Which activities do you give how much time, currently, and ideally? What are the most impactful aspects / dimensions of life for a good enjoyable life? Is this a good list to have as root nodes for going through life? Did I miss listing any important ones? Are these dimensions orthogonal or overlapping? (-> overlapping). What would be the smallest set of orthogonal aspects of a good life? What would be their names?
I could make a religion out of it. (no please don’t).
Saw this and it got me thinking – Before the rescue, this cat was so miserable with a broken jaw, blindness, ants etc with persistent suffering, and yet it had no option but to continue surviving. Animals have no idea of suicide, and that is sad!
Isn’t this world cruel for incentivizing agents (animals) to live out their life doing things just to minimize negative rewards (pain & suffering)? Granted not every individual suffers persistently; but, when their life spirals down into a miserable one with no likelihood of improving, they cannot even discover the action to end it! Every natural attempt to end their life is met with a huge negative reward (pain), so these agents would likely never even discover the action of suicide!
Thinking in terms of evolution, let’s say an individual does discover the action to commit suicide when they are in a grave, perpetual suffering state. If they do commit suicide, that cuts off further inheritance of their qualities, lol.
But humans exist! It is interesting how we have thrived despite the knowledge of suicide, especially with the knowhow of less painful and quicker ways to kill oneself; although, the majority of people probably do *not* know of quick & painless ways to die (including me). If they did know of quick painless methods to exit the game, would a majority of them pull the trigger? If the majority would indeed pull the trigger if they had access to a quick & painless way, what does that say about the state of our society? In a free world, shouldn’t this choice be left to individuals rather than governments banning access to such knowledge & tools?
Okay well, we don’t know if the majority would pull the trigger. Whatever subset of the population would pull the trigger, would die off, and the ones remaining would be the thrivers. It would become a cultural difference and create a stigma by those who have it easy in life towards those who are miserable enough to be suicidal. Maybe it has already happened. Seems like the solution should involve more of leveling the field & improving the latter group’s lives than simply sigmatizing the topic entirely. Or, perhaps respecting that it can be an individual’s informed choice.
The topic of suicide should not be taboo. It should be discussable freely, just like depression, or abortion. Normalizing freer healthy discussions can help identify larger issues underlying society and life itself. Banning discussion on the other hand could become a tool for the powerful to keep the miserable people in control.
It’s easy to see that “powerful” above can refer to powerful people or the government; but it could very well refer to any more powerful entity – like the simulation that we possibly are in. Talking about it is necessary to potentially break the chains if at all that is possible.
Context: April 28th, at the beach watching sunset. Later at home watching related content. #Thoughts #HT
Time & related thoughts
88. What is time? Was time discovered or invented? Does a microorganism know time? What even is the notion of time to them? Does a slug know time? Do apes know time? Surely at some point in history, the first human suddenly came up with the idea of time. Did he discover it or invent it as part of the story he started telling? Are we all in his story?
The first human/ape/x to keep track of time started it by looking at the sun – its repetitions. 1 day was the unit.
Who defined “year” first? How did they define it?
90. When did we start counting years? When was it discovered that after 365 days the earth completes one year (around the sun)? Who decided that we will start counting from Jesus’s death? Was Jesus real? Whoever is the storyteller, we are all possibly in his story since then.
90.1 Why are we counting years since Jesus’s death? What are we waiting for?
94. Think of the spacetime block universe. And the multiverse. If I regret a past choice – if I contemplate that if I had made the other choice with a better outcome, in the past, would I have made it out of a proper understanding/calculated choosing? or would it have been just a random choice out of all possible options? For it to have been a wise choice made out of proper understanding, I would need to have foresight of the future; clarity. The visibility along the time axis should not be fuzzy/uncertain.
So I guess the more certain I can be about my future, the wiser the choices I can make.
Is this what the Oracle referred to when she said “You have already made the choice in the future. You just have to understand it. You cannot see past a choice that you do not understand”.
