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makr99on How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

I am not like everyone else and is not dying to get in to the US as you can see that I moved to Canada. I am a highly skilled worker and was working for some of the top technology companies in the US. I should have been given preference for my Green Card. But I was queued up and backlogged to 9 years because of the country of my birth. That is not how skilled immigration should work.

The immigration system of Canada is called Express Entry and gives importance to skills than luck (H1B lottery). That's why I called US immigration system broken. I should have been specific that its the H1B system that is broken. Edited my comment for the same.

makr99on How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

Thank you. I got my PR some months back. My spouse can work now. We are very happy than being in the US where she was not authorized to work. We enjoy the real freedom here.

makr99on How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

I tried web alerts, but the emails were not instant, plus no phonecalls. Most the services I found didn't look reliable enough as I had no window for mistakes for my immigration. So I rolled my own.

makr99on How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

I was in the US and want to immigrate to Canada because of US broken H1B immigration system ( for me it will take 9 years to get a greencard). Here is what I did -

The immigration website of Saskatchewan province opens up randomly to apply for immigration. I missed it many times because there is no indication other than the "Apply" button being enabled and a small text in their homepage which says "Applications are now 'open' ". They will close the application intake when they have reached X number of applicants. So timing is very important.

So I hacked up a script which diffs their home page every 10 minutes for "open" regex. When there is an "open" keyword in the diff, the python script calls twilio API to make a phone call to me along with an SMS.

So this script was running in AWS for many weeks and one day I got the call. Logged in to Saskatchewan's immigration homepage and applied. Now I am in Canada as a permanent resident. Thanks to Twilio.

edit: add H1B to make clear which type of immigration is broken IMO.