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Thats wrong information. H1B is a “dual intent” visa.

Its broken because it was really intended for exceptionally skilled workers. But currently its a lottery. USCIS just takes the word of the company applying for it and grants the visa. This loophole is being exploited by numerous body shops. That is reason why there are low quality H1B workers. There are various other problems like employee mobility, spouses of H1B is not free to work in the land of the free. Country of birth based quotas for permanent residency, rather than skills or points based quotas.

The problems are too fragmented for a generic alert service to solve.

There are many sites which already does this. During that situation when I missed a slot, I didn't want to take any chances again by using sites like visualping. I trusted my script and twilio API to work.

First I thought to ring a loud alarm connected with a Pi, but then it will be limited to my apartment. So I went with twilio to give me a phone call. Because I should act immediately and time was of the essence. Emails or SMS might go unnoticed.

Yes, made it to SK, but moved to Montreal for better job prospects. Probably will have to move to Toronto because my spouse's can't find a good job due to the strict French language requirements for non IT jobs in Quebec.

Frankly, I didn't think much. Just wrote this script in an impulse of a moment when I missed a slot. During that time, I didn't think about how it was done, but the end result. Sure diff would have triggered false positives, luckily didn't get any.

So we both had life changing events. Its the real winning moment of a programmer when he is able to use his/her skills for a "non-work" task automation. Its more satisfying.

Because this was very important to me and my life forward, I thought it was better to roll my own custom notifier. Moreover, the phone call thing was the most important part which will get attention any time of the day than an email.

You took the right decision. (well, your dad).

Yes, too small of an audience to sell it to. Also I didn't care about the timezones in the script. It will make the call no matter in which timezone you are in (you will get the call in the middle of the night), because Saskatchewan's site do not care, it will close when the quota gets filled and it gets filled fast, within hours !

The problem with monetizing this service is because there are many immigration watsapp groups with many members in it. So when one member buys this service, he can simply broadcast this notification to his watsapp groups. I even made the service free, but no takers. Anyways it worked for me, changed my life !

I did, hosted at sinpnotifier.com, Saskatchewan province is not that attractive for skilled immigrants. Had one sale though, then I shut it down.

I was in the US and want to immigrate to Canada because of US broken H1B immigration system ( for me it will take 9 years to get a greencard). Here is what I did -

The immigration website of Saskatchewan province opens up randomly to apply for immigration. I missed it many times because there is no indication other than the "Apply" button being enabled and a small text in their homepage which says "Applications are now 'open' ". They will close the application intake when they have reached X number of applicants. So timing is very important.

So I hacked up a script which diffs their home page every 10 minutes for "open" regex. When there is an "open" keyword in the diff, the python script calls twilio API to make a phone call to me along with an SMS.

So this script was running in AWS for many weeks and one day I got the call. Logged in to Saskatchewan's immigration homepage and applied. Now I am in Canada as a permanent resident. Thanks to Twilio. edit: add H1B to make clear which type of immigration is broken IMO.

(This comment is from my previous HN account, for which I lost my pwd.)

Exactly my thoughts, when people say they have a great work life balance at their enterprise IT company, it’s at the cost of some cheap labour outsourced somewhere.

When you buy cheap cloths at Walmart or even at the brands, just have a look at the tag. Your luxury is at the cost of cheap wage slave labour or a child labour in a third world country.

The new trend is 100% US based customer support. These are the very companies which cheaply outsourced customer support to start with.

“Worlds most popular banana” is a tall claim. In my part of the world, where the large population on the planet lives, we haven’t heard or eaten a Cavendish. How could Cavendish be world’s popular ? It might be popular in North America and Europe. This article is probably not in the best interest for readers. Perhaps to achieve some goals for United Fruit. And no bananas are not going to be extinct. This one is a genetically engineered one. So it’s not even an original one that evolved through natural selection. I won’t be concerned. The lobbyists and companies behind it should be.

I haven’t eaten a Cavendish variety yet. We call those plantains in our part of the world and use it for cooking, as a morning breakfast steamed, as a fruit, as well as deep fried snacks.

That is why I rephrased the quote.

Probably because you don't have to have different css styles for many of the options like image size, font size, language, color. Though these can be achieved with css.

One use case I see is for native mobile apps to generate the avatars as an initial profile image during the signup.

We have been using Hazelcast for a while now. Currently evaluating K tables if we could get the same performance. Any learnings or advices would be welcome if anyone has done the switch.

95$ is too less for visas. Probably he holds a very accepted passport. Have to count in the huge visa costs and its processes for the less privileged ones like me.

According to my tinfoil hat, if we plugin sensible defaults to the drake equation, the aliens should have been broadcasting something around 21,000 light years ago for us to get something in 2035.

Only applicable for an approved I-140 employee. That will be a slight relief though.

Its not easy as it sounds. Its not a transfer per say, its a new petition. Recently premium processing was stopped. Many H1B transfers were in limbo. If an employee transfers when he has I-140, his greencard process might get jeopardized. There are many quirks for an employee to change his employers. Many employers will not allow an employee to join unless his petition is approved. This is also good for the employee, because there are high chances that an H1B transfer can go wrong. So no, its not easy.

H1B employment is a legal way to own a person in IT.

