I'm really glad US has such tight immigration norms. As someone from India, it is great the see that those innovators who couldn't get visas, are innovating outside US and living a much better life. why move be an alien in US, when you can live in home country and innovate?
I think the author (also an Indian turned American) has been making this point for quite a few years. Not all, but some of America's loss is China and India's gain.
India and China are so vastly different markets, that most of the products made for US really dont fit outside US. And innovating in China / India truly help these countries!
I totally agree. As a company, we lost two of our best engineers who emigrated to the US in the past year. And no, it was not because of the pay or working conditions or no equity. People have been sold the "American Dream" to people outside America over the decades. Young people have seen their relatives from previous generations live much better lives in the US over India.
Bringing people back will take time and I think once the infrastructure is fixed (which is very fixable in the next 10-15 years), most people will not think of emigrating. Having lived in the US and India, I think the society in India is as free as in the US, without the anxiety of "fitting in" and leaving your family behind. Also today you have access to the best products, technology and knowledge being in India so other than the physical infrastructure (housing, travel, cleanliness) the gap is much reduced.
I sincerely hope the immigration laws get tighter in the US so that we can build great companies, create wealth for the society, create jobs and remove hardship and poverty in India.
If you're an employer then, from a pure cold calculating stand-point, nobody would blame you for having that thought for you wouldn't say it out loud. If your country is the destination of choice of many talented people, you'd have access to a larger pool and an advantage over other employers in countries that are less attractive. Also, none of your tax dollars went to educating and training these prospects.
Think about the influence the exodus of the Soviet Union's best and brightest had on the U.S. The influx of that massive brain power had tangible consequences. It wasn't the first time this had happened: many of very bright scientist and engineers fled (or were "paperclipped") to the U.S. during/at the end of WWII.
For the U.S. in general, this was a windfall and it was a direct consequence of dire conditions in Europe. The newcomers crushed anyone not at the same level who was getting by fine hitherto, many of whom quit academia altogether.
Think about all the people trained for free as M.D's or engineers in other countries who are not able to find jobs for lack of degree recognition in the U.S. and are forced to work as nurses or paramedics or jobs for which they are overqualified which effectively raises the bar. The U.S. and several countries are getting talent that was subsidized by other states.
But it also works, slightly differently, within the same country. If unemployment is high, many qualified people are forced to take menial jobs. For employers, this is a windfall. There was a manager in Courchevel on TV that could hardly hide his joy about the economic conjecture. He was showing the news crew the résumés of people applying for unqualified jobs. People with college degrees in STEM, speaking many languages. For a place at a high-end resort like that, snatching people like that with the same pay an average person would get is a very good deal.
It hurts people who are not yet established in their careers, and some people who are but are unwilling to evolve. Recent graduates must hit the ground running jumping from a truck going a 100mph.
I think it's a great argument for opening up immigration law in the US. It'd make any US citizen feel uncomfortable and I think that's basically the point.
You should never hope for less freedom of movement. You can never know what lies ahead in the future of your country, and the freedom to move elsewhere could be your only option to protect your safety and inalienable rights.
As an American, I hope so too - there's a real cost to emigrating and I would think that home is always home and people should have the option of being there. I'd like to be able to buy cool things no matter where they are made.
In principle, I'm also for pretty much unrestricted immigration but that's politically ... difficult. It may also be practically difficult.
so you want to move to police state to be under constant surveillance (as a foreigner it means forever, including your relatives), you want to support corrupt war machinery with your taxes that literally feeds of death of hundreds of thousands of innocent all over the world? in the country with highest nr of prisoners per capita, where one mistake (or not even) will ruin your life forever?
that ain't american dream, that is american reality. you can try to do better than that
Huh, what you know about bad government. I'm trying to leave country where 99.99% of all Judge verdicts are "guilty" (it's official statistics - you have 1/1000 chance to remain free if you are in court). I'm trying to leave police state where all phone calls and sms messages are _officially_ tapped and cellular operators have to store records for 3 years. Where government officially wants to decrypt all of your ssl traffic (it's just impossible technically, but they are too stupid to realize it), and all non-encrypted traffic is already being monitored. In Russia, if policeman is going to your direction on the street - you are nervous. If he is knocking to your door - you know there's a big chance of big problems.
I can say much more, about feeding wars also, it's just offtopic. But trust me, US reality right now is something we can't even dream about. And I know about US not from movies, it's not so difficult to monitor US-related news.
