Back to India
yugal.me
yugal.me
There’s a nice shiny shell of Indian startups now for sure, but the fundamental rotten core of Indian magistration is still there. There are smart people but for every smart cookie that didn’t leave the country there are 5 charlatans demanding the same salary now. Pretty much every successful startup in India is massively building on top of cheap slave labor / bad tech regulation / gambling. VCs are pouring money here because where else can they go? China? Middle East? How long will it last? Who knows.
Not saying india is not going to be successful, but to bet on it’s success over the same industry in the US is at best speculation.
Now coming to the society disadvantages, viz. the pollution and water scarcity, abject inequality in your face, and my god let’s not start on the safety of women (my partner said she will never bring a girl child up in india and i incline to agree). The last point is in particular interesting because only naive people have shrugged it off to my face till now. If you are a guy (or worse a girl) who insists it’s not that bad in india, then you grew up with extreme privilege or are extremely clueless about realities of life in this country. Anyways choose away but don’t for a second suggest this is somehow better.
Given the author's impressive credentials and ambitious tone, he would be a fool to choose to wait 195 years [1] for a green card.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2021/03/01/immig...
Now let us say he has an engineer friend who was born in Bolivia, received a bachelor's from Arizona State University, and works on an H1B at Office Depot. A perfectly adequate employee with a perfectly good background. His visa category will most likely be 'EB3' and his wait time for a green card will be 18 months.
The 'better visa options' you mention are in practice applicable only for a small minority of workers (certain PhDs, the very wealthy, expat managers etc).
The vast majority like this author find themselves strangely waiting 100+ years for a green card while their colleagues with very similar backgrounds from virtually any other country receive it in a year or two.
The false equivalence of a 100+ year wait with some vague "Indian politics and bureaucracy" is not relevant. "Romanian politics and bureaucracy" and "Cuban politics and bureaucracy" may be worse than "Indian politics and bureaucracy", but that is not at discussion here. What matters is that Romanian and Cuban H1Bs have an 18 month green card wait time.
And the author clearly considers this unfair process more than "annoying". To him, it is perhaps closer to humiliating and debilitating, which is partly why he has chosen to put up with it no longer.
Exactly. Considering what I went through already, I can't even think of spending the next couple of years like that hoping I will get GC one day. If I go through again even half of what I went through already, the stress alone will kill me soon. I already lost all my memory - I don't remember anything about my past, no memory of my childhood, parents, school. What I went through probably shortened my life by 10 years. And I am worried if I will get dementia because of that.
Its really disappointing that people are using his gender and caste as excuses for dismissing whatever he went through.
care to cite a few specific ones when one doesn't have a PhD, nor have a few million lying around nor intend to go in management?
> Yes they are annoying. But so is Indian politics and bureaucracy. I view them as equally annoying.
Will cite your own words from the top comment in this thread about annoyance of those options - "only naive people have shrugged it off to my face till now"
Also the same amount of money goes a long way in India than in US. Rents, medical costs, etc are way cheaper.
It will teach you a practical lesson in natural identity. Do make sure to go to a nation that you think is the greatest nation in human lifetime.
It behooves us to call out shitty stuff just as it behooves us to work towards bettering our surroundings in increasingly larger circles.
It's going off-topic now for the thread, but since you mentioned it: Some European countries do just that.
https://www.dw.com/en/over-100-islamic-state-fighters-return...
> Authorities believe that 1,060 IS fighters left Germany for Syria or Iraq, of which a third have since returned, the Interior Ministry said. Germany is taking a "holistic approach" in dealing with ex-jihadi fighters, including deradicalization and reintegration.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55387991
> Germany and Finland have repatriated five women and 18 children from Syrian camps housing suspected family members of Islamic State (IS) militants.
.
Incidentally, on the thread topic, I too turned my back on the US and returned to Germany in 2004 after about 8 years and with no visa or job trouble and a good outlook. Back to Germany, in my case, and also after thinking about the bigger picture. I'm a co-founder of a small software company here now. Healthcare, politics (so divisive, and divided, here in Germany it's so much more mild except for the far-right Russia-friendly AfD party), housing costs. Well, the latter is really bad now in Germany too but the rest remains good.
> If you are a guy (or worse a girl) who insists it’s not that bad in india, then you grew up with extreme privilege or are extremely clueless about realities of life in this country.
What kind of argument is this even? "If you disagree with me, you're clueless"?
There's definitely some "I'll shit on my birth country to win Western approval" energy here..
Stop projecting.
I assume you're going to travel on a "humanity" passport...? Or are you going to eat some crow and "pledge allegiance" to some country?
But honestly choosing between US and India to raise kid is choosing between two very bad options and there are more options in world, someone with IT background shouldn't have many issues to move to Europe which would be certainly better option long term raising the family, but maybe slightly worse career wise.
Also France and Germany are quite multicultural, so I don't see how it's any different becoming French or German vs American or Brit in general. It just comes down to you being Indian and probably only country having large Indian population in Europe being UK, so they can think you was already born there and consider you local. Black people could already pass also for French, Turks for Germans, but yeah specifically Indians will stand out everywhere except UK as not being born there, but just because you stand out it doesn't make your life worse.
Other people stand out for other reasons than color of their skin anyway even if they are completely local and still live in their countries without moving to country where people like them stand out less. By your logic very tall people should move to Netherland, dwarfs should move to some dwarf colonies etc. so they won't stand out for being different, your skin color is just another thing to stand out.
My wife also has a similar opinion - that being a woman in India is very hard. Yet, she wants to go back to India more than me.
There are pros and cons of this sense of community as well, people can be nosy. However, coming back from India recently, I felt pretty depressed and alone. In North America, everyone seems like a busy worker bee that is working all the time. On the weekend, the bees explore a little bit more. Go hiking, or explore their other hobbies. But the sense of aloneness is something I never knew I had until I went back to India.
Aside: This was my first trip back after having done a few when I was young and hating those since I was just stuck in the house as a YA and had limited internet access. The country, the people, have come far from that and as an adult I have all the freedom to do whatever the fk I want too.
I think this is the biggest difference - economic differences are quite large in nominal terms but life always goes on, there's going to be food on the table and roof over your head.
Coming from East Asia a lot of my friends are not used to this - but I find myself enjoying the loneliness of it all - being on a boat in the middle of the lake at the middle of the night with no one around you in 2 miles radius is a blessing.
For a similar reason, I never liked New York, SF or LA in the US.
I only lived in Bangladesh until age 5, and have spent nearly my whole life in America, but this sense of loneliness hit me really hard when I had my own kids. I remember being surrounded by aunties and cousins at their age, and my kids aren’t. Just in the last year we had a critical mass of neighborhood kids move in, but for my oldest, it was a very solitary childhood until age 8 or so.
This doesn’t just happen in india but also in the states where there are “tight knit communities”. Aka small church focused towns. Jobless people knowing each other seems like one of the fundamental problems hindering human freedom to me.
The whole what will SOCIETY think of us, I think it really varies depending on what parts of India you are in. At least in India, cultures vary greatly even from city to city. I have heard very very progressive things happening in India, and also very regressive things. It just depends on where you are and how much f*ks you give personally. Who cares what a lady three doors down thinks? Let them think what they want.
I definitely see your side of this though, as that was my perspective before. Mine is a bit different at the moment, but might change in the future.
It has lot of potential but at the end of the day it’s corrupt to the core, cities are hyper polluted and the infrastructure is abysmal(Although better than two decades ago).
I also didn’t like it that the government supports Russia.
As an Indian kid growing up on Cartoon Network, I was quite envious of western kids with skateboards and actual skate parks, tons of toys, gizmos and game consoles.
Once you start knowing people well, they start opening up about their past and I have come to realise 3 out 4 of them, pretty decent well educated people have had to struggle with alcoholic/abusive/loveless parents, addictions of their own, depression.
I just realised even though things were pretty bad in terms safety (traffic), sanitation, health or access to simple things like telephones or material comforts, most "middle class" Indians grew up in pretty safe social settings.
Somethings like safety has certainly improved substantially, but certainly some like alcoholism has grown exponentially bad.
