Haryono was born in Indonesia and came to America to
study. His ultimate goal was to become a U.S. citizen; armed with his new
degrees, he set his course to achieve that goal. Under stringent U.S.
immigration laws, his graduation day also marked the end of his international
student visa, starting a countdown clock for one year of optional post-degree
career training.
In other words, if he wanted to stay in the United
States, Haryono had to find a job and begin the byzantine process of applying
for permanent residence and earning a green card. Thanks largely to his degrees
and stellar academic record, Haryono cleared the first hurdle, landing a job
with a Texas-based information-technology firm called Electronic Data Systems
Corporation, or EDS.
Since international students are not allowed to work
while enrolled in college, Haryono had no previous work experience; he was
thrilled to get his first job in the United States and was determined to prove
his value at EDS. Haryono’s bosses noticed his hard work almost immediately and
pledged to sponsor his application for an H1B visa, which would allow him to
stay in the country as a temporary worker for up to six years. Still, Haryono’s
goal—to earn a green card and become a U.S. citizen—remained.
After about a year and a half at EDS’s office in
Austin, Haryono noticed an opportunity in the San Francisco Bay Area—a
career-advancing role with the company that could also get him his green card.
With a generous salary increase and relocation allowance, he moved to the Bay
Area, and after he settled on the West Coast, the green-card process began.
After two years of continued hard work on the West
Coast, Haryono’s bosses made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. EDS had won an
outsourcing contract with the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps in Herndon, Virginia,
and they wanted their star employee to serve as the lead analyst. How could
Haryono turn that down?
But this golden opportunity was enveloped in a dark
cloud. Under immigration policy, a green-card application is both job and
geography specific, which meant that if Haryono relocated from California to
Virginia, the entire process would have to begin again—Haryono would be back to
square one.
EDS’s human resources managers thought Haryono’s
expertise and degrees made him an ideal candidate and promised to expedite his
green-card process. Previously, his green-card process had been filed under the
more general employment-based category, which took up to five years to
complete. Now, EDS’s managers told him, the green-card application would be
filed under a more specialized occupational category that could take half as
much time to complete. As a result, Haryono accepted the job and moved to
Virginia.
About 12 months later, his green-card application in
Virginia hit yet another bump in the road. No one at EDS knew that the job
Haryono had agreed to do was sensitive enough to require a national-security
clearance—one that he couldn’t obtain. Once this became apparent, EDS officials
took immediate action to preserve the valued contract. Haryono lost his coveted
position, but EDS offered him a pair of alternatives—a job in the Chicago
office or one in Singapore.
If Haryono moved to Chicago, the green-card issue
would start over again. As much as he cherished living in the United States,
Haryono was extremely frustrated by the lengthy and winding route to become a
citizen. Although he wanted a life in America, it seemed that America didn’t
want him. So Haryono accepted the job in Singapore.
Seven years after his permanent return to Asia,
Haryono has returned to visit the United States. He is currently employed as a
finance professional with PT Rajawali Corp., a Jakarta-based regional
investment-management company, and is on a six-week assignment in the United
States for his employer. Part of that job is being spent at the Center for
American Progress, where he is observing how public policies are made.
His return has brought back a flood of bittersweet
memories. “I remember vividly the decade I spent in the U.S.—living as an
American, attending college football games, eating junk food. Those were among
the best memories and a defining part of my life,” he told me.
But Haryono remains sad that he couldn’t make this
country his home, especially as he studies the slow and grinding issues at the
heart of our ongoing immigration reform efforts. He told me that the U.S.
system seems to work against the interests of our nation.
“I can best describe the difference between the
U.S.’s and Singapore’s immigration stances as the difference between night and
day,” Haryono said. “[In Singapore,] I received an employment-based visa on the
same day of application. After three months under the Singapore
employment-based visa, the government sent me a letter that said I had become
eligible to become a permanent resident. I had arrived in Singapore as a
foreigner in July 2006, and by December 2006 I was already a lawful Singapore
permanent resident.”
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Singapore
officials are so welcoming to foreign workers such as Haryono. By embracing
skilled immigrants with necessary talents, the country’s economy has grown
enormously over the past 10 years, making it one of the world’s leaders in
gross domestic product, or GDP, per capita. Specifically, World Bank figures
reveal that Singapore’s GDP per capita grew 128 percent, from $22,690 in 2003
to $51,709 in 2012. Comparably, U.S. GDP per capita grew 31 percent, from
$38,225 to $49,965, during the same time period.
Haryono plans to return home and set up Indonesia’s
first public policy think tank. Once again, he’s come to the United States to
learn, but this time, he will take what he finds and apply it overseas.
Although he would prefer to be in the United States, his talents cannot be
harnessed here.
“I have learned that American people are among the
most welcoming people I’ve encountered anywhere,” he said. “And I continue to
cherish American values of freedom, self-sufficiency, and hard work, which
translate well across the globe. Now all that is lacking in this most marvelous
country is for its immigration policy [to] catch up with the rest of the
American people and the world.”
About the author: Sam Fulwood III is a Senior Fellow
at the Center for American Progress and Director of the CAP Leadership Institute. His work with the Center’s Progress 2050 project examines the impact
of policies on the nation when there will be no clear racial or ethnic majority
by the year 2050.
This article was published by the Center for
American Progress.
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