luckymoney

I hope the OP can go here and see this, but I am currently in Vietnam as well. I am a CS student studying aboard in the US, but I was born and raised in Vietnam. I am currently on vacation. Hope we can get in touch :)

And yes, I can confirm these education is true. However, the level of the last problem was taught to very few chosen gifted student in a very limited selected school. I do remember me learning about matrix, dynamic programing, graph theory, various pascal optimization for quicker run. The rule was, if you program run more than 1s, you're out(except stated otherwise).

I register today just to say this TL;DR: it sucks being here on visa. Even if I want to be a US-citizen and I contribute like a US-citizen, they still make sure I'm just a second-class in here.

I am a F-1 Visa Vietnamese student that recently got a pretty good offer in a big corp. I am really tired of being treated like half-resident person. While I do all of my duty (paying taxes), I never receive the benefits of being an resident. First there was a out-of-state tuition for every public university in the US. For over 5 years in school, I've seen many of my friends run out of money because of this "premium" price we pay.

Now, some of us try to work to support our premium tuition, but we are not permitted to work outside of school. As a result, most of us would have to work illegally in some Asian restaurant, usually with under-minimal wage and no tips. I understand they stop us from getting a job to protect American. However, from what I observe, those minimal-wage jobs which could not be taken by international students will be taken by illegal immigrant anyway. So it puts the US government in a lose-lose situation: those jobs won't return to American citizen, and they lose some of the taxes. Maybe they should look at others country, such as UK (allowed to work up to 20h), or Australia(allowed to work in controlled manner)... and rethink.

The only way you can work, is to get a job in your college with minimal wage or to get an OPT. I've had a job on campus in which I design a website for dorm using bottle.py and backbone.js for... $9.5/hour. Before tax. An OPT is a program where you can work outside of your college for one year, but the job has to fit your major. I got my internship with EMC by OPT.

Now, although we do not have the benefits of being residents, we still have to do our duty while we are in here. I have to pay taxes like everyone else. I just finish doing my tax for last year. With one internship and an on-campus job, I fall in the second braket of tax, although I did pay a lot more for my education. We also do not have credit cards as no-one trusts us. I just got my frist creditcard after 6 years being here :).

Now, after 6 years of suffering, it finally pays off for me to have a offer for a big corp and be an h1-b visa. I can asure you that they pay me very competitively. However, it is still pretty damn hard to become a US-citizen from here. The process is lengthy, and sometime depends on luck. Not to mention if I want to bring my wife to the US, my wife will not be able to work at any form, not even on college campus.