Wednesday, July 5, 2017

American Dream -The Outcome (Part 4)

Hello everyone,

Sorry for the long break from writing, needed time for reality to sink in and had lots of stuff to figure out. The verdict of my situation is as expected, I did NOT make it in the H1B Lottery for the 4th consecutive time this year (2014-2017). I lost my job a week back. My firm could not support any visa work around or provide opportunities in a different country (my husband being here in the US, I am not sure it would have helped anyways). My husband just got his H1B approved  this year, by the time his green card is initiated , I-140 is approved and I get H4 EAD, it will be at least 1-1.5 years. The wait seems futile and a big road block in my career.

Conclusion: After studying from one of the top schools in USA and working for one of the top firms here, I am sitting at home because I am just unlucky when it comes to the Visa lottery. I was sad and disheartened at first but not anymore. I am keeping a positive mind and  figuring my next steps. I refuse to be a puppet of a damn lottery, I refuse to dance to the tunes of luck and destiny. I understand somethings in life are not in your control but one cant sit and whine about it for too long . One needs to fight back and be strong. Worst happens to people in life and I don't think my experience with the H1B visa lottery can dampen my spirit and determination. I will take the next 2-3 months of my life as an opportunity to start over, figure out stuff, plan my next steps and course of action.

As I read somewhere recently, once you hit rock bottom real hard , you bounce back up higher. Life has given me an opportunity to start over and write a new chapter of my life that hopefully does not revolve around playing a lottery each year.  I will continue writing this blog now without using the title 'American dream' as I explore more opportunities , there is more to life than pining for a country right ?  Life is too short to be too sad about something for too long :)
I would love to share my journey from this point on with anyone who is in similar situation or anyone who has faced any sort of visa issues , hoping I can inspire and help them !

Thanks to everyone who supported me through their emails/messages/comments , it meant a lot to me. Good luck to everyone who will continue playing the H1B lottery, may the odds be in your favor.

Sunday, April 30, 2017

American Dream-The beginning (Part 1)



If someone were to ask you the question -"Which is the most developed nation in the world with a plethora of opportunities?" , the first name in majority peoples mind would be the United states of America. Many of us Indians especially, grow up with the idea of the American dream stuck in our heads. The reasons that many of us nurture this dream to move to USA ,pursue higher studies ,find the perfect  9 to 5 job and have the perfect life are varied  and I am not here to comment on why other people make this choice. I am writing this blog just to share my personal journey. Firstly , lets clarify, I am not a writer ;I am a Software Engineer who is going to try her best to put her thoughts into words. I am sharing my journey to throw some light on the much debated 'H1B' work visa which is distributed to 85,000 'skilled workers' via a purely 'random' lottery to give an opportunity to us foreigners to work in the USA. You see how I have quoted some words ? Well of course  it is to attract your attention to them. Don't the words skilled and random together sound funny?  I don't know if there are other people in in this exact same situation that I am , but I do know that each one of us at some point in our lives faced a setback (job, career, health, love, relationships etc) that has felt so unfair and has seemed like the end of the world and today I am writing this so that the readers can relate to me in some form or other and know that they are not alone. Besides, I have realized that my head is bursting with a ton of thoughts at this time and penning them down seems like a great idea , so here it goes-
I grew up in a small town in India. I belong to a loving well to do Punjabi family. Growing up, I was always extremely studious. On one hand I had friends talking about getting married to a rich guy and being the perfect house wife, on the other I used to talk about being a Doctor (Yes , that's how it started before I decided to become an Engineer).  I always did well academically and by class 12th, I developed this fascination to Technology after taking up a vocational IT course for grades 11  and 12. So there it was bye bye to Medical and hello to Engineering. No one in my family or extended family is an Engineer so I would not only be the first Engineer in my family but also the first female to do so !
Interesting story, after the class 12th result was out along with my Engineering entrance exam results, I remember me and my uncle went to a local college close to home for admission; The reason being I was a girl and it wasn't really safe for me to travel outside my town to study alone. Now you see, I was ambitious and got good scores that could get me into any good engineering college easily, but I wasn't really ready to let go of the comforts of living at home with family and mom's food either so I readily agreed. The admission officer at the college took my attested copies of mark sheets and looked at me and my uncle with quizzical expressions and said "Are you sure Sir you want your daughter to study here ? she is very talented it seems , you should send her to Pune (Pune being one of the hubs for engineers in India)". That one gentleman whose face today I don't remember very clearly, but whose words still echo in my head became the reason why our decision changed. Sometimes a few words are all it takes. A few months later I found myself enrolled in a very good engineering college in Pune , purely on the basis of merit with no donations or reservation quota. I got my Bachelor of Engineering degree in Information technology by continuously being among the top 3 in my department for 8 consecutive semesters and 4 years. It was sometime during the semester 4 that I read about the Fellowship program my college had for Purdue University-One of the most reputed universities in USA for Engineering. The criteria again were purely merit based. The program was in affiliation with a top company in USA whose employees would come to our college , interview us, judge us on the basis of many criteria like  marks, extra curricular activities, recommendations from professors etc. and grant us the opportunity to pursue Masters of Science at Purdue University with full funding and a monthly stipend. As if that wasn't enough, the cherry on the cake was that they would surely offer you an internship opportunity in USA and if you performed well; BINGO -you get a full time job offer. Sounds too good to be true right ?It was 100% true, competition was tough but I MADE IT(One of the happiest days of my life when I found out), I came to USA with the coveted scholarship and this marked the beginning of my American dream. I landed at the Chicago ORD International airport in August, 2012 with dreams in my eyes, determination in my head and belief in my heart that I will work hard and everything will be good like it has always been. Because after all, hard work is the key to success right ? Not really, as you read on , you will see how that was in fact not going to be true for me but little did I know at that time !!!







