1/ The Fairness of High-Skilled Immigrants Act, 2019, or #HR1044/#S386, which would've removed country caps on green cards in the US for Indian and Chinese nationals, particularly bringing the wait time for Indians from 150yrs to ~10...
2/ ... was blocked in the Senate by Sen. Dave Perdue after bipartisan support in the House. If you were Indian and moved to the US for an undergraduate degree in 2001, you'd be 36, have spent half your life in the country and not have a green card.
3/ You might be married with kids but if you lose your job, you might have to leave your family after paying for a college degree and 14yrs worth of usually fairly high taxes. Isn't that absurd?
4/ Despite being Indian, and a beneficiary of this bill, there are problems with this bill. One, most Indians in the backlog are not high skilled tech workers, but cheap outsourced labour from IT consultancies like Wipro and Infosys.
5/ Two, without a smoother cap removal transition plan, this would essentially flood the green card quota with Indians for the next ~10yrs, throttling competent candidates of other nationalities.
6/ If those two issues are fully addressed, I this bill will be unanimously favored and @sendavidperdue will let it pass and hopefully Trump will sign it!
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I want to dispel certain accusations made about my EB-1 blog on X.
I wrote that to help people. To not gate-keep knowledge. It's not great to be punished for that. The primary reason I write online is to help.
I'll break down the claims and why they're patently false:
1/8
On low quality science journals.
1 I did not use them, you can check Scholar.
2 These were recommended in the onboarding email of one of the biggest immi law firms that I used at first who have done 1000s of EB-1s.
I don't recommend it, but people have the right to know.
2/8
On publishing trade articles pt1
My language in the blog insinuated that Trade Press Services writes papers for you.
They DON'T.
They interview you, draft an article that you edit, and find trade publications who run it. Been around 30+yrs, with corp clients too.
I've spent the past 13yrs in the US afraid of being fired, anxious about travel paperwork, and not knowing if I'd spend New Years with family. Takes 100+yrs for India-borns unless you do an EB-1A.
Things immigrants go through:
1/8
You can't study what you want.
A close friend, a star mechanical engineer, learnt by soph year that most of the jobs he wanted didn't hire intls — Lockheed, Boeing, SpaceX. At his lowest point, he almost switched to CS. He ended up powering through a top PhD to get a job.
2/8
You can't always work in a field you didn't study.
A friend who was a chemical engineer ended up getting up a job as a consultant in NYC. When she applied for an H-1B, she was told her job doesn't require her major and had to leave.
3/8
When I write about leaving India, many say I'm biased. Let's look at data.
Every year, ~2.5M Indians move abroad.
Indians are the largest overseas diaspora with 30M+ people. In comparison, ~30M in India make 10LPA ($12k/yr). People who leave far outnumber those who return!
1/7
The topic of moving to and from India is so prone to narrative building on both sides..
Indians overseas feel patriotic and say "I want to move back" without doing so. Indians in India for 30yrs have said "India's future is now, why leave?" and cherrypick flaws abroad.
2/7
I've moved back and forth to India a few times and many in my circle debate this. There are plenty of good reasons to do both, but let's not lie about the data.
The numbers are scant on reverse migration, but most estimates show <10%. For every 10 that leave, 1 comes back.
3/7
Redditor goes from failing their college Algorithms and Data Structures class to cramming Leetcode for months and getting an E5 offer at Meta.
If the system is this broken, you might as well exploit it and take home $500k/yr.
Common myths:
"They're not hiring anymore"
"They don't ask leetcode questions anymore, maybe others but not us"
"Leetcode won't work, you need my course"
90% of teams espp at FAANG don't care about your experience, just interview scores. Hardest part is getting an interview.
How I went from a low level startup to FAANG in 3mos. Interview Tips and Tricks: reddit.com/r/leetcode/s/g…
What are the top 10 ranks from IITJEE, the hardest exam in India, 1987 doing today?
1M compete for 10k slots in engineering at IIT. People believe a top rank is a made life. Is it, 37 years on?
4 Profs, 2 founders, 2 financiers, 2 tech and 4 in India and 1 big on X!
🧵
1/13
Rank 1 — Rajesh Gopakumar
One of the best string theorists.
— From Calcutta, did Physics at IITK, not CS
— Princeton PhD, research at Harvard
— Moved back to India to be a Prof at TIFR in Bangalore
— Fun fact: ICTS was funded in large part by Jim Simons of RenTech
2/13
Rank 2 — Alok Sharma
Hedge fund guy.
— Went to IIT and then IIM Ahmedabad
— Spent 19yrs and became an MD at Bank of America
— Got an MBA at Booth in the meanwhile
— Was an MD at Millenium for 10yrs
— 5yrs at a $12B AUM hedge fund in NYC