Seek and you shall find
Last Friday two colleagues of mine held their faraway party. They corroborated the idea that my company is so good that people habitually leave it for the sake of employment abroad. Our alumni is already present in the US and Switzerland while France is about to join the venerable enumeration. I cannot say people are leaving in droves but the trend is still encouraging to observe.
On this particular occasion, the girl was going to the US to join her husband who won a GC earlier this year. The guy truly deserves this regal prize - he managed, still being physically in Moscow, to obtain within a month of job hunting an offer for a $110K-position in a well-known software company (in CA).
The other colleague represents an alternative camp. He applied for the British HSMP program and, to my utter amazement, it took him only about 6 months to succeed. It turned out that it was relatively easy to qualify for the program. The disposable income required by the program stipulations is only £12,500 which, together with the perspective of permanent residency after 4years and the right to work for the spouse, makes the program substantially more attractive than the orthodox H-1B approach.
Personally, I am still an ardent and staunch supporter of the US but the news concerning the EB Visa Numbers Retrogress is demoralizing. The analysts together with the general public believe that the feasibility of getting a GC through employment is all but disappeared. Currently, the bodyshop slavery is assured for at least 5 years (the EB-3 category is backlogged to March 2001) without any guarantee of deliverance at the end.
The conclusion? Well, probably my failed attempt to obtain H-1B this year boded well for me. I might just as well consider alternative destinations at least as provisional steps. What does not kill us makes us stronger. The US immigration seems to provide the ultimate entrance exam - only the very best people deserve it and the fact of not being there just separates those who are ready from those who have to strive harder. Thus, excellence and hard work are still the motto of the day.
On this particular occasion, the girl was going to the US to join her husband who won a GC earlier this year. The guy truly deserves this regal prize - he managed, still being physically in Moscow, to obtain within a month of job hunting an offer for a $110K-position in a well-known software company (in CA).
The other colleague represents an alternative camp. He applied for the British HSMP program and, to my utter amazement, it took him only about 6 months to succeed. It turned out that it was relatively easy to qualify for the program. The disposable income required by the program stipulations is only £12,500 which, together with the perspective of permanent residency after 4years and the right to work for the spouse, makes the program substantially more attractive than the orthodox H-1B approach.
Personally, I am still an ardent and staunch supporter of the US but the news concerning the EB Visa Numbers Retrogress is demoralizing. The analysts together with the general public believe that the feasibility of getting a GC through employment is all but disappeared. Currently, the bodyshop slavery is assured for at least 5 years (the EB-3 category is backlogged to March 2001) without any guarantee of deliverance at the end.
The conclusion? Well, probably my failed attempt to obtain H-1B this year boded well for me. I might just as well consider alternative destinations at least as provisional steps. What does not kill us makes us stronger. The US immigration seems to provide the ultimate entrance exam - only the very best people deserve it and the fact of not being there just separates those who are ready from those who have to strive harder. Thus, excellence and hard work are still the motto of the day.
posted by Nick at 8:58 AM
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