Violinist, CCM graduate and former adjunct faculty member must leave U.S.

The piece is Violin Concerto No. 23 in G Major by Viotti. Its first movement alone challenges the musician with sudden, dramatic changes in tempo, tone and mood. The U.S. immigration system can have the same effect on people.

Bulgarian national Yuliyan Stoyanov is rehearsing it Thursday afternoon at a Madeira church with one of his advanced violin students. Madelyn Deininger, a 15-year-old Walnut Hills High School freshman, would be playing the piece with piano accompaniment at a recital two days later.

Madelyn has studied with Stoyanov for five years. She frequently looks away from the sheet music while playing, sometimes making eye contact to seek his approval. She winces at the occasional sour note.

Yet the lesson today is bigger than a piece of music.

"We talked about a very calm morning; here comes the sun. Then immediately you have to switch to a completely different thing," Stoyanov says to Madelyn. They both hold violins and bows. His gentle baritone belies the fervor of his dark eyes and thick eyebrows. Madelyn shifts her weight left to right and back left on her black Converse Chuck Taylor basketball shoes.

He mentions bow speed. Bow position "is your biggest helper." He encourages her not to think of playing individual notes but rather creating a melodic line.

"You have played the last note, and everything is done," teacher tells student. "And then you have to turn around and put a smile on your face and play the next movement, which is happy and energetic. It's not so easy to change your whole emotional mode in a snap. Still, we have to try."

Stoyanov, 40, talking about his life, too. He is about to be deported.

On Wednesday, he and his Bulgarian-born violinist wife and their two U.S.-born children will board a plane to Paris that connects with a flight to the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. There, they will start a new life after living almost 14 years in the United States on a series of student visas.

The U.S. government has twice denied Stoyanov's petition for him and his family to stay in this country on a permanent worker visa.

"It feels as if they just did not have the patience to look through everything and analyze it," said Stoyanov, whose filings to U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services have amounted to more than 700 pages.

"Otherwise," he said, "I cannot explain their denial."

The category in which Stoyanov applied – foreign national of extraordinary ability – is competitive and rigorous. Many applicants who appear to be more than qualified are denied, according to some national immigration experts. The selection process is not necessarily limited by quotas. Experts say legal immigration officials are looking for the best of the best in sciences, arts and business and might be applying a too rigid and narrow definition of the law, a process that can leave people such as Stoyanov on the outside looking in.

The category seeks Nobel Prize laureates, patent holders and Olympic medalists. Sadly, Stoyanov is none of these.

Family wanted to stay in United States

Stoyanov and his wife, Smiliana Lozanova, 36, have performed since 2006 with the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, based in the state capital, Charleston.

Lozanova emigrated to the United States in 2002 on a student visa to work toward a master's degree in violin performance at Louisiana State University. Stoyanova followed a year later.

Their last student visa expired in 2013 when he earned his Ph.D. in musical arts from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. His wife has the same degree and the performance-oriented artist diploma from CCM. They estimate they received close to $500,000 combined in scholarships from the school, which they consider one of the top five in the United States.

"There was nothing better for us than CCM," said Stoyanov, who taught violin for three years in the school's Preparatory Department. "It was the place where we could achieve our dreams and goals."

They are two of three instructors with the Madeira String Academy, which they co-founded and through which they've provided lessons for 20 students. Their plans to incorporate and grow the business leave with them. Madeira City Schools did not offer a strings program.

In 2014, the West Virginia Symphony filed on behalf of Stoyanov for an "Immigrant Petition for Alien Worker," claiming he is "an individual of extraordinary ability." If granted, the petition would have allowed him and his wife and sons to stay in the United States and earn naturalization status, a "green card."

The petition, which was denied Oct. 4, included dozens of letters of recommendation from internationally recognized experts in violin, orchestra and chamber music. Stoyanov provided proof of his professional career: orchestral appearances in Japan, Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Bulgaria, Russia, Macedonia and the United States. Recordings of his work are available in archives of Bulgarian National Radio and Television. His popular music experience includes work with the classical music-based Electric Light Orchestra rock band, Trans-Siberian Orchestra and vocalists Sarah Brightman and Josh Groban.

In a give-and-take of submission by Stoyanov and requests for more information by immigration officials, the government determined that because he had not won a one-time, major international award, he would have to meet three of 10 categories for his petition to be considered.

He met two: He had judged, individually or as a panel member, the work of peers; and he had earned enough media coverage about his work in major trade publications or journals.

Immigration officials, however, determined that Stoyanov – despite 13 letters of recommendation in this category alone – did not prove that his "work has made original contributions of major significance to the field."

"The category they said I did not meet," Stoyanov said, "was the one I was most confident I would meet."

He appealed. A letter dated Feb. 22 arrived and stated flatly: "USCIS did not find the beneficiary to be of extraordinary ability."

Officials with the federal agency declined to comment on the case.

He cannot appeal its decision. On Friday, Stoyanov sent in a motion to reopen the case.

He had worked with several attorneys, the first in Pittsburgh who was recommended by other classical musician peers.