94. Perhaps, over nuancing of some ideas has made it difficult for us to understand the true nature of reality around us. Like, having different tenses and different words for each of the tenses – past, present, future. Eg. Saying “When will X happen and when did Y happen?” vs saying “When does X happen and when does Y happen?”
Maybe people whose language never had any distinction between past, present, future have a more accurate perspective of the universe. Or do we (the English speaking modern Western world) have the more accurate perspective? Which one is it?
96. The universe exists because the spacetime block (matrix of spatial frames) is filled with numbers that are *NOT* random. There is continuity along the frames. That means it contains information. There is a function. Each frame is a function of time.
Other Thoughts
95. “You are my favorite [person].”. What is favorite. Is it a cultural thing? Does the word / notion / meaning of favorite exist in Marathi, Hindi?
89. Are cigarette smokers perpetually high? Is that their normal and they believe that majority of the world is in their normal? It would feel like a sober person feels believing that the majority of the world is their sober normal. Is this what it means to be addicted to something and it being hard to quit it? It’s hard because you don’t understand the reality. But again which one is real?
91. Driving **** thru the winding hills at night with powerful music in sports mode is just like playing NFS on the best video controller & screen never made.
92. I want to be the main character of my life; or the storyteller.
93. I want to learn and understand how the world works. That is my passion. I want to be paid for learning more about the world/universe. Why would they pay me? In exchange, I can teach it to the society. I can be the one discovering things and spreading the knowledge. If only this could happen, I’d be happy. This basically means I should have been a physics student->researcher->professor.
Is this a late realization that I should have had before college? Do most others have this realization before college? What can I do now to get that and be happy?
I am pursuing enlightenment. I have been, since college. Who are the enlightened people of the modern world? Relatively the most enlightened people are those who understand the world/universe the best. Those who have the best model/understanding of the mechanism/workings of the universe/world. If this definition of enlightened remains constant over time/centuries, then today’s Physicists, Mathematicians, Astronomers, Philosophers, PhDs, leaders of the world are the same as olden times’ enlightened/buddhas/pandits/spiritual leaders/leaders.
Are today’s leaders of the world enlightened with some knowledge they share in common with each other that the common man does not know/understand? What is that knowledge? What did Elon Musk grow up reading/learning/watching/observing? Zuckerberg? Shannon? Einstein? Newton?
A good way to teach kids some new instrument / thing like guitar –
Don’t tell them “you are going to learn guitar” or “you should learn guitar”. Don’t tell them anything about it or your intentions to have them learn it. Just keep a guitar at home like you keep a ball or fridge at home. They will try it out out of curiosity. Let them discover how to use/play on their own, how to mimic songs etc. Then after a while of them playing it in their own not knowing music theory & formal conventions, tell them that classes exist where they teach existing knowledge & techniques that can help increase your skill much more.
Everything is a language. Don’t know how to dance? That just means that you don’t know that language. Don’t know how to appreciate weird music? That means you just don’t know how to read in that language.
Everything is a language to our brain because a language is just a dictionary – an association of feelings/concepts/notions/ideas/mental image/eidetic imagery/mood (x) which are some embedding in the brain’s neural net, to words (y). x is to y.
If y = playing piano, then it means you can translate from x to piano music. You can speak piano. And if you can “appreciate” piano music, then you can read piano, i.e translate from piano music to x (series of feelings/concepts/notions/ideas/mood).
Neural networks simply form associations between two things from the input layer to the output layer. A translator from one domain to another is just an encoder-decoder.
The Employment Green Card Backlog that Needs More Awareness
This post is about the Green Card Backlog in US in the Employment-Based category. As of 2021, about 1.2 million people are waiting to get their Green Card despite having an approved immigrant petition for many years. The wait time for many of them is several DECADES literally. The wait time for a new entrant in this queue is more than 80 years optimistically [6]. The people on this backlog are predominantly from India.