What do you also think about safety with so much of gun violence and abuse going on in USA?
In our experience, private schools in India are much better and probably safer for kids. They offer all-round learning experience (books/studies, sports, cultural experience etc.) and hot fresh meals as well. It is expensive and hence it is not commonly available to all kids, but I don't think such school experience is available in USA as well (especially cold and frozen food given in schools).
While I agree about some of your points related to safety, pollution, and overall civic sense, I don't think it living in US is somehow better. May be you are living in USA with extreme privilege and/or with narrow vision and mindset. :)
> India’s rising startup and tech wave
> Massive switch from wealth accumulation mode to wealth creation mode.
> And the amount of VC funding in India combined with the startup ecosystem’s energy here is absolute fire
> The collective risk appetite has never been higher.
> The step after the ‘American dream’ is the ‘Indian dream’.
This is great to hear about India. The more developed and economically successful the world’s largest democracy is, the better for the world in general. The US, Europe, and allies should be doing whatever we can to support this.
Not for India’s economy and defense. Surely, you recognize they are not a rich country and in an unstable region?
They literally hosted Russia Foreign Minister week or two ago. They abstained in votes against Russia for that invasion in UN. US warned them no to go in bed with Russia. Do you think EU or US will look kindly to support India now?
This country needs to be cleaned from the head, just like Germany after WWII. If not it will always be a danger to world peace.
Ukrainians have the right to decide what they want to do and what, if anything, to give up.
But that doesn't change much. The US intervened in Vietnam and Afghanistan and because the locals didn't want them, the US still lost.
Foreign contributions in Ukraine pale in comparison to Vietnam and Afghanistan yet Ukraine is resisting. And this a full blown Russian invasion, not just a Ukrainian civil war, yet Ukraine might even win this war.
That's strictly the merit of the Ukrainians. You can gift weapons, but not the will to fight.
Not yet, apparently, but they are fighting for it.
Ukraine becoming a more successful county like all the other countries that have joined the EU would have made Russians wonder if Putin was holding them back given their closeness to Ukraine and more advantageous starting point.
Yes but this furthers the goals of Western Europe and The USA, regardless of how Ukraine behaves. It just so happens to be an aligned interest with Ukraine. If Ukraine wants to fight off Russia it certainly has the right to, but asking China/India to sanction Russia is like telling them to pay and actively contribute to the war. Maybe they should do that, but that payment is at their cost, for the benefit of Ukraine and NATO.
I'm sure there are plenty of civil wars and atrocities such that the US probably should have interfered more, such as in Myanmar, so one has to wonder why in certain cases (Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine) that the US decides to intervene slightly more.
I'm not saying that's what they should be doing or not be doing, I'm just helping laypeople rationalize why the self-interested approach of certain countries is rational... for their self interest. But then countries aren't people, but they are beholden to the interests of their own people first. The US just so happens to be aligned with the interests of Ukraine, but our interference definitely has self interest motivations too. We just can't go around pretending like China and India not "helping" for our self-interests as some kind of atrocity.
There's always a double standard at play. For EU, buying oil is a necessary evil. For India, it's "supporting" the enemy.
India received Lawrow recently, he is not allowed in any EU country.
But there is a difference in long dependency and completely new buy. India is not dependent on Russian oil, Germany is (I mean, if they stop, cars will stop, people will freeze in houses because of lack of gas to heat their houses).
And? Your point? Speaking to diplomats is suddenly taboo?
> India is not dependent on Russian oil
No. But, it is dependent on oil and gas being cheap enough to make basic inputs with. It is a region and country on the brink of poverty in many ways. What did you expect?
You can speak on phone, receiving one from countries killing civilians on purpose is making a statement. If you make a statement you will be heard, and I don't think many EU countries will be happy. Not to mention, you know humanitarian aspects - you can buy your oil without blood.
And, why hasn't the EU shut off all oil and gas purchases from Russia immediately?
Why should a poor country support this sanctions regime and then witness massive internal disruption?
Most of the countries and populations of the world have in fact NOT imposed sanctions.
Because they let themselves get too dependent on foreign energy, so doing so would have meant letting their own people freeze.
You are free and rich enough to do this, be my guest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD_6L_ktkM8
Is oil the only thing a country can be dependent on?
Also, what are you? Some Eastern European, who has some emotional ties to the region? 99% of Indians have never heard of Ukraine, and yet, Indians should sacrifice their one steady ally who has stood with India all these decades?
I assume India politicians heard what Russia targets in Ukraine (and it is not military). Bucha is just one example.
Would India buy cheap soap from Germany during WWII (of course if it wasn't under Britains rule)?
Do you really understand or know more about these concerns?
India has massive dependency on Russian military hardware and spare parts. So what should it do, just break off with Russia over a war in the Europe and get screwed itself when China-Pak nexus comes knocking on the border? No country in the world would do that, none-zero-zilch…
Moreover, Europe itself is buying Russian oil and gas, and wants India to stop - that reeks of double standards..
International politics is much murkier than national politics, so nothing is ever black or white.
Choices.
BTW. Regarding the oil and gas, India started buying when it didn't need to . EU is dependent on that oil and gas (Eastern Europe was forced on that dependency, Westerners stupidly joined) - e.g. cars will stop on streets, people will freeze in houses (ok, maybe not now, fortunately Spring is coming, but we still have 0-8 Celcius here, not fun to be in unheated house in that temperature). And we try to stop it, e.g. in Poland we worked on that and hopefully by the end of the year we can stop importing gas from Russia.
You are free and rich enough to do this, be my guest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD_6L_ktkM8
There is a difference: you don’t have a choice, Russia is the enemy as well as from where where you’d sourced hardware. Moreover, per my understanding, a lot of hardware and spares are manufactured in E. Eu, due to Soviet era, so things are slightly better due to that.
India is different, the enemy is China-Pak nexus. Russia has never been India’s enemy, rather has been friendly as a counter against US which for decades was more friendly towards Pak and even China. Kissinger hated India for some reason. Also, India doesn’t manufacture a lot of spares for military hardware. India is trying to reduce dependency on Russian crap by buying from West, note the Rafale deal. So it will happen, it will just take time. Note: India has the 2nd largest army in the world, so things take time.
> India started buying when it didn't need to
India started buying exactly when it needed to, when the price went over $100 a barrel which has a huge economic impact. Just like Eu is still buying Russian oil and gas. It’s not fair to express your own reasons while not understanding the other’s.
No one in India is doing this out of love for Russia, the history is in the past, but out of strategic reasons - which is what countries do.
Do you think it's only Europe that has cars?
Do you think Indians move around on donkeys and bullock carts?
If the US oil prices match Russian oil prices, then sure, buying oil from US can be considered. [1]
[1] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/Swaminomics/if-us-...
It’s pretty obvious that the 2 would have different responses.
Also, if dependence is irrelevant, then why is the EU a continuing to buy Russian gas? To the tune of $35bn since Russia invaded Ukraine, compared to the $1bn they’ve given Ukraine?
I don’t blame them for it. I can understand that it’s pretty much impossible to unravel those decades of dependence in months, and trying to do that immediately will likely be counterproductive.
And India recognizes the same about its own Russian policy. They know they need to move away, but they also recognize the dangers of doing so in a thoughtless and rushed manner.
Further, unlike your conveniently specific black and white thinking, other countries like those in the EU (which haven’t said anything to India), the US (which has tried diplomatic persuasion but has not threatened any negative consequences), Australia, Japan, etc, all understand where India is coming from. And even though it is their duty to at least try to persuade India to shift its stance, they know it’s not gonna happen and understand why it won’t happen at such short notice, which is why they’ve been neutral to supportive.
There is absolutely no reason India shouldn’t buy Russian oil. Especially when the EU continues to do so.
The only country that has any standing complaining about Indian purchases of Russian oil is the US. And they haven’t complained about it because they recognize the hypocrisy of criticizing India buying a few millions worth of oil while not saying anything to Europe buying a few billions worth of oil.
Do you know that Europe is _still_ buying from Russia??
Do you know that the US is also _still_ buying from Russia??
India does about $8Bn/year of trade with Russia. That's peanuts.
