Daniela is a healthcare administrator and an H-1B visa recipient. Initially intending to pursue law, Daniela shifted her focus after an internship at a community health clinic turned into a full-time role. When a screening with Path2Papers revealed her eligibility for a work visa, her employer agreed to sponsor her. Her petition was approved quickly and after securing Advance Parole, Daniela traveled to Mexico City for her consular interview. Despite unexpected delays, Daniela was able to manage the stress with the help of a supportive friend and her therapist. Daniela’s visa was approved and she safely returned home shortly after Inauguration in January of 2025.
My connection to healthcare is very personal because I grew up without any health coverage. I rarely ever went to a doctor. My parents didn’t either. Whenever we needed access to healthcare, we would visit one of the community health centers that I now work with. I think that’s what drew me to this kind of work and why I’ve stayed in the sector so long.
My connection to healthcare is very personal because I grew up without any health coverage. I rarely ever went to a doctor. My parents didn’t either.
In college I actually majored in political science with the intention of going to law school, but I pivoted right after graduation because I did Dream Summer and the organization that hosted me extended my internship into a full-time role. I was placed with a consortium of community health clinics that needed help managing their Covered California grants. An opportunity came up at one of those clinics and I took it. I’ve been with them for ten years.
I thought that in my field, the H-1B was for physicians or roles different from mine, so I never looked into it. But when my parents began looking for legal support for their own legalization process, I went with them to one of their intake appointments. The person doing the intake included me too. And I said, No, pretend I’m not here. This is solely for my parents. She told me that I was potentially eligible for employment-based legal relief and that I should at least get screened for it. I agreed and she referred me to Path2Papers.
The H-1B wasn’t really on my radar. I never thought that I would qualify for any sort of employment sponsorship.
I got screened in October 2024 and I realized that yes, the H-1B was an option, but I honestly didn’t think much about it until the Election happened. That’s when I asked my employer if it was something that they would like to learn more about and they said they were interested. After that, everything happened really quickly. By December we had already submitted everything, and by the end of January, I had come back to the US with my visa.
Since I’d started working with my employer through the Dream Summer program, they already knew that I had DACA so I think that made it easier. The part that made me a little anxious was that a few of my colleagues from the finance and HR department had to find out in order to help prepare the application. But the conversation itself went well. As soon as I asked if they would have a talk with Path2Papers, they moved quickly. I think they understood the urgency and were very supportive.
The application process moved pretty fast. My application was submitted on December 12, 2024 and by the 23rd it was approved. Then I had to request an interview appointment at a consulate in Mexico. I was a little stressed out because the earliest appointment wasn’t until the second week of January. I left the U.S. on the 13th of January and my appointment was on the 16th, which was a Thursday.
Everything seemed to go pretty well. The officer said, I have the full intention of approving this. I just need my supervisor to review all your documentation, and if we don’t give you a call back by the end of today, we’ll give you a call tomorrow morning. He called me Friday morning to tell me my visa and D3 waiver were approved and that I just needed to bring in my passport and pay the reciprocity fee. So, I went back in, but their visa printer had broken down that day. I started panicking because Monday the 20th was a holiday, and also Inauguration Day, so I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get back into the consulate until Tuesday morning.
It was hard. I had a moment where I seriously considered taking my passport back and flying home on Advance Parole. I felt like, if I wasn’t going to get my visa before Inauguration, I wanted to at least see my brother. He was leaving for basic training that Monday. I called the attorney who was helping me and he said he would support me in any decision I made. I thought about it for an hour or so and I decided I would leave my passport and come back for it first thing on Tuesday.
I had a friend who came with me to Mexico City. She helped me make a little bit of a trip out of it. I’d been crying for a couple hours from the stress and she suggested that we go get some dinner. So, we went out for dinner, and while we were there we planned a trip to the pyramids for the next day. It really helped that she was there so I wasn’t only focused on my fear.
I actually had the opportunity to go to Mexico on Advance Parole in 2017 for a study abroad program. That was my first time back in over twenty years, and it was a great experience. I’m still very close friends with a few of the folks I met on that trip. I was there for about a month and I got to spend a lot of time with my family in Guadalajara. In fact, my initial plan was to do all the consular processing out of Guadalajara, but because of the time crunch, they didn’t have any appointments available before the end of January. That’s why I moved it to Mexico City.
As soon as they gave me back my passport, I went straight to the airport to come back home.
The first time I had traveled on Advance Parole, I hadn’t been so open to accessing mental health services or trying medication that could help ease my anxiety. I remember feeling horrible the entire week leading up to my return. This time around, I had a plan to help reduce my stress.
Because I had to stay a few days longer than expected, my friend didn’t fly back with me. Thankfully, I didn’t feel lonely because I’d talked to my therapist the day before and it helped a lot. It also helped that I more or less knew what was going to happen. I knew I was going to go through secondary inspection and that I was going to have to give a brief explanation of my situation. Also, this time, I flew through a different airport where they were so much friendlier. The officer asked me just two questions: What do you do for work? And do you have your approval letter? I just answered the questions and gave them the letter. They stamped my passport, and that was that.
I feel a little bit safer from the threat of ICE activity with this status. I still worry about my parents though, because they don’t have any sort of protection just yet. But I feel more confident now that my safety doesn’t depend on whether or not USCIS wants to renew my DACA or on some executive order that dismantles DACA entirely.
There’s also the pathway to a green card and then citizenship, which makes a big difference. One of the things that the Path2Papers team talked to me about was thinking through the role that I could potentially grow into over the next two to three years. For now, there are bigger priorities, like ensuring that we have enough federal funding to maintain our operations and keep seeing patients. Once that is in place, we can start to look at my professional development and the future of my role.
My advice is to remain open and stay nimble. Have a plan B if plan A doesn’t work out. I remember requesting a loan because I didn’t know my visa was going to get processed so quickly and I was preparing for the possibility of staying out there for a month or more. I know someone who’s still abroad waiting for their approval and it’s been almost two months. You just never know what can happen, but I think it’s about planning as much as possible in case things don’t work out as you would like them to.
My advice is to remain open and stay nimble. Have a plan B if plan A doesn’t work out.
If things hadn’t worked out, my plan B was to come back on Advance Parole and remain on DACA. While I was out there I also thought a lot about how, if I had to, I could stay in Mexico, probably even work in Mexico City, which is a really beautiful place. I’ve seen people who have left, that have self-deported, and they’re out there making things work for them.
One of the things that I’ve always wanted to do ever since I was a child was travel. And I haven’t had the chance to freely travel internationally. I’m growing older and I eventually want to have a family and settle down, so I know I am not going to have time to do those things for much longer. So, if it came down to it, I felt like I could choose to go back to Mexico and start a new life there.