At a time when the immigration laws in the United States and their abuse is being debated, I tell the story of how I used these laws for my family's benefit. Born into a family in India, I worked hard and earned an excellent education. With planning, I was lawfully admitted into this country as a student. I used the U.S. immigration laws to help my father of ten children, who included five girls, from becoming destitute.
This book is about the dowry system which still prevails in India. The dowry is a payment of wealth that is expected from the father in order to get his daughter married. The dowry is no small amount. Depending on the status, education and earning potential of the bridegroom the dowry could be astronomical. How does a father of five girls cope with the burdensome dowry?
I arrived under a university assistantship award to become a physicist. My goal was to obtain my doctorate, earn money as a physicist in the U.S. and then return to India to settle down. My original expectation was that my earning potential would help my father meet the dowry demands. However, this expectation soon collapsed. After earning my Ph.D., I was caught up in a U.S. recession and unable to find employment commensurate with my earning potential. This unexpected event reset my goal.
After working as a teacher, I made a dramatic change in my career to become a lawyer. My study of law combined with my foundation in physics opened up a new vista to address my goal to solve the dowry problem that my father faced.
This book tells how I devised a solution to help my father by lawfully using the immigration laws of the United States to reunite my family.
I qualified for my U.S. Green Card based on my scholastic accomplishments which paved the way to become an American citizen. I was able to sponsor my unmarried sisters to earn their Green Cards. I orchestrated their Green Cards as a currency for finding suitable husbands in India without paying dowry. The husbands then joined their new brides in the U.S. to live permanently as married couples.
Coca, T. R.: - The author has a rare combination of multi-disciplined education, a kaleidoscopic professional career and rich cultural background. His first love of Physics drove him to the pinnacle of leaning of Physics, as evidenced by the degrees he earned which include a B.S., M.S., M. A., and Ph.D. While working as a teacher and later as a Physicist at General Dynamics Corporation, TR pursued law to synergistically combine his rich technical background with knowledge of the U. S. laws and became an Intellectual Property attorney. TR has been admitted to practice in New York, Ohio, Vermont and the United States Patent Bar. He is admitted to practice before Federal Courts including the U. S. Supreme Court. Before being appointed as the Vice President of Intellectual Property Law at IGT, he was a Sr. Director of Litigation and Licensing at NVIDIA Corporation. Prior to that, TR worked as a senior corporate counsel at IBM where, for a period of over two decades, he held many executive and management positions in many world locations including a five-year international assignment as the Assistant General Counsel in charge of IP in IBM's Asia Pacific Headquarters based in Tokyo. Of Indian heritage, TR has synergistically combined his rich and disciplined Indian cultural upbringing with the consensus building of the Japanese tradition that he was exposed to while living in Japan and the competitive and innovative work ethic prevalent in the United States. TR presented and published innumerable papers and talks in Physics and intellectual property, and corporate law matters, including contributing a chapter on the Semiconductor Chip Protection Laws to the legal treatise Intellectual Property Litigation & Licensing. He served on the Editorial Board of the AIPLA Quarterly Journal of the American Intellectual Property Law Association. TR's varied experience has been as a teacher, physicist, software architect, lawyer, speaker, mentor and writer.
