4 ms·
my mom won the green card lottery 10 years ago, when I was still young and surely wouldn't have been very useful or profitable. 10 years later, I'm getting my m
by webspiderus 15y ago
my mom won the green card lottery 10 years ago, when I was still young and surely wouldn't have been very useful or profitable. 10 years later, I'm getting my master's at one of the best universities I could've hoped for, and a pretty good chance of being able to do interesting work with competitive pay. I'm extremely grateful for the lottery, which is the one thing that made all of this possible.
my mom also got a chance to actually apply her computer science degree (which she couldn't do before because of the explicit sexism which meant women were generally employed as, perhaps glorified, receptionists), and now works as a senior software engineer at a large company. I imagine her true potential would also have been difficult to estimate prior to the move, as she'd done very little actual programming after college - but she effectively got a fresh start here, and was able to quickly advance in an environment which allowed her to be judged solely on technical competency.
- rubashov 15y agoGood for you. Are the American people better off thanks to you and your mother's presence here? Or would they have got along just as well without you? That's the salient question.
- webspiderus 15y agoI imagine they probably could have, but even looking at it from a strictly utilitarian point of view, both me and her are now American citizens producing a fair amount of value by plying our trade. I suppose you could debate whether or not skilled workers like ourselves were truly needed, but I think being able to find employment is a good enough proxy for being a productive member of society, so I would say the American people as a whole are 'better' than they would have been without us - although clearly this hinges on the actual criteria you choose.