Green Card - to be or not to be

This is the normal dinner topic for all the desis (for starters desi can be any non American, but is typcially used to refer to Indian citizens by fellow Indians) during a social gathering. What is the priority date for green card? When will I get my green card? Most of us are travelling in the same boat where we wait for 7-10 years to get the green card. During this wait, we end up checking the status of queue almost every alternate day. People have built business models around this emotional idea where there are portals which tell about your status. If you want to crib about it, there are Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs on the same site.

Sometimes I wonder that do we put our careers at stake by waiting for green card for long? During the wait for green card, you cannot switch jobs. Even worse, I have heard stories where the engineers have been mentally totured because the employer knows that till the time he gets his green card, the engineer will not move.

The contrasting theory can be why do you wait for green card? Is it just to be able to change the job. But if you are working hard, chances are your organization loves you and is keeping you happy. Then why do you want to leave or even think about leaving.

Or we just want the freedom to be able to move whenever we want. Even if we dont switch jobs, but somewhere within we know that we can switch over.