Whatever the cause behind the backlog, it is fundamentally unfair to the individuals caught up in it because it violates equality of opportunity. When a company files an employment-based immigration (green card) petition for two employees who have the same qualifications, same job, everything that matters for the job being the same, if after the petition is approved they are made to wait drastically different amount of time based solely on where they were born, which was not a factor in their employment at all, that clearly violates equality of opportunity, discriminating on an irrelevant factor, the country-of-birth. In the meantime, they are constrained by an employer-tied work visa.
Why is there a Backlog?
There exists a backlog for receiving a GC because the number of approved applicants for GC has been exceeding the available annual number of GCs. There are about 1 million GCs given out annually, out of which 140,000 are available for Employment-Based categories (EB). Within EB, there are sub-categories like EB1, EB2, EB3 each having some quota. The GC Backlog primarily exists in the EB2 & EB3 categories which are for skilled workers & professionals holding advanced degrees. Out of the 140,000 GCs, EB2 and EB3 approximately have 80,000 slots (the calculations are a bit more complex but for simplicity sake, this is good enough to understand).
To obtain a GC from these categories, an employer has to file an immigrant petition for the employee which is an elaborate & lengthy process that verifies qualifications, ensures no American is displaced, ensures the immigrant is paid the prevalent wage in that industry in that area. After this long process of 1-2 years, the immigrant petition (i-140) is approved to be able obtain a Green Card. See [1], [2] for further details on the process.
If the number of people with approved immigrant petitions in these categories exceeds their quota in a year, then they get queued up in a backlog. Makes sense so far.
However, there exists a per-country quota of 7% each year, due to which, applicants effectively get segregated by their country-of-birth. The result is that the brunt of the backlog is borne by just a couple of countries, namely India and China as of now.
All the Backlog gets borne primarily by Indians & Chinese
From https://www.cato.org/blog/employment-based-green-card-backlog-hits-12-million-2020
The current law imposes a 7% capacity limit per country for the Employment-based GCs based on the applicant’s country-of-birth. This makes the system not respect first-come-first-serve order. Remember, first-come refers to the order in which the immigrant application is made (Priority Date is the date that your immigrant petition was filed and represents your “place in line”. See [3]). This means that even if your GC petition is approved before another equally qualified person’s, you are not guaranteed to get your GC before that person. If you are from India, you certainly will not.
This effectively makes country-of-birth a factor in a supposedly Skills-based GC category. It is illegal for employers to discriminate based on nationality & ethnicity to make hiring decisions according to the Civil Rights Act, but this 7% country-cap from a bygone era violates that, forcing employers to account for this immutable factor which can have negative implications for American citizens themselves. This results in discrimination & unequal opportunities to individuals based on their country-of-birth.
India and China happen to have been the first countries to reach that 7% cap and get caught up in a disproportionately increasing backlog for them, simply because they are larger countries with more number of qualified people that meet the market demand in raw numbers compared to other countries. A few other countries also suffer from this backlog to a smaller extent. If not India, China, some other country would have been caught up in this issue. If the EU were one country, perhaps it would have faced this issue first. Similarly, if India were a continent with 28 countries, perhaps they wouldn’t have faced this issue.
What purpose exactly is this 7% country-cap even serving?
Here’s a little detour from the main point of the article – let’s contemplate on this 7% country-cap. What seems to be the intention behind it?
Is it to enforce diversity as some would argue? Diversity of what? Diversity of race? Diversity of culture? Although I entertain these questions below, the important point is that these factors are irrelevant for a skills-based green card.
If it is to enforce diversity of race, why don’t all White countries get one single quota? Why don’t all Black African countries get one single quota? Why do Northeast Indians fall into the same quota as South Indians? As you can see, not only does the law not satisfy this purpose, it also is impossible to classify people into distinct races (rightly so). More importantly, if indeed the intention behind these country-caps was to enforce diversity of race, it would be outright racist to discriminate based on race in an Employment-based category where race is a completely irrelevant factor.
