemic and the anti-immigrant shift in US policy. It is a process that, in spite of the suspicion you might get from bureaucratic officials and the vitriol from demagogic politicians, you would only do for love. 

Today, Po Yu and Yue are together in Taipei, where they spoke to me from their new apartment, fanning themselves to beat the smoldering summer heat. They made it clear to me that they are not the types to announce their lives to the world. “I’m very private,” Yue said. So I’m grateful for their willingness to share their story, the challenges they faced as filmmakers in the US without permanent legal status, and the steps they took to be together within the maze of the modern-day immigration system. 

*Disclosure note: I met Po Yu and Yue while I was a student in that same program. We’ve been friends ever since.

How did you two meet? When did you know you had a connection?

Yue: We lived in the same building of student housing our first year. 

Po Yu: We lived on West 113th Street. I’d make dinner and then knock on her door and invite her to come eat with me. At first, it was just out of politeness, being a friendly neighbor.

Yue: Then very quickly we got together. 

Po Yu: We agreed around the end of October to be in an exclusive relationship. 

Yue: It was around the 2016 presidential election. We actually had a day off for election day, so we had a date — our first official date. 

Po Yu: We went to Central Park. The fall season in New York was very nice. The sun was shining that day. 

Courtesy of Po Yu Chen and Yue Jiang.

Did you watch the results together?

Yue: No, we went to the library. [laughs] I went to bed pretty early and didn’t know the results until the next morning.

You both graduated during the pandemic. How did you plan to be together?

Po Yu: We both had student visas from the beginning to the end of the program. Afterward, the government gave us one year of OPT (Optional Practical Training) to start looking for jobs in the industry. You have to prove that you are working in your profession—in our case, it would be in roles related to writing, editing, or videography. 

Yue: You can’t work in a supermarket or something. If you were a STEM student, you’d have three years of OPT. We just have one. 

Po Yu: After graduation, I wanted to move to Los Angeles. 

Yue: I was flexible at the time. It was during the pandemic, and you didn’t have to actually be anywhere for anything. I didn’t even have a thesis presentation. 

I had an internship at a production company that I was told would turn into a job, so I graduated earlier than I had to and applied for my OPT. That turned out to be a mistake. When the internship ended, they said, “We don’t actually have work for you.” But then luckily, I found another development internship.

I graduated in October 2020, and we moved to Los Angeles at the end of that year. Po graduated in February 2021. Since Po’s OPT period ended later than mine, I enrolled in a marketing program at UCLA to extend my stay in the US so that Po and I could be on the same timeline.

Po Yu: In that whole year, you can only have 30 days of unemployment. I was a freelancer, so I had a lot of breaks between work. I had to register into the system whenever I had a new employer. 

Courtesy of Po Yu Chen and Yue Jiang.

I also freelance. You never know how long the period in between jobs will last. How did you manage to keep the gap to less than thirty days?

Yue: You just have to find a job. 

Po Yu: Anything so you can put a date on the paperwork. For Yue, it was a bit simpler because she found an unpaid internship, which counts as employment [for the OPT]. Some people would put their internship into the system and find a paid gig in the meantime. 

As the one year of OPT ran down, did you have plans to stay in the US?

Po Yu: I applied for the O-1 Visa (“Individuals with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement”). It’s if you’re an ‘outstanding person’ in your field. 

Yue: If you have an O-1, you can freelance more easily, and you don’t have to work all the time. However, you still have to work in your field and can’t take side jobs. And it lasts three years. I talked to a few O-1 lawyers. You have to build, or make people believe that you’ve built, a body of work for which you are recognized professionally, not as a student. So, even if you have a number of student awards, it doesn’t count. Anything done in school they won’t accept. I didn’t have that many credits, so I didn’t apply in the end. But Po applied. 

Courtesy of Po Yu Chen and Yue Jiang.

How was your experience with immigration lawyers when you applied for the O-1?

Po Yu: [laughs] It was very, very bad. I used a law firm that my friend recommended. In my personal naivety, I thought they would take care of everything since I was the customer. When I signed the contract, they had an attorney's assistant contact me, give me a long list, and say, ‘These are the documents we need. Upload it to Google Drive and collect as many materials as possible.’ Scripts, call sheets, posters…they wanted everything because I didn’t have too many accomplishments as a ‘non-student.’ I also included a lot of gigs I got in Los Angeles, like some short broadcast reports I did for Voice of America. I worked on a feature film that premiered at Sundance, but they didn’t recommend I use it since my job title was not ‘Writer’ or ‘Director.’ But I still uploaded those materials. 

After the assistant attorney sent me the Google Drive, he disappeared. I thought he’d follow up and give me recommendations for improving the application. Instead, he only told me to find more commercial, official jobs as a director. But it’s hard. I could only find more press coverage related to my work. I contacted my friend who worked as a journalist in Taiwan and asked him to write some articles. I reached out to VoyageLA, a local magazine, and invited them to do a feature on me. 