Also, Tighter immigration is just one part of the story. India itself has grown up and fixed a lot of its issues. Apart from the current generation, even the generation that saw the first wave of benefits of 1990's reforms has already reaped far more benefits than their peers who moved to US around the same time. Most are disproportionately rich, have had better careers and family/social circles in India.
My guess is as more things get fixed in India(which they will), and more situation improves here, it will be harder by the day to think of restarting your life elsewhere while your peers do better than you back home. At the end nobody wants to end up being worse off than their peers despite doing a lot more of that extra work as immigrant in a foreign land.
Now we are in the second generation of this trend. Among my friends who moved to the US for MS and never returned. Most of us in India have done better on nearly every count.
Essentially today immigration to a foreign country in India has been reduced to a social status issue.
The actual financial reasons have been drying out for a while and very few remain today.
I can only speak about myself, I come from a lower middle class family in India and probably was the poorest in my school. Now, I am at senior position in large well established tech company and definitely doing better than any of my class mates back in India.
My family still lives in India and I am amazed how tough their life is when dealing with every day things.
My life is so much better than my sister's who lives in Pune and also works in a similar position for a tech company. She would move to US in a heartbeat but has some personal issues.
This is how bad conditions in India are, my mother, who lost her husband when she was 34, worked all her life and raised 2 kids on her own. After several decades of employment, she needed to withdraw some money out of her PF account. She had to bribe at least 4 guys and pay a total of 20,000INR to be able to withdraw money from her account, her own hard earned money.
Life in India is pretty bad, I do believe us Indians have a "chalta hai" attitude and a lot of problems are just shoved under the rug or considered "yahan aise hi kaam hota hai" (this is how things are done here) category.
I would want India to be the same as US where I have lived now for more than 15 years and Bollywood movies keep promising me that India today is so much like any other developed country, but my 15 visits in the last 15 years break every one of those promises.
Back to the original point, no financially a person earning at the same position in India vs US is not any better off by a huge margin.
Now if your point was is it worth it moving from Germany or Australia to US, then the answer is completely different answer.
India is not there yet, a lot of work needs to be done, a lot of change needs to happen. If people in India start believing that they have arrived then they will be doing themselves a hige disservice.
Agree with this comment. The culture of corruption is anathema to a lot of middle-class workers who sincerely believe in the value of hard-work and honesty and yet are prevented from doing even the most basic things in everyday life. You do not need to "have connections" to get what you're legally supposed to. Not to mention that there is just no comparison between the compensation offered in the US to anywhere else.
I second the opinions posted above. Just a few days ago, we were comparing the costs of housing at a decent place (in the city/closer suburbs) are 3 to 4 years of my gross annual pay. If I dreamed of similar housing in India (Chennai, where I'm from), it would cost me ~30 years of my market annual salary for a similar job there. I don't want to work my life off to get a house to retire in.
And yet you can buy a house in the outskirts in any major Indian city for way less. Which used to be how most middle class Indians used to buy homes in my dad's generation.
The issue is most of us want housing in luxury apartments with amenities with no match, and with transit infrastructure closer to office. This was and always will remain very expensive in any economy on earth let alone Chennai.
It will take more or less the same in any major city in the US. Most Indians think if they land in the US, all problems will vanish in thin air, milk and honey will flow from now. While what really happens is all your problems remain as is, except that you get a little better roads.
Please take a good look on all housing related threads on this forum, young people in western economies have it way difficult than any of us.
> And yet you can buy a house in the outskirts in any major Indian city for way less. Which used to be how most middle class Indians used to buy homes in my dad's generation.
And how do you get to the city? Through the non-existent highways? Or maybe the congested public transportation, if any? Besides which, I don't know about you, but my parents could not afford a house until I was in high school. And even after buying the house, they still could not live in the house (because of aforementioned problems with commuting).
> The issue is most of us want housing in luxury apartments with amenities with no match, and with transit infrastructure closer to office. This was and always will remain very expensive in any economy on earth let alone Chennai.
Please stop projecting your opinions on others. The demand I see is mostly for livable quarters at reasonable distances with basic amenities and some expectation of privacy... which seems to be too much to ask in any of the major cities.
> It will take more or less the same in any major city in the US. Most Indians think if they land in the US, all problems will vanish in thin air, milk and honey will flow from now. While what really happens is all your problems remain as is, except that you get a little better roads.
I don't know where you're getting these ideas from. Better roads yes, but also: better work-life balance. Decent compensation. Reasonable vacation time. Great career prospects. The prospect of living and working with people from different cultures (not just American, but from many other countries as well).
