maybe during her schooling she worked with someone who worked with him on it? as like a shadowing sort of thing to learn and she helped him out a bit? my understanding of immigration law is fairly shaky all things considered but i believe he'd have had to get sponsored and i'm not totally sure how a tattoo shop apprenticeship would have worked but maybe that was the problem and she and whoever she was shadowing or working with for school or what have you helped prove that the tattoo shop was enough and allow his mentor to sponsor him? if that makes any sense, i may have lost control of that sentence