And nearly 50% of the tankers carrying Russian oil are Greek; and yet you don't hear a word about Greece.
I didn't know about Greece, I was wondering how in the world was Russia transporting that oil and wheat.
NATO will loose its purpose when Russia disappears.
In other words, Europe continues to buy from Russia so as to not to inconvenience its own citizens (need gas to heat people’s homes). But India shouldn’t buy from Russia to keep a check on fuel prices in a poor country.
Seems like you don’t care as long as someone else is inconvenienced.
And Europe is not filled with rich countries.
Or that Europe would in anyway want to give up on its Russian gas and oil, while pointing fingers at India which buys less than 1%.
In fact they fear it might go the same way as the sanctions on Iran, where India had to go through Germany banks to pay its Iranian dues, where Indian banks were expected to abide by sanctions while German banks were not.
India isn't a colony, and India is capable of and willing to be a mediator to bring peace, the west isn't or won't.
What regime changes, what orchestration?
It is and I hope india is able to develop.
> The more developed and economically successful the world’s largest democracy is, the better for the world in general.
Who cares whether india is a democracy or not? It's so odd people parrot the propaganda so religiously. Every post about india inevitably mentions something about india being the largest democracy. Who cares? If india wasn't a democracy, should we hope 1.4 billion indians revel in poverty?
> The US, Europe, and allies should be doing whatever we can to support this.
We will support as long as india is poor and unsuccessful. As soon as they get rich and strong, we'll attack them just like we did to japan in the 80s and china today. The largest geographical democracy is russia and boy we surely don't support them. And we sanctioned india when they developed nukes in 90s, even though they were a democracy.
How about we support india lifting hundreds of millions of humans being out of poverty and worry less about democracy which has kept them in poverty for nearly years after independence?
Anybody who wants to do business. Democracies have stable, predictable rule of law. Do you want to invest in a country where a dictator could simply decide that he is going take your assets?
The grandparent’s point was that Russia is technically a democracy and look how it’s doing. If there’s enough corruption is it really still a democracy? And if it isn’t, why does it matter if India is a paper democracy or not when considering whether it needs our support.
Really? Russia? Venezuela? They are democracies. Also, do you realize that many of the world's poorest and unstable countries are democracies? India has been a democracy for nearly 80 years. Nobody wants to do business with them. Everyone wants to do business with china. Go figure.
> Do you want to invest in a country where a dictator could simply decide that he is going take your assets?
You mean like how britain, EU, etc are taking russia's assets? Or how we stole japanese american assets during ww2? Or mexican american assets in the 1930s. Or the native american's lands since the very beginning?
There's nothing inherently good, stable or lawful about democracies. If you didn't have blinders on, you'd be shocked at how terrible democracies have been. The country with the most poverty in the world is a democracy - india. The countries that have waged the most wars around the world in the past 20 years have been democracies - US, Russia, EU, etc. The countries that have committed the greatest genocides have been democracies.
What a nation needs is competent leaders, not democracies. Instead of blinding accepting propaganda, just look at the reality.
Isn't that the fault of democracy then? How can democracy be so great if it can't even help develop basic civil society? So now you are moving the goalpost from political government to civil society? So it's civil society that's important not democracy?
> I'd much rather be in one of those flawed democracies than, say, in North Korea. '
And most people would rather live in china or vietnam than many of those flawed democracies.
> Democracy, liberal/bourgeois values, civil society, proper rewards for merit...
That's not what honest look at political history shows. We're told hitler was the worst thing in history and democracy gave us hitler.
> All of these things ultimately foster competence.
I'd say it fosters corruption rather than competence. And everyone from the founding fathers to the ancient greeks would have agreed.
There are merits to all forms of governance. Nothing magical about democracy as I've shown. What you need is competence. Doesn't matter the form of government.
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
Last I know all major nations and big corporations of the world are queuing up to invest in India.
Every human being on the planet who doesn't want to live in a dictatorship subject to the whims of one or few strongmen, or to be disappeared with no legal recourse for saying or thinking the wrong thing, or to have the valuable things they've built stolen by the unaccountable powerful.
There was a brief interregnum to history after the fall of the USSR, where we all thought authoritarianism would disappear if we just all get rich together, and that the culmination of human social evolution was liberal democracy and free markets.
Unfortunately none of that is true, and authoritarianism is on the rise again. You can pretend not to see it or that it doesn't matter if you wish, but that won't change the reality.
And Russia is no longer a democracy, the US has never attacked Japan post-WWII, and US has been extremely generous to China until Xi Jinping took over and began his campaign of regional and world domination.
How exactly does a democracy prevent any of that? Democracy gave us Hitler. Democracy gave us Putin.
> There was a brief interregnum to history after the fall of the USSR, where we all thought authoritarianism would disappear if we just all get rich together, and that the culmination of human social evolution was liberal democracy and free markets.
There was a brief time after the soviet collapse where the clever sold the lie to the naive. But no serious person ever believed "it was the end of history".
> Unfortunately none of that is true, and authoritarianism is on the rise again. You can pretend not to see it or that it doesn't matter if you wish, but that won't change the reality.
My point is that india suffered immensely for 80 years as a democracy. It has hundreds of millions of people living in poverty. Hundreds of millions of people without electricity. Not a very good endorsement of democracy. My point is that india needs competent leadership who can develop india. Not necessarily democracy.
> And Russia is no longer a democracy
Democracy must have sucked then.
> the US has never attacked Japan post-WWII
Other than the attacks on japan during the 80s.
> and US has been extremely generous to China
I'd say it is china that has been extremely generous. You might want to read up on some Sino-America history. It's a pretty ugly affair.
> until Xi Jinping took over and began his campaign of regional and world domination.
It isn't china that colonized and occupied asian countries. It is the US. We are the ones occupying taiwan, philippines, korea, japan, etc.
The monster in the pacific isn't china. It's the US. The country causing strife in the pacific is the US, not china. But then again, we cause strife everywhere in the world from south america to africa and everywhere in between.
People who continue to say “expat” will justify it by saying “oh, they don’t plan to stay in the country long term”. But you can’t possibly know what a persons long term plans are just by looking at them. You can’t even tell with certainty if they came from a poor country or a rich one. All you can see is their skin colour. That’s what people base the “expat” tag on.
Sincerely, an immigrant.
White people living in retirement communities in Thailand call themselves and are called expats.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/10/immigr...
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/laws-and-regulations/laws/i...
I grew up an immigrant to Switzerland, now I’m an expat in South East Asia.
In fact I did some tutoring to a school for poorer pupils, many of them second generation from the Philipines (so born in Hong Kong, where I immigrated, with two parents born in PH).
When I told them I was an immigrant they were dumbfounded "but then you re very lucky to have arrived here", I was like "not at all, immigration is a choice, you dont need to feel victim of it, we're not here by luck but by work and opportunity seizing".
Talking of immigrants as victims is like talking of africans as "subevolved" charity needing parasites: it hides most of the truth of it.
Every expat is an immigrant, every immigrant is an expat. You left for a reason, and it s always money or a girl.
They're by no means as rich as some of the Chinese visitors to those destinations.
More:
Why are white people expats when the rest of us are immigrants? Surely any person going to work outside their country is an expatriate? But no, the word exclusively applies to white people
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals...
When is an immigrant not an immigrant? When they’re rich. The British diaspora in the Gulf and Brunei are seen as useful – it’s only poor immigrants who are seen as a problem
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/10/immigr...
That then shades into other meaning, which is one of someone living abroad that doesn't expect to stay, or retains a strong cultural connection with their home country, or doesn't mix with the local population (c.f. "expat ghetto" to describe a locale primarily inhabited or frequented by such people).
I don't know what the dictionary definition says, but I wouldn't say "immigrant" and "expat" mean the same thing to me.
Two different things.
When you're creating products for developing countries, you have to build for a certain market. The one in India is enormous and prosperity is increasing (although the pandemic has been a setback, yes).
It was definitely a shock for me at first & is not a pleasant way to live IMO.
This is unfortunately very true. Living in most Indian cities requires one to build a character that can withstand living amidst such destitution. Millions of people do it everyday though. You kind of have to mentally block it out.