American dream-The Journey (Part 2)

Finally , I made it to Purdue University !!!! Amazing school, amazing people and world class education. I was living my dream. America is a beautiful place. We Indian students felt so accepted by the Americans. Everyone was so friendly and kind , no wonder people from all over the world come here to study and work and feel so accepted. I was studying the subjects I liked, doing great school projects, making new friends and I also met my now husband at Purdue and we started dating. It all seemed so perfect. I got the Internship I was promised and performed well. The firm  did give me the full time job offer following the internship based on my good intern evaluation. I graduated from Purdue in summer of 2014 with a perfect 4.0/4.0 GPA and with not one but four job offers in hand . Don't want to name the firms but one was of course the firm who had chosen me for the fellowship program and where I interned , two of them were banks and one a top consulting firm. I was over whelmed. I chose one of them by comparing all options in hand and that was the start of my professional Journey.
Now to provide some back drop for whats to follow, after completing your Masters in USA, you get OPT(Optional practice training) but your visa status is still F1 -Student visa and if you are in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) approved courses , the total OPT is 36 months. So you get three years and three attempts at applying for H1B work Visa which are doled out by a lottery once a year in April to 85,000 people. If the number of applications received are more than the quota, they do a purely random selection from the received applications.  In my case, I had the job offers in October , 2013 even though I actually graduated in May,2014 so I got an extra attempt at H1B in April,2014. So to not confuse you any further, legally including the first attempt before joining the firm , I would get a chance to apply H1B in April 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 . Summer of 2017 is when my OPT and work authorization would expire. I thought to myself ,fair enough ! Four chances at the lottery . All the people with advanced degree have an additional small quota (20,000 out of 85,000) so it felt quite certain that I would make it one out of those 4 attempts. The thought did strike me back when all this started that hey,  for a country as developed as USA ,this purely random selection process for the so called 'skilled work visa' is unfair; But then I thought to myself, you got to get lucky one out of those four times at least and so I relaxed and moved on.
The next couple of years at job were so smooth and professionally satisfying. I learnt so much , worked with some extremely intelligent people and loved my Job. I had the nicest bosses one could wish for. I am no star performer but I was doing my job quite well, my performance review, raises and feedback proved that and I was working hard so I was content. The first couple of times when I didn't make it through the lottery, I didn't think too much about it. I mean, I had so much going on and felt that eventually I am going to make it. The realty hit me hard the third time when i got rejected . I was  doing what ever was in my control at my job to continuously push myself forward but luck was certainly not favoring me and pushing me backward. The summer of 2016 was the first time I actually felt maybe hard work isn't enough? Merit is not relevant anymore? This visa process is designed to favor the lucky and maybe luck is all I ever needed? Was I living my whole life with incorrect beliefs ? We will soon find out. 


