Winning the Green Card Lottery

The latest New Yorker has a great article about a couple from Peru who won the Green Card lottery and then moved to the US where the man became a food service worker despite knowing no English and being a mining engineer in Peru (a sought after position on top of the food chain). The reason: the children. It's a stark reminder that despite all the wage compression at the bottom 95% of the U.S., this country is still very much seen as the land of opportunity for most of the rest of the world, if not for the poor immigrants who show up with next to nothing, then (at least in perception) in the hopes that their children will have a better life here than in the home country.