IEEE-USA slams immigration bill

The Senate passed immigration bill has provisions to increase the H1-B visas to 115,000 per year and exempt certain U.S. Master's degree holders from the cap. What may come as a surprise to most of you is IEEE-USA is strongly opposed to allowing foreign high-tech workers. They say they're concerned about the "alleged" abuse of the H1-B and the L1 visa programs and the system needs to be fixed before it is expanded.

I remember during my college days when applicants to U.S. universities would pay money and take up membership with the IEEE. Little did they know that their own money would go to advocacy against their ability to work in the USA.

While their passion to oppose the H1-B program is understandable, their opposition to legal high-skilled immigration is truly appalling and both a disservice and a misrepresentation to all the aspiring immigrants who were or are members of the organization. Why is a professional enhancement organization getting into politics?

Unemployment rate in IT is at 2% compared to the 5% overall U.S. unemployment rate. That's practically full employment. Sure the economic recession of 2002 drove out a large part of the IT work force into other fields but they're now free to come back to IT. If they can, then why is the unemployment rate so low? What IEEE-USA members are interested in is to raise their wages to higher levels by allowing the work force shortage to continue. That's their goal and they will swoop to any levels to achieve it.

U.S. Senate approves immigration bill

The U.S. Senate approved the Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) bill that will grant some 10 million illegal immigrants a chance at U.S. citizenship. That's no so good news for legal immigrants who have been waiting patiently for years to get permanent residency. The bill that was heavily debated in the Senate and which senate conservative republicans put every possible effort to kill also includes some last minute pro-legal immigrant provisions. The whole thing was a roller coaster ride with amendments after amendments being introduced that did nothing to benefit legal immigrants. Finally as a fitting climax these provisions were added in the last amendment called the Manager's amendment. The Immigration Voice team and their strategic counselors have managed an almost impossible feat by adding these provisions in the CIR bill.

Some of the highlights of this amendment are:

• Hard country limit on visa numbers which was set at 10% per country was replaced by a soft limit wherein if any country does not use its quota those unused visas will go to oversubscribed countries. This is good news for applicants from India and China as these countries which have large population will always be oversubscribed.
• Certain US Masters degree holders and other advanced degree holders will be exempt from the visa number limits.
• Allows I-485 to be filed as soon as labor certification is approved
• EAD and Advance Parole will be issued at 3 year extensions instead of yearly.
• Labor backlog elimination.

The next step in this uphill struggle is the House-Senate Conference where the Senate version and the House version will be reconciled. While the entire nation hopes that sanity will prevail, it is entirely possible that since the two version are so vastly different that nothing may come out in the end.

Legal Immigrants: Waiting Forever!

The National Foundation for American Policy released results of a study titled Legal Immigrants: Waiting Forever! highlighting the serious backlogs in the current immigration system. The study found five year wait times for most employment based immigrants which could only worsen if no legislation is passed soon.

"Unless Congress acts, the day may come when promising international students and outstanding foreign-born scientists and engineers decide America is no longer the land of opportunity for them," said Stuart Anderson, executive director of NFAP on MSNBC.

NFAP has done the hard part, now only if the U.S. law makers listen to them.

U.S. is not heaven!

For a lot of people outside the U.S. this country is like heaven. They think everyone here is rich. When you land that job offer for $50,000 you don't realize that you may end up saving only $5,000 a year. Here's the typical breakdown for a year considering a family of two:

Gross Pay: $50,000

Taxes: $16,000
Rent: $12,000
Living Expenses: $10,000
Car: $3,500
Health Care: $3,000

Amount left: $5,500

The only way to save more is to cut on living expenses which means living poor. Is that why you come to U.S.? to live poor? I know people who make $70,000 or more and can't manage to save more than $10,000 per year. That's about Rs. 4,50,000. I know many people who save more than that living lavishly in India. Let's look at the rent and health care costs in detail.

Rent:
I think in this respect the U.S. has a weird tax system where it rewards those who have money and punishes those who don't. What am I talking about?

Take the case of house rent. In Mumbai where I worked earlier, a big chunk of my salary came in the form of the House Rent Allowance. This component of salary, which in my case was about 40% of my income, fluctuated yearly based on cost of renting and was also tax-deductible. In the U.S. rent that you pay is not tax deductible from the federal tax. Ouch! To add insult to injury, if someone has enough money, they can buy lots of houses and rent them out. Agreed they will have lots of mortgages to pay, but the mortgage interest on those payments are tax-deductible.