To add to this, there are no appointments for Visa Stampings back in the home country because of which many people dropped their travel plans; and USCIS doesn't give a damn about it. Life is more or less crippled at this point. Now, would all this still be outweighed by a First World living quality? In the beginning when I was young I used to think "yes". But I've realized lately that it's a big "no". Days are making me think about my plan to move back out to home country or our peaceful northern neighbor.
Exactly my thoughts. The poor quality air or the mad traffic in Indian cities feels a lot better than the insane stress the visa situations put me through the last few years.
> To amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to reform and reduce fraud and abuse in certain visa programs for aliens working temporarily in the United States, and for other purposes.
For a long time, desis treated the H1-B system as a permanent immigration visa, and Americans looked the other way. My family came here in 1989 under the old H1 program. That’s no longer true. Americans feel that the country is full and will increasingly be enforcing the letter of the law. Desis should internalize that. Unless they’re eligible for a real immigrant visa (in America, the main one is the family reunification visa) they should either go to Canada or Australia, which need people, or help improve India.
I used to think the same, that the Americans don't really want us. But when the corona pandemic related lockdowns happened, and US banned people from India, US still allowed Indian college students. So there must be some need. These students are not coming to US for education, they are coming here to work, and get green card and become a citizen.
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2021/05/03/us-rest...
> For a long time, d###s treated the H1-B system as a permanent immigration visa...D###s should internalize that.
And that is why I think posts like this are important. So that Indians who are considering moving to US know the ground reality, and make informed decisions rather than regret it later in life.
Silicon Valley needs and perhaps even wants Indians as permanent immigrants. Insofar as Biden is supported by Silicon Valley with donations he’ll throw them some scraps. But Indians (and Asians generally) aren’t especially politically useful to Democrats. They aren’t eligible to vote for a decade or more, and don’t turn out even then. And they create internal tensions in the coalition (e.g. voting down Prop 16 in CA). Democrats will talk a lot about loving immigrants because they’re laser focused on the Hispanic vote. But reforming the H1B system doesn’t help with that and they won’t spend any significant political capital on that.
Perhaps the literal interpretation of the law reaffirms your argument for the temporary status of the visa but that doesn't take away from the fact that H1-B visa holders have progressed to the permanent residence status through this track in the past.
This doesn't mean that every and each one of them is entitled now to this immigration status upgrade but this sentiment of "Here it says temporary in the law so you better pack up and leave now" is a bit unfair.
I don't think so. At this point Americans don't seem to care. In ripe cities, they see many immigrants from different countries many of who are GC holders or citizens. Btw many of them came here a couple years ago on the same h1b visa, so not sure why only Indians should be looking at it differently?
The fact is America always needs high-skilled labor, to keep its economy at the No.1 position. They're however, not ready to reward that labor so readily.
I don’t believe America really needs high skill labor. When my family came here in 1989, America was already the undisputed #1, and there were less than 1 million desis in the country. Today there are over 6 million—but America is in decline. I’m not saying there is a correlation, but I think it’s self-indulgent to say the country needs skilled immigrants.
I'm not saying it needs me, but generally standing strong at the top has its cost - to have a rock solid administration and to keep bringing the cream of the world to work for them. There couldn't have been such a boost possible otherwise.
Those immigrants were the poorest and least educated ones Europe and Asia had to offer. I’m just saying it’s presumptuous to say America “needs” the educated elite from other countries.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, but can you be more specific about which metrics America is objectively declining at?
There are so many areas where the American culture really shines. The civil rights and protection are fantastic, and in a country like India, it'd be a breakthrough to even have 5% of it. While no country is perfect, I guess it's not too late yet to put forth some measures to guide the country onto a path of correction.
This is false. The H1B is a 'dual intent visa', which means it "allows foreigners to be temporarily present in the U.S. with lawful status and immigrant intent".
> Unless they’re eligible for a real immigrant visa (in America, the main one is the family reunification visa)
This is false. An H1B ("temporary worker") from, say, Iraq or Serbia has no wait times for a green card. In contrast, a child ("family reunification") of a Mexican US Citizen must wait at least 20 years for a green card.
Ordinarily, applying for permanent residency would signal immigrant intent, which would be a violation of the H1B. The INS later created “dual intent” as a legal fiction that says that applying for a green card doesn’t, by itself, create a presumption of immigrant intent. Congress codified this narrow exception in the 1990s—but never eliminated the requirement that H1Bs have non-immigrant intent. See section 205(h) on PDF page 66: https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/eoir/legacy/2009...
> (h) The fact that an alien is the beneficiary of an application for a preference status filed under section 204 or has otherwise sought permanent residence in the United States shall not constitute evidence of an intention to abandon a foreign residence for purposes of obtaining a visa as a nonimmigrant described in subparagraph (H)(i) or (L) of section 101(a)(15) or otherwise obtaining or maintaining the status of a nonimmigrant described in such subparagraph,
When someone here on an H1B applies for a green card, the government winks and says “we will both pretend that you still intend to go back home.” Their legal rights are limited to this indulgence. If they signed an affidavit swearing that “I definitely intend to immigrate here permanently and abandon my residence in my home country” the government might well be forced to kick you out.
"In addition, INA 214(h) provides that an H-1B nonimmigrant may have "dual intent," i.e., the fact that an H-1B nonimmigrant has sought permanent residence in the United States or will be seeking such status in the future does not preclude him or her from obtaining or maintaining H-1B nonimmigrant status. The applicant may legitimately come to the United States as a nonimmigrant under the H-1B classification and depart voluntarily at the end of his or her authorized period of stay, and, at the same time, lawfully seek to become a permanent resident of the United States without jeopardizing H-1B nonimmigrant status. Consequently, your evaluation of an applicant’s eligibility for an H-1B visa must not focus on the issue of immigrant intent." [1]
1. if H1Bs are not to lead to green cards per your interpretation of existing laws, then no H1Bs should lead to green cards, regardless of country of origin
2. if H1Bs do lead to green cards as we know they do in practice, as per my 'dual intent' understanding, or as per your 'wink wink' description, then they should lead to green cards regardless of country of origin
But the inconsistency in providing green cards to Tunisian H1Bs in 18 months while providing green cards to Indian H1Bs in 100 years is where the problem arises, and that is why the young author with a bright future is headed to India instead of applying his intelligence and abilities in the US.
When I read this originally, I was a bit confused why the child would not have been a US citizen as well by merit of being born to a US Citizen...but I think you're saying that the parent received US citizenship after the child was born?
For that child to become a US citizen would take at least 20 years and perhaps much longer to the point it would not be feasible, like in the case of the author.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/immigration/h1b
"The H-1B program applies to employers seeking to hire nonimmigrant aliens as workers in specialty occupations or as fashion models of distinguished merit and ability. A specialty occupation is one that requires the application of a body of highly specialized knowledge and the attainment of at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent. The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States."
At least according to the U.S. government's Department of Labor, H-1B is a nonimmigrant visa, offering temporary employment, for specialty occupations that cannot be found in the U.S. workforce. That said, it is highly likely there is some other official government source backing up your claim that it (as you quote from somewhere) "allows foreigners to be temporarily present in the U.S. with lawful status and immigrant intent". The U.S. government has a reputation for providing conflicting information!
The whole comment is so uninformed it’s just wholly nonsense. It’s fiction from the /r/asablackman genre.
I’ll provide a starting point https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx
A lot of people i know moved to US because of huge salary gap. Now that gap has reduced a lot and you can save more in India maintaing same lifestyle.
And accounting for 40% taxes and 30% spending (~7K per month which gives you a super comfortable lifestyle even in SV) leaves you with 30% savings, or ~84K USD which is the entire pre-tax pre-CoL salary for the same kind of work in India. Numbers are even more skewed as you become more senior.
Now one may argue with Google being an outlier. But Google is an outlier in India as well and a lot of companies pay similar (>3X between SV vs India). SV is also not special in that Seattle or NYC will net you similar numbers.
Care to cite some hard data about your statements?
[1] https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi... [2] https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Facebook&track=Softwa...
And EU/Uk pays 2x or 0.4-0.5x adjusting for cost of living.