Is it to enforce diversity of culture? Well India literally has 28 states based on distinct languages & cultures. Many other countries are also composed of people of varying cultures. On the other hand, some different countries have a very similar culture. It doesn’t make sense that the country-caps exist to enforce a diversity of culture.
Anyway, since there are more applicants from India & China that met the market demands, a backlog builds up – and it has been building up for over a decade now for India. Now, the number of approved applicants waiting in this backlog are roughly 800,000 from India. About 75% of the backlogged people in EB category are Indians! The backlog grows almost exclusively for the countries already caught up in it. Individuals from all other countries thus bump up ahead of Indians & Chinese in the queue to get the GC. The projected wait time for a newly approved immigrant petition in 2021 for an Indian to get a GC is 80+ years, whereas that for someone from say Mongolia or France is 0 years.
From https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/immigration-wait-times-quotas-have-doubled-green-card-backlogs-are-long#detailed-projected-future-waits-for-eb-2-eb-3-categories
Adding to the disproportionate backlog growth is the fact that dependents (spouses & children) of the applicant are counted against the GC quota for that country! Consider an average 30 year old person getting married & building a family at that stage of their life. If that person already had a GC, the spouse’s GC does not count against his/her country cap for EB GC, but if not, then it does count. Counting children & spouses, this nearly doubles the backlog for that country’s EB GC. As of today, in the EB backlog, 51% of the waiting people are dependents!
Consider two friends, one Indian, one French, both immigrants to the US. They both got approved for an EB GC in 2011 when they were young bachelors in their 20s. The French guy gets his GC immediately using up 1 seat from the French EB GC quota in 2011, whereas the Indian guy waits for many years. The Indian guy’s turn to get the GC comes up in 2020 by when he likely has a spouse & children. If the spouse is Indian too, she gets counted against the quota, thus using up 2 seats from India’s EB GC quota for year 2020, thus exacerbating the wait time for other Indians in the queue.
The wait time for a new Indian EB2/EB3 applicant is 80+ YEARS! i.e. never in their life! New Chinese applicants in EB2 have 11 years wait time, and in EB5 (investor category) they have to wait 18 years! Imagine being told to wait 18 years despite investing 1.8 million dollars in the US economy for creating jobs!
This is fundamentally unfair as the system gives unequal opportunities to immigrants, discriminating based on a factor that is immutable and irrelevant to their merit & employment qualifications i.e. country-of-birth, in the employment-based category itself.
How it Affects the Backlogged Immigrants
Many of these backlogged immigrants came to the US not knowing the excruciatingly long wait times to actually get the GC. The wait times also got worse over time. While they wait to get the green card, they have to stay on a work visa (such as H1, H2, L1, etc). While they wait for their turn to get the GC after being approved for it, the system allows them to renew their work visa every few years. H1, for example is a dual-intent visa meaning, your intention can be either to be a temporary worker or to immigrate to the US as a permanent resident. However, decades long wait time to get a GC was not anticipated when designing these visas.
While the backlogged people wait on their work visas, they face many problems & restrictions imposed by a visa.
Reduced job mobility & wage suppression:
Since their visa is tied to an employer, it severely restricts their ability to switch jobs, switch roles, get promotions. It also affects their negotiation power, allowing the employer to implicitly keep wages suppressed.
No Breaks in Employment:
Since the visa is tied to an employer, they have to remain employed at all times. Any break of more than 60 days will require them to self-deport themselves along with their whole family. You cannot take time off for child care. You cannot take time off for pursuing another hobby or interest. You cannot tend to family emergencies. Combined with the above point, this is essentially indentured servitude aka modern-day slavery.
Taxation without representation
Despite paying full taxes, they cannot vote. They do not get to represent the community in political matters. They do not get a sense of belonging to a community.
Restrictions on working spouse:
Dependent spouses have work restrictions, and work permits may be revoked any time by changes in immigration laws.
Aging parents:
They can not bring their parents to this country to take care of them while they are on a work visa for life.
