Senator racially insults Indian

One day we have an Indian among the most powerful positions in America and the next day we have an insensitive and misinformed racial slur against an Indian. Senator George Allen (Republican from Virginia) repeatedly used the term 'macaca' - a racial slur used by White supremacists against people of color - on an Indian American student filming him on his election campaign.

One thing that is very clear in this remark is that the majority of Americans have no clue where India is and consider everyone between Europe and China as the same. 'Macaca' is a racial slur used by French Whites against North Africans who immigrate in large numbers to France. By using that term to refer to an Indian, the Senator representing the best of Americans displayed how much knowledge of the world he has.

Among one of the Senator's defense points is that he didn't know what the term meant. It doesn't matter! He meant to use a racial slur, it doesn't matter if he got the wrong one. That only shows he is stupid and not a closet racist.

So, my non-White friends, welcome to America, you will be racially profiled and treated differently in many places, be it police intolerance or general public ignorance. This is particularly important in the wake of 9/11, the London bombings and the recent foiled plot in England. You will always feel different no matter how long you stay here. While they will go to great lengths to show that they do not discriminate against race, you will definitely find out soon enough that some do!

September 2006 Visa Bulletin

Every month around the 15th day, the U.S. Dept. of State, releases the visa bulletin which lists who can avail of a visa number next month to adjust status to permanent residency. This bulletin breaks down the numbers based on the category and also seperates out over-subscribed countries from the rest of the world. When you apply for permanent residency you get a case number and a priority date. If your priority date is earlier than the date listed in the visa bulletin for your application category, USCIS will proceed with your case and in most cases you will get your permanent resident card in a few months. Here are the cut-off dates for employment-based permanent residency categories from the August 2006 visa bulletin:

For persons born in India:

Category	Cut-off Date	Movement from previous month
EB1