The Personal Story
As you can probably imagine, this blog was created, to a great extent, as a manifestation of my catharsis regarding missing out on the H-1B lottery. However, I have since decided to give it an organized form and focus on actually filling a gap I seem to find in the ongoing conversation about immigration. Long before I started this blog, I had started peeking around the internet for more to read about how people deal with this situation (declined status), as I foresaw it as a definite possibility in my future. I wanted to know what the veterans' thoughts on it were, what their workarounds and compromises were that made the most sense, for themselves and the country that tried to throw them out. And what their advice was to those forced to face the same situation. To my surprise, the voice of those denied the ability to live in a country where they felt made the most sense of them to stay and do something they loved (in general), and those denied H-1B's via the lottery (in particular) was conspicuously feeble or non-existent. You have the occasional whisper heard from folk who got lucky and made it. I myself don't have any special light to shed on these topics this very moment, but I hope over the course of the next few months, I would have accumulated valuable experiences and thoughts, and logged them here, that will give a useful perspective to a lot of people (and not just those in my exact situation).
I'll take this opportunity to talk a little about my own situation here, which is what inspired me to start writing this blog. At the time of this writing, I am the fourth employee of BitGym, a unique fitness-oriented tech startup based in the Bay Area. The quest our party has undertaken is to make fitness universally accessible, wonderfully addictive and socially fulfilling. Our party's skills involve brilliant vision processing and tracking algorithm expertise -- to track your exercise; an understanding of the human psychology involved with software-driven positive behavior change -- to help you get addicted to something you hate doing, exercise; creative game design skills -- to make the whole thing fun; a wide variety of crazy technical chops -- we're four people who have built our own advanced motion tracking technology, iOS apps, Android apps, corresponding tech SDKs, website, servers, video decoding and playback systems for different platforms, etc; and a fair amount of good karma -- we want the world to enjoy staying fit and leading happy lives. The last is something we believe to be one of the vital elements of our team.
March 22nd, 2013 found Alex, one of the co-founders, and myself in the office of a wonderful San Francisco immigration attorney. I was on the dregs of my OPT (which will expire by the end of this year), which was allowing me to work in the United States after my graduation from college. I had filed every extension in the book to reduce the costs to BitGym (we try to stay as lean as possible). But the time had finally come to file a H-1B if I wanted to continue to work on a mission I was passionate about. We were concerned that because I was taking a founder salary (hand-to-mouth $$), or that the company did not have a record of compliant (or any) H-1B filings in the past, or some other similarly silly reason, the USCIS would turn away our application. How comically optimistic of us -- the government would not even look at our application, because I was not one of those lucky enough to make it through the (somewhat hilarious concept of) notorious H-1B lottery, as I was officially informed on May 15th.
And now what? Does Alex go around town trying to find someone to pick up where I left off? Someone passionate enough about the mission to work through the trials that such an early stage startup can be? Does he try to keep me as an offshore contractor? Should we just part ways? We're in the process of figuring out our arrangements, but you can see how ridiculously disruptive to our operations it is when 25% of the company has to move away due to a forced lottery.
This post is not meant to offer a solution. Like I've said elsewhere in my blog, this problem is much more complex than what most people think. I'm hoping, however, that this personal anecdote will help people ask the right questions. For example, in what way has the visa-cap contributed to the American economy in my particular case? Well, it has disrupted the operation of a fully local startup resulting in hindering its ability to grow in a timely fashion to create more jobs; it will result in some development probably being outsourced, something the immigration bills have been fighting to avoid; Additionally, it has made me, who was almost 100% sure I wanted to make the US my home, completely reconsider where I want to spend the rest of my life. There are also other serious implications -- financial, emotional and logistical -- for the person being denied an H-1B. Anyone who has ever lived in a country other than where they hold their citizenship can imagine what level of chaos this throws into their plans. I won't go off ranting about those, because they are fairly obvious effects.
The primary objective of this particular post is to help plot the vector from which I am approaching this ongoing immigration conversation. I feel like it is a very important facet that people don't voice enough. People in our precise position (a skilled worker, but intending to stay permanently, and not working for an outsourcing firm, among other characteristics) may be a minority, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be considered in the policy making.
Some problems are best solved by finding the solutions for the smallest minorities and extending that solution to include the next largest group, rather than the other way around.