Kids being deported:
When their foreign-born kids age up to 21, they can no longer be a dependent on their parents’ immigrant petition, and must either get a work-visa and facing the backlog themselves or self-deport. Such kids who came here a young age only know USA as the country they belong to.
I have personally been affected by the broken immigration system too. You can read more about it here. However, I am relatively young & new to the GC backlog; there are people facing way worse hardships due to the GC Backlog.
Resolving the GC Backlog would likely help American citizens
The high-skilled immigrants stuck in the GC backlog on a work visa are restricted from starting their own businesses and creating jobs. Unshackling this huge skilled workforce is sure to add to the economy, create new jobs, and fuel innovation. These immigrants are future Americans-in-waiting; not unlike Satya Nadella or Sundar Pichai if they were stifled in the backlog.
Granting GCs to these approved immigrants also means they would not be tied to an employer, eliminating their indentured-servitude status, increasing their negotiating power, and effectively eliminating any implicit wage suppression in that field. This is speculation but maybe employers covertly prefer hiring foreign workers on a work visa over equally qualified American citizens because of their low negotiating power & reduced job mobility. If these immigrants are set free, this would remove that bias against American citizens if it exists.
Efforts to Resolve the GC Backlog
There are two issues that should be addressed:
The total number of GCs available should be increased since the current limit was set about 3 decades ago, and since then, US economy has more than doubled.
The distribution of GCs should be equitable without violating equality of opportunity in a merit-based category on an individual level.
Immigration Reforms are hard to come by. Increasing the total number of green cards has been historically impractical. Making the distribution of GCs equitable seems like an easy-to-pass reform but for some unexplained reasons it has been evasive too.
Bill to Remove Discriminatory Country-Caps
A bill to remove the discriminatory country-caps has been proposed in every Congress since more than a decade but it never gets enough priority. This bill was called S386 / HR1044 “Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants” in the 2019-2020 Congress which successfully passed the House and the Senate by Dec 2020 but it was too late to reconcile the differences between the House and the Senate version by the end of the 116th Congress. Having followed its progress personally for those two years, I witnessed the following opposition to it:
Opposition by immigrants from countries other than India & China, their reason being that the wait time for them will increase from 0 years to a few years since it will equalize the wait time for all EB immigrants across all nationalities. Although one can see their opposition based on self-interest, it does not align with the right thing to do – an equitable & fair policy. Even so, the S.386 bill had several amendments providing a reservation for Rest-Of-World so that their wait time would not increase beyond 0 years for the first few years.
Objections by Sen. Durbin for unanimous consent in the Senate. Sen Durbin blocked the passage of the bill multiple times for a year with reasons that really made no sense. On one hand, he put on a display of being sympathetic to the backlogged Indians while on the other, he made excuses to block the bill. An example opposition – Durbin: “The bill delays implementation of the policy by 2 yrs; the immigrants are suffering now. This is unacceptable, so I won’t pass the Bill now [but I will thus prolong their suffering indefinitely]”. See the senate floor debate here. It is not clear why Sen Durbin hindered the passage of the bill when he himself had cosponsored it in previous Congresses.
Objections by a few Republican senators. A few Republican senators objected to the bill demanding some carve-out reservations for particular groups of people. Although it went against the purpose of the bill, some amendments were worked out by the sponsor of the bill, Sen Mike Lee who himself is a Republican. In general, the Republican controlled senate did not prioritize this bill to be brought for vote.
Sen Mike Lee explained this bill and the plight of the GC Backlog excellently on the Senate floor while defending it from an objection (direct link):
In 2021, this same bill has been reintroduced as the EAGLE Act. It hasn’t seen any limelight yet. Also see eagleact.info, a website advocating for this bill.
Immigration reforms in Build Back Better Act / Budget Reconciliation Bill
Biden’s Build Back Better manifesto promises to resolve the GC backlog while also giving a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. The House version of Budget Reconciliation bill that passed recently has a few effective provisions, namely:
Provision 60002 – Recapture wasted GCs from previous years.
