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You've put my feelings into words better than I ever could.
We're not too different. I too am Indian, ADHD riddled, and confused at how un-appreciative my fellow coastal-Americans are of this great nation. My American girlfriend lives out in Europe and refuses to appreciate the great nation for what it is. I quote her from last week : "Screye, we need to talk about settling down in the US and how it is going to shit. Abortion is illegal and everyone is becoming conversative." God bless her.
I was lucky enough to choose the 'right' science, the one with an easier pathway to the US, but that's about it.
All global super powers are ruthless. America too is a ruthless global superpower, one that tries to be benevolent, more so than any that came before. There is no ruthless superpower I'd rather be oppressed by. The US is so wildly productive, that no amount of crumbling infrastructure or urban zombie hordes can so much as dent its economic productivity. It's a fucking cheat code in nation form. Competing is futile.
If that wasn't enough, its secular founding document has an appeal so universal through time and space, that even the best efforts of enemy nations can't stop their best from dreaming of America. The people here are fair and uncorrupt. They try to be race blind, as much as their caveman genes would allow. They don't treat me as an outsider, and all they ask is I try.
The country has issues, but the US is a nation in decline in the same way that Michael Jordan was 'over' after his 1st retirement.
All that being said, this is exactly what I thought about Intel, and they some how managed to stay in their slumber until everyone had leap frogged them and it was too late.
Intel can go on begging Congress for a hundred billion every few years to “keep America in the race” for chip development.
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You're already in the States and I'm not, that seems likely a major difference to me haha
I'm glad you made it out, it would take a real asshole to begrudge others for achieving what they dreamt of themselves, especially when it costs me nothing.
Medical licensing restrictions are driving me up the wall, we doctors really do forget how much less red tape is involved for most professions when it comes to simply just grabbing a new job and heading over. I know the US is still unusually difficult in that regard!
I think I've already said in this very thread that there's no jackboot I'd rather live under. Do you think they'd annex India if we shot at a few of their ships? A man can dream can't he?
For legal reasons, I must inform the officers at the local American Consulate, and well as my future immigrations officer, that this is a joke.
Do you mind if I ask what the specific problem seems to be? I'm... let's say friendly with some US attorneys who specialize in immigration law and can probably propose a hypothetical some time that'd get a relatively serious answer. It wouldn't be "legal advice" and there'd be a game-of-telephone aspect, so I obviously can't promise anything would come of it, but I can at least see if the roadblock is insurmountable or simply difficult.
Sure, I appreciate the offer a great deal indeed.
There's a website called the World Directory of Medical Schools, that collates the details of individual med schools across the globe, and is pretty much the official registry recognized by most nations across the world.
In said website, you can find things like the date of establishment of an entity, its address, contact details and such.
There's a section called "Sponsor Notes", which records information such as whether the ECFMG has verified the credentials of the place and has given its stamp of approval as meeting the standards they set. I believe it's also used by a few other bodies, in places like Singapore, but the ECFMG is the most important by far. This is entirely unrelated to whether the med school is recognized by the government or licensing body of its own nation, just an additional certificate.
This is also nigh ubiquitous, you'll be hard pressed to find a med school that doesn't have it, at least when I checked, but is also not a legal requirement for a legitimate med school in India. People simply take it for granted.
My alma mater lacks this sponsor note. I suspect it's due to a tumultuous period in its founding, when even its standing with the local government was contested, and since this is India, the corrupt millionaire politician who founded it beefed with the other corrupt millionaire politician who lead the party he seceded from, the latter leaning on the government to get back at him by blocking the process of certification by the IMC.
It was eventually resolved, but either served as sufficient deterrent that the ECFMG wouldn't accept them, or far more likely, they simply didn't bother applying since it's not legally required, whereas being recognized by the IMC/NMC in India is. They also didn't have much motivation to, because the overwhelming majority of my seniors or even my classmates had absolutely no aspirations regarding going abroad, it was a very middling med school and they had their hands full getting into our own competitive postgraduate programs.
I contacted the ECFMG on my own, or rather with a friend who also wanted to give the USMLE, and they informed us that in order to pursue the matter, they need to correspond with the relevant authorities in my med school. I did my best to plead the case to them, and while the Principal at the time was sympathetic to our plight and pleased that some of her students had higher aspirations, she had to speak to the managing board who held the purse strings (it's for profit, and I don't know how much this sponsor note actually costs, the ECFMG doesn't say).