Most of the time the rent is priced by the market in such a way that its the renters who pay for the mortgage of the landlord and the landlord gets tax-deductions from Uncle Sam as a bonus. Infact, there are many publicly traded companies whose only business is to rent out houses (eg: Home Properties). The result is higher rents than what would have been otherwise.

Health Insurance:
Typically for a family of two, you would pay anywhere between $40 and $100 per week. That's upto $5,000 per year and that's only the premium you pay not the other 70% or so that the employer pays to the insurance company. It may be noted here that your premium pre-tax but employers contribution is tax-deductible.

You may say health insurance is optional. Yes it is, but only when you can afford health care without insurance. The system is so deep-rooted that it is extremely expensive to have health care without some sort of health insurance. You may say developing countries are backwards in terms of providing health care for its residents. After getting to know the U.S. health care system, I think its better to have poorer health care than extortive health care.

The main culprit in the system is health insurance. While insurance is good for society in general, as it makes it easier for the sick to get medical services cheaper, there are those who exploit the system. Everyone might have heard about patients suing doctors for negligence. Then there are pharmaceutical companies who mass advertise their latest and most expensive products like it was some soap. Who pays for those ads? You, through your health insurance!

Then, there is the inefficiency in general at hospitals and clinics as the jobs are almost guaranteed for life. Finally there are uncurbed prices for medical supplies that drive the price of all things like medicines, staff salaries to extortive levels.

For example, when you got to an emergency room, they usually give you a blanket and a pillow while you're in the waiting room that are charged at $50! Now, if it was money going from your pocket you would cry out loud but since insurance pays for it, you don't care. And when no one cares, the insurance rates go high along with higher charges for everything else associated. During the years 2001 to 2003 when the economy shed thousands of jobs, insurance rates actually went high by about 60%. Reason? Fewer people contributing into the pool while those who needed or exploited the system stayed put.

U.S. Senate Proceedings Update

The CIR bill (S. 2611) now has about 105 amendments, most of which are waiting in the queue to be introduced. The main sponsors of the bill Senator Specter and Senator Kennedy will decide when and in what order these amendments will be introduced. Somewhere buried in those amendments are the Brownback amendment (SA 4058) and the Cornyn amendment (SA 4005) both of which contain useful legislation for aspiring legal immigrants.

To give you a picture of the kind of amendments that are being introduced, here are a few that have already been introduced. Once introduced they are voted on, usually by voice vote or a Yea-Nay vote. Needless to say some of these pass and some don't.

1. Kyl Amendment that prohibits Criminals from getting Amnesty was passed 99-0
2. Sessions amendment that asks for building a 370 mile fence between USA and Mexico was passed 83-16
3. Vitter's amendment that would have removed the guest worker program and the legalization of the undocumented workers was defeated 33-16
4. Sen Cornyn introduced an amendment that asks for the Guest Worker program to be Employer Based similar to the H1-B program instead of allowing the immgrant to self petition. This amendments squeaked through narrowly 50-48
5. Sen Kennedy introduced an amendment that changes Cornyn's amendment. This amendment makes a H2-C immigrant to self petition if they have been in the country for 4 years, have a labor certification and their employer is able to attest to a future job. This amendment passed 56-43

(Source: ImmigrationVoice.org)

The list goes on...we can only hope that pro-legal immigrant amendments atleast get a chance to be voted on. Most Senators don't have any opposition to these provisions, just that there isn't enough political pressure or will power to introduce them onto the floor. That's where lobbying comes into play and that's what ImmigrationVoice.org is doing. Remember that this is a volunteer organisation made up of members like me whose cases are pending in the system. Please join the group and donate if you believe in what they're doing.

CIR bill back up for debate

Once again the U.S. Senate today started deliberations on the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill after a rare speech on domestic issues by President Bush on prime time TV last night. The main issue discussed is ofcourse illegal immigration, but there are pro-legal immigration provisions in the bill and Immigration Voice is working hard with law makers to include favorable amendments that will alleviate the labor certification backlog and the green card retrogression that mostly affect Indian and Chinese born professionals working in U.S. If these provisions have to be passed then the whole bill has to pass through the Senate, later to be followed by a compromise session with the House which itself passed a strict enforcement only bill last year which has no pro-legal provisions and makes all illegal immigrants felons instantly.

The legal immigrant community is watching the proceedings mostly on the sidelines and hopes that their less controversial provisions will get passed if the House and Senate can do a compromise bill.

