Not sure if this helps anyone but as an immigrant, here is kind of my story and what I am thinking for the future:
- Came to the US in 98 on a work visa H1-B. Company that hired me applied for my LPR/GC after a couple of years working for them. Those days Green Card timelines were much shorter, especially for people from India and China. I think at that point my application was in the EB-3 (Employment based 3rd preference category. EB-2 is for those with an advanced degree etc and EB-1 for folks with demonstrated outstanding potential..think well known business executive or very talented & recognized professional). If I had stuck around with that firm, I probably would have gotten my permanent residency by 2003.
- However the bug of getting an MBA got into my brain, so after taking the GMATs and all that I got admitted to the MBA program at Dartmouth as a full time student...and therein was the first dilemma. As a full time student I would have to move to an F-1 visa which does not allow for being a legal permanent resident. In fact to get an F-1 visa you have to demonstrate an intent to return back to your home country after your education and off-campus training are over. How fucked up is is that now I had to go from a green card application pending in the works to cancelling that and now demonstrating that I would have intent to return to home country. The owner of the company I was working for was open to continuing my green card application if I promised to come work for them after my MBA..but I had bigger dreams and could not in good conscience do that. So my Green Card counter now gets set back to zero. I was married at that time and my wife was on a H-4 visa (dependent of an H1B visa holder) and by law not allowed to work. My getting a green card would have allowed her to work legally. She was an advertising executive with Ogilvy & Mather in Mumbai and doing quite well but accompanying me to the US meant she had to sit home and be a housewife by law. I think it is much harder on the spouses of those who come to the US for work, especially in the earlier years. After a couple of years my wife did find a company that would give her a job and sponsor her H1B visa but that certainly came with a loss of career progression and even having to completely change her industry. But hey, not everything in life is guaranteed to be a bed of roses and after all we did make it to the US...so fair price to pay I suppose (yeah, I am saying and she is paying the price).
- After my MBA and $100K in student loans, I got a job with a Multinational company in California and again I find myself on an H1B visa working for my new corporate masters. Survived many layoffs and reorganizations as I was keenly aware that if you get laid off /rightsized (what a sanitized bullshit word at that) on an H1B, you have about 10 days to leave the country. Couldn't let that happen to self and wife. During this time I also discovered how I was underpaid compared to my peers even though I was a ‘rockstar’ (management’s words not mine). But see the thing is when you are on a work visa, they have you by the curlies since you don’t have too many options (other than to find another employer who would also agree to sponsor your visa and then the curlies would change hands if you will, that’s all, and not all employers sponsor visas, in fact most don’t. Many of the American companies that come to campus for recruitment won’t consider international candidates who need a work visa. Consulting companies, Wall Street and Tech companies - generally not a problem. So Ford or General Electric wouldn’t want me but I could work for McKinsey or Goldman Sachs – nice!
Need for a visa also ensures that unlike my US born colleagues I could not consider jobs with cool startups, many major American firms and other niche companies. And at work you get to learn to hold your tongue more than your colleagues have to since they can’t be screwed over by the boss to the same extent you can…though being an ENTP Sagittarian, I was not necessarily successful at it (hence eventually EGTOW – sort of like MGTOW but for Employees
ha ha.). That was a stressful decade of work and managing psychological equanimity for self and family. Interspersed were events such as them making errors in my Green Card application that cost a year to redo the process and the ever retrograde movement in Green Card Priority dates by the USCIS (priority dates are the cutoff dates that indicate which applications the USCIS are currently working on. One fine evening I discovered that I was 2 years further from my Green Card than I was that morning, thanks to an Update om Priority dates from the fine folk at USCIS. Needless to say much secretion of adrenaline and cortisol followed such news and around that time I think I had my first heartburn and esophageal spasm I think. But life goes on. At least I am not stuck in Bangladesh like those other unfortunate people. Somehow I recall that at that time I also got my MENSA membership and went to a couple of events – many socially odd people there I tell you.
-Finally in 2011 I got my Green Card and later that year asked my boss to organize my layoff – should have seen his face! He did come through for me after over a year and in that time I had to balance between showing low enthusiasm and morale for work while not slacking of so much so that anything bad happened to my department (had team of 8 reporting to me) or that I got fired immediately…that added its own stress but it was balanced by the enthusiasm with which I was making plans for my soon to be newfound freedom (5 month motorcycle trip, location independent living etc). During this period I also was the best boss my team ever had as no vacation request was denied and eventually I even stopped keeping track of their off days – I think everyone wanted to be on my team.. ha ha.
The benefit of being laid-off versus straight up leaving was that I got a 10 month severance package with full medical while also being eligible for unemployment (thank you California labor laws) – that was my Shawshank redemption (what a movie by the way!)
-Since then (6 years now) I have been my own investment advisor and have lived overseas for many months, walked across Spain – Camino Frances, rode my motorcycle all over the west, lived in different parts of the country and am free of the burdens and pretensions of paid employment.