Devs in India are getting paid _more_ now adjusting for cost of living..
It's just that, cost of living stops making sense after a specific amount. For a lot of things $1 = $1
You want to buy a laptop in India? still costs $2000. Vacation to Exotic Islands? Would still cost the same.
But lets be real, isn't the quality of life much worse? I've never been there (or in the US, for that matter), but I'd imagine that things like infrastructure are far worse in India. Also, the country seems so... chaotic, the cultural shock must be crazy.
Here are my ₹2
> quality of life
"Quality" is subjective. My wife and I value having our parents around, being able to afford a cook/maid/nanny, not having to deal with winter and darkness, ...
> infrastructure
For sure it's worse in India. But our lifestyle here is such that we don't have to deal with it frequently. We live next to friends, in a arguably beautiful society, and when we do need something done, we inevitably "know a guy who knows a guy", who can help sort things out without us having to deal with the subpar infra. But yes, for sure India could do a lot better on this front.
> chaotic
For someone like me, who was born and raised here, it is easy to thrive in this chaos. This is home.
Having domestic servants is only possible in placesi of high inequality.
1. Climate: India is definitely sunny and enjoys predictable weather patterns all year round. Climate change might upset the equation, but it is still bright and sunny.
2. Biodiversity: India is 7th largest country with lots of great places to visit. Mountains, deserts, beaches, jungles, plains etc are all there and South East Asia and Africa are just a flight away. India is 2nd only to Africa when it comes to wildlife.
3. Food: Most Indians eat locally grown stuff sourced from the region and there is an amazing variety of fruits and vegetables that are local to the regions.
4. Social support: The society is definitely more warm and cordial compared to USA. There is house help readily available and the extended family support is unbeatable.
5. Booming tech scene: India will soon need to support it's own internal market which is growing exponentially. The success of Byju's DarwinBox etc is just a start.
P.S. Balaji Srinivasan goes into details about ascending vs descending societies here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlY8HICFiRs&t=4183s
>Climate
Definitely hotter in most (80%) of India, from late February to mid-October. US states enjoys more cloudless sunny weather per annum.
>Biodiversity: India is 7th largest country with lots of great places to visit. Mountains, deserts, beaches, jungles, plains [...]
US is almost a continent. It has all these and more. Sorry.
> Food: Most Indians eat locally grown stuff sourced from the region
True for US too. California, Midwest, Florida and North Carolina produce majority of US food primary produce. Infact, they export it. And we import a lot of these to India.
You can get the same terrible strawberries all year round if you want though.
I’ve never been to India, but I assume the situation is better, at least based on how people rave about mangoes.
It isn't. The best produce in India ends up getting exported.
It’s a choice, though. Sushi is not as well available. European food is rare. Beef is not as good in India.
If you’ve got cosmopolitan sensibilities you will find that there are trade-offs. For some reason, people get very attached to food so these comments get very contentious.
But a fresh ripe banganapallee is not something you’re really going to experience in America. It is just absent.
And if you live in India only, you will never get to experience top quality BBQ. This is reality.
My dad grew his own vegetables. The only guaranteed fresh ones I ate :) Fun fact: Best mangoes generally are from Philippines. The Cebuano variety. Alfonso is mighty overrated.
This is a parochial dismissal of a valid point. India is also a sub-continent with some unique geography.
> It has all these and more.
Come back when the US has Himalaya, Wildlife like tigers, lions, rhinos, snow leopards, Elephants, Gaurs, Nilgai, Dholes etc.
As someone who has lived in both India and the US, I can say that they both havr beautiful nature.
No. It isn't. Compare the landmass size & it explains what I mean. Compare the number of unique wildlife species & recognized biodiversity exclusive zones - and it shows the stark difference. Reserved & National parks cover far greater chunk of both US & CAN as compared to India, with the possible exclusion of some African countries (by %landmass coverage)
>Come back when the US has Himalaya, Wildlife like tigers, lions, rhinos, snow leopards, Elephants, Gaurs, Nilgai, Dholes etc.
N. America has Rockies & Appalachia - wild boars, bisons & reindeers & similarly exotic flora and fauna. I personally like rattlesnakes, gophers & opposums. Somewhat exclusive to US SW. What's your point, except sounding mildly absurd.
> As someone who has lived in both India and the US, I can say that they both havr beautiful nature
As someone who lived between India, US, EU & Japan for practically all my life continually after high school, I must better qualify to give a reasoned opinion based on your logic, no? Counting number of years in a country is meaningless to discuss, if your only jaunt is a weekend hike somewhere. I work for a biodiversity conservation agency additional to my CS job. Its a serious job done gratis in cooperation with Greenpeace. How about you?
I can tell unequivocally that conservation efforts are very slim in India. If you seek an answer, choose any hill station & observe the deforestation around it. India claims recently green cover increased. Thats factually incorrect because they count shrubbery as green patches. What matters is contiguous forest which is fast disappearing in Southern Himalayas, Nilgiris and even remote places like Sunderbans & NE hills. The proliferation of waste & solid pollutants in green cover is a much more complex topic which would entail its own thread. Summarily NPS in US is still doing a better conservation as compared to Indian counterparts, although not on a vastly larger budget (i.e order of magnitude larger, as anyone would normally expect)
I base my answer on stats not personal opinion. Just a last nitpick - you have misquoted me. I wrote "US is almost a continent. It has all these and more. Sorry." Your cherry pick "US is almost a continent. Sorry" made it sound more dismissive.
There is house help readily available in the U.S. - the caveat is that you can't afford it unless you're super-wealthy relative to the average population. Incidentally, that's the same in India.
In India anyone earning Rs. 75K a month, (around 1K USD) can easily afford house help for cleaning dishes, and sweeping floor and cooking food. My personal expenses on these 3 things are Rs. 7500 per month (around $100).
1. Since, I am from North India, Bangalore treats us like foreigners i.e. if you don't speak the native language, you will be at a significant disadvantage when requiring the assistance of police.
2. Rather, the police has been known to discriminate against `outsiders`. You can even head over to r/bangalore to know more.
3. The income inequality is real and through the roof. We tech people make much much more than any other private profession and this has made the general population unhappy.
4. Lastly, there isn't much to do besides going out to pubs/cafes.
Which is why I've been leetcoding and preparing to emigrate to Canada/UK. While it's true that I can save a lot more money here (in real terms! At PPP, my monthly savings allows me live for several months without an income) but at what cost.
> Lastly, there isn't much to do besides going out to pubs/cafes.
I am just amazed at this comment. The wondrous ruins of Hampi are just a train ride away. Then there's the UNESCO protected majestic western ghats few hours away, and not to mention the pristing beaches of Malpe and Udupi. I mean Chamundi hills, Hogenakkal etc is right next to the city.
I agree, there are certainly amazing places to sight-see but I am largely referring to activities like rock climbing gyms (https://www.youtube.com/c/magmidt88), archery, horse riding, accessible national parks and a more extensive board games culture (surprisingly Hyderabad has 2 active clubs)
The Indian society would cast you as an extremely privileged person if you were to bring this up and rightly so, since most people here are trying to live a life first.
I understand that it may not be what everyone wants and this is personal to what I prefer. I would like to be in a place with a better infrastructure (trains), schools and with access to more recreational activities.
That is an interesting comment to see, because a cursory Google Maps search gives plenty of results. I think I can easily say that Bangalore has archery clubs [1], Rock Climbing gyms [2], Equestrian clubs [3] and a National park [4] (with others also pretty accessible). I can't, of course, talk about board games because I can't get that from a cursory Google search, but this is an interesting nitpick.
[1]: https://www.google.com/maps/search/bangalore+archery/@12.890...
[2]: https://www.google.com/maps/search/rock+climbing+gym/@12.890...
[3]: https://www.google.com/maps/search/equestrian+club/@12.89137...
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bannerghatta_National_Park
1. Yeah the language barrier can be a lot - but no matter which city I lived in - I have always had people help me out with the local language. In smaller villages/towns - it can be harder to find people who can do that for you though.
