How did I end up in Singapore?

Here's the quick version of the story: I didn't get my H-1B visa and was relocated to Singapore temporarily for at least a year.  So here I am, back in Asia, still processing all the changes that have happened in the last few months.  I'll get into how I feel another day, but I thought it'd be helpful to clarify a few things because the question I always get is - "Didn't Microsoft sponsor your visa?"

What you need to know about the H-1B visa? 
This is probably the most common work authorization that your international friends have to work legally in the U.S.

• The visa program has a congressional yearly numerical cap.
• Petitions are subject to a statutory cap of 65,000 visas for each fiscal year.
• A U.S. advanced degree exemption is provided for 20,000 petitions.
• Free Trade Agreements reserve 1,400 visas for Chileans and 5,400 visas for Singaporeans.  If unused, the reserved visas are made available in the next fiscal year to applicants from other countries.
• Universities, nonprofit research organizations affiliated with universities, and governmental research organizations are exempt from the cap.
• If there are more petitions submitted than the statutory cap, the visa applications are selected by a computer-generated random selection process, or "lottery".
• Filing period for each fiscal year starts on April 1 and the visa takes effect on October 1.
• International students can work legally in the U.S. for one year on their student visas post-graduation, so applications not selected the previous year would reapply the following year.
• Historically, there has been a "lottery" when the economy is performing well: FY2007-2009 and FY2013-2014.
• For FY2015, 172,500 H-1B petitions were filed for the 85,000 visas (65,000 + 20,000) available, i.e., ~50% of H-1B applications were selected.

So, even with Microsoft sponsoring my visa application, the odds of getting the visa were not that great.  And it did not matter what my education background is or which company is sponsoring my visa.

In reality, I am fortunate that I work for a company that has global presence so an alternative arrangement can be made.  I am also grateful that my team wanted to make this work.  But the whole situation is still pretty shitty so I'll leave it at that for now.

#day50