I'm the subject of the post -- startups probably won't be able to hire me because of the legal hoops they'd have to jump through to hire a foreigner... As some of you mentioned, I'm considering writing software but I don't really enjoy maintaining legacy code.
Thus, grad school seems like a good way to develop new things (and stay here legally) What do you think are cool fields?
Thank you for your advice. I wasn't really sure what a grad student's life is like and given the high opportunity cost and limited benefits it seems like a bad idea all around.