MIAMI — A new-to-Miami entrepreneur who has made headlines enlisting high-profile investments in his startup says he is stuck in the U.K. — the victim of an American bureaucratic delay that won’t let him get the needed approval to return home until next year.
Harry Hurst came to the Magic City from Los Angeles in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the move-to-Miami tech wave. His firm, Pipe, has attracted investments from Dell computers founder Michael Dell and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.
In a series of tweets Monday, Hurst said he cannot get an embassy appointment to have his passage back to the U.S. approved.
“I’ve done this twice before and usually it’s so simple — go home to see family in the UK for a week or two and after a quick visit to the US embassy in London to get the actual visa stamped in my passport, I’m good for another 3 years,” he wrote Sunday.
“Being approved by (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) is the tough part — the embassy visit to get the visa in my passport has always been merely procedural. However, the tables have turned — I was approved by USCIS within 24 hrs but I now can’t get an embassy appt until 2022! citing being ‘understaffed’.”
The tweets caught the attention of many in Miami’s tech community, and eventually made their way to Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who has been at the center of recent efforts to grow as a tech hub.
In an interview Tuesday, Suarez said he had reached out to Sen. Marco Rubio’s office.
“If anybody had a similar problem, I would be taking a similar action,” Suarez said. “It’s not like I’m doing anything different for him than I would anyone else — I believe in helping people in all circumstances. This is not just because he’s running a successful tech business in Miami. It doesn’t matter what stature, or situation. I would put in the same effort.”
In an email, a spokesperson for Rubio said the senator is aware of Hurst’s predicament but did not have any updates.
Hurst, a British national, is in the U.S. on an O-1 visa, reserved for individuals who possess “extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics.”
A so-called non-immigrant visa, O-1 visa holders, like their E-2 or H-1B counterparts, tend to have priority in approvals over immigrant visa holders, according to Adriana Kostencki, partner at Nelles Kostencki immigration firm.
But she said Hurst is correct in that U.S. embassies remain short-staffed as a result of the pandemic — and what’s more, continue to face extreme backlogs.
“It’s all delayed,” Kostencki said. “They’re now trying to accommodate immigrant and non-immigrant visas.”
USCIS data show the London embassy approved hundreds of non-immigrant visas in April alone.
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