It has been more than a decade since I along with my better half and 1 month old son had migrated to United States from South Asia, leaving behind our Loved once in search of better opportunities (being a Brahmin by caste, life was not easy in South Asia around 10+ years back).
We were legal immigrants and I held a H1 along with wife and son who had H4’s respectively.
Life was great – a great job as a Database Administrator, a car, good salary in $$$, cleaner environment, people respecting you for your technical abilities .etc.-.
I worked for a consulting company based out of New York and was deployed to client locations in Kansas and Sacramento. So far so good, I worked long hours and made a bunch of money for myself and my employer for almost a year.
Things got nasty when I decided to join one of the clients in California as a permanent employee (transfer my H1 to new employer). My employer (consulting company based out of New York), saw his “Hen that Laid Golden Eggs”, being adopted by new employer. The employer threatened me with a “Law Suite” and informed me that he will sue me in New York and bring Injunction (a judicial remedy issued in order to prohibit a party from doing or continuing to do a certain activity) and cancel my H1, if I shifted to New Employer. Since he had signed a “Contract only” agreement with the client and my employment letter stated that I had to work for two years with the company, both my prospective employer and I had limited choice.
Consulting attorneys in California did not help me. Since, most attorneys are concerned what they get in return if they decided to take us an employee issue. And in employer friendly states (such as New York), and employee is bound to lose and argument, apart from bearing the burden of fighting for “rights” when on H1 Visa.
Finally I had to give in to my employer’s wish and scared to death in a capitalistic country; I decided to stick with my employer and got assigned to a project in Texas. Finally, I did shift to a different employer in Texas, but had to pay $10,000 as penalty to my former employer since I left within two years and the $10,000 was explained to me as total relocation fees (when I moved from India to United States to Kansas to Sacramento to Dallas) – no argument here, can I make one when on H1?-.
Here I am now, a US Citizen and trying to make a difference with my Pen. The story one has to learn from this experience is that, when you are on a H1 you have very limited opportunities, and more so if you have migrated with your family.
I am not sure if things will change for good, anyways I thought this was a good forum to pen down my “two cents.” |
