Why I Moved Back

01 Nov 2022 - Tanmay Jha

I had been thinking about moving back to India for a few years before I finally took the call. There were several factors that were tipping my hand towards moving back, and none of them alone was enough to justify such a drastic decision. However, when combined together over time, they proved to be enough of a push. Most people I know struggle with this decision for a long time. Along with the factors that personally influenced me, I will also highlight some factors I heard from my friends and colleagues who were also contemplating a move.

A word to the wise - moving back is a very personal and subjective decision, and the mix of reasons that hold true for you may not work for someone else.

1. Green card wait time and h1b - This was my primary motivator, because the extremely long green card wait (30-100 years) put a lot of things that I wanted out of my reach - like freedom from a temporary visa, ability to take risks, work at an early age startup, dabble in entrepreneurship etc. If you plan on studying further (like doing an MBA), you have to evaluate it against the risk of not getting a work authorization or being unable to find a job at the end of that program. After 8 years of the visa life, I decided I was simply not willing to put up with the uncertainty anymore.

2. Personal difficulty with the visa system - In this blog, I mostly try to talk about systemic issues that will be common for most readers of this blog. However the final decision will always be subjective. For me, one big reason for leaving was my personal experience with the immigration system. After I graduated from college and landed a high paying job at a big tech company, I was quite content with my life. The work was good, team and work culture was great, pay was great. There was no way I would move back. The h1b lotteries quickly changed that. I got 3 tries with the h1b system because of my STEM degree, and I only got my h1b in the last try. This meant for most of my 3 years on OPT, I was always unsure whether I will be able to stay here next year. This meant all big financial decisions like buying a car, buying good quality furniture, investing in stocks, investing in 401(k), changing jobs etc. became a lot more complicated because I had to account for the fact that I might be forced to leave and figure out contingency options. Because I only got my h1b on the last try, I had to create a contingency plan that forced me to realistically think about my options in case I did not get picked in the lottery. It made me realize a few things -

   • My company’s default strategy for people who did not get a h1b was to relocate them to Canada, and have me work remotely for 18 months. After that, they would bring you back on a L1 visa. I realized that when push came to shove, I was unwilling to relocate to Canada, and to pretty much any other “western” country. US was the home I chose, and I spent years building my life here. I had social and professional connections here, a sense of identity, and a deep knowledge of American society, history, culture etc. at this point. It was a second home. If I couldn’t stay here, I would much rather go back to India, and least give it a shot.

   • I was also unwilling to go the Canada -> L1 visa pathway. It requires you to take a massive pay cut, relocate to Canada for 18 months and come back on a visa which does not let you switch jobs. This meant erasing your leverage in any salary negotiations, and losing the freedom to switch jobs for any reason whatsoever until you manage to get a h1b (so most likely 2.5-3.5 years).

   • All these years, I had been dreading having to leave. But when the decision was shoved in my face, I realized I was actually okay with it. I was going to be fine, in India or US or anywhere.

   • The tech salaries in Canada, UK, Australia etc. are a fraction of the US, while cost of living is similar and taxes are higher. In Canada, I would be making 60% of what I made in the US with a more or less same cost of living. In comparison in India, where tech salaries have exploded in recent years, I would be making 35-40% of what I was making in the US but the cost of living is also ~33%, so I carry over roughly the same purchasing power as the US. Obviously this has to be weighed against other negatives, but it did make the decision easier.

   • A general feeling that if I was going to run away from India, I should know what I am running from. Unlike most other NRIs who make the trek to the US, I had never lived in India as an adult. I had left because I got a great opportunity to go to college, which I wasn’t going to turn down. 8 years was a good point to re-evaluate whether I want to move home, especially if I was getting kicked out of the US.

   • I did end up getting my h1b after all, and ended up staying another year. However, this entire process really affected my gut feel about moving to India, and ultimately was a factor in deciding to leave.

3. Inability to see family for the last few years - this is closely tied to visa issues. Whenever your employer applies for a h1b for you, there is a restriction against travelling outside the country. On top of that, my F1 stamp had expired during the first year of my job, so the next time I left the country I had to get a new stamp (I still had valid status and the right to stay and work). However, due to the environment of Trump years and the non-immigrant nature of the F1 visa, company lawyers strongly advise against travel till you get a H1b. Between this and the ensuing travel bans during COVID, I had been unable to see or visit my family for 4 years. This had eventually added up, and I decided I was going to avoid situations and immigration systems that restrict my ability to travel home.

   The constant uncertainty around your life eventually gets tiring. Case in point - a friend of mine recently learnt about layoffs in his company while he was visiting India. If he got laid off while still in India, he wouldn’t have been able to return back. I simply got tired of the sword of visas and travel bans constantly hanging over my head.

4. Length of US stay - By the time I moved back to India, I had been in the US for almost 8 years. Four years of college and 4 years of work. This was almost 30% of my life, I had started getting the feeling that if I was going to move back at all, it had to be soon. A couple more years, and I would be unable to move back -

   • This is simply life - the longer you stay somewhere, the harder it gets to move. The reasons are quite varied but the crux is you change over time in ways you don’t notice, and your home country also changes over time and isn’t how you remember it anymore. When you talk to NRIs about India, you will notice they talk about the country like it was when they left. So when you move back, you expectations and reality are quite different and you get reverse culture shock.