Provision 60003 – Allow filing of Adjust of Status if having an approved immigrant petition without waiting for your priority date to become current, by paying an additional fee of $1500. Also allow being exempt from country-caps if waiting > 2 yrs by paying another fee of $5000.
Provision 60004, 5 – Increased fees and more budgeting for USCIS.
Provision 60001 – Parole for undocumented immigrants. (Does not affect employment GC backlog, but equally important for the undocumented community)
It is uncertain whether these provisions will be included in the Senate version of the bill. Even if they are, it is uncertain if the Senate Parliamentarian will allow them. As of today, the democrats have made several attempts to get provision 60001 accepted by the parliamentarian by refining it; however they have remained quiet about the provisions resolving the GC backlog for the legal immigrants.
It is unclear why democrats seem to ignore the plight of the legal immigrants stuck in the backlog. Sen Durbin, despite being at the forefront of immigration matters continues to turn a blind eye to their issue. The only explanations the backlogged community can come up with are:
Lobbying against reforms resolving GC backlog by certain interest-groups. But who exactly are they?
Racism?
Not enough awareness & visibility of our issue.
The backlogged community has received some welcome attention from an Washington correspondent for Latino Rebels, Pablo Manriquez who advocates for the undocumented immigrants community – Analysis: Sympathy for Indians Stuck in Visa Backlog.
I think it is high time that this issue gets broad mainstream awareness. Systemic discrimination of a minority requires the majority to be vocal in their support for equality. It seems like a no-brainer to resolve the employment GC backlog affecting 1m+ people who are already present in the US legally and suppressing contributions to the American economy.
It indicated the quality of the video / content, allowing us to decide if it was worth watching.
It indicated if the video was controversial (think 50-50 bar). Thus it showed where other people stand on the content of the video.
It was a quick summary of the public perception without needing to read many comments.
It was YouTube’s qualitative advantage over videos & content from FB, Insta, Twitter. Those platforms without a dislike button allow crap content to be prevalent.
YouTube may give bullshit reasons like they removed the Dislike bar to “protect” creators from dislike-harassment but it is not hard to see that their motivation to remove it comes from point (1) – if we cannot see the dislike count, it would increase user engagement, watch time, ad-revenue, thus increasing profits.
Thus, I urge you to realize this, and consciously reduce YouTube engagement.
Skip over videos that you are unsure of for which you previously would have consulted the Dislike bar. Don’t give them the watch-time, ad-time and Views.
Unsubscribe from YouTube Premium. Use an adblocker in the browser. I guess if you are a power user who uses it on mobile & TV, this will be hard to resist.
Try alternative like Odysee.com, Vimeo, DailyMotion, FB Videos, CuriosityStream etc.
By removing the Dislike count, the valuable information gained from points (1), (2) & (3) will be lost forever in the future. The way people use the Dislike button will change because they cannot see the Dislike bar. More of crappy content will become prevalent. Imagine clickbait videos, fake news, fake guru videos for which you would not be able to see how many others have Disliked; you would take that content more seriously than if you could see the Dislike count. Bad content creators won’t get accurate feedback.
I’m sure Google / Youtube understands all these negative consequences; because afterall they are the smartest people. But they can afford to do this because they have a monopoly. This is why we can’t have good things. When a company has a monopoly, the quality of the product goes down. They just think of maximizing profits.
It is sad that Google / Youtube has made this decision for chasing financial profits, by causing a reduction in user experience and reduction in quality of content in the future. Google used to be the charming company that made products for actual good of the world, not for profits. But seeing this deviation from their original mission is saddening, lowering their image in the eyes of the public.
Perhaps by boycotting their attempt at increasing user engagement they would bring back the Dislike bar.
In the meantime, there are a couple of browser extensions that can show the Dislike count. These extensions use the YouTube API to fetch the dislikes count for now; however, YouTube has announced that they will be removing this information from their API in mid December. Here’s an extension that you can use till then: www.returnyoutubedislike.com.
