Err this is not true. There are so many illegal immigrants in America that deportation is unlikely. You'd have to do something pretty bad to get deported.
Those millions of illegal immigrants are living on the margins of society in order to avoid the authorities. They are unable to get well-paying work, they are at the mercy of employers who can rat them out to the INS at any time if they complain about poor labour conditions, they cannot get health insurance, they cannot get mortgages or college loans for their kids. You can't hide like this while working in the tech industry. Do you know of many illegal immigrants working at Google?
Huh? I knew many illegal immigrants growing up with professional parents and comfortable middle class lives...immigration is more varied than the experience you see on TV although admittedly many immigrants are poor.
I have also had various family members overstay visas for very long periods of time and they weren't dirt poor. On the other hand, this kind of hiding in plain sight is hell when kids turn 18 and can't attend a university. That's the most sad part of the existence and a big reason for support of the DREAM act.
Also not fully true. Not working at google doesn't mean you live in the margins of society. It's possible to have a pretty okay life as an illegal immigrant here in the united states.. It's also possible to have a bad life as well... you def won't have a job at google but many times whatever you can get is still a better life than what some people get in their native country...
Counterpoint with a few points of anecdata: 2 good friends, 1 Stanford CS, the other Stanford Econ (minor CS), both got kicked out of the US -- one due to an H1B issue, the other because he visited home in Uzbekistan and didn't get let back in.
Well educated as they are, skilled people usually don't prefer to live illegally. And that's why you will most likely see ex-illegals and unskilled people receiving green cards or citizenship in US.
Do you mean being arrested? Because having your permission to stay/work revoked with a given time to leave the country looks like being deported for me. After that, even a touristic visa will be harder to obtain again.
Please, don't get offended. I'm not a heavy user here and I don't have permission to downvote posts.
"Told to leave"; sure he could stay an illegal and just live off the radar, but the expected value of that is really low given his options anywhere else in the world. I guess if you want to argue semantics, his risk of being physically flown out of the country was probably not substantial.
I think the purpose of all this discussion was whether OP should come to the States and work under the radar, and the general consensus is that being here illegally strongly caps your upside, and has a pretty uncertain downside.
PS - My friend's now the chief engineer of a successful business in London... I always thought it was such a shame for a guy who worked his way from being an orphan on a farm in Kenya to live 90% of the American Dream, only to be kicked out of the country after putting in his all at Stanford and at a few startups.
This history sounds weird for me as he was in a relationship for 5 years and haven't even tried to marry with the girl to fix his status. The only safe way to stay in US is by getting married, what give to the skilled workers the same level of opportunity given to illegals. An immigration policy that encourages the fraud.