Greetings. This is an update on my effort to obtain a Gold Card.
My application failed.
TL;DR: I applied in September 2020. After some back-and-forth, my application was formally declined in January 2022. The problem in my case is that, at the time of application, I was not aware that the requirement to have a certain salary “previously or currently” does not include any salary history that is more than 3 years old (a misunderstanding that was caused by a deficiency in the online application instructions, in my opinion).
Here are some excerpts from my previous interactions on this forum (June 2020) and my further comments.
What I did was that I followed the link cited above, which took me to a table of contents. Per further advice as above, I clicked on Economy, which took me to a page that summarized the requirements for an Economy application and also provided a link to a PDF with a more detailed specification of the requirements, which I reviewed meticulously. The PDF contained no indication that there were further requirements not specified in that document. Both the Economy summary page and the detailed PDF said that the indicated salary can be “previously or currently” without specifying the further stipulation that anything more than 3 years in the past doesn’t qualify. It turns out that this additional stipulation can be found by starting from the table of contents page as linked above, and clicking on Introduction. Since I had not read the Introduction page at the time I applied and paid for my application, I was unaware that I was submitting an application that would not qualify.
The good news is that, now that this is past, having one less option simplifies the way forward, in a sense. Thanks to all who engaged with me in the discussion, and good luck to everyone. I’m posting this because I hope others don’t make the same mistake I did.