By Marla Boone
Contributing columnist
EB-1A. It’s just secret-codey enough so that you know its origin is somewhere deep in the bowels of the government. Bowels may be an inapt metaphor. The EB-1A is a type of visa. A very valuable visa. Specifically, it is a permanent-resident visa, which, unless you are a U.S. citizen, is as good as it gets. This visa is supposed to be bestowed on those with “extraordinary ability.” Hey! No room for interpretation there, right? Technically, the visa is meant for those with extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics. I don’t mean this bad, but some of the committee should be recognized for their extraordinary ability not to know what extraordinary ability is. Melania Knauss, whose extraordinary ability was posing, was awarded one in 2001. Remarkable, given that only one per cent of the 500,000 permanent resident visas granted each year are EB-1As. On the other hand, if a Miss America contestant’s talent competition can be changing clothes (this really happened), maybe it’s time to set the bar a little higher.
Discovering precisely where the bar is located now involved braving the arcane world of government-speak. It seems candidates for the visa must fulfill three of the ten criteria set forth by the immigration service. Steel yourself and Google CFR 204.5(h)(3). Be prepared to be impressed/puzzled. The ten criteria include national/international awards, publication in a major media, and original contribution with major significance to the applicant’s field. You get the picture. Interestingly enough, criterium #9 is commanding and holding a high salary or significantly high remuneration. The fine print says one million dollars should do it. Criterium #10 is success in the performing arts. The fine print here instructs the artist to provide box office receipts. I swear I am not making this up. It all sounds like golden material for a late night talk show monologue but every word of it is directly from the government website so you know it has to be correct.
If a person can’t manage to cover even three of the wildly inclusive ten criteria, they can scrape by if they have had a “major one-time achievement.” This includes something like a Pulitzer Prize or a Nobel Prize. A Nobel Prize sounds like a big deal. It often is. But sometimes you have to wonder if the Nobel committee is smoking the same stuff the EB-1A people are. The Nobel Peace Prize went to Henry Kissinger for his work in negotiating a cease-fire in Vietnam at the same time he ordered the bombing of Hanoi. Don’t get me wrong. Bombing Hanoi was a sound military strategy at the time. It’s the irony of giving a peace prize to the guy orchestrating a bombing raid that gets me. I mean, dropping bombs on an enemy capital is a pretty in-your-face move. Did he think no one would notice? The prize in medicine in 1962 was given to James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins for the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA after they surreptitiously obtained and used (without attribution) Rosalind Franklin’s ground-breaking research which revealed the molecule’s helical shape. Ms. Franklin was notably not included in the prize. Barack Obama was given the Peace Prize after he had been in office a whopping eight months. At least he had the grace to say he didn’t deserve the prize, something almost everyone except the Nobel committee agreed on.
While most people can see there are some highly questionable awards here, no tale of truly terrible choices would be complete without an “Absolute Worst” category. Again, if you Google “most controversial Nobel Prize” the Henry Kissinger recognition will often crop up. Controversial, yes. Worst, no. For that distinction, I give you Antonio Egas Moniz, who, in 1949, was given the Nobel Prize in Medicine for developing the pre-frontal lobotomy. This barbaric procedure was performed on thousands of people, ostensibly mentally ill, but all too frequently merely those who did not fit into a neat societal package. Most were (surprise!) carried out on women rebelling against stereotypical role definition and gay men in an effort to change behaviors to something more in line with general expectations. Uppity women and gay men…what are you going to do? Why, stick an ice pick in their brains, of course. And then hold your hand out for the prize.
Marla Boone resides in Covington and writes for Miami Valley Today.