> Please take a good look on all housing related threads on this forum, young people in western economies have it way difficult than any of us.
Again, please stop projecting your ideas/views on the rest of us.
Surely won't project my opinion while receiving yours.
>>The demand I see is mostly for livable quarters at reasonable distances with basic amenities and some expectation of privacy... which seems to be too much to ask in any of the major cities.
But based on what you just wrote you can relocate to pretty much any city on earth and these problems would barely change. While in US most of my colleagues who had homes lived in far suburbs. This is a international trend. Places close to office had insane rents. And from what I learn property taxes are quite high in California and Texas where most of our desi dudes stay.
This is not a US vs India issue. This basically how demand and supply economics works.
>>better work-life balance. Decent compensation. Reasonable vacation time. Great career prospects. The prospect of living and working with people from different cultures (not just American, but from many other countries as well).
Again all of this is possible if you have an expensive STEM degree. Take note that they are good deal of US citizens who work on minimum wage. There is likely nearly everyone who works for $60K or less. Tech and Medical workforce that comes from India is really like people landing into good salaries at the very start. This could all change if the persons very kids don't get a STEM degree.
I understand that for most people making these immigration decisions its very hard to reconcile with these things.
I have lived exactly both the scenarios you just described.
(1) Lived in a suburb of Chennai commuting 15-20 Kms to work. It took 1 hour to get to work and 1 hour back regardless of how much I can pay for it. That's 2 hours of my life wasted every day! - All the while paying my mortgage that would last until my retirement.
(2) Now, Live in a US city. Ironically, work in a suburb, but live in Downtown 20 miles away. I spend 20 mins in commuting to work, peacefully. With my pay, I'm confident I can pay off my mortgage in under 12 years.
Now, I'm not saying this is true everywhere in the US. Living in NYC might be the extreme case, whereas living in the countryside would be cheapest. I'm trying to compare equivalent in my mind.
First step towards change and improvement is to accept the need for it. IMO.
I can imagine how hard it must be for you. Most of us have these stories.
But sir, If you have been out of India for ~15 years now, you are now totally out of touch about ground realities in India. Also it takes far more to get decent health care and housing in US than it takes in India. Apart from this you have the added advantage of a social circle in India in case of death, disease and debt which is totally absent in US.
In most US coastal cities(Only places where can make a decent career) rents are high, and affording a home is basically 2-3 decade venture. And after all that you still have to struggle for your retirement fund and health care during old age.
India has a lot of vacuum as a developing economy for both investments and a long term career.
Also this whole corruption issue is sometimes overplayed. The last time I dealt with a government office for anything was passport office where no bribes were paid, not even to the police who came for verification.
Political, economic and social climate in India is undergoing huge upgrades every decade and anybody who stays abroad for 10+ years essentially would have lost all context about things back home.
The US coastal cities are the only place you can make a decent career? As someone who doesn't live in a coastal city, and makes a very, very good living, I find that hilariously inaccurate. If I look at the list of fortune 500 companies with a large presence in Chicago, Dallas, Houston and Minneapolis, I'd say you're about as wrong as could possibly be. Unless by "decent living" you mean "startup valued at billions of dollars".
Largely depends on what you work on. I have relatives from India who are doctors who stay in non-coastal cities and make a decent living. Unfortunately if you have to make it big money wise you have to ultimately play the start up game, where the biggest center in the world today is the Bay Area.
Also as some one who has lived both in Bangalore and Bay Area, I know well to understand cities matter in the sense if you are in the middle of all the action chances of progress and growth are higher. Or your long term competitiveness and career will likely suffer.
Sure some hipster culture exists in the Bay Area, but for all of it. There is a lot of good work in Bay Area, and I think if you are in tech and are an immigrant you must absolute stay there.
I speak to my friends and family in India on a daily basis, I also visit India almost every year and I stand by every word I wrote above. If you think life in India is up to the standard of living of any other developed country, then you need to educate yourself.
Never did I say things in India have are better than US. But things have so drastically improved incentives to go foreign lands are lesser.
India has grown by leaps and bounds. Opportunities compared to what was 15-20 years back aren't even comparable now. Unless you come and live here, you wouldn't have a clue. Calling and talking to relatives won't give you a good idea. They think you are living in heaven, this perspective exists because NRI's send pictures of vacations and their cars and people in India think its all coming either for free or through magic.
