For here or to go?

It's a question that most fast-food and takeout patrons are familiar with. No hidden meaning. No double entendre. Would you like to remain in the restaurant, or would you like to take your food back home with you?

It's also a question that skilled immigrants to the U.S. often ask themselves about their careers, says Rishi Bhilawadikar, a senior user experience designer at a San-Francisco-based e-commerce company and the writer and producer of a new movie that's being showcased at film festivals around the world.

His film, aptly titled "For Here or to Go?," tells the story of Vivek Pandit, an aspiring entrepreneur from India living in Silicon Valley on an H-1B visa. Throughout the movie, Pandit and his friends struggle to navigate America's complex immigration system while trying to answer that and other key questions for themselves.

Can I fulfill my dreams in the U.S.? Am I better off here? Will I even be allowed to stay here? Or should I – or will I have to – return home?

It's a series of questions that Bhilawadikar says he and hundreds of thousands like him who are currently in some stage of the H-1B visa process ask themselves every day. And that's the story he wanted to tell.

The government currently caps the number of H-1B visas issued each year at 65,000, though there are some exceptions related to education. The visa application window for the upcoming fiscal year opened Friday.

“Everybody comes at it from a very different data-driven angle. I am coming at it from a very humanistic angle,” says Bhilawadikar, a first-time filmmaker whose project has now been shown on four continents. “Data without a story doesn’t really move people. I’m coming at it from a very individual, grassroots angle of just humanizing the whole situation.”

Bhilawadikar had no cinematic experience prior to writing this film, and throughout its production he needed to maintain his responsibilities at his day job – or else face deportation for failing to uphold the terms of his visa. “Obviously, you need to be dedicated to your workplace. But you have the evening hours,” he says.



But he's managed to garner a lot of support for a first-time filmmaker. Most significantly, Mike Krieger, a Brazilian immigrant and co-founder of Instagram, has said the film left him with "a tear in [his] eye."

"I feel like it's a story not just worth telling, but it's been told now. It's worth seeing," he said in a video on the film's website.

Bhilawadikar is still showing the film around to build support for the project. He hasn't yet planned a full nationwide or international release. But U.S. News recently spoke with him about the film and his own experience as an H-1B visa holder in the U.S. He says his project tells the "lighthearted" version of problems and complexities with an immigration system that impacts thousands of lives every year.

Tell me a little about your own move to the U.S. You came first as a student, right?



I came here as a student in the fall of 2005 [at the age of 22] to do a master's in video game design [at Indiana University]. In 2007, I got an internship in Silicon Valley, and my master's thesis intrigued a now very famous startup incubator. And they asked me if I would like to pursue that after graduation.

All of this was a little bit new to me then. So I asked the incubator if they'd sponsor my visa, and they said, 'No, we don't do that.' And that was the end of the matter for me. I went on to look for a job that would sponsor my H-1B visa that would allow me to live in this country.

As a new [graduate] you feel like you can conquer the world and change things. And that's what I felt. But that didn't really happen. I got into a regular design job. When you interview for jobs, the first question is not based on your skills. The first question is always tied to immigration, which is a very strange way to fashion your career.

At what point did you decide you wanted to produce a movie highlighting the H-1B experience? What story are you trying to tell?

Through the course of my living here in Silicon Valley, I started noticing the curious assimilation of the Southeast Asian population. If you ever visit certain places in Sunnyvale or San Jose, it feels very Indian. And for a newcomer, it might feel like they never left India. That's very curious, and it's not just this ethnicity. It's a lot of other ethnicities that just kind of build this bubble around themselves. To me, the natural thing would be to get more into the realm of the general public. But here, you have these pockets of very strongly knitted cultural communities.

People don't come here, then, with an open mind of assimilating into and embracing the new culture they're about to enter in. They're more interested in holding onto their existing mental models of existence. So it's a very, very complex topic.

But there is no real authentic portrayal of this assimilation story. The problem for immigrants like me is that there's no authentic legal or media or political representation. We are pretty much temporary visitors, and we are treated as temporary visitors for a very, very long time, to the tune of 15 or 20 years or so. So now I've been here close to 11 years, and I'm still temporary. I still don't have a sense of permanence. I still don't have furniture. Simple things like that.

