H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies

If you think it makes sense for a person born in India to wait for 150 years while paying taxes etc, and a person born in a different country waits for 7 months, we’ll, it’s clear what your POV is.

Look at the bi-partisan hate for Facebook and Google. Regardless of how you feel about the privacy issues there, it is clear that neither party is particularly friendly to the needs of Silicon Valley.

While the merit based immigration idea is nice, I think it will fail for the following reasons:

- Trump is not putting his political weight behind it. It was floated as an interesting policy proposal, but he didn't put his weight behind it like he did for say tax reform, ACA repeal, etc.

- As mentioned above, neither party is especially driven to help Silicon Valley

- While it may help Silicon Valley and tech companies, this change also really hurts people who count on family based immigration to bring their loved ones into the country. I don't think it would be politically popular to cut off family based immigration to help tech companies.

I think if Trump (or Obama etc.) wanted to help the situation, the simplest path forward is through executive action. Trump (or Obama etc.) can easily change the priorities and internal policies of INS to make it easier for tech workers to come to America, within the bounds of current law.

My life's goal is contribute to curing/diagnosing terminal disease using technology. Everything I did in the past 14 years has been towards meeting that goal. I figured, I would need knowledge, network, and financial stability. I moved to US in 2011 and over 14 years I achieved all of these. However, after moving to US I realized that I lost the most critical piece: ability to work on this goal without significant restrictions.

Visas like H1/O1 have lot of restrictions on what you can work. Recently it has become extremely difficult for early stage startups to get H1, especially if the applicant owns significant equity.

Once you get invested and comfortable in a place, you stay put. I worked really hard to break this ceiling. I tried for EB-1 Green Card twice and got rejected both times. You need 3 out of 10 criteria for Green Card. Over 2 petitions and an appeal - separate USCIS officials gave me 4 criteria. But none of them gave me 3, and their responses were very hostile.

I had to deal with H1/O1 petition every year while I pursued my entrepreneurship goals. However, I am finally done with this and can't do it anymore. I think I also have PTSD because of my experience dealing with immigration. I could not work to my potential, missed family events because I couldn't travel and stayed in limbo for too long.

However, finally I have moved out of US. I want to pursue my goal to attack terminal disease without any employment restrictions. At this point, Canada seems like the best place for this and that is where I am moving.

I am originally from India, and as mentioned in a few other posts, I do not want to live there because of quality of life challenges.

I will write more detailed posts sometime next year detailing my experience. However in summary my advise is:

If you are from India, come to US only if you internalize that you are in a temporary situation with a set goal: make more money/learn/build network. Don't get too invested, because you might need to leave at short notice. If you are an entrepreneur, you would be spending the best years of your life, without being able to perform to your potential due to immigration related bureaucracy. India, currently, has great opportunities for Entrepreneurs.

I was lucky to be able to found a company on H1, sell it and work at a few great companies. Still it wasn't enough to make it here.