I'm not Indian, but I truly hope that India rises above it's current economical level, for the good of the entire world. Having whole generations of very hard-working (too hard working!) young people that have grown with an unhealthy tolerance for very bad working conditions, work abuse and for bad living conditions decreases the quality of working conditions worldwide (or in EU and US at least) and enforces a stereotype that will only turn back to hurt the younger generations of Indians.
My advice to qualified hard-working Indians (or any other qualified and educated people emigrating for a poorer country to a richer one):
1. be PROUD of yourself, don't be willing to work for 2x less just because you've just immigrated to an EU country or to the US (or for 10x less if you're working in your home country for an outsourcer)! you don't deserve less!
2. stop selling yourself with the "I can work really hard" label on your head - every employer and manager will respect you less as a human being if you do so, even if they may value you more (as in "business value", not human value!). (let me tell you something: even if business owners and top managers paint themselves as hard working guys, they just do it to project this image to their employees - 50% didn't get there by working hard, but by working smart an by good delegation and externalizing skills; only 10% probably got there by sheer hard work; and the other 40%... let's just say you don't want them as your role models :) )
3. once you get to a certain skill level, grow a bit of smugness, pride and condescendence for God's sake (it's healthy for you, trust me!), and try to wear the "reluctant genius" hat form time to time instead of the "hard working bee" one, even if it's not who you are - it teaches people the value, scarcity and tricky nature of "high quality wetware", it teaches that they have to pay top dollars for brainpower and accept that it will not always work as they want it and they just have to put up with this!
4. don't be afraid to show Uncle Sam the finger if you get caught in an US VISA trap, like being unable to quit your job because you'll loose your H1B VISA or something - this is demeaning and you shouldn't work in a country that puts you in such a situation, even if you'd earn more and learn more than anywhere else! You shouldn't because you don't have to: the "rich" world is bigger than the US: there's Canada, Europe, Australia, rising economies in South American countries etc.
Be angry, but also be proud and don't sell yourself short even if it hurts you in the short run - by asking for more and doing less you're actually making the world a better place for your children, even if it seems against your intuition and values!
For people who qualify for H1B and other immigration visas, the following are true.
1. Vast majority are from really rich families. Like million dollars in family assets. The education is either very expensive or they were top students in their schools, which usually happens because they went to private schools.
2. People working in India never take low pay after 2 years of experience. It's only during the first few years that we trade an opportunity to gain experience with low wages. Theres a very high attrition rate in all it companies in India and salaries are ever increasing.
3. Young Indians have the opposite problem of being hard working. Most spend extended hours in office to socialize than to actually get stuff done.
4. The part about growing smugness is true. Indians traditionally seldom call ourselves "experts" in any thing even if we know stuff.
5. Losing h1b is big deal. You are given notice to leave country with your family in no time. Technically u need to leave the country within a month if you don't want to be barred from reentry. So in that one month, you have to try and sell all your stuff, cars, house, furniture, discontinue schooling for your kids and collect transcripts, medical records,file taxes,payoff debt. Instead most people would jump into any job to hold onto the status.
What you say at (1) is not gonna be true anymore: with all the open courses and other high quality learning resource available online for free, at least in the IT/CS/Math and even physics are, we'll have a huge number of mostly self educated professionals, and in areas like software where a nice portfolio of projects trumps any fancy diploma they will be very valued and employable! And they will also be put in a position of selling themselves short by comparing themselves with western Europe or US schooled people (the guy with a diploma from a fancy US uni will have the guts to ask for far more than someone with a diploma from an Indian uni, even if he is less competent! ...and this is the best case scenario: if, let's say, a Harvard schooled guy is stupid enough to ask for less than he's worth, anyone else will have to make do with even less than he does!) and they will accept worse deals. And that's the danger I'm talking of: this will make all employers expect more for less, from everyone!
About (4), indeed, having a family to take care of greatly restricts your mobility (and I bet this is what the guys doing US immigration policy bet on!) - but you can avoid the issue before it happens: take a better look at other options besides US as most EU countries have more flexible VISAs and such (yeah, having to speak German - Berlin area seems to be shaping up as Europe's SV nowadays - and French and maybe Spanish or something else fluently on top of English is hard, especially for techies with not so good language and social skills, but it opens up a lot of doors and gives you more bargaining power for yourself).
for what it's worth the salary of a mid-level manager in India is half of what an equivalent position will fetch in Korea (this surprised me greatly at first).
with South Korea's GDP per capita being 10x that of India, I would've expected a more than 2x difference. So this would imply a much lower difference between manager and worker incomes in Korea than in India. Basically Korea's better social equality smooths down what should've been a 5x-10x difference to a mere 2x one ...then again, my understanding of East Asian economies is not very good, and they are know to be economically "weird", so I may be quite wrong on this.
My advice to qualified hard-working Indians (or any other qualified and educated people emigrating for a poorer country to a richer one):
1. be PROUD of yourself, don't be willing to work for 2x less just because you've just immigrated to an EU country or to the US (or for 10x less if you're working in your home country for an outsourcer)! you don't deserve less!
2. stop selling yourself with the "I can work really hard" label on your head - every employer and manager will respect you less as a human being if you do so, even if they may value you more (as in "business value", not human value!). (let me tell you something: even if business owners and top managers paint themselves as hard working guys, they just do it to project this image to their employees - 50% didn't get there by working hard, but by working smart an by good delegation and externalizing skills; only 10% probably got there by sheer hard work; and the other 40%... let's just say you don't want them as your role models :) )
3. once you get to a certain skill level, grow a bit of smugness, pride and condescendence for God's sake (it's healthy for you, trust me!), and try to wear the "reluctant genius" hat form time to time instead of the "hard working bee" one, even if it's not who you are - it teaches people the value, scarcity and tricky nature of "high quality wetware", it teaches that they have to pay top dollars for brainpower and accept that it will not always work as they want it and they just have to put up with this!
4. don't be afraid to show Uncle Sam the finger if you get caught in an US VISA trap, like being unable to quit your job because you'll loose your H1B VISA or something - this is demeaning and you shouldn't work in a country that puts you in such a situation, even if you'd earn more and learn more than anywhere else! You shouldn't because you don't have to: the "rich" world is bigger than the US: there's Canada, Europe, Australia, rising economies in South American countries etc.
Be angry, but also be proud and don't sell yourself short even if it hurts you in the short run - by asking for more and doing less you're actually making the world a better place for your children, even if it seems against your intuition and values!