Simply put, I couldn't explain to my mother what the problem of living in America was. On the surface, it's all very, very good. You have a great job, living in a great city, living in San Francisco, you make decent pay. But the kind of pressures and constraints that your immigration status lends on you is very unique, and it starts dictating your life in very strange ways.

I look at it as a problem with empathy. How do you try to change things? You have to make people care and be aware of the cause. And what better way to do that than to tell a story? And that started me off on the journey.

Where did you start? How does one go about producing a movie here?



I have a background in interactive storytelling and video game design. But sometimes the old mediums are more effective and scale better. I decided film might be the right medium to bring something like this to life.

The process was quite chaotic. In 2010, when I decided that I should be making a story and telling this story, I basically Googled how to write a screenplay and went from there. I didn't have any background in screenwriting, so I had to take a couple of classes just to get me oriented and get me inspired. So that took about a year and a half or two years. And once I wrote it and showed it around and it resonated with people, I said, 'Well, it's a film worth making.' So I made it.

I took it to Indian Film Studios in Mumbai. I'm from Mumbai, so on my annual vacation, I took some time and got into the offices of these film studios and started peddling around my script.

But I didn't get any response after a couple of rounds of doing that. I tried to go to L.A., but that's a very difficult network and nexus to break into for anyone. Hollywood didn't really care about it, and Bollywood was clueless and busy with its own thing, so they didn't really do it.

So once the realization set in that if I don't tell this story, nobody else will, I just had to figure out how to do it all by myself. I started looking around for collaborators and using Craigslist ads and asking friends, saying, 'Hey, I have this script. Is there anyone in filmmaking who might be interested in collaborating with me?'

Everything from looking for producers to casting to fundraising to getting locations have been a step-by-step process. And, of course, there's the little matter of me being on an H-1B visa. I really couldn't do this full-time. Even today, I have to be on my H-1B, and I have to do my job.

Actors Melanie Kannokada and Ali Fazal are shown in a scene from For Here or To Go?, a film written by Rishi Bhilawadikar and directed by Rucha Humnabadkar. (Courtesy of Many Cups of Chai Films)

What was it like trying to produce a film while maintaining your current job?

It was very, very, very challenging. Initially, there is a lot of energy and passion and drive to do it. But it takes a big emotional and physical toll on you, mainly because you're just context-switching so much and trying to do so many things. Obviously, you need to be dedicated to your workplace. But you have the evening hours, so essentially you don't get to sleep much.

You've talked about trying to make this film authentic. How much of this was inspired by things that happened to either you or your friends?

A lot of this film is inspired by real life. The overall picture is about entrepreneurship and human potential. When anybody moves from one place or another, they move for a better life, to fulfill their potential and to get ahead in life. But immigration can also be very restrictive, and it can limit that potential. So the film asks, "Is this really the best place for you to fulfill your potential?" And it really depends on how you look at it.

It all started with this phenomenon that we documented called "reverse brain drain." And it was people who had been trained in U.S. universities and people with U.S. qualifications going back to their home countries to start their own ventures for whatever reason – family reasons, immigration restrictions. A lot of entrepreneurs and students that were not able to get their visas sponsored were returning back to India. And this thought was in my head, too. "Maybe I should go back to India to pursue some of my ideas."

For my generation, when you set foot in the U.S. for the first time, there's always some part of you that thinks, "This is temporary. I will come back home at some point." But as life sucks you in, some of us go back and some don't. Some are always in this dilemma caught in between. This is also covered in the film.

What has your reception been like from other Americans as an H-1B holder?

I'm fortunate enough to be working in technology, where many of us are immigrants. If I were to just stick to my job and stick to my world, especially in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, I think it's only welcoming and mostly merit-based. But even though I may be equal to my American coworker or my German coworker or whoever else in all respects, my particular immigration situation comes with restrictions as to what kind of role I can perform and when I can get promoted or not promoted. I cannot switch companies easily. I cannot make my own company.

I had to pass on a lot of entrepreneurial ideas [because of my visa restrictions]. I saw friends who had visas run out, and they couldn't pursue their own visas. I am in the midst of it, and it will probably take another six to eight years [until I get my green card], I believe. And by that time, it'll be more than 20 years that I'll be in the country. And when I think about that, it's extremely unpleasant.