American Dream- The Reality (Part 3)



So as stated earlier, it had been three consecutive years (2014- 2016)  and I never got lucky in the lottery. Meanwhile I saw, people getting the Visa in their first attempt(sigh). All the friends I had started my journey with got the visa during those  three years. But you see the problem was that the number of applications kept increasing exponentially during that time. From 180 K applications in 2014  to 236 K in 2016 and the quota remained same at 85 K, this basically means the odds kept lowering. During this time ,some of my friends working in Indian outsourcing companies got the visa , some never even got a chance to come to USA in spite of getting H1B for reasons like cancelled projects, no budget and some came and left within a year. Some people were benched indefinitely after being picked in H1B lottery, while I was still waiting to win the coveted lottery prize. I also know of people who have just done masters for the sake of getting in the Masters quota of H1B lottery (from tier 3 colleges) and they have been picked up in the lottery. To make things worst, I kept hearing about some 'Desi Consultancies' helping students prepare 'fake' resumes, with fake experiences and them getting visa based on those 'fake credentials' . 
On the other hand,I was reading about some MIT grad who worked for a big tech company and did not get picked thrice just like me. All this made it certain to me that this system is COMPLETELY flawed and my hopes dwindled. 
 The one year following that was stressful indeed since I was approaching my last H1B attempt. Its funny how in spite of having a high paying job , working hard, being a law abiding , tax paying and absolutely harmless resident of this country, everything you have worked so hard for all your life could be taken away on the basis of luck. So here I stand today in the summer of 2017 playing my last H1B work visa 'Lottery' which is purely random yet again. The only difference is that usually lotteries have money at stake, here all my future dreams , aspirations , career and my very job/livelihood are at stake. 
Lets say the selection was on the basis of merit, I would readily give up my spot for someone more deserving who has earned it; I certainly do not have a superiority complex and would accept defeat gracefully and move on to other options in life in that case. But being defeated by someone who is just plain luckier than me ? Now that's one hard pill to swallow. Would a firm decide to fire an employee based on performance or just pick a chit of name from a tub? You tell me!  I am not sure if lawmakers will change this system soon,  if possible, I hope to draw some light onto the situation for the benefit of many who could be in the same boat as me. I am not sure what my next steps are, but just for the sake of future aspirants, please make the system fair. Make it more honorable and legit, so people’s American dream is not crushed just because they are UNLUCKY. Hard work is and should be the driving force towards success. 
I can lose my job in about two months if I am 4th time unlucky in the lottery; which with each passing day is becoming more and more certain. I am not a politician to come up with a solution to this problem but here’s an idea: H1Bs should be awarded based on multiple factors like Experience, degree, job roles /responsibilities, skills etc. So, no single person feels its’ unfair for them. A person with 10 years’ experience gets points, a person with masters from a top college gets points and we can get points for each of our skills too. People with max points get visa. I will sportingly take defeat if I don’t get visa then, but this, right now, is just hard to digest. Lottery is a form of gamble, PLEASE stop gambling with our futures.
As for me, I honestly went through denial/anger/grief about my situation but have now finally reached acceptance and peace. This is not the end of the world, I know people suffer through worst and this is just one of the smaller things. My skills stay with me where ever I go. It was important for me to share this because this is something that has deeply affected my career and life and I am sure this is something that is affecting or will, in the future, affect the millions of people that are yet to commence upon their journey to fulfill the american dream.  
I will keep you posted on what the future holds for me, the lottery verdict and how I proceed from this point on. One thing is for sure, I wont lose hope or determination because of this and will try to find a path which truly values merit and hard work, like I have always believed and never again will I choose a path in life which is LUCK based, because luck is just a four letter word after all.  

Please feel free to share your stories or experiences in comments below :)
Also feel free to share this article with anyone who has had similar experiences.  
Thank you for taking the time to read this ! 

P.S. -> There could be questions about my Husband's legal status, he finally got his H1B picked this year in his 3rd and final attempt(Yes we both are unlucky when it comes to lottery). His H1B will kick in from October this year. By the time I get H4 EAD after his green card filing and approval of I-140, it will be two years as per his company policy. So I lose my job and stay out of job for two years irrespective :(