I have faced this issue too. People think all they have to do is land in US and pretty much all their issues are solved without doing anything at all. Most people staying in India haven't a clue about life in US. They have never heard about how expensive higher education is, or health care for that matter. They do not realize what it takes to have a mortgage in a place like Bay Area. They haven't heard of minimum wage. They don't know how strict tax laws are. They don't even know how few options their kids have in life if they don't get into STEM branches. This along with harshness of what can happen to your dependents should something happen to your life. Without a strong social circle all these things are hard and set back life for dependents.
Most people, aspiring to come to US are thinking on the lines of Disneyland and Yosemite. And at best the US 101 freeway.
Plus I see this whole thing among NRI's about wishing bad things to happen to India and overplay things about conditions in India to make their own decisions look good. Its sad.
I have lived in US and India. Things are just going full hyper in India. Things might not be same as US, but its no longer the binary 1 or 0 it used to be in the pre-2003/90's era.
Things have improved (drastically?) only for a sliver of population. I talk to so many of my relatives and apart from some already well-off, working in high-tech industry most of them are way worse in term of living standard than they were 15-20 years back. Everything is so much expensive when compared to their rupee income.
Things can become violent at any time even in big cities. Just look at Bengaluru etc situation now due to Cauvery issue. It has already caused Rs 22000 crore worth of loss.
>>Things have improved (drastically?) only for a sliver of population. I talk to so many of my relatives and apart from some already well-off, working in high-tech industry most of them are way worse in term of living standard than they were 15-20 years back.
Same in US too right?
Its not like everyone works at Wall Street and drives Rolls Royce. You don't hear about these things in US simply because you haven't set up a family big enough there. Whoever is in US would have generally come on tech work or Medical degree, which are paid well in the US. Other people especially in Non-STEM branches, are basically the equivalent of people you talk about it in India. And please don't even have me start on inequality in the US.
And small businesses in US are not like in India. So most of that population in US works at Warehouses and Walmart sort of places.
>>Everything is so much expensive when compared to their rupee income.
Food is relatively expensive in India(Based on inflation figures). Otherwise higher education is far more expensive in US and student debt takes a good few years to climb out of. Housing in any major US city is a 2 decade mortgage undertaking. And retirement with health care(even other wise) is very expensive in the US.
>>Things can become violent at any time even in big cities. Just look at Bengaluru etc situation now due to Cauvery issue. It has already caused Rs 22000 crore worth of loss.
And you talk of Law and order situation, shooting incidents at schools in US are everyday news these days.
"no bribes were paid, not even to the police who came for verification"
But there are the daily annoyances like even having to have the police come to verify you live somewhere. Having to get X, Y, Z documents and then waiting for them to get stamped for basic services.
On the other hand transferring money to other person's bank account is actually easier and cheaper than in the US.
Procedures regarding legal work are same in every country and equally expensive. Especially if your work is some how related to government or its security.
If anything these checks are harsher in other countries than in India.
> India and China are so vastly different markets, that most of the products made for US really dont fit outside US.
What? Most successful US companies end up developing massive international markets. In fact, for many top tech companies their international revenue can exceed domestic revenue.
This is in stark contrast to Indian and Chinese companies where even the biggest successes have a lot of difficulty appealing internationally.
Uh, it's not that clear cut. Also, the line is drawn along the lines of developed vs. developing economies.
Having lived in India and had some experience with US multinational companies, the 'massive international markets' in developing countries are limited to electronics, automobiles, and computer science: a few companies like Ford, GM, Microsoft, Intel, and most significantly, Apple. In other industries, companies like Unilever, P&G, etc. setup subsidiary structures because the markets in India and China are often much smaller in $s. At the same time, in structures similar to how P&G or Ford manage their Indian or Chinese businesses, Indian and Chinese companies control US/European corporations: Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo, Starwood Hotels, AMC Theaters, etc.
> Uh, it's not that clear cut. Also, the line is drawn along the lines of developed vs. developing economies.
It really is. No developing economy companies enjoy anywhere near as much international success as American companies do, however you want to parse it.
Since this is a tech forum, we're talking about tech companies. You already noted how Apple, Intel, Microsoft. Add on Google, Facebook, and Amazon and you can see that almost every single major US tech company has strong international profits.
Credit cards are far less common, and especially far less used for ecommerce. Figuring out how to do payment on delivery is what helped Flipkart in India (and doomed a competitor who couldn't). Example article http://indianonlineseller.com/2016/01/cash-on-delivery-cod-s...
