<p>Well, let me begin by giving a little background first.</p>
<p>I was born in Cuba from a Spanish family. I came to the US at the age of 12 years old. When I came I left a cousin that was studying for his Licenciatura (Bachelors Degree). I never had any contact with this cousin up to like a week ago when we started communicating via email. Well, I soon learned that my cousin currently holds a Phd in "Ingenieria Automatica" (Automated Engineering), I am not sure this major exists in the US but it is something along the lines of combining Engineering and CS. He is currently a professor at his university at the age of 27. </p>
<p>So you can imagine all the information being shared after 6 years of no contact and between all this information I almost died when he told me that he currently gets paid $24 monthly. I gasped and hoped for air. I then continued to inform him that with the education he has, he would be making big figures if he were in the US.</p>
<p>So i was just wondering, if he ever came over to the US, how hard would it be to re-validate his degree? He sent me his Phd thesis and I was just amazed at how long that thing was and the depth of his research, just thinking that I will have to do this sometime give me the creeps. He reads English perfectly, in fact more than half of his bibliography in his thesis came from English sources. He told me that anyone who pursued an education in one of the major sciences had to learn at least to read English if they wanted to inform themselves since the best stuff is published in English. So again, I return to my main question, if he was ever to come to the US, would his degree hold? Or is it useless? </p>
<p>I am just impressed at how many people around the world are underpaid etc and still engineers here complain they are underpaid :P hehe.</p>