> But this kind of stuff is what tips the balance the other way, not for me, but for other people like yourself.
I made my decision independently long ago. You really should ask yourself: if this is not enough to tip the balance for you (who has experienced it firsthand) why would it tip the balance for someone who only gets it second hand?
Nobody is going to fix anything because of this blog post, but you can make a statement that really carries weight.
But if you feel that your greencard is worth more than your dignity or principles then you've made your own bed and now you must lie in it.
Understand that my native country, Trinidad, has laws still on the books that make my sexuality illegal. You have to be pretty shitty to be worse at respecting my dignity and principles than that, so the US has a low bar.
But yes, I could pick some other first-world country to move to. In fact, I lived in the UK for seven years: in that time, I made as much progress in my tech career as I did in my first six months in the US.
I think America really is a land of amazing opportunity, and I believe action to change the system from the inside says more than staying out does. And I believe that America is full of decent, compassionate people who genuinely believe that fairness and justice are bedrock principles of their nation, and would be horrified to learn that this is how their country treats some people -- and I'm right, because I can see them saying so elsewhere in this thread.
This is indeed my bed, but I think I can change the sheets :-)
I went to college in the UK. Before, during and after, I worked at a series of startups. I gained experience in PHP, MySQL, etc.. -- a slow but steady accumulation of skill. Then I got a job with Yahoo in the UK, who despite their (many!) flaws as a company are a world-class web development organization -- I learned more, but at much the same speed.
After a year, Yahoo moved me to the bay area, and the difference was shocking. The demands made of me professionally, the density of smart and talented people everywhere, the intensity of the focus on tech culturally and socially: it blew me away. I went from feeling like a spectator of internet technology to a participant at the leading edge -- in terms of the skills I had, the people I met, the sense of the industry's direction.
The bay area is where people invent the next big thing, continuously. London has improved substantially as a startup environment since I left, but it's still nowhere near the same league.
I made my decision independently long ago. You really should ask yourself: if this is not enough to tip the balance for you (who has experienced it firsthand) why would it tip the balance for someone who only gets it second hand?
Nobody is going to fix anything because of this blog post, but you can make a statement that really carries weight.
But if you feel that your greencard is worth more than your dignity or principles then you've made your own bed and now you must lie in it.