Problem with moonlighting on EAD??

[kanus]

I am in H1 status with NIW pending since Feb 2003. I have had an EAD all the time, but have never used it until now ... I kept it just in case.

I had a week of vacation, and just for fun, worked as an extra on a movie for a couple of days (this is not my job!). I had to fill in an I-9, and naturally I used my EAD, for the first time. My vacation ended, and I went back to my normal life as an MD researcher.

There is no problem with this, correct? My understanding is that I have not affected my H1 status or my pending I-140 / I-485 simply by doing this fun job for 2 days.

Thanks.

 

[ETA-GC]

could be a problem

From what I've read / understand, using your EAD invalidates your H status. But, in your case you are / were using the H for a specific job (your main job) and used the EAD to work for a couple of days at a different job.

I don't know but there's a chance this could be a problem.

The worst case scenario is that your H is indeed no longer considered to be valid which means you need to switch over 100% to the EAD. I don't want to scare you, but if the vacation was a while ago, you may have been working on an invalid H visa since that time and I don't know if/how this can be corrected.

If you switch over to the EAD this also means you will need AP to be able to leave / re-enter the US from now on.

And, you'll obviously need to renew these every 9 months or so (to make sure they don't expire).

The good news is that you will no longer be eating up time towards the 6 year H visa limit in case you need to revert to this.

I'd get in touch with your lawyer -- it's not worth risking your GC over this...

There's no way I would have used my EAD like this without being sure whether / how this would affect things...

ETA