USA = My Dream Land?
Career March 29th. 2008, 10:18am
(Picture courtesy of stock.xchng.)
About 8-9 years ago, I was dreaming about living in the US. Their high-tech industry grew very fast at that time. There are a lot of opportunities there.If many Chinese and Indians are able to migrate there, why can’t I? That’s why, I tried many different ways to migrate to the US.
- I applied for Master program in 7 universities in the US. Yes, it’s not a typo. Seven universities! One of them is Maharishi University. Guess what… all of them rejected me!
- I joined Green Card Lottery in year 2000. Since the lottery is purely based luck, I didn’t get it.
- Not to forget about job application. I submitted my resume to many US companies, including job agencies. I was quite lucky because one of them finally contacted me. We started H1B visa application. It was approved! Unfortunately, the company collapsed right before I came, almost at the same time as dot com crash.
Since I had no luck in the US, I went to Germany to pursue my Master degree. The rest is history. I forget about my dream of migrating to the US.
About 2 weeks ago, someone from Silicon Valley contacted me about job opportunity there. The job description is just great. I flew to Silicon Valley for an interview last week. The interview went quite well. They seem to be interested hiring me although no written offer yet.
I am questioning myself now, is the US still my dream land? Should I relocate there? It WAS my dream land but…. many things have changed. Right now, I would prefer living in Canada much more than in the US.
March 29th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
hi anthony,
I’ve been reading your blog for a while. If you moved to US and become their local citizen, it is still possible that they will still be biased towards your birthplace. I was crossing over the border in a school trip (2 busloads of people) to NY and only 2 people were called down to be interviewed with the customs: me and a Canadian citizen. I was holding an Indonesian passport and the other guy was holding a Canadian passport. The reason why this Canadian (but not the rest of 2-busloads of canadians and a few other foreigners) was called down was because his birthplace written on his passport was Kabul, Afghanistan. The ‘war on terror’ will still be around for quite some time, so my guess is that you will have a ‘hard time’moving around in US despite that you look chinese and holding a US/Canadian passport.
March 30th, 2008 at 7:09 am
@Andrew: I fully agree with you. I have had a “special treatment” from US border officer a few times. That’s why I just forgot my dream living in the US. It’s just not worth it for me because they treat me like a criminal.
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Antony,
I’m afraid you’re already late. H1-B visa program has just been opened for applications and learning from the past I’m pretty sure that the cap has been reached already on Apr 1. Unless this new company had already made a contract with you, willing to do the paperwork for H1-B and filed your application on the very first day, it’s late.
Hope your dream will come true (whatever it is), H1-B is just simply THAT tough.
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:15 pm
@Tote: I have actually rejected the offer. I was thinking US is no longer my dream land. There are many other better places in this world.
PS: I am now happy with my decision.