The process is expensive. He estimates spending close to $14,000 in attorney fees and a few thousand more in filing fees, each one costing $630.

'There's something wrong with the system, not the applicants'

Such stories teeming with frustration and seemingly arbitrary decisions by government bureaucrats are not uncommon.

Cleveland-based David Leopold, past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, has handled several dozen applications similar to Stoyanov's. In addition to his private practice, Leopold advises several immigration reform groups, most notably America's Voice, and contributes frequent op-ed columns on immigration.

"If they were judging baseball players, you have to be Derek Jeter, not a journeyman Major League third baseman. You can't just be good," Leopold said. Though not familiar with Stoyanov's case, Leopold said he appears to be gifted and a strong candidate for relief.

"This kind of thing happens all the time," Leopold said of the denial. "The law is designed to protect the U.S.-born workforce. In other words, `Is there a qualified American worker who can do this job?'"

The type of talented foreign-born applicants turned away, such as Stoyanov, Leopold said, make him think that "the people making these decisions live in a culture of `no.' To get one of these things, you have to fight tooth and nail. I think we are turning away people who can save lives and create jobs. The purpose of immigration is the enhance the economy and enhance the culture."

Stoyanov would appear to be doing both. He is studying yoga to learn more freedom of movement for violinists. They have developed an online violin instruction course that they launched, and which they plan to enhance from their native Bulgaria. They will live in her grandmother's apartment in Sofia.

"The Internet needs a good, high-level violin tutorial," he said. "We will provide that."

They say they are frustrated but not angry.

"We have always played by the rules. I've seen colleagues of ours who stay here illegally. I can never do that," said Lozanova, Stoyanov's wife. In 2001, they were members of an orchestra that toured 24 states for 54 performances of three French operas. Some fellow orchestra members overstayed their temporary work visas and are now U.S. citizens.

He said, "It is a cliché. Life goes on. The show must go on."

Their departure will leave holes in communities from Madeira, where they've owned a house since 2012, where their 5-year-old son, Teodor, has attended preschool, and where they brought home their 2-month-old son Deyan; to Clifton Heights, where violin student Madelyn Deininger lives; to Charleston, West Virginia, where Thomas and Sue Vasale have been their hosts since 2009.

"They're part of our family," Thomas Vasale said. "We've watched them grow into the kind of family that makes our country such a wonderful place to live. If these two can't pass muster, there's something wrong with the system, not the applicants."

One last lesson, virtuoso to student

Stoyanov frequently uses music to teach larger life lessons to his students.

Teacher, heal thyself. He finds empathy and comfort in Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 in D minor. He performed it in 1997 on a tour of Europe with a Swiss orchestra.

"After I played it, I felt the whole symphony conveyed the struggle of life," he said. "Every day is uncertain. Every day is something different and something difficult. You can never see where you are going. The horizon is so far away. But you keep showing up every day and doing your share. The superhuman will to resist and endure in the last movement is incredible."

He read about the symphony two weeks after completing the tour.

"There are infinite ways to interpret a piece of music, but his message is what I felt," Stoyanov said. "One year ago, I had just completed my education. My wife was expecting. I was a happy citizen and looking to contribute what I could."

Today their small house in Madeira is empty of furniture they have sold. A man knocked on the front door during an interview Tuesday to pick up and pay for a shelf unit. Stoyanov took the cash and helped the man carry the shelves to his truck.

A neighbor will be the landlord and rent the property in their absence. Teodor's preschool teachers threw him a going-away party Thursday.

"Ridiculous," is how violin student Madelyn Deininger describes the set of circumstances of her teacher's forced departure. Her mother, Carolyn Deininger, said Stoyanov's tutoring turned the violin from something her daughter felt she had to study to something she wants to now make her life's pursuit.

Stoyanov left Madelyn with a final lesson.

Find a new teacher. Fall deeper into the music. Absorb its beauty.

Overplay it. Feel it. Make it your own.

Persevere.

MORE INFORMATION: Five types of worker visas

The federal government, under the jurisdiction of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, makes about 140,000 worker visas available each year to foreign nationals and their spouses and children.

Workers can apply in five employment-based immigrant categories. The U.S. Department of Labor certifies that an insufficient number of qualified and willing U.S. workers are available for positions and their the hiring of foreign workers will not negatively affect the pay and working conditions for similarly employed U.S. workers.

The first category is for people of extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business or athletics, or for professors or researchers and multi-national executives and managers. (This category is the one in which Bulgaria-born violinist Yuliyan Stoyanov of Madeira applied.)

The second is for people in members of professions who hold advanced degrees or for people with these degrees in the arts, sciences and business.

The third is for professionals or skilled workers whose job requires a minimum of two years of training or work experience.

The fourth category is a preference for “special immigrants,” which can include religious workers, employees of U.S. foreign service posts, foreign-born minors who are wards of the U.S. courts.

The fifth preference is reserved for business investors who invest $1 million – or $500,000 in a targeted employment area – in a new commercial enterprise that employs at least 10 full-time U.S. workers.