The deadline for my submission was in May. In April, I found out that the law firm hadn’t done anything. I started pressuring them to take my case more seriously. I sent email after email. On the date of the deadline, I got the full portfolio that they had put together, and I said, ‘OK, there are a lot of mistakes.’ The arrangement of the portfolio looked very bad. They basically just printed out what I uploaded to the Google Drive without checking it first and sent it to the immigration office.

Yue: At Columbia, there were O-1 lawyers who came and gave a presentation. They told the students in the acting program not to act in short films because they needed to have a good portfolio and credits. If they do a play, they know they will get a credit at a certain time. But if it’s a short film, they just never know when it’s going to come out, if at all, or if it’s going to gain any recognition. The same applied to us. It’s much harder for us to get credits than our friends who work in theater. It’s easier when you have a printed leaflet. The USCIS people reviewing your O-1 think it’s more serious. 

No one I know has had a good experience with immigration lawyers. They’re more like agents than lawyers. You can’t hold them accountable in any way. At the end of the day, maybe it’s better to do stuff by yourself because you know your materials better. It also depends, because I do feel that the law firm Columbia invited was probably better than the one Po used. 

What happened after you submitted your O-1 Application?

Po Yu: I got an RFE (Request for Additional Evidence). I had given the law firm all the materials I had. When I asked them what I could do, they just said, “We can find more press coverage, or you can find a commercial job as a director.” [laughs] They offered to write something extra, but they charged for it. When they told me how much, I said, OK. That’s the end. I wouldn’t pay for it or hustle for more materials. Ninety days after I got the RFE request, my case was denied. 

Yue: A lot of people I know gave up when they got the RFE. You can always resubmit the O-1 and try your luck, but you just don’t know how long it will take to process the new application. You can stay in the US during that time, but you’re not authorized to work. Some of our friends waited for months. Of course, when Trump was in office, there was a deliberate slowing down of processing times and understaffing of those offices. 

Courtesy of Po Yu Chen and Yue Jiang.

Something else happened during your time in LA — You got married! Why did you decide to get married there?

Po Yu: Knowing that we were going to leave LA, I decided to go back to Taiwan. Yue didn’t want to move to Taiwan that soon. A visa was announced in the UK. 

Yue: The High Potential Individual visa. I received that and moved to London. I didn’t want to move back to China. It was during lockdown so there was no way I was going back. And I didn’t want to move to Taiwan just yet. I don’t know why. I mean, it’s very hot here [laughs]. 

Po Yu: Asia was not on the table for her. 

Yue: Also, because I’m Chinese, I couldn’t visit Taiwan at all. If you’re a Chinese citizen, you need to have an intimate family tie to go to Taiwan, like your parent, spouse, or child. 

Po Yu: We had to get married in LA so she could come to Taiwan and visit me. [laughing] So it was a very realistic decision to keep our connection closer.

Amid all these different bureaucratic processes, how did you keep up your creative journeys?

Yue: While I was in LA, I still thought that there was some way I could stay in the US. I was working part-time for an independent video game company called Pathea Games. I also had an unpaid part-time gig at a startup, which was a possible route to a visa. I was waiting for the H-1B lottery results. I was waiting for Po’s O-1 results. But those didn’t come through. So I worked full-time at the game company when I moved to the UK and have been working remotely for them since. 

I work on the story of the game we’re building out. Basically everything that the designers and programmers don’t do. I come up with story quests, character backstories, and some translation stuff. Anything text-based I have to write. 

In my own writing, I’ve turned more to non-fiction. I feel I have more non-fiction writing to do before going back to fiction.

Po Yu: When I moved back to Taiwan, I founded a production company called Dialect Pictures with a friend of mine. Ideally, it’s a company where we can produce and direct independent feature films. We’re building a brand to get to produce our personal work. So far, we’ve produced one short film and have done promotional videos and videography for events like weddings and company gatherings. We are doing those projects to make a living and to have more free time to create our own stuff. We are also applying for government grants and seeking investors. In the past two years, I’ve met a lot of people in Taiwan. Connections are very important in the film world here. At the end of October, my friends and I will make a micro-budget short film that we’re producing ourselves. 

You’re together now in Taipei. It’s been around two years since you were able to live together consistently. How does that feel?

Po Yu: Yaaaaayyy!

Yue: I’m happy. [laughs] I’m just really used to life in the US. He was born here, so he’s more used to the way things work. 

Po Yu: Our only arguments in life are about the small stuff: where to put the garbage can and what to have for dinner. 

Yue: I’ve told him many times that we can’t find whole wheat bread easily here. And he’d say, ‘This is whole wheat bread,’ and I’d say, ‘This is not whole wheat bread.’ [laughs]

Po Yu: You can find it here, but you have to go to the high-end bakeries. 

Yue: And it’s still not the same. 

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Yue: There are a lot of people who have to be separated for a period of time, long or short. We had neighbors in Los Angeles who didn’t see each other at all for two years because she was in China and he was in Taiwan. So I don’t know that our story is something special. I feel like what we’re going through is not that bad on the whole scale of human sufferings. 

This interview was edited for length and clarity. 

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