India offers a once in a lifetime opportunity

Raju Narisetti, Editor of The Wall Street Journal (Europe) as well as a Deputy Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal in the United States is quitting his job and moving back to India

The 40-year-old native of Hyderabad, who started his journalism career with Economic Times, where he helped launch its weekend section and later worked at The Times of India in New Delhi, came to the US in 1990 with "$2,300 in traveller's cheques and two suitcases" to do a master's in journalism at the Indiana University in Bloomington. Since then he had never looked back.

"Looking at where India is today and where the business newspaper segment is, it just feels like there is an opportunity to do something new and different, and the idea of doing something in India at this time is tempting," Narisetti told rediff.com in a phone interview from Brussels, the headquarters of WSJ (Europe).

Infy to hire 300 grads from US

Infosys Technologies on Monday announced its first largescale plan to recruit 300 college graduates from universities in the United States in 2006 and 25 graduates from the United Kingdom in 2007 as part of an ongoing commitment to create a diversified, global workforce. Here's the complete news story.

Infact there are some 100 to 200 Americans working at Infy right now. This guy has a blog where he documents his one year in Bangalore. Its pretty interesting.

Texans heed call: 'Go east' to India

Interesting news article on Dallas Morning News.

For years, highly skilled graduates of India's universities have taken jobs in Texas, helping fuel the state's high-tech boom. Now, young Texans are discovering India as a land of employment opportunity. Infosys has grown from 500 to 50,000 workers in 12 years. Chief financial officer Mohandas Pai said he sees a trend of young Americans taking jobs in India.

Americans used to say, "Go west, young man," said Mr. Pai. "Now, it's 'Go east.' With the rise of India and China as economic powers, we're seeing life-changing opportunities here."

Do you know what you're getting into?

Millions of people especially from poor countries wish to immigrate to the U.S. every year. This creates a lot of stress on the U.S. immigration system, the basic framework of which hasn't changed in decades even though global economy has changed enormously.

Immigration is a low priority issue for the U.S. as aspiring immigrants are willing to be patient and accept the process as a way of life while the U.S. gets brilliant folks educated by foreign nations pratically for free. This desire to migrate to U.S. among the really bright persons in foreign countries has only been popular for the last 2 or 3 decades and coincidently(?) that's the time when the U.S. has prospered to become the world's largest economy and the only superpower.

However, lot of the people coming to the U.S. have a wrong impression of the U.S. socioeconomic picture before they come here. They assume that merit stands above everything and they will have a fair opportunity to succeed in their chosen field. Many decide to make life here permanent and decide to embark on the journey called permanent residency and that's when they get humbled and face the reality of their worthlessness to the U.S. economy and the U.S. population in general. They are treated not as humans that add value to the nation but as files and case numbers in an indifferent immigration system.

The U.S. immigration system is like an old computer sitting in the corner. It works fine as long as no one is paying attention to it but the moment it starts getting used, it comes to a grinding halt and everyone wonders what the computer was for anyway.

Let's start at the numbers to see the underlying problem. (Source: ImmigrationVoice)

Demand:
The first step in getting a green card is to get labor clearance. There are approximately 350,000 cases pending labor clearance since 2000. Assuming getting labor clearance, the next step is to file an immigrant petition or form I-140. There are another 271,000 cases pending in this stage since 2002. Total cases requiring visa numbers is over half a million.

Supply:
There are only 140,000 immigrant visas available per year and each country has a 7% cap. That means only 9,800 persons per year from India including spouse and children can get green cards. Due to processing delays and inefficiency not all 140,000 visa numbers may be used up in a year and the left over go unused or wasted.

Problem:
How long will it take to get your green card if you file today? You do the math.

Solution:
Increase the numbers of visas per year temporarily or extend green card benefits to people who are stuck in the process. In fact some measures were introduced in a bill in the U.S. Congress late 2005 to alleviate the problems.

Opposition:
Groups like NumbersUSA and WashTech are against immigration and find a way to relate all problems with public welfare to immigrants. They are very organised and they lobbied hard against the measures introduced in Congress. With the support of anti-immigration Congressmen like Tom Tancredo, they succeeded in removing the measures from the final bill. They even tried to increase the fees instead but that move failed.

Don't live here permanently. Work for a few years and take your money home. The U.S. dollar is loosing value compared to other major currencies and at the same time, home economies are growing at 8% or higher. Think about what you want and decide about your future before its too late.

