As I was fixing my eyes on the television, my mind went back to Nepal and I compared this speech with our annual 'budget speech'. How anxiously we waited for the speech because all we wanted to know was the salary hike of our parents as both of them were working and the government raised salaries of government officials and teachers with the budget speech every three or four years. While listening to President Obama I expected similar thing to be announced but he did not announce such measures. I thought that here too they revise the wages or talk about revising wages but this was not an issue of the State of the Union.
I am a recent immigrant to the US so it was obvious for me to ask my friends and fellow Nepalis living here for a long time about wages. They told me that when they were students in US in 2000 the minimum wage was around US $7 to US $8 and still it is the same.
The minimum wage remains the same for 15 years and a President is still struggling for an increment from US $8 to US $10. This is US's harsh reality. There is a huge disparity in salary distribution: A medical doctor earns US $80 to US $100 per hour but a person cleaning the same hospital receives a meager US $8 an hour. Can't we raise the cleaner's salary to, say, US $12, taking US $4 from the doctor's salary? Now, US $4 does not make much difference for a doctor but for the cleaner it would be a huge relief. This equation looks simple but this won't turn into reality soon.
The US seems to be a country of sharp contrast; to be a tenure track University Professor one has to go through a painstaking task of six years of PhD, publish tons of research papers, journals and "if" you are hired you will earn US $60,000 to US $65,000 a year. But if the same person goes to a technical college and earns a two year degree in Microsoft Data Base Management, s/he can earn around US $80,000 within four years of professional experience which can go up to more than US $100,000 in due course. Why would you then go through the hard toil of earning a PhD when there is an option of earning more with a technical college degree? Asian immigrants seems to have realized this fact, so they join such colleges—two years of technical education makes you secure for 20 years.
It is hard to understand this disparity. Interestingly, people here with PhD degree struggle to find a job and those who go to technical colleges are well settled. So it depends on us what to do here. Follow your "passion" or change your career? Many Asian students have changed their career leaving their passion behind. One of my friends working as a database architect told me that he was an "alien" to computers. He did not even know how to "select all" in a word document! But now he is a senior database architect earning more than US $90,000 a year, far more than a PhD holding Professor.
Immigrants seemed to have realized the fact that most people of the Indian origin have taken over the IT sector jobs. Nepalis too are doing well in the IT sector. These immigrants are smart enough to know the job market and study what is in demand. They keep aside their passion and start a new career. Moreover, US university education has become very expensive these days. An MBA in University of Minnesota costs US $55,000 a year.
Recently we saw a merger between two law schools in Minnesota. These are two reputable law schools in the Midwest: Hamlin and William Mitchell Law College. Now, this was a new issue for me and I tried to find out why this happened. The reason behind the merger is that law schools in the US are so expensive that people are reluctant to study and colleges now face a shortage of students. But technical colleges are less expensive and they teach you what is in demand in the job market and they even have placement programs. Employers in the US these days don't go to a University (which gives a four years undergraduate degree). They go to technical colleges to find their workforce.
US Embassy in Kathmandu is always full with students applying for visas. I am aware about the need of so many young students trying to leave their country before even fully knowing it. I encourage these students to come to the US for higher studies. If you want to continue your life in the US even after studies, I suggest you to go for something "technical" apart from your undergraduate degree. Even if you can just properly use Microsoft Excel you can survive here. If you are really passionate about any other non-technical subjects you can get a job here but with that you can only buy the US $8 American dream.
The author is an Operations Specialist at Webber Law Firm, Minneapolis, US manojaryal@live.com
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