US techies unable to find suitable brides

KURNOOL: The visa restrictions proposed by US President Donald Trump seem to have had an impact not only on the career prospects of software professionals, but also on their marriage prospects. There has been a dramatic shift in the profiles that people in Rayalaseema seem to be seeking for marriage alliances. Software professionals, who were once in high demand, seem to have fallen out of favour. Matchmaker Rama Subba Reddy said several girls have turned down alliances with software engineers in the recent past.

“Multimedia professionals are in high demand followed by doctors, lawyers and teachers. Engineers and MBAs have begun to be sidelined by the parents of girls,” he says, adding that dowry is never a constraint for the right match. Mr Nandeeshwar Reddy, who works with a Seattle-based firm, is a prospective groom who is keeping his fingers crossed. Amidst rumours of layoffs at his company, he awaits a positive response from either one of the two girls that he has been introduced to through a marriage bureau in Tirupati.

“It has been over a month now. In both cases, the girl’s family approached my family and expressed an interest. Things were almost finalised with one of the girls, who is from Allagadda. Her family insisted on a wedding in August and we invited them to our home in Kurnool. They agreed but we haven’t heard from them. The other family also stopped responding,” he said. Ms Sujathamma, a Kurnool-based matchmaker, said the number of inquiries about software engineers has drastically declined over the past four months. “If there is a good match, parents want us to conduct a thorough background check on the boy, the firm he works in, and his job security. We don’t take up such background checks. Until a few months ago, people blindly accepted proposals from software engineers; now their biodatas are being ignored,” she said