I enjoyed your post and I enjoyed your honesty. IMO your problem is you’re in the States. There are better people and better companies in other parts of the world (specially here in the Nordic) which will enjoy working with you. I was hired from Iran and moved to Finland to work in a great company with great benefits and job security and all I had to do was talk to them honestly and do a homework project. Yes sky's the limit but not if you’re not in the US, where everybody thinks they’re better than everyone else.