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Need a Job? Move to India
WhoDaresWins writes "As U.S. jobs move abroad, more Americans are willing to work overseas like in India as per a CNN.com story. The story talks about many Americans and also Indians who are American citizens moving to India for work. This story should be an eye opener to people who feel Americans cannot work in India. With a booming economy there is a need for skilled professionals with years of experience in a western enconomy and industry. Best of all, job listings are available online." Thomas Friedman has a piece called The secret to India's success.
Only if living in American climate, American culture, American political/legal system, near to your family and friends has no value to you. Materially you might be better off, yes. Perhaps you would prefer Indian climate and culture, yes. Maybe you don't even like your family and friends that much and wouldn't mind moving 10 timezones away. But for most people, this is a drastic step.
Constitutionally Correct
Everyone in India is perfectly aware this Indian boom is good as long as it lasts, but it will end, and they prepare for this already. They claim their jobs will gradually move to Philippines and other countries where labour is even cheaper.
So, if you plan to go to India, remember to save for the return ticket...
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Check it out, it's a good read.
Excerpt: "So I went on the web to see how easy it would be to emigrate to India. I found NOTHING. I called the Indian Embassy in Washington, DC and asked how I could emigrate to India. They didn't know what I was talking about. What the Indian Embassy was prepared to discuss was how my U.S. employer might transfer me to India for some period of time. I told them PBS had no such expansion plans to my knowledge, though they might make an exception just for me. They were also willing to discuss how I might go to India as an entrepreneur, bringing capital into the country and starting a new business there employing Indians. I told them I had no money to invest. And the idea that I'd just arrive at the Mumbai equivalent of Ellis Island looking for a job, well they found that rather amusing. You can't just move to India it turns out. Someone there has to want you -- no, they have to NEED you -- OR you have to be bringing with you a big suitcase of cash to start a business. Journeyman techies need not apply. It's interesting that Indian immigration policies are more restrictive than U.S. immigration policies. There is no true Indian equivalent, for example, of our H1-B work visas. There is no quid pro quo. But then there is also no wave of U.S. engineers clamoring to move to India."
I've lived in the US for almost 20 years and I can't get my visa straightened out or work legally. So I'm in graduate school but I can't take a teaching or research assistantship (even though I've been offered) since that's considered working, and though I'm qualified in terms of ability, I can't get fellowships because they're reserved for US residents and citizens. yeah, life's tough. But you still have a hell of a lot more options than I do.
You say it's not viable, but think of the MANY MILLIONS of Indians that try to come to the US. Only few make it. Of course, here, there seems to be many. But that dwarfs how many don't make it. Not to mention the countless other countries.
I'm not from India, but from Nepal. A country that's even more impoverished with political and other problems. And I've lived in this country so long and there was no Nepali community growing up that my Nepali is very poor. Yeah for me. It's always important to keep in mind that there are billions who have it worse. That's what I have to keep reminding myself.
As someone else said, I understand how fortunate I am, though I don't feel it. I think its important for people to at least understand it and realize how many ways they have it much better. It's always possible to see others who have it better in some ways or another. And obviously you want to better you standing. But that's not where happiness nor peace come from.
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
While many will point out that even a reduced salary would go farther in India, the enormous plunge in quality of life just isn't worth it (to me at least).
While spending 10 days in Mumbai and Chennai auditing Citigroup's new offshore partners, I was courted by the senior staff of one of them. "Come work for us, and you can live like a rajah! Your wife's a doctor? Forget it, she won't have to work, and she'll have servants!"
Even treated like a prince, put up in 4 star hotels, eating in the best restaurants, invited to private clubs most of the population can't get inside, my trip to India was a visit to hell.
Monstrous traffic, unbelievable overcrowding, incredible numbers of beggars, and Mumbai smelled like burning garbage... everywhere.
No thanks.
Harken back to the recent past, where workplace regulations were a dream, businesses routinely exposed their workers to deadly risk to save pitiful amounts of money, everyone worked weekends, and the minimum wage was zero dollars and zero cents.
