Outdated immigration system won’t let this computer whiz launch start-up in U.S.
Madhu Arambakam had hoped for years to build a start-up company in Chicago.
Arambakam, 45, envisioned hiring 50 employees to start. He wanted to build an e-commerce site that would provide event management services and products for all types of occasions, from big trade shows and weddings to kids’ parties. His site would connect consumers to vendors, a lot like Amazon.
In an interview recently near his north suburban Lincolnshire home, he described a one-stop shop for event planning.
“If only I had my green card,” Arambakam, who is from India, told me.
Arambakam is stuck in an immigration backlog for employment-based green cards. The wait is so long that he’ll be an old man when he gets it. Until then, he can’t open a business in the U.S.
So he built his e-commerce business, ohoevents.com, in India. Three years ago, Arambakam invested $200,000 of his own money to launch the site.
His business partners and employees handle day-to-day physical operations in different parts of India, Arambakam told me. He oversees it all from home after he completes his shifts for AbbVie Inc., a biopharmaceutical company in North Chicago.
To be clear, he’s happy with his job at AbbVie. But he’s got that entrepreneurial spirit that we prize in the U.S. He wanted to try something ambitious on the side.
Arambakam has a master’s degree in business administration and another in computer science. Since he came to work in the U.S. from India on an H-1B visa in 2009, he has helped U.S. companies with their software systems and business management.
H-1B professionals are a godsend to the tech world because there aren’t enough Americans becoming software engineers and doing other related computer science work to bolster U.S. innovation.
The visas allow temporary stays of several years. Many professionals like Arambakam get sponsored by companies for employmentbased green cards to allow them to live and work permanently in the U.S.
That’s where our immigration system breaks down.
Once approved for the green card, Indian nationals end up in an abyss known as the green card backlog. Basically, it’s a waiting list, limited by stingy per-nation green card quotas that have been in place for 30 years.
Those quotas are out of step with our times. They should be raised to account for the influx of Indian citizens, most of whom work in the tech sector, who currently have to wait 50 to nearly 100 years for their green cards.
Since their immigration is employmentbased, those stuck in the backlog can’t leave their jobs, unless another employer sponsors them. They can’t own companies in the U.S. without jeopardizing their green cards.
In April, I wrote about a bill sponsored by Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah that could start clearing out the green card backlog for Indians. It wouldn’t raise the per-nation quotas, but would distribute the green cards differently. The downside: It would create longer wait times for foreigners from other countries who currently speed through the waiting list, relative to the wait by Indian and Chinese nationals.
The bill came close to passing in the U.S. Senate by unanimous consent last winter, but Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois shut it down after
Lee reneged on a compromise he had forged with Durbin.
There is no action pending on this bill, and it could die. That would be tragic for some 750,000 Indians stuck in the backlog. A car parade to rally support for the bill is scheduled for 4 p.m. Friday in the northwest suburbs.
I see hypocrisy in U.S. policy. American companies recruit these folks from India, who in turn provide critical services for U.S. companies and government agencies. Our country pays back their professionalism and loyalty by leaving them in a legal limbo full of frustration and despair.
A few months ago, I interviewed a Seattlebased Microsoft engineer from India, Ravi Bulusu, 42, who wanted to open a factory to produce medical masks that we desperately need because of the coronavirus. He has some capital and the smarts.
But he can’t dare try because he’s stuck in the backlog. Instead, he invested some money in a company that another immigrant just opened in Kansas to make masks. They hope to hire 20 employees.
The backlog is like a straitjacket, Bulusu said.
Our country is stifling ingenuity. Culture wars keep preventing Congress from modernizing our immigration system that could make our country smarter and stronger economically.
“An immigration system from 1965 doesn’t cut it for 2020,” Tahmina Watson, a business immigration lawyer in Seattle who belongs to the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told me succinctly.
Food for thought on the Fourth of July.