2. I can't say much about this because I didn't have to deal with this in a meaningful way.
3. I think it is more complicated than "tech people make much more". As a point of reference - the street food vendors (pani puri guys for eg.), the uber drivers, the blue collar workers and sometimes even the house help i talked to - they all made more money than the "IT people" they provide services to. And outside IT - my doctor, lawyer, architect friends all earn quite well - while being under a lot less stress. I do see huge income inequality though - but at the same time it is more complicated than I thought it would be.
4. Honestly - I used to think the same too but you need to figure out what/where to look at. We IT folk tend to live in a bubble (Especially when living in another city) and that hides a lot of the cultural aspects of the city from us. I have had friends who are into hiking, cycling, rock climbing, theater, dance classes, standup comedy, music making, painting, cooking clubs. And sometimes, You really might be alone when it comes to some hobbies. But that's when your high PPP can come in real handy and help you get started with your own club. I don't think "I can save a lot more money here but..." would be a problem once you figure out what exactly you want to spend that money on.
Don't know about Bangalore, but in Pune (another IT City in India), this is not true at all. These people might be earning more than fresher programmers and Testers just starting out but as soon as these freshers get 2-3 years of experience, their salaries get doubled and tripled quite easily. Also quality of life of a programmer working from a AC office and a Uber driver driving for 10-12 hours a day are 2 very different things. Also after 5 years this programmer will be earning much more than this taxi driver.
This is true true virtually everywhere in the world.
you don't expect it in your OWN country, just moving to a different state, you are an outsider. Its because India was put together just like that, because the British ruled over many peoples and their languages.
Which country apart from Papua New Guinea has the linguistic diversity comparable to India? Migrants everywhere understand the need to learn the local language. It's only the Hindi speakers, high on the delusions of national language that see this as a problem.
> Its because India was put together just like that, because the British ruled over many peoples and their languages.
Right, because India didn't have any multilingual polities before the British?
(And while I don't mean to deny your personal experience, I've never faced any trouble in Bangalore despite not being a Kannadiga.)
I can't speak about India, but I am a Romanian who worked in Austria, and when coming back, I noticed the infrastructure is lacking, especially public transport.
Still, with my savings and investments, my quality of life is much better than a typical Romanian's, though not quite on par with Austria's.
That use to be the case. The shine has definitely worn off. I would say the work culture in Indian product companies are much more closer to its western counterparts. (Service companies are a different ball-game)
> But lets be real, isn't the quality of life much worse
In my opinion, India is worse off in 2 things primarily: 1. Population density in cities 2. Poorer govt. Having said that a lot of things have improved in last decade:
1. Payment infrastructure is probably the best in the world.
2. Govt services increasingly getting online and digitised. This used to be a big friction before.
3. Govt services are increasingly streamlined in last 10 years e.g. Huge improvement in passport application/renewal
4. Investing heavily in physical infrastructure. E.g About 36 KM/day is getting added as National Highways [1]
5. Biggest Tax Reform called GST in last 50 years. The implementation is shaky but improving.
6. Incentivising production in India called PLI scheme. It received huge response [2]
As far as startups are concerned, the sentiment here (at least for me) is "we-can-also-do-this" and "we-can-be-the-best". This uptick in confidence is palpable (again where I am standing)
10 years ago, I would have never imagined electric scooters/cars being designed (and not just manufactured) in India [3]
[1] https://www.news18.com/news/auto/road-network-in-india-showe...
[2] https://www.cnbctv18.com/auto/govt-receives-huge-response-to...
That is true, but most tech folks live in cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune and can skip bad infra part. For residential there are premium societies and here office spaces are build like hotels.
For transport there are metros(ongoing in Bangalore) . Roads are only unavoidable bad infra.
I went back recently in 2017/18 and between the 400ppm smog (when there was a wildfire near me in CA it was like 160) and people driving the wrong way across lanes in the smog fog and the traffic and poverty, I found the occasional Mercedes and other luxury car stuck sideways in traffic in the middle of the four lane highway that’s now somehow 9 to be extremely ironic.
I know I personally would find it extremely difficult to move there. I couldn’t deal with the fact that we went to a ultra luxury mall and came outside to be surrounded once again my mind boggling poverty and seeing everything from beggars to people in Benzes stuck in the same road. You go back to your nice home and still hear honking or breathe in the smog.
Moving to America was my lottery winning experience. I’m forever grateful for it.
His brother, however, has been in the states for decades and I’m sure will never move back. So there is no magic answer.
I keep telling myself I will move back to the country of my birth, but haven’t yet. The work here is too much fun.
We had lunch around the time he made the switch and he’d just dropped his kids off at tutoring then he went to pick them up from Judo after our meal, i.e, basically the same as if he’d stayed in New Jersey.
However it becomes harder to move back once you’ve school going kids and want them to have access to world class universities like TUM, MIT, OxBridge etc.
Balaji Srinivasan is definitely a big India proponent and his latest session with Shane Parrish was really illuminating.
If you can basically hire anyone in the world instead of locals, then what leverage does the local workforce have to demand higher wages?
Feels like a power imbalance that greatly benefits the employers, banks, real estate owners, retail businesses and the boreoarctic government apparatus, who all benefit from the increase population and consumers, but screws over the local workers who need to compete with a bigger talent pool for work and a bigger pool of tenants for rent and overburdened public services like childcare.
That being said, at scale, the increased talent pool might indeed suppress the wages - especially in short term, but you never know about long term. Immigrants might start / help their own company provide jobs to more of the local talent. Not to mention other issues like falling birth rates vs. the economy, increased tax base, companies unable to afford local workforce temporarily (think early stage startups) etc..
Personally, I see skilled immigration as a net positive to the receiving country - only because I see the downsides of brain drain on the country those highly educated people are immigrating from.
1. https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/germany/visa/employment-vis...
Depends how you define cheaper. The visa sponsorship is a one time sunk cost, but if the candidate you sponsor aggress to work for several thousands or even tens of thousands less per year than the local candidates, then the saving for the company are obvious.
It's an opens secret that companie in Germany/EU usually sponsor the candidates who accept less than the market rate, otherwise they would just pay market rate or a bit higher and hire a local without the visa hassle. D'uh! Even my former German boss was open about this with me that the recruiting department is constantly trying to bring candidates from places with low wages and low QoL like Brasil (their example, not mine) in order to not have to pay higher than market wages to poach local talent.
>the minimum wage for a German work Visa is 56,800 EUR (EU Blue Card) and 44,304 EUR for shortage jobs.
44K/year seems pretty low for a so called "shortage job", and even more so if you consider the rampant inflation in the past couple of years. AFAIK 44K is pretty much around or sometimes even far less than a new grad makes in a skilled field at a good company. So, IMHO such low wages for supposedly "shortage jobs" are there for wage suppression and nothing else. If we had something like 70-80k/year as the bar for a shortage wage then we'd be talking sense.
The secondary effect of immigration is increasing the burden on inelastic services and assets that everyone needs such as doctors and rentals for everyone, as the real estate supply is highly restricted due to NIMBYism and several political and financial reasons around the rigged real-estate market I don't want to get in right now as that always makes my blood boil.
I just feel the locals are too less in number for ofcourse product based job. Not talking about standard banks or non product roles. Often these non product ones (if big like banks) prefer giving contracts to Indian service based companies to cut cost.
Product based tech jobs are quite few relative to the rest. Most is just lame IT and service based jobs like the ones you described that usually offshore or nearshore.
I'm sure they can offer 80k, but from my experience they're also quite demanding and selective when hiring.
What i meant was for the same Embedded Linux/C++ jobs - they were willing to pay me 65k/year in Germany - while similar jobs in Netherlands or even other smaller towns in Germany were offering me 36-40k back then. So my old company could have easily scooped up the people from Netherlands as opposed to jumping through hoops to get me a Visa and still save up on a lot of money. But people were reluctant to move there/in general harder to find apparently. I do know what you mean about the "candidates from low wage places". I have seen that happen a lot too. In fact I am seeing it happen a lot more these days because more companies are getting used to remote work and the competition is driving down the wages quite drastically.