   • After years of living in the US, your social and professional circles are way stronger there than in India. You lose touch, and that makes it all the more harder to adjust back to society, network professionally etc. In addition to that, there are life stages that you have experienced only in the US. For me, this encompassed basically all parts of being an adult like driving, renting, operating bank accounts, networking, interviewing etc. But even for people who moved to the US later in life, there are stages like buying a house, having kids, experiences with preschool and day care etc that they have only experienced in the US. This makes moving back quite challenging for anyone. On top of that, over time you simply get used to American culture and way of life, and may start preferring many aspects of it. The potential barriers get bigger every year.

   • Based on what I have heard from multiple colleagues and friends, even if they get over the factors above, there are yet other barriers. As you get older and have a family, its no longer only your choice to stay or move back. For a lot of families, the wives don’t want to move back because they greatly appreciate the freedom western society brings. Freedom from nosy relatives, freedom to wear what they want or be a working mom without attracting society’s judgement etc. Sometimes both the spouses want to move back, but the kids don’t want to leave. Desi kids who grow up in the US are a different breed altogether, and are quite American in their outlook. For them India is a foreign country, and one that can be quite difficult to adjust to.

   • Even if everyone in the family is willing to move back, the logistics get quite complicated as your grow older. For instance, I decided I was going to combine a break with moving back, and would find a job after I move. I had that luxury as a single 26 year old, and even then dealing with the financial and logistical challenges was quite a bit of work. Selling everything I owned including my car, ending my lease, moving around money, figuring out whether to dispose off or hold US stocks, 401(k) etc. was quite a time sink. Now if you have a family, you won’t simply quit your job and move. You will spend a considerable amount of time trying to find a job in India while being in the US, which will be a challenge if your existing employer doesn’t have offices in India or isn’t willing to let you transfer. Finding a job in India while you are sitting in the US is actually quite hard. Most recruiters will simply not entertain you, because they think you are not going to move back and will simply waste their time. The time difference also makes recruiting quite inconvenient, especially in software where competitive coding interviews are commonplace.

   • On top of that, you will have to take major financial decisions like selling your house. If you have kids, you have to get them admitted to a school in India and time your move to minimize the disruption. This is quite challenging from what I have heard and typically one of the parents will move first with the kids to help them settle in and get admitted to the school. The sheer enormity of this means most people keep kicking the can down the road until its too late to move, or something forces their hand, like a family emergency or visa issues.

5. Cap exempt h1b - I actually discovered this information after I had already made up my mind, but it nonetheless increased my confidence. Once you receive your h1b, you are cap exempt for at least 6 years. So if your h1b has an initial start date of October 1, 2021, then you are cap exempt until October 1, 2027. More crucially, this applies even if you have quit your job and moved outside the US. If you wish to return in the future, you get to skip the lottery selection. So you still obviously need a job offer, but you don’t have to go through the lottery, get picked and wait till October 1 to start. Once your employer files a petition for you and it is approved, you can simply get a new visa stamp and move. For all intents and purposes, this is pretty much the same process as switching jobs while already on a h1b in the US. Also when you come back, you get to use the remaining portion out of your 6 years. This means that if you move back and end up absolutely hating it, you have a parachute to move back to the US. If you have an approved I-140, then also you are cap exempt for h1b.

6. American society and isolation - While this was only a minor factor for me, its still interesting to discuss. In general, US society is more individualistic and isolated than India. I know that I am painting broad strokes here. Western societies in general are more individualistic, and Asian societies in general are more collectivistic. Even among the western world, the US sits at the extreme end of individualism. Broadly speaking, your life in the US is centered around what YOU are doing, wish to do, and set as your goals. Typically your social life/friend groups are hugely dependent on activities you do. You will have tennis friends to play tennis with, partying friends to go party with on the weekends, hiking friends you go to hike with. The concept of just having “friends” is relatively uncommon. I don’t mean this as a criticism, I just mean to point out that friendships work differently in the US. They are more individualistic, and less group oriented. For instance, in India, where you typically just make friends at your office or with people from your college who work in your city, and then proceed to hang out with them as a group for all sorts of activities ranging from clubbing to taking trips. In the US, you typically don’t make close friends at work, and hanging out is more activity oriented. I have discovered I prefer Indian style friendships/social relationships.

7. Purchasing power and career break - This one is sort of obvious when you think about it. I was quite burned out and wanted to take a break between jobs. I wanted to use the time to recover and explore a switch to product management, and maybe entrepreneurship. Simply quitting your job to take a break is not allowed with a h1b, so that part about moving to India is self explanatory. The second part concerns expenses. The biggest barrier to taking a break (other than gaps in your resume) is expenses (bills, rent, health insurance etc.). These are quite expensive in US. According to my estimates, my expenses would average around 3-4K USD a month after adding health insurance. A burn rate like that means a 2.5 month break would cost $10,000. In contrast in India, 1K a month in expenses(roughly 75-80K INR) is more than sufficient to live an upper middle class lifestyle for one person. It roughly triples to quadruples your runway by reducing your burn rate.

8. After I got my h1b, I decided to give it another year and change things about my life that I disliked. Since covid vaccines were rolling out, I moved from the boring suburbs of Redmond to the hippy Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle. I started socializing and partying more. I travelled more. I made several other changes, and decided to wait a year and see if I still wanted to move back. At the end of that time, I still wanted to move back, so I took a call and moved back.