Finally, I leave you with the following three videos to watch to understand why censorship on Youtube, Facebook etc is bad. These videos show us an extreme situation, but it can be a slippery slope if we do not educate ourselves of the distant outcome. Hiding the Like/Dislike opinion of other users is a form of censorship on a public forum.
I came to the US in 2012 for pursuing a Masters degree in engineering. I did not initially have plans of settling down here but life happened, my friend circle grew here, I got more & more invested US, and I enjoy the culture here.
However 9 years after coming here legally, paying taxes, I still do not have a permanent residency (green card) in US! As I write this, it shocks me with an uncomfortable feeling of “what did I get myself into!”. When I came here, or even until 2016, I hardly knew that I would be stuck in a lifelong Green Card backlog simply because I was born in India. The US’s image as the progressive, educated country leading the free world never made me suspect such a toxic situation would exist.
Since 2015 I have been working in US on a work visa (H1-B) tied to my employer. Many of my life choices & decisions have been influenced by the bullshit immigration system. Despite being very qualified for various jobs that I was passionate about, my options were limited to employers that could sponsor a work visa. I could not take up work at small startups that wanted to hire me but could not because they lacked knowhow of filing a work visa. I wished I had a work permit (EAD card) that allowed me to freely switch employers; the kind of work permit that even students on F1 visa get temporarily after graduation; the same kind of work permit that even DACA beneficiaries get. I saw a glimpse of hope in a potential immigration reform suggested by then President Obama that would give EAD to those with an approved immigrant petition (i140), so I stayed on.
In 2016, I switched to my current employer (also on H1-B visa) as an Application Support Engineer for progressing my career. I strived to transition into a Software Engineer soon. My employer could have sponsored my immigrant petition for GC (i140) soon technically but because I wanted to change my role, did not. Why? because a different role voids the previously approved immigrant petition. So I waited till 2018 to change my role after which my immigrant petition was approved in 2019.
In the meantime, I could not switch employers, because ofcourse it would reset the 1-2yr long process of the immigrant petition. Meanwhile, my H1-B visa keeps expiring and requiring extensions. Even after being extended, to get the visa actually stamped on my passport, I have to go to a US Consulate in India. This means, I cannot leave & reenter US unless I visit India and get a visa consulate appointment first. Getting an appointment is another hassle that has months long wait. Even to extend the H1-B visa, I have to wait until 6 months of expiry. These months long waits pile up restrict my international travel plans severely. Seeing family back in India is hard or impossible.
The work visa has to be renewed every 2-3 years repeating the cycle of hassles. What’s worse is that every single time, my ability to stay in US is at the mercy of the officer behind the window at the US Consulate. If for any reason, they deny my visa renewal, I have to uproot my life in US & deport, despite having an approved immigrant petition. If only I weren’t born in India, I would have been a Permanent Resident already, onwards to become a citizen in 3 yrs or sooner. My driving license’s expiry date is tied to my visa, so I have to renew it every 3 years! The uncertainty of being allowed to live here permanently means I cannot easily make the decision to buy a house because what if I have to self-deport?
Being on a work visa tied to my employer, I am not allowed to take a break from work. I wanted to take a break for picking up new skills but I couldn’t, even after having an approved immigrant petition for green card! Some of my immigrant colleagues who were not born in India have had that basic freedom. I cannot even drive for Uber or Lyft because it is considered an employment other than what my work visa allows! I am technically not even allowed to earn any income from an active YouTube channel or selling handicrafts! I am forbidden from starting my own business or working with a friend on a startup. I have had to put a few business ideas on the backburner because of this. Being on an employer-tied work visa literally curbs creativity and contribution to the economy!
Exacerbating my condition is that I have been in a coast-to-coast long distance relationship, and my girlfriend (now wife) is also Indian on the same kind of work visa with the same kind of restrictions. The limitations on switching employers or taking a break from work have negatively affected my relationship.