> 44K/year seems pretty low for a so called "shortage job", and even more so if you consider the rampant inflation in the past couple of years. AFAIK 44K is pretty much around or sometimes even far less than a new grad makes in a skilled field at a good company. So, IMHO such low wages for supposedly "shortage jobs" are there for wage suppression and nothing else. If we had something like 70-80k/year as the bar for a shortage wage then we'd be talking sense.
Yeah My German Colleagues coming from smaller cities were making around 45k/year even with 4-5 years of work experience back then. Later on they moved to the big cities and got those 75-85k/year Devops jobs (this was around 2020). The companies which paid the bare minimum to sponsor a work visa were usually the ones like yet to be funded startups in Berlin, hectic jobs in Games industry etc...
And Yep. Too much of a good thing can be bad too. There needs to be infrastructure growth to keep up with the incoming population. Real Estate market - it is crazy. People had to be on waitlist for months to rent an apartment even in little cities. God knows how long they have to work there to be able to buy a house.
Adding more it’s a 6-7 hour direct flight to India. If I’m working in a metro in India it could take a day for me to be back to family in my hometown, it takes a bit more from Germany.
To add 40 paid vacation days and are kind of pushed to take those off for mental health.
Plus you’re eligible to take day off when you’re moving, have a family event(your or close family’s death or wedding).
Not counting the sick leaves here which obv do not get deducted from these
Assuming that India can navigate through the next 20 years peacefully and with sensible economic policy. They've got a much better foundation than China for sustained prosperity; as far as I can tell they have a saner political system.
I do understand that if you care more about having the right kind of people with the right opinions in power then Western educated Congress Party people might be preferred to those Indians want to vote for. But that’s democracy.
How much more evidence do we need before having second thoughts that hey, maybe democracy is not the end-all, be-all of government systems?
China has had competent leaders since 1978, but before then they had disastrously bad leaders for decades that killed many millions of their own people, and if the current or some future leadership turn bad, there are few robust mechanisms (institutional knowledge, traditions, expertise, etc) to help replace it with better leadership.
In short, although things are pretty good for residents of China at the moment, IMHO the risk of the whole country's becoming a hellscape is much higher in China than in India.
that's the tradeoff. In a democracy you intentionally cripple your own government's ability to get things done. It lets you avoid major risks but consequently you don't get to reap major rewards.
In a situation like India's, don't you think maybe greater risks are worth taking? Stability and preserving the status quo is something you want _after_ becoming developed. Consider that even after China kneecapped itself with the cultural revolution, today it's still far ahead of India. "Pretty good" is an understatement relative to India, unfortunately.
India is consistently achieving 5% real GDP growth for 30 years - and those numbers are a lot more reliable than China's. There is little need to take risks, they're building wealth at a fast rate.
> Yugal Raj Jain. He’ll be fine in India.
Indians will understand what my friend meant by that.
But what the hell, I’ll say it. OP is an upper caste male. You won’t see many “India is doing great! I’m heading back there!” posts from Indian women or Indian Muslims or Indian Dalits. That’s what I meant.
I’m similar to the OP in that I’m an upper caste male as well. The difference between me and him is that I can understand and empathise with the difficulties faced by people different from me.
OP could be a remarkably empathic and kind person for all I know. But this post doesn’t show it.
I grew up in rural area and I’m not a savarna. I studied in Govt institutions and most of my non-Savarna batch mates are doing just fine. We don’t need savarna apologists to tell us what is the ground reality.
Ok, go ahead and link 5 of them. Hyperlinks on the internet are free :)
> toxic empathy
What does this even mean, hahaha. Because I point out that life is difficult for women in India, that’s toxic? Pointing out that all the women I know who have emigrated don’t want to move back unless they’re guilted into caring for family, that’s toxic?
You throwing casteist slurs (“savarna”, twice) my way, accusing me of doing this for farming karma, that’s not toxic?
I have 11000 karma, you have 22. Karma isn’t even something I think about unless someone brings it up. It just passively increases. I certainly didn’t point out the shortcomings of OPs article for the 20 (?) karma I supposedly farmed on this thread.
I’d suggest you be less toxic in future. You can try to claim that you’re not using a casteist slur when you say Savarna but I’ve never heard anyone say that word without venom and hatred.
If you think the sources (thePrint, Soch) I shared have issues, point them out. If you think either video makes inaccurate claims, point them out. But please avoid ad hominem attacks on me.
- Toxic empathy: Toxic empathy is when a person over-identifies with someone else's feelings and directly takes them on as their own. There is an active group of upper caste (Savarna) activists trying to milk the lower castes' lived experiences and making it about them. I was pointing to that hypocrisy.
- I can assure you that Savarna is not a casteist slur, it is a real word used in the Dalit lexicon. It is akin to calling a White person "Caucasian". It was used by Babasaheb and other dalit pioneers and it is a staple word in Ambedkarite literature. I implore you to read real dalit voices from India like Dhasal, Hansda Shekar, Daya Pawar to get a real picture.
- I also find your claim that Indian women or Indian Muslims or Indian Dalits don't have any such stories. (sorry paraphrasing). I have seen first-hand what strides India has taken post 90s and downtrodden peoples kids have climbed up the rungs and are doing great. India is definitely not a wonderland like the Nordics or USA, and has a long way to go, but it is definitely not the case of only Upper castes are progressing and women, muslims and dalits are shunned at the bottom of the society.
India is going through a flux and the casteism is definitely a bane to our society, but we can not eliminate it if we do not understand how it manifests. Peace out, Atta Deep Bhava.
P.S. These are the 3 links I shared after a cursory Google search
- https://www.thebetterindia.com/267994/dalit-entrepreneurs-ov...
- https://www.thebetterindia.com/278570/assam-woman-builds-tai...
- https://www.thebetterindia.com/138014/shattering-barriers-hy...
P.P.S: I also find it sad that Indians drag caste into any discussion about India, but you never see them attributing "White male privilege" in discussions like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30987472 or this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30985684 (I know Whataboutism and all but you get the gist)
Usually "upper caste" christians, Ashraf muslims/Paki or pro-congress children of super rich or super powerful bureaucrats who benefited greatly from the previous corrupt regime.
Caste system is ungodly fucked. I once had an otherwise super hippy in the US explain to me why the caste system is totally okay because of “centuries of religion” or some weird shit like that.
Anybody who advocates for the continuity of the caste system is irredeemable scum in my book. Unfortunately, for me, I think that writes off a lot of people as irredeemable scum. Maybe I’m the baddie.
I implore you to take a rational look at Indian society and not rely on WaPo/NYT to know your own land.
Here’s a video that you might find illuminating.
- Caste Conundrum: Why do upper castes believe discrimination doesn’t exist? - https://youtu.be/vjt8aBoejho (1.4M views).
You speak of NYT/WaPo. This was published by an Indian newspaper ThePrint.
Now you might be thinking, that can’t be right. I’ve lived in India for a long time, I know it isn’t like this. That’s ok, I used to think like that too. Until I saw a map of india overlayed with the extent of untouchability practised in each district. Turns out, I lived in a district where it was barely prevalent. Here was me, living in one corner of India for decades and extrapolating that to the rest of India. Don’t make the same mistake I did.
You can find that map and see how prevalent this abhorrent practice is in the beginning of this video
- What Hathras tells us about Casteism in India - https://youtu.be/ELbdGh0-4T4.
Both videos are mostly in Hindi, with English subtitles. I hope that’s ok.
I am not saying casteism isn’t present in India but the way you are projecting is way over the top , especially in urban areas.
Do you know anything about the stringent SC/ST act.? It has now been abused so much against the upper caste , that few years back Supreme Court had to intervene and direct the Govt to not immediately arrest in case of an FIR. There was a huge protest by the SC/ST community over this order and within few weeks Govt had to bow down and pass an ordinance to repeal the order by Supreme Court.
Just Google about “misuse of SC/ST act India” it is mind boggling.
What you lack is perspective. Any action you take to stop a crime will lead to false positives.
Try and imagine any crime that happens. Let’s take a crime you feel less strongly about, dowry harassment. Every year thousands of women face mental harassment and physical and assault from their husbands and in-laws demanding dowry. Should we do something about this? It doesn’t affect you or me, after all. Let’s say we do anyway. Now we criminalise harassment related to dowry demands. What we find is that this new law makes no difference. No woman actually charges her in laws because she knows she’ll bear the brunt of their immediate fury. Ok, let’s try again, let’s make the crime non-bailable. Now more women come forward, which is presumably good.