To Quote from the article -

" Employees are more risk averse, they fear being fired more than contractors do being sued. "

Rephrasing -

" H1B employees are even more risk averse, they fear being deported right from the moment they are fired". A fired H1B employee is out of status from that very moment. He should leave the country asap.

A winning formula for US IT companies. Hire an H1B employee. Squeeze the juice out of them. You can own them than any other type of employee in your organization.

Has also to do with the H1B employee lock in benefits.

I will chip in for what I feel about the supposedly bad code quality problem. Most of the US firms which outsources to India is looking for work to be done in an unreasonable amount of time. To make my point clear, if a story takes 8 points, it should be done in India for 3 points and at 1/4 the cost & hence. Both firms (outsourcer & outsourcee) are to be blamed for this (to look good on their Q4 reports). Not the programmer.

An exception in India, a small state called Kerala which has achieved 100% electrification recently. This do not mean there are power outages and voltage problems. This is among many other socio economic achievements which makes it stands out when compared to other states in India. It has achieved these feats through a model of development which is now called "Kerala model".

Kerala model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala_model

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/kerala-is-now-t...

About Kerala: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala

Automotive makers like FCA is still sticking with QNX and Harman made headunits hardware for many years. Having programmed on them, it was a pain with so many constraints while we have watches 100x more powerful than them. While the UI/UX and performance of headunit telematics apps are not the forte of automotive manufacturers, they need to change with times. Headunits are still marketed as an add-on with which the manufacturers can up the price by several thousands. While too much of an entertainment system on a car is a distraction even though they have speed lockouts, a little bit of improvement will be a welcome change. Its not that they should have APIs for CAN Bus access, but can piggy back on CarPlay for a good music & nav system.

Comparison, an ideal scenario:

Direct PR from Federal = 6 months.

Quebec Inland = 6 months (CSQ) + 1 year(Federal).

Quebec Outland = unknown number of years, I know cases which are 4 years waiting for a CSQ.

So it boils down to how many points you have. If you satisfy points in the Express Entry system currently, then its the way to go. Go ahead and apply to the Express Entry system online. Else land in Quebec with a temporary work permit & go thru the Quebec CSQ route. The Quebec CSQ is also based on points. Not every occupation is in demand in Quebec. IT certainly is.

Note: PR is not equal to citizenship. Canadian citizenship can be applied after 4 years(I think) of continuous residence in Canada after PR.

This. The southern Indian state of Kerala successfully resisted and shutdown this company for good. Even the state made legislation to sue the company for those affected by its ruthless exploitation of ground water.

The factory was in the Palakkad district of Kerala which has historically low levels of ground water. The company was extracting more water than agreed to. The politics behind approving this plant in an already water deprived area is another story. The villagers were experiencing health problems, water depletion in their wells.

I would say the politicians approved this plant and the people shut it down. Even there was a smear campaign in the state against Coke depicting it as an effective insecticide so that people would stop consuming it.

This is not an isolated incident of foreign companies exploiting a third world country. I do not understand what companies means when they say "responsibly sourced". People need jobs and salaries, but not at the cost of their own environment & health.

http://www.righttowater.info/rights-in-practice/legal-approa...

Quebec likes to do things differently when it comes to immigration and work visas than the rest of Canada. I can explain it a bit here though IANAL.

To get a work visa in Quebec, the employer have to apply to MIDI (Quebec's Immigration dept.) Your application will undergo a review process called LMIA, Labor Market Impact Assessment. The employer have to prove that you are not replacing a worker here and the employer finds it hard to recruit a local talent. Once thats done, the work visa should be applied in Federal Level, which will grant you 2 years closed work permit. The closed work permit means you cannot work for anyone else. This entire process will take around 5-6 months. You will get CAQ(Quebec acceptance certificate) and a work visa stamped in your passport with which you can land and start working for the employer.

In order to continue working after 2 years, you have to get something called CSQ (Quebec Selection Certificate) , which will be based on your work experience,education,age,language skills on a points based system. You will have to satisfy a minimum cut off points.

If you speak and understand excellent French, you will get CSQ within 1 month under the PEQ priority category. If you don't, CSQ will take around 6 - 8 months in the Regular in land applicant priority. You can then use this CSQ to keep extending your work permit. Usually its good to apply for Permanent Residence after obtaining CSQ. Permanent Residence should be applied to Federal govt after CSQ which will take around 1 year to be approved.

To summarize, if you know French, things will be faster for getting a CSQ. Federal will take 1 year.

If you have family, you will have to think about the school system in Quebec and the language laws and read more about Quebec Bill 101. The health system in Quebec lacks a lot of doctors. So finding one will be little bit difficult for a new comer. There are more quirks about living in Quebec than the rest of Canada.

https://www.immigration-quebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/immigrate-settl...

In India we got lucky this time that the TRAI ( Regulatory Authority ) rejected the proposal even though Mr Z personally visited PM Modi to get his support including a town hall in IIT. Facebook even employed questionable tactics to get support for this. Eventually it did not work out.

Now Google, with its Indian origin CEO is trying his hand by providing free wifi at Indian Railway stations.

Everyone now wants a chunk of a growing economy like India to convert its people to "products".

Indian authorities should be smart enough to differentiate between the good & bad things that giants like Facebook & Google can do to the country, its economy and nowadays even its stability.