Information in: 

English


Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi


Korean


Japanese


German


Swedish


Spanish

870 Market Street
Suite 1028
San Francisco, CA
94102

(415) 391-0228

Eunju Oh
Korean Humanitarian

by David N. Strand

Eunju Oh and colleagues in Afghanistan

The majority of individual clients that immigration lawyers help bring to America stay in the U.S. and enrich our society through their energies, talents, education and creativity. A portion of our clients, however, come to America to participate in training programs to improve their abilities and broaden their experiences in order of return to utilize their considerable abilities to contribute to the development of their native lands.

Most of these folks come to the United States on J-1 visas, the “exchange visitor” category established by Congress to allow participants to gain training and education in America to be applied to the development and improvement of their homelands.

I became intimately familiar with J-1 visas through twelve years of volunteer service as President of the San Francisco International Program (SFIP), an affiliate of the Council of International Programs USA, an agency authorized by our State Department to oversee training programs in a variety of fields including health and human services, public administration, journalism, business, architecture, economic development, and technology.

Of all my clients, I am most proud of Eunju Oh, a J-1 exchange visitor whose original purpose in coming to the United States was to improve her English to be more competitive in the job market in Korea.

I first met Eunju Oh when she was an au pair working for a family in the San Francisco Bay Area in J-1 nonimmigrant status, which is possible to do through a variety of organizations recognized by the State Department to sponsor J-1 au pair programs including the Au Pair in America Program of the American Institute for Foreign Study, the organization through which Eunju procured her first J-1 visa. Her major purpose in applying for a J-1 visa was to come to the United States to improve her English to enable her to be more competitive in the job market in Korea. However, after six months with the family to which she was assigned as an au pair, things were just not working out.

Eunju came to our office to see how she could legally shift to a training program with an American travel agency. She graduated from college in Pusan, Korea with a degree in Hotel/Tourist Management and anticipated a career in Korea in tourism or marketing.

The most appropriate visa status for her to pursue her goal was as a J-1 trainee. We chose SFIP. However, immigration regulations discourage foreign nationals in J-1 status to change from one J-1 category (such as au pair) to another, such as a J- trainee program. An exception is when it can be demonstrated that a change in category is clearly consistent and closely related to the participant’s original objective and necessary due to unusual or exceptional circumstances. I was President SFIP at the time. Although the law allows people to extend J status within the United States, SFIP and most J-1 training programs require applicants to apply for visas abroad to diminish the appearance that participation in a training program is merely a way to extend one’s stay in the U.S. We therefore prepared a visa application to be submitted in Seoul that stated that the primary reason that Eunju became an au pair in America was to improve her English skills to pursue a career in hospitality, travel or marketing in Korea, and that training at a travel agency in the United States would further that cause.

U.S. consuls authorized to issue visas are required by law to deny visa applications in most nonimmigrant visa categories if they believe that the applicants intend to stay permanently in the United States or otherwise violate the conditions of their visas. They are toughest on young, unmarried women, and our Embassy in Seoul has a reputation of being one of the toughest of all. As President of SFIP I prepared a letter to the Embassy in support of her application for a J-1 visa to participate in a management training program that was consistent with her previous participation in the J-1 au pair program.

I explained that in addition to the training she would receive at the travel agency, she would join with other SFIP participants from a variety of other countries for lectures and seminars in American history, government, and culture and visits to various cultural institutions. SFIP was justly proud of providing a comprehensive program of immersion in American culture.

We were plenty worried about whether she would be granted a visa because of the broad and unappealable discretion of American consular officers, but they issued her a visa and she returned to California.

Unfortunately, things didn’t work out at the travel agency, but she wanted to stay on as a J-1 trainee. SFIP’s staff director at the time was in need of assistance, so I authorized changing her training site to the SFIP office. This move changed Eunju’s life.

SFIP has a focus on training human service professionals. Two of SFIP’s most successful programs brought eastern Europeans to San Francisco for training after the fall of Communism, and non-white South Africans after the fall of Apartheid. Both groups consisted of individuals who were very excited about the challenge of building new democratic societies and participants included a wide variety of professions from environmentalists to bankers, playwrights, museum administrators, and social workers.

The executive director of SFIP left shortly after Eunju came on board, so Eunju became acting director reporting directly to me as President of the Board of Directors. She did a fabulous job. One of the SFIP board members at the time was Fristah Affifi, an Afghan immigrant. She and Eunju became friends. Eunju began to realize that her career should be in the world of non-profit charitable organizations, and she found herself fascinated by Fristah’s stories of Afghanistan.

Thus, when Eunju’s J-1 program was over, she returned to Korea and volunteered with Good Neighbors International, a Korean based NGO dedicated to helping young people in troubled parts of the world. Eunju was recruited by Good Neighbors to go to Afghanistan to join a Good Neighbors project building and administering schools for girls in Afghanistan. Educating women in Afghanistan can be dangerous. The Taliban has destroyed a number of schools and killed teachers. In fact, they killed several Koreans who were in Afghanistan providing needed services.

The Korean government ordered all Koreans out of Afghanistan. Serendipity, however, brought together Eunju and Byounghee Lee, her boss in Afghanistan. They are now married and living in Los Angeles, where they are establishing an American affiliate of Good Neighbors International. Their most exciting project as of this writing is arranging the first American tour of the Jirani Children’s choir from Kenya, a choir supported by Good Neighbors International.

The career trajectory of Eunju Oh moved her from the corporate world to working for a Korean based non-governmental organization building and administering schools for girls in Afghanistan. It has been extremely fulfilling and enjoyable as an immigration lawyer to help enable Eunju Oh to develop her admirable career providing badly needed human services throughout the world.