She ended up leaving and being replaced by a new one, and there the matter languished as I was too busy applying myself to the one country that would take me as is, the UK.
That's where it stands, while my friend is rich enough that she could sue my alma mater, that would be pure lawfare and I don't think we actually have a case, since it's not a legal requirement, just a nice to have that almost everyone else does.
That's about it, it's not obvious to me that legal recourse will help, but I'm not averse to finding out! I am perfectly eligible to go to the US by other routes, but the USMLE gatekeeps my ability to match into a program and thus practise there.
Please do let me know what your friends say, even if it only confirms my fears, and thank you again for offering!
I apologize for the lengthy delay in getting back to you, there was indeed a game of telephone as well as having to wait for someone to return from leave. Unfortunately the people I spoke to were of the opinion that while your issue may be resolvable, it's not something any of them have experience in. It appears you were correct in that it is more of a USMLE issue than a legal issue, and so they cannot offer any real answers to the hypothetical I proposed. That's not to say an immigration attorney would be useless to you, in fact they would probably make a good resource, but unfortunately I have come up dry on my end. Also, immigration attorneys are not cheap. I realize this was a very long wait for a very short drink of water, for which I again apologize.
Hey, I genuinely appreciate you remembering to get back to me!
It's as I feared, but that's fine, I was ready to deal with this outcome. I'll do my best to handle things from this end, and given that immigration lawyers are unlikely to help with the USMLE as you've said, it's a good thing I don't have to pay for them just yet.
Thank you, you did keep up your promise, and I hope I can find a solution on my lonesome or with the help of people in the same boat.
Glad I was able to get back to you - even if it was with less than ideal news. I will say that I wouldn't rule out all immigration attorneys as being unhelpful, merely that the ones I spoke to had never encountered your specific issue before. I also hope you're able to come up with a good solution! Best of luck.
Thank you, and I'll keep at it from my end! If it does seem to end up at a point where I could use a lawyer, I'll be sure to ask.
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Our State Department is dumb but not that dumb. We didn't even try to annex Grenada; we ain't fool enough to try to take India. And America, despite the common claims, has never really been much of an imperial power in the traditional sense of sending governors to run vassal states, so you can't even get that much. (You'll note we effectively did the empire thing in Afghanistan, but it wasn't even what we were trying to do and we did a bad job of it.)
Spoilsport!
I don't think the US has expanded its borders for almost a century at this point, I'm struggling to think of anything but some remote pacific islands with 3 coconut trees where that might not be the case. I'll have to Google that.
We should at least have called dibs on Luna. Outer Space Treaty my ass.
Hey, depending on how fast SpaceX advances, it might be a reality. What are the Chinese going to do, throw rocks at you?
They should at least try and claim a large chunk of it, because the OST is more an artifact of nobody really having the ability to monopolize most astral objects than something with staying power. If you can't get there in numbers and with the ability to stay, it's all moot.
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Cold comfort, but this is frustrating and bad for Americans as well. What's sold as being about medical safety sure looks a lot more like professional protectionism, controlling medicine as a cartel from where I sit. Extending the same opportunities to Indian doctors that we do to Indian software developers holds significant appeal, but I doubt it's coming any time soon.
I certainly have mixed feelings on the matter, since it both makes it difficult to get in as barring a few states like Texas (and Minnesota too? I think they did something recently), foreign doctors must match into a residency program regardless of their international qualifications.
This obviously inflates the salary the locals command, since there isn't nearly enough of them to meet all the demand. They're also more immune to mid-level creep, which is absolutely not the case in the UK. They make more than junior doctors like I do, for less work and better conditions, and they can't even prescribe.
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Don't count Intel out yet. Institutional inertia at enterprise scale is a hell of a thing, and all it takes is one big breakthrough to get most/all of the performance- or value-conscious people to switch sides. They can coast for quite a few more years while they try to pull a miracle out of somewhere.
Honestly, Intel CPUs are still perfectly competitive with AMD on the server side. And frankly we have less problems at scale with Intel than I see on our AMD fleet.
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