Pilots moving out of U.S. into emerging economies

Today's article titled With Jobs Scarce, U.S. Pilots Sign On At Foreign Airlines in the Wall Street Journal is another indicator of the changing face of the global economy. After recent bankruptcy filings, restructurings and huge layoffs many U.S. pilots are increasingly finding lucrative and better job offers outside U.S. in places like China, India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

Nearly two years ago, at age 51, Brian Murray took early retirement from US Airways. But Capt. Murray's flying career was far from over. Today he lives in Dubai and flies wide-body Airbus A330s for fast-growing Emirates Airlines, winging to exotic destinations in Europe, Africa and Asia.

There are simply not enough pilots being trained in these emerging economies and they need to hire from U.S. where there is a surplus. It's the same economic factors that drived scores of Indian and Chinese professionals to the U.S. in the 90s.

G.R. Gopinath, managing director for Air Deccan, a two-year-old budget airline in India, says he has been recruiting a dozen pilots a month from overseas. "If Indian software engineers can work in the U.S., their pilots can come and work here," he says. "It's reverse body-shopping." Pilot job fairs in the U.S. have begun attracting recruiters for Chinese and Indian startups, according to Kit Darby, president of Air Inc., a placement firm.

In India foreign pilots make upto $15,000 per month. Heck, that's high compared to U.S. standards itself. In India you are not living like a king but a king with that salary!

India counts more. Deregulation has spawned startup airlines, an influx of international flights, and 20% annual passenger growth. India expects to need 2,500 new pilots by 2010. At Jet Airways, the nation's largest private carrier, 111 of its 685 pilots are foreign. Air Deccan has 75 foreigners among its 250 pilots, and is setting up its own flight school in Bangalore.

This all the more reason to stay in India and other emerging economies. The lure to immigrate to U.S. is dwindling and at the same time home economies are growing. Do you want to come to the U.S. and be stuck in the ridiculously insane immigration system or stay back and enjoy life at home?

Various events over the past 2 weeks

Lots of developments since the last post. The biggest of them all, Aman Kapoor co-founder of ImmigrationVoice.Org was on Fox News Weekend talking about the current problems in the legal immigration system for high-skilled immigrants such as can't change jobs, can't get a raise, spouses can't work and so on. Here are the video links (they're slow to load)

http://www.zippyvideos.com/513335711...30april2006-1/
http://www.zippyvideos.com/800983146...30april2006-2/
http://www.zippyvideos.com/635404091...30april2006-3/

The CIR bill is back into discussion on May 15th and yesterday illegal immigrants and their supporters organized the Great American Boycott. This has prompted a fresh round of attacks from the anti-immigration group headed by Tanrcredo (R-CO) and various conservative talk(scream) shows hosts. The chances of this Bill passing is now almost zero, so the high-skilled community has decided to look beyond for other bills that don't have the controversial illegal immigration proposals. The SKIL/PACE/TALENT bills are in the pipeline in case CIR fails.

Here's another interesting story in BusinessWeek. Saratov State University in Russia won the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest in San Antonio on Apr. 12. They solved 6 brain-teasing problems in a gruelling 5 hour contest.

Of the U.S. teams, only Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranked among the 12 highest finishers. Most top spots were seized by teams from Eastern Europe and Asia. Until the late 1990s, U.S. teams dominated these contests. But the tide has turned. Last year not one was in the top dozen.

In fact the team from Duke University had an Indian girl, Kshipra Bhawalkar. She plans to go back home after her graduation.

"In the past, people from India stayed here after they got their degrees,'' she says. "But now India is at a turning point. It's getting to be a leader.'' The foreign students have a palpable determination to succeed. Bhawalkar's role model is Srinivasa Ramanujan, an early 20th century Indian mathematician who became famous worldwide in spite of an inferior education. This year, as a Duke sophomore, Bhawalkar placed 70th among 2,500 top North American university students in the prestigious Putnam math competition. Her life goal is "to make a mark in some discipline so people will say, 'That's Kshipra. She did this.'''

It's not that foreign students are any smarter, say U.S. university leaders. They just have relentless discipline. The team at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which finished first last year and fifth this year, uses past participants to train each successive team. "We pile up experience year after year,'' says coach Yong Yu. The team practices year-round and puts in three hours a day during the months before the contest. U.S. teams typically spend much less time preparing.

The indications are quite clear. Poor immigration system, indifferent politicians and uninformed population. Hind sight is always 20/20. They'll be caught with their pants down. I have some personal friends whom I met this weekend. They're both Ph.D candidates, one in Organic Chemistry and one in Robotic Systems. They're both planning to leave by the end of this year. Whose loss is it?

Oh and by the way, China leap-frogged UK and France last year to become the fourth largest economy in the world. China was in 6th place only as far back as 2000. India is not far behind either and rapidly picking up pace.