Change is inevitable except from a vending machine

The US legislature seems to have gone berserk (e.g. the GC lottery was proposed to be abrogated whatsoever). Stringent measures have been ratified by the House and now a lot will depend on the debates in the Senate. As is habitual in the contemporary world, the struggle against all those illegal Mexicans and Muslim terrorists will likely adversely affect the lives of the white educated community – a few thousand Eastern Europeans working in the high-tech are hardly noticeable by the powers that be. Some people are already afraid that even H1B visa renewal after first 3 years will be mandated to be performed in the home country as opposed to Canada/Mexico.

The pertinent forums are full of poignant accounts of people whose EBGC processing was suspended. The majority seems to believe that H1B has lost its appeal. People used to obtain GCs through employment within three or four years, the permanent residency was virtually assured so a few years of bodyshop slavery were justified. Nowadays the visa seems to be mostly attractive either to asylum-seeker-style losers unable to succeed even in their home country or scarce adamant supporters of the American lifestyle.

I desperately want to believe that the situation is provisional but with the growing trade deficit and a war coming nowhere but burning billions weekly the trend is perceived as essentially bleak. The more and more germane question is how strategic the trend is. A surge in outsourcing allegedly wiping out R&D positions in America, the invasion of Asian and Indian engineering students, the inconspicuous place of the ex-USSR in the modern world and the corresponding image of people from those places – potentially these factors may be construed as an economic shift after which the perspective of integration into the American society through employment in the software engineering will all but disappear.

My point is that the sheer number of people with comparable skills and easier access to the US, the internal political situation in America and my current citizenship might sufficiently decrease my competitiveness regardless of my own efforts. All the rage in America is about Asian talent, the EU is almost overwhelmed with the influx from the Eastern Europe – all in all there are few places to run in this world from the Evil Empire :( Obviously there is little new in this situation but nevertheless it is humiliating to be confined by one’s passport and not by skills or motivation.