What should I be doing to immigrate to US sooner?

I would like to share a bit of my story to get some context for you, and maybe just give you another POV from a poor third-country perspective on salary, expectations, hopes. Just to dilute it a bit from your usual $200k+ TC. But if you don't care, just skip to the last two paragraphs. I have 9 YOE in Software Engineering, and only about 7 months ago I've started earning $6,000 a month ($72k TC, currently living in Armenia). If we go back to 2013, my first salary as a Junior PHP dev was like $800 a month, and it was real struggle with 1-bedroom apartment costing 80% of your salary. Luckily, co-worker just decided to give me a half of a room in his 2-room apartment for free. After 1.5 years in the office, I read "Remote: Office not Required" and kicked off my career by creating an account on oDesk (currently Upwork). Almost instantly got 2x salary increase, and in less than 9 months it become staggering $2k/mo. Never went to the office again, ever. But then left the platform to search for employers directly and getting those contracts myself, without paying 20+% tax to third-party. Originally, I'm from Russia and just had to move out recently, since current employer would otherwise had to layoff me after recent events. I really like my current workplace: great WLB (4-days week with one day for self-development / learning), interesting fintech project, decent size company (>500 people), no BS management (no micromanagement, actually caring about the team and mental health more than sprints/deadlines), except the problem is that I'm employed through the consulting LLC based in the US, however the company is pretty small (when I joined they had like 60 people on internal Slack, and now it's about 100), and I'm not sure if I'm going to stay with them. It's "you cannot discuss any kind of expenses with our client or you'll be fired immediately" kind of company. I understand their concerns but being transparent around how much they actually earn from me would go a long way for the talent retention. I just checked salary calculator on TeamBlind and for my YOE and role I would be getting at least $150k (median) in NY. So I'd assume they cut at least 50%. I'm also fearing that the bonus they've announced (30-60% of the salary) also would be cut off, or I might not even see it. There are no exact numbers in the contract. I had multiple offers and decided to take it because they specifically mentioned that after 1 year of employment they could start visa process and offer relocation assistance. So I hoped I could go to USA after 1 year if the salary was good enough to survive for two adults. However, things seem to be changed after recent events, and now I'm not sure if they ever going to keep their promise. I still haven't received any relocation financial support after emergency moving to Armenia — it was only the money I've saved myself. So, while it's more or less safe here, and I was lucky to keep my most highest-paying job ever, I don't think I should stop here: I believe I'm underpaid, and I'm pretty sure I can be pretty comfortable as an SWE in pretty much any US/UK/EU company. I was pretty ambitious as long as I remember myself. However, as my salary grew, I felt less motivation to continue learning and going outside of the comfort zone — I was getting $, and spending always falling wooden roubles, life was good, I was living like a king there. March 2022 is when I finally experienced the phrase "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans". We had less than 40 hours to pack 7 years of our lives into boxes and move out from the country. Another way was to lose the job and struggle to find another employer in a new reality, where no one would like to do business with anyone residing in Russia. We've spent about $6000 for tickets, rental, accomodation, warehouse cell block, and so on. There were no help from pretty much anyone (my fiancée doesn't work due to medical condition, I don't have parents at all, and she only have mother that doesn't really care about her), and I never traveled abroad during 30 years of my life, except when I went to Amazon interview in 2018. I only did two interviews: 2018 with Amazon (failed LC easy, on-site in another country with 4 engineers), winter 2021 with Google (it was LC medium/hard probably, but coding interview was completely remote). I also got many emails from recruiters that I should retry after 6-12 months but I believe unless I start crunching those LCs at least 3 times a week, there's no point trying. I was also burned out and after one of the project ended, I've been unemployed for 6 months, trying to simply learn new stuff and relax from never-ending cycle of "looking for a new job -> working until project ends / layoff / burnout -> looking for a new job". Also, I never had PTO during those 9 years, so the only time I got some time for myself was the unemployment period (which I had two in total), where I had to look for a new job pretty much every day, schedule interviews, and try to prepare for them for a better chance to succeed. So, here I am, broke and slowly getting financial cushion to where it should be: $10k (should be enough for 3-4 months of a frugal living for two unemployed people). My current options: - Stay low with the current underpaying employer until better times and try to ask for relocation again in a few months / years. Cons: low salary, living in a poor third-country. - Start interviewing with any major consulting company that have streamlined H1-B process (e.g. EPAM) while hoping the coding interview would be easy (no leetcode required). Cons: it's bodyshop with poor management and high headcount turnover. - Start crunching LC easy/medium (and later hard) and after 6 months of prep schedule interviews every week until exhausting every high-profile company (Meta, Amazon, G, Netflix, and so on), and then repeat this process until actually receiving an offer and H1B visa. Cons: this might go on for ages depending on my efforts with LC and luck getting interviews and passing them. - [option] Maybe there's some good fintech company in UK/EU with decent salary and WFH? But now after all this shit happened to me, I think I must carry on and try even harder than before. What would be your suggestions, people? #tech #career #relocation #salary #leetcode #underpaid #consulting #us #remote #crunchtime