chickenking

I am an H1B from India. I want to add one point.

My LCA says x salary. I get 3k more than that. Considering all yhe benefits, it comes to around y per hour. My employer charges the customer '1.76y' to '2.14y' depending on the project. So the customer is actually paying nearly twice of what I get paid.

I think a lot of non-Indians have this impression that arranged marriage means forced marriage or child marriage. I was talking to a South Korean guy and he thought we (Indians) get married at a young age or something equally bad. When I told him how it happens in India, he remarked "thats how it happens in his country as well".

Nowadays, we have matrimonial sites similar to your eHarmony. Guys/girls or their parents will create profiles and contact each other. If all their criteria match, guy will meet the girl, talk for some time and may say yes or no. Both the girl and the guy can say no. Nobody is forcing us.

I know the next question will be how can you choose a life partner in 30 minutes. To me, marriage involves a lot of understanding and compromise from both the parties. I was talking to a 65+ year old American recently. He was talking about something called a "spark" when a guy/girl meet. If you have that spark, you go ahead in the relationship. I don't know if this "spark" is real, I saw a lot of girls in person after liking their profiles, but didn't like them (or they didn't like me) in person.

I think at some point, our culture decided that interest of the society is bigger than personal freedom. They may have decided its better to find a partner this way rather than spending several years like in other cultures (I worked with an American who dated the same girl for 5 years and got divorced in 6 months). If you are going to say that such a lack of personal freedom is regressive, I don't feel that way. In America, you have the draft which to me means you loose the right to your body.

I am from outside US. I grew up watching American TV shows and movies and had a really positive impression about US and its people. I actually used to look down on my culture and its ways most of the time. The 4 years I spend on Reddit exposed me to so much racism and hatred that I have only negative feelings left now. I am leaving US next month, a good part of my decision was based on those feelings.