It seems that markets such as India and China[1] are more comfortable with apps packed with numerous features (i.e. WeChat or LINE), whereas US apps seem to usually be more focused on minimalism [2]. Snapchat is a notable US counter-example.
That's not really a feature that people are "comfortable with", that's because Chinese Internet has been captured by monopolists, like the AOL of USA in the 1990s.
I doubt that's all there is to it, there really are some cultural differences that show when you take western services and put them on the chinese market.
Amazon for example found that their site simply looked too "clean", had too much whitespace, for the chinese market. All that empty space was not taken as a clean look by users, but as a sign that there weren't a lot of products available. If I go to amazon.com now, there are literally 5 products on the landing page. On amazon.cn, more like 30-50.
(I am recounting this story as it was told by an Amazon employee who came to my Uni a while back)
To be a little crude, and in my opinion, what you are basically saying is that you are glad that the choice and autonomy of other people unrelated to you is restricted so that your vision of what the world should look like can be realized.
I think you may have missed the whole point about USA. Nobody is an alien in this country, a lot of people would life to make you feel that way, but I know a lot of people from Sikkim regularly get asked where in China are they from.
There may be some terminology or crossed wires here. For example I have a US government issued card that literally says on it that I am a "resident alien", and is the reason I can be in the US. When filling out forms, such as employment related, or opening a bank account there will be somewhere that I have to say (again literally) that I am an alien. Also the government can revoke this at any point for any reason they deem fit, there is no right of appeal, nor do they even have to tell me why.
This is at least one way that someone is an alien in this country, using US government terminology.
An immigrant will always be somewhat alien. I moved to the U.S. when I was five, and I'm pretty Americanized. But most of my family is still 10,000 miles away, and I never had much connection with my grandparents, aunts and uncles, or cousins. Indeed, I often feel anxious and self-conscious around them because of our significant differences in values and worldview. At the same time, I still don't really get some things Americans do (e.g. treating dogs like people).
Meanwhile, my wife's family came over to Oregon on the wagon trains. Almost all her grandparents, cousins, etc. live within a few hours' drive in Oregon and Washington. If you drive along the pacific coast highway, you'll pass a scenic overlook named after her family, marking where their homestead was before the government took it to build the highway. You can see the lighthouse where her ancestors were lighthouse keepers.
America is probably the most welcoming place in the world for immigrants, but that doesn't change the fact that immigrating means basically severing yourself from your roots to come live in a very different country. Many people would not make that sacrifice if they had adequate opportunities in their own homeland.
>At the same time, I still don't really get some things Americans do (e.g. treating dogs like people).
Do you mean having pets at all? I'm pretty sure that's not at all unique to Americans; most dog breeds I've heard of came from Europe or Asia.
Personally, as an American, I don't understand why so many people love dogs so much either, but not all Americans are dog people. We're basically divided into a few different camps, the biggest two being "dog people" and "cat people" (I'm the latter). There's a few other weirdos out there: "bird people" are the strangest. And definitely stay far, far away from any "horse women" (trust me on this one: do NOT date a woman who loves horses!).
Anyway, in all seriousness, pet ownership is not a uniquely American phenomenon by any means. Having cats as revered pets goes back to ancient Egypt, after all. And to my knowledge, having dogs as pets goes back to the stone age.
Not just pet ownership, but e.g. "bring your dog to work" policies. I also find it strange how highly dogs are valued relative to kids (at least among millennials), but also how over-the-top Americans are about how much effort they invest in both pet ownership and parenting.
I have never personally seen a company with "bring your dog to work" policies, and I've worked at quite a few. I've never been to a business where it was normal for people to bring their pets in, except for pet stores and veterinarians. I've heard of "bring your dog to work" places, but I suspect it's just some hipster-run startups that are like this. It is not even remotely representative of American business culture.
I think you're been paying too much attention to some small group of Americans and assuming they represent them all. I can't really speak for Millenials and their dogs vs. kids attitudes, but a lot of people do have dogs, but again I don't think it's unusual; Europeans have kept dogs as pets for millennia.
The helicopter parenting, OTOH, is an epidemic in America these days. Now it seems kids under the age of 10 can't go anywhere alone without the cops being called and parents getting in trouble for "child abandonment". It certainly wasn't like that when I was that age in the 1980s.
And dogs are kept as pets everywhere (including Bangladesh, where I am from), but don't feature as prominently in peoples' lives. My Facebook feed is full of pictures and comments about peoples' dogs. People let their dogs sleep in their beds, favor restaurants with outdoor seating so they can bring their dog along, etc.
