This chapter follows the personal journey of an immigrant from India to the U.S. as they pursue education and career opportunities in the tech industry, facing challenges tied to their immigration status. It reveals the complexities of ambition, success, and the emotional toll of living in a foreign country while maintaining legal status.
Each year in April, the US conducts a lottery that shapes the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. And each year, only around 85,000 are granted an H-1B visa for highly-skilled workers. With skyrocketing application numbers, the odds of winning have only gotten slimmer. But new data obtained by Bloomberg News has revealed how certain companies have manipulated the system, gaining an advantage over people who play it fair. In other words, the game was rigged.
On today’s Big Take podcast, host Sarah Holder speaks to investigative journalists Eric Fan and Zachary Mider who explain how outsourcing companies and staffing firms exploited loopholes in the H-1B system to get extra shots at the lottery.
Read more: How Thousands of Middlemen Are Gaming the H-1B Program
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.