Fighting an epic, intensely violent and brutal struggle against their aristocrats (adverseries so used to victory they had become surprisingly complacent), the proletariat of America carved out a victory, and they did it without abandoning capitalism or resorting to the dangers of political revolution - though we certainly came close on a number of occasions.
We now live in shocking wealth and splendor - a victory for the "common man" made possible through a lively democratic process and a series of reforms that dragged business owners, wailing, kicking and screaming, into the modern age - where the entire standards of what was acceptable in terms of working conditions, wages, and workplace safety changed. Yes, it cost more money. And... what a surprise - with a newly propsperous middle-class, it was also intensely profitable.
Free Trade was thus inevitable. It's the prisoner's dillemma of the modern business.
The issue has proved a bit too subtle for most people to grasp thus far, even as it impoverished America and eviscerated the progress of the middle and lower classes, handing victory after victory to regressive enterprises.
The question free trade raises is simple. Is it cheaper to produce goods and services in a society where the underclass is abused?
Why be surprised?
The American South used to produce cotton so cheap, you'd think it was picked by slaves.
The sad irony is that (with only a little help), we're doing it to ourselves. All I have to do is hold up cheap jeans, and the underclass will skewer itself on its own greed, happily selling themselves out to save money at the cash register, never wondering about the hidden costs of trade without policy, never quite realizing that they had just bought back into laissez faire capitalism.
And yes, when you admit that national boundaries can contain arbitrary laws but not trade, that is exactly what you just returned to. The fleet, famously, travels as fast as its slowest ship.
In America, when we legislated ourselves a decent life, we made it impossible to compete with those who lived indecent ones.
Of course, we shouldn't have to compete with them.
The logical extension is to ask a farm worker to find a job in a field full of slaves. His value is reduced to nothing.
"But Slavery is Illegal!" the farmworker shouts. "Not in Namibia," the slaves reply.
Free Trade is a code word. It stands for the elimination of the 1st world's gains for its ordinary people - by forcing them to compete with what they are bound to lose against: the economies of worker abuse.
Its proponents depend on the American population's ignorance of the issues. You can talk around it in circles with most people, while all the time they have carefully insulated themselves from the basic issue at hand:
Is it OK if I break the law, as long as I do it out of your sight? To people you don't care about? Maybe people in another country?
Free Trade is supposed to reduce the importance of nations and bring about the ascendance of a global community. And it has! The American Working Class is no longer in America. They are in India, China, and Indonesia! Mexico, and Costa Rica, and Guatemala! They are in Afghanistan, growing our opium, and in Iraq, pumping our oil.
So I welcome you all, prosperous last descendants of the old 1st world dream, back into the world you created.
Welcome to India. I hope they really do let you go. Just don't be surprised when you realize it's a one-way trip.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Actually, you don't know how right you are. My father came to study (did Masters and PhD) with funding from international agencies and he came with a J visa status. That requires that he returns to his country of origin for two years (makes sense). Since I came some months after him, I was put under the same restrictions. If I had come illegally, I wouldn't have had those restrictions. Seriously, once you start studying in the US, when do you want to take a two year break from your education?
:D
Also, if you get a job (illegally), a house and other things, then you can show ties to this country and would have a better case for not being deported, whereas if you follow the law, you'd have less ties.
My case is an even more interesting one. My visa didn't support me when I turned 21 since parents can no longer sponsor their children 21 and older. That puts me in an interesting category. I'm not illegal but somewhat "out-of-status". However, if I decided to leave the country and INS found out, then I'd be barred from re-entering for 10 years. Funny how that works out isn't it
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
Something people seem to miss in the CNN article is that almost all those foreigners trying to work in India are of Indian origin. Most Indian's I talked to laugh at the concept of a non-Indian working in their country. They are not arrogant so much as just traditional. Asia has always been xenophobic and they DO have laws that assist in enforcing this case. So the article was not a real eye opener to those of us who know the existance of the laws. Most of us are also smart enough to know of the "Indian Brain-Drain" issue where many of the highly skilled Indians left the country to work elsewhere. Now they are going home. No big surprise.