But now we have a non bailable offence that requires minimal evidence before filing charges. Will this be abused? Almost certainly. There are at least a few cases every year.
How do we balance the two? If the standards of evidence are raised or if “false” accusations are penalised, we’ll have more false negatives. If the standards are lowered, we’ll have more false positives. There’s no way around this.
I don’t know the solution here, but I will point this out - people only complain about one side of it. They complain about whatever they can empathise with the most. Each side only thinks that either true harassment cases or false accusations is the worst thing, and we should eradicate them asap. There’s no acknowledgement there’s a trade off between reducing one and increasing the other. There’s no discussion about the total number of each, the number of unreported cases and so on.
That’s how you are. You worry about what will affect you and your family, which is false accusations.
I can’t make you care about other people. Nothing I say will make that happen. All I ask is look at the data and ask yourself - which is more prevalent? Discrimination against other castes or false cases against upper castes? Which has been more prevalent historically?
Looks like a template attack against those who doesn’t agree with you.
Anything I would say, you would attack it in a long winded response without trying to absorb other’s pov.
That you have touched the topic of dowry harassment, go and meet some good criminal lawyers in India from HC/SC. Don’t just read propaganda. They will clear all your misconceptions about just “few false cases” etc. (More than 90% of dowry cases turn out to be false)
All I will say is that extrapolation and generalization from personal experiences leads to biased perspectives. Your experience does not invalidates other's and vice versa. My recent experience in Rajasthan has been that caste dynamics is still in a healthy full flourish.
I agree, biases should be avoided. My point is that GP had a biased view of casteism which doesn’t help in eradicating it from the roots. He seems to be pasting the same links that confirm his bias and seeking internet validation in an article that has nothing to do with casteism. The real need is to bring the change on the ground by understanding the problem better.
That's your opinion and personal experience against his.
I have been in contemporary situations steeped in casteism as well as where it has played no role. Absence or weakening of caste dynamics in certain states does not make it a non-existent or irrelevant in others.
That national politics in many Indian states are campaigned along caste lines is proof enough that caste is well entrenched even today in many of the Indian states. Observing election campaigns and their results is in my view a good indicator where caste is a dominant force and where it isnt.
Please watch these two videos and let me know if you still think so.
- Caste Conundrum: Why do upper castes believe discrimination doesn’t exist? - https://youtu.be/vjt8aBoejho (1.4M views).
- What Hathras tells us about Casteism in India - https://youtu.be/ELbdGh0-4T4. (300k views)
Is it common in the US for people to refuse to come into contact with people of other races? To bar them from places of worship? To not even touch water they might have touched?
What you did was just whataboutism. It’s the “yeah it’s bad, but no worse than any other place”. But even if we allow this deflection, it’s not true.
My point was that OP reckons India is great to return to. And I agree, it is! As long as you’re an upper caste male, like OP and I are. And even if that makes you uncomfortable, it is pertinent to the discussion of whether someone should go back to India.
Ironically, people like you insisting we shouldn’t discuss caste only makes this conclusion even more certain. We can’t fix what we won’t discuss.
We have been considering going back and discussed this with some of the folks who came to Germany recently, where we live. They think we are crazy to go back now, as a Muslim.
I can see tons of new folks come to Germany now, many of them Dalits and Muslims on blue card work permit. Almost all of them have the same thing to say.
If you are an upper caste, Hindi speaking elite class, then you wouldn't see it. But if you are a Tamil, Dalit or Muslim then it is obviously frustrating to see the agenda the current central government is executing.
So we have kept the decision on hold.
Found this list of hackerspaces but I’m personally not familiar with any of them.
https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Mumbai
Coffee/meetup sounds good! Email me when you’re here!
I actually miss the US a lot and would've loved running a small business instead of some hyper successful startup. Alas not possible in a realistic sense because only way to be there is on the work visa. The reverse cultural shock is real and true even if you work remotely as I do.
It's exactly what I would have done if I were in his shoes. Now it's kind of late for me to go work and study in another country. Many of my fellow countrymen do suffer of self hate and at the first chance they go to study or work abroad with the intent of leaving their homeland, even if the economic situation is not bad here. I feel sorry for them.
US immigration is not flawed but carefully designed to benefit corporations to have enslaved foreign labor force available on their terms to keep their local labor workforce in check.
There is no other interpretation of it. Especially targeting those who born in countries like India who are ready to pay the price to stay in the US.
Living in the US is not as great as they make you believe.
Subpar experience for anyone from other developed country. So target US as a market never try to live there.
Note: I have worked in the US, had enough opportunity to live there but never bothered about it.
Most large cities in India are extremely polluted, and the smaller ones aren't necessarily any better. I have been all over India, over 15 states and union territories. Even the cleanest Indian cities I have been to (e.g. Chandigarh and Puducherry) are filthier than a regular city in other countries I've visited. It will take massive overhaul of garbage disposal and recycling infrastructure, as well as a massive cultural shift in how we treat our public spaces to overcome our enormous pollution problem.
The lockdown has forced people to their homes with limited opportunities for outdoor activity especially in the winter. Things start to look very different pretty quickly.
While it is definitely hot in many parts of India, one can have access to round the year gardening, house help is affordable.
There’s also not much interest politically to make it easier for Indian immigrants specifically. For folks who have already immigrated, they have a “I got mine, fuck you” mentality, while the people in the process itself can’t vote and influence political decisions. The community of Indian Americans is also not large enough to have extensive networks similar to that of immigrants from South/Central American nations.
Now I am torn, or specifically, we are torn. Our heart is in 3 different countries. These two countries (non US ones) do not recognize dual citizenship, so if we do get US citizenship so that we can leave US and live in other countries, we have to be extra careful.
Even when these 2 countries do dual citizenship, the challenge still exists. First, I do speak my wife's country of origin language, though not fluent. My wife doesn't speak my country of origin language. We both speak English fluently though.
What should our kids learn? We currently don't have kids but are trying to. We would need to prioritize language learning for our kids more than anything else. We want our kids to be born here, in the US, and they will have automatically 3 citizenships at birth, until they have to choose when they turn 18. I wonder how they will feel if we constantly move around like this? I know military kids and missionary kids feel the same way.
On the other hand, if we live US, and work in my country, my salary probably won't be as good as US salary, but if in the future our kids want US education, I won't be able to afford it. Same with my wife's country as well.
The reason why I am pondering all of these now, and I've been living in the US for 10 years is because, once an immigrant, always immigrant at heart. US has its good things of course, but other countries as well, and most importantly, family. Family, friends, in which we both still have strong ties with our origin country. Time passes, our families and friends aren't getting younger. Money is useless to us, having combined household income of around $500k, but we don't enjoy our money. What's use is money if we can't enjoy it with our friends and families. We live modestly, never go into lavish vacation or lavish things.
My wife country is a 1st world East Asian country. My country of origin is a 3rd world SEA country. I've seen that my country is getting better and better, and there are many many, many opportunities back there. Even people from 1st world countries are retiring and creating companies here. 3 years ago I visited, I'd never imagine in the middle of nowhere while I was eating random street food, 2 foreigners spoke in their foreign language next to me. How, when did this happen. So much growth has happened.
I don't know, I'm just sharing here. I think our plan is, we want to make as much money as possible now, and see in 5 years what will happen.
Language shouldn't be a problem. You can easily speak to your children in your origin language, your wife her's, and your kids will speak three languages by the time they're 7.
However, you should the country to stay in for the next 13 years by the time the kid is 5. Most people that grew up moving around often, breaking childhood friendships, regret that they had to.
You've been living in the US for 10 years, and it's a neutral halfway point for you and your wife. Unless she is very excited about moving to your origin country, where she will struggle to speak the language and fit in, vice-versa with you and her country, I think living out your lives in the US and giving them an upper middle class US upbringing is the best thing you can do for you and them, from my American 3rd person perspective.
Typically, you'll end up making yearly multi-week trips back to the origin countries for relative visiting with your kids.