I ask myself why do I continue living here in the US? Why not go back to India? It’s because I see some hope now & then. In 2016, I saw the hope for an EAD. In 2017, I saw the hope for merit-based immigration reforms which never got anywhere. In 2019-2020 I saw hope for GC backlog relief by removal of country-caps. I gave my best for advocacy for these reforms. Today, there may be some hope for GC backlog relief but at this point, my life has become very invested in US. I have spent 1/3rd of my life in US, my critical 20s. But at the back of my mind, there is always a possibility of uprooting life in the US and heading back to India or to Canada which is very welcoming to skilled immigrants.
The uncertainty & insecurity of life on a perpetual visa waiting for my green card is toxic. Without any immigration reforms, my wait time for a GC is so many decades long that practically I won’t get it in my life; unless ofcourse I have a kid born in US who would then sponsor my family-based GC when he/she turns 21. Is it worth it? I don’t know for sure, but it certainly is modern slavery, indentured servitude. It surely does not suit America, the land of free to treat legal immigrants this way.
Ten years ago, after finishing my bachelors when I was in an existential crisis, I had come up with this purpose for my life:
My purpose of life, since we do not know our purpose, is to find that purpose of life. i.e. Work on finding out the Truth, meaning of life and universe.
One way I figured I could contribute to this is through the field of machine learning and AI – I did not understand it much especially since I had studied mechanical engineering, but I felt an intuition that these could be legit avenues. I figured if we ever invent a “self-learning machine”, and provide it the same senses, cognition and motion as humans, it would learn and grow way faster than humans could. And then when it knows more than humans, we could just ask it the purpose of life.
My life did not go as planned for whatever reasons. I could not get onto that academic path of contributing to such science & tech directly [yet?]. Blame it on opportunities, circumstances, resources, personal flaws, procrastination, lack of information, bullshit US visa system, whatever. Life happened. I have been quite depressed about that for long.
Recently, I have been revisiting the simulation hypothesis (like The Matrix), and it has been causing a bit of an existential crisis again. Imagine humans in an effort to understand the universe spend thousands of years with science, tech, art etc, and finally understand it only to discover that they have perfectly understood only a simulation, and there is another real universe outside it with an unknown number of layers of simulations outside it! Our simulation may not have the same behavior as the real universe. The real universe may not even be observable. That information may just not be available to us. What then! Well, that throws my original purpose out the window which had pacified my existential crisis. I’m back into the crisis!
I have also been reading / watching a little about how there possibly are limits to what we can know. Something like Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem.
So I guess if purpose-1 would be fundamentally impossible, then what’s there to life at all? Other than just having fun, do your time and get out when it’s time? Hence, I now have a secondary purpose in addition to the original primary purpose (at least tentatively until it gets ingrained):-
Enjoy living, as if you’re in a video game with just 1 life. There’s no meaning to life, just do what you like.
This happens to also be the message of the movie Soul. It’s the same message as Kurtzgesagt’s video on Optimistic Nihilism. It’s probably the same message as when people say “Don’t forget to have fun!”. It’s probably the same message as what my mom writes in her email signature – “Be Happy”. It’s the same message as The Happiness Equation’s rule – “Be happy first, then pursue wants”.
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Musings to follow this:
Implications of that purpose. Hedonism? Maximizing fun? Short-term vs Long-term gain? Calculative vs impulsive? Calibration of that? Morality?
There are countless number of things to do in life, countless activities, countless fields to explore. What’s interesting is that within any particular thing, no matter how small it seems, you can go infinitely deep, explore & grow in it infinitely. Be it a game like Age of Empires, or a relationship, or fitness, or computer science, or being the richest person, each of these things has infinite growth & depth to offer, and once you get into that zone, you can end up spending an infinite amount of time enjoyably.
Life is like a Real Number line filled with various activities, fields, interests, aspects, laid out as intervals on it. Even if the interval is small like [0, 1], there still are infinite numbers between 0 and 1.