Those companies are not even remotely representative of American workplaces. Especially Ben & Jerry's; WTF??
Also, I'd sincerely like to know how they deal with employees who are allergic to dogs. Not to mention dogs shitting in the office, barking, getting in fights with other dogs, etc. Pit bulls in particular are infamous for attacking and killing other (smaller) dogs, and of course some "pit bull advocate" is going to insist on bringing her pit bull to work to prove to everyone how "sweet" he his, and then act shocked when it kills her coworker's Chihuahua, and worse she'll blame the Chihuahua owner somehow. Honestly, letting people bring dogs to work is one of the stupidest company policies I've ever heard of.
You're not going to get much of an argument from me about dogs; I honestly don't know why people like them so much. But as I said before, I'm one of those "cat people", so of course I'm not going to understand why people want to have a big, smelly, slobbering animal around that can't even figure out how to take a shit in a relatively clean and hygienic manner. Cats are far more sensible pets: they're smart enough to always crap in a litter box where it's easily managed, they're small (even the rare huge breeds aren't over 20 pounds or so), they don't smell (because of their fanatical cleaning habits and the chemistry of their saliva), and the only downside is the dander is an allergen to some people. You can even get automatic litter boxes these days which make the bathroom part really, really easy.
But I do think you're overblowing things a lot. As I said, I've never seen a workplace myself that allowed dogs (I never worked at Google, just like most of the nation; their ridiculous interview process keeps most qualified people out anyway), and I very rarely see a restaurant that allows them at all, in or out, or where people have them. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I saw someone with a dog at a restaurant, except for one time about 6 months ago inside a Panera where a guy had his service animal (which is something entirely different; very few people get those; I'm pretty sure this guy was visually impaired IIRC). The main places I see these dog-lovers out in public with their dogs is on hiking trails, at parks, etc.
Don't forget that Facebook is not a good way to judge peoples' lives. FB is infamous for having people post all kinds of crap on there trying to show how wonderful their lives are and one-up their friends, and it's driven a lot of people into depression because they see all these happy, smiling pictures. Real life isn't like that; what you see on FB is a tiny non-random snapshot or worse an act, or the shameless self-promotion of a vocal minority. Of course, all the dog proponents who can't spend 30 seconds without thinking about their dog are going to post a bunch of crap about dogs and their dog and how wonderful dogs are and "look! here we are going somewhere with our dog!" and "this restaurant sucks!! they wouldn't let us bring our dog in!!", and you see this and now you're thinking the whole country is like that. My advice: figure out who all these idiot dog-loving people on your FB feed are, and de-friend them, for the sake of your own sanity. Do you really want to see all kinds of dog-related posts on there every time you log in?
My pets are literally treated as family members. I treated my dogs like they were my brothers, or sisters.
I am one of those people who think animals should have rights. I know it's crazy, but it just how I feel.
I had a girlfriend move out because she didn't like my Bull Mastiff's period. She told me to get rid of the dog, or I'm leaving. I literally packed her bags. She had her own apartment, so she wasen't homeless. You would not believe the words she yelled at me. "You love that dog more than me--you a-hole!" Me, "Maybe?"
I didn't think it was an American thing. I guess I just didn't think about it.
(I will say this; I sometimes think family bonds are tighter in other countries. I don't know? I've seen some nasty immoral acts--akways over money in the United States. I loved animals way before I realized how immoral certain family members were though.)
And continues to be an alien for years, and sometimes decades. You only stop being an "alien" after naturalization ceremony. "Alien" terminology is not some emotional made up word, it's a real term that America calls any non-citizen.
>>I know a lot of people from Sikkim regularly get asked where in China are they from.
Every one has their own axe to grind based on what they want out of life. But this is plain ridiculous. Discrimination exists on every country on earth.
Every one who is following US elections and speeches from a particular candidate knows what is happening there. Racism has and may be will always exist due to identity consciousness among humans.
On an average US probably has the same levels of this sort of racism as much as there is in India.
I guess most of it has to do with education. I genuinely had no idea that there people in Inda who look different than what I see around me till I was in my late teens. I guess its lot better now with the internet but diversity education won't hurt.
I think the author (also an Indian turned American) has been making this point for quite a few years. Not all, but some of America's loss is China and India's gain.
India and China are so vastly different markets, that most of the products made for US really dont fit outside US. And innovating in China / India truly help these countries!