- I applied for my US citizenship around 6 yrs after I had my Green Card (earliest possible is after 5 years of Green Card) and after clearing a background check and an interview I found myself along with over a 1000 people at the Jack London Theater in Oakland being sworn in as a United States Citizen. – almost 20 years after I came to the country as a hopeful but slightly unsure 25 year old. I’m glad the lights were dimmed in the auditorium for the onscreen presentation and welcome message from the President because suddenly everything I was seeing became blurry and distorted and yet I could see everything clearly as all the memories of the stuff above and a whole lot of other stuff that I have not mentioned came at me like a rubber mallet – you feel the impact but can’t quite put your finger on the exact spot. “Welcome to the United States” – it said on the screen. I started at that for a long time (also I was hoping my eyes would dry before the lights came on and people started congratulating their fellow citizens on either side of them).
THE FUTURE
After having lived in the UK and Spain for 9 months in the past year…I was still not ready to come back. Part of it was certainly the novelty of being in another culture (had never crossed the pond before…have done it twice since) but the novelty of sights, sounds and food thins out and what remains is the sense of the day to day life and the people that make up the place.
In that regard, I found the UK, Scotland and Spain to be very open, safe and ‘welcoming’ even though I had no expectations going in. It is only in looking back that I feel that day to day life felt so much more ‘normal’ and ‘human’ there. I had more interesting and fulfilling conversations with people there than I’ve had in years with my friends and acquaintances here who always seem to have some sort of inability to have a sustained interaction and behave as if they are always on the clock. It seems to me life in those places is more on a ‘human’ scale – the sense that we are people first and then consumers (though the UK is trying hard to change that). We did spend most of our time in the smaller to mid size towns and that might have colored our impressions, though I wouldn’t call Edinburgh and Glasgow small.
The UK is a little more than half the size of California and yet it was easier to walk pretty much wherever we wanted, unlike back home where all I see is fences and fences and fences with ominous signs to keep out. Never in Spain or the UK did we ever feel unsafe (a couple of alleys in Gloucester notwithstanding) or a sense of being alert or on edge the way I do when back in the US. Not sure what it is but just a heightened sense of some tension and awareness that I must walk around with a somewhat assertive air of dominance around me because everyone else is doing the same? I am still processing this.
Another thing I noticed is that the dogs in the UK seemed far more docile and well adjusted and I think it is because they get walked by their owners much more often (people have smaller yards) and hence are used to being around other people and dogs. In contrast, where I am here in Albuquerque, there are homes with massive fenced yards and the appropriate ‘beware of dog’ warning. One helpful home even has a cheery sign ‘Immediate Armed Response’ in case a trespasser was not deterred by the dogs. The dogs run free in the yard and run up to the fence snarling at any man or beast strolling on the other side – and that is perhaps the intention of the owners, for them to be guard dogs not socialized companion animals. Neighborhoods here feel less neighborly and more like a collection of armed compounds. It might be a small thing, this business with fencing and dogs etc but I think such things start defining the vibe of an area…repeat it across the country and you have a vibe of a country.
Of course many many things in the UK and Europe suck too. Public transport in the UK is really expensive and not very good outside of London (in Spain it was great) yet the common man depends more on it there than in the US. Homes are small, less variety in the stores and online. People are not overtly talkative (actually started liking it after a while) and everyone does not have chiclet white teeth. But at the same time, I found the women and men more ‘normal’ not so high key. The small children were reasonably well behaved too. Bratty behavior is frowned upon and manners are still important. Just as a guy, my another observation is that the women in the UK (not London, which does not feel like the UK) are a little more feminine in their demeanor whereas back home it seems the feminity is more defined by wearing female apparel and makeup whereas the attitude can be hard as nails with an aggressive attitude (Spain is different in that I feel the women are very loud and vocal and strongly openly feminist – attributing it to post Franco freedom)
Prior to this I must admit I was of the firm conviction that everyone in Europe was jealous of the US and would love to move here in a heartbeat. BTW I must also mention that prior to the election there was a part of me that wanted to see Trump win if only to just overthrow the smarmy and annoying PC attitudes that so many of my bicoastal acquaintances seem infected with. Now having seen the aftermath I am not sure if the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater.
Well the long and the short of it is that I would like to continue to spend some more time in different parts of Europe and the 3 month Schengen visa restriction is a pain in the logistical ass. So thinking about ways to maybe get a permanent residency or something like that which means I won’t have to be watching the clock and could travel more freely there. Currently exploring options in Europe as well as South America – Idea being to eventually get a second passport.
Of course I could also hope for the EU to come undone and then maybe I can have 3 months per country versus for the whole Schengen zone – now that would be something.
<Sorry for all this rambling…maybe I am trying to make up for not posting much, which probably is a good thing for all concerned
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