>That's good news. You made it work for you. Still, it seems that productive immigrants should be granted a guest worker permit and then eventually citizenship (if they want it). I just don't get our system the way it is now...

Actually, in my case, it's the myriad ways in which H-1B sucks. First, you're limited to the current employer. They have to pay you the prevailing wage, but there's a lot of leeway there. The guy who sat next to me, doing pretty much the same job, and often using me instead of F1 key, was earning 50% more than I did.

Then there came the October 2000 update of the law, whereas the visa was transferrable to the next employment - cool. Except there was a catch, you lose anything that was accomplished in the green card process. Which is a serious bummer.

Then the H-4 for family members, which strictly forbids them from working. They are practically non-persons, can't even get the non-workers SSN anymore. And since recently, this also means they can't get a driver's license without a SSN, no matter that they do have a legal status.

The worst part is the "once it's over, you go home" - c'mon, what's there? Return to what? There are no jobs there, no chances to start a business, everything's changed. I'm not saying we couldn't survive back home, but getting the third daughter to rehash all the history, grammar, books to read, and what not just to be able to get into school again - it'd just take a year out of her life. Not to mention the cultural shock; the way the schools operate here and there is as different as Mac is from Windows. Things may look the same, but underneath they differ a lot. And of course, all of her achievements may be lost (straight A all the way, enrolled in a magnet program, always on principal's list, even won a medal from Daughters of American Revolution for citizenship values).

We're talking about people here, not USB drives that you can just unplug from one machine and plug into another.