My job is dependent upon the economy's health and things that are completely out of my control. If a recession hits tomorrow [and I lose my job], I have to pack my bags and move. And that's a very restrictive and impermanent way to live. It creates this doubt in the back of your mind with every step that you take. From the smallest conversations about appreciation for your manager or what you want next for a career move.

You mention how long this process has been and how impermanent you feel while you're here. As someone who is going through this and navigating the country's immigration laws, what problems do you see with the system? Would it make sense to streamline the H-1B process?

The naturalization process has a long backlog and extremely long wait times, and there are a lot of people just in limbo waiting to be accepted or get a green card so they can sort of move around and do things in life. And by that time, you're 40 or 45 [years old], and I don't know how many people have that drive or motivation. That, for me, is the bigger problem.

There has to be some kind of a merit-based or skill-based type of consideration. I'm absolutely not trained in policy or law, but I know this affects human lives. And it affects potential. And we should change that. The system is completely dehumanized. It hasn't accounted for the lives of several million people and billions of dollars that they could actually bring into the economy.

If people come to your home and are willing to help you out and do good and prosper themselves and bring more prosperity, that process should be made easier, not more difficult. It's just the most rational and logical thing to be doing from all different aspects of the argument.

If you unlock this potential and the possibilities that come with people like myself, you're unlocking a huge amount of economic progress and prosperity, and you're making people's lives better who have been here for decades and who have been law-abiding.

There are many people out there who want to restrict the H-1B system. Some argue that immigrants take jobs Americans would otherwise occupy, and others say companies abuse the system. What's your response to that?

The fact that it has been abused previously is probably why it's so restrictive. But a lot of companies want to fill these open skill positions, and there are a lot of people with degrees who want to [emigrate to the U.S.]. But it's a lottery system.

When you graduate out of school and you have some tech [experience] and you've incurred a debt in U.S. dollars that you need to pay off in U.S. dollars and you have put in between two and four years to get that degree, you want to get that job. And if you don't get that job, that is where that H-1B lottery becomes problematic.

If you don't get that [job], then you have to return [to your home country]. Those are the people who've been training in the U.S. and have now gone back to their countries and are not giving to the U.S. It's a restriction of the system that didn't allow them to get a job.

And people who are on H-1Bs like myself, there's absolutely no way anyone can make an argument that we don't contribute to American society. The taxes we pay are equal. The jobs that we do are equal. The value that we add in our companies is equal. We are basically powering a lot of technology companies. You see [Sundar Pichai,] the CEO of Google, [Satya Nadella,] the CEO of Microsoft – these are first-generation Indian immigrants, just like me and many others.

If anything, we pay all the taxes but we never get any benefit out of it, because of the impermanence. Even though I'm paying so much in state taxes here in California, a lot of that goes to the [school system]. If I don't start a family here, I'll never be able to take advantage of that.

I don't want to make that argument. If you're living somewhere, you should be paying the taxes. You should be abiding by the law of the land. But I'm forced to bring up that point.

What do you want other immigrants, other people applying for citizenship or trying to lock down a visa, to know?

Coming up in my generation, there was a lot of films and media and books talking about wanting to and aspiring to go to America to live the big American dream.

But I think the times have changed. Technology has changed. The opportunities have changed. There's a lot of potential outside the U.S. now. When my generation decided to emigrate, a lot of this information wasn't available to us. We didn't have all of these sources available to really evaluate the opportunity.

Today's youth in almost any country can better evaluate for themselves. They're better equipped to research for themselves what choices they want to make in life and what kind of problems they want to solve and what they want to do with their career.

It's a globally connected world with opportunities and problems galore. Any entrepreneurial person who wants to solve or help solve a really big problem can do it almost anywhere now.

What do you wish someone who was born and raised in the U.S. knew about this process?

I showed this at a private screening, and I had a lawyer who's been practicing immigration law for 20 years come up to me after the film and say, "I finally understand why my clients are so anxious all the time. Thank you for making the film."

So that, to me, was the biggest compliment. And that's exactly the kind of impact I'm trying to think about. There's no authentic representation of first-generation immigrants, and we've been working in the background for the longest time and catching a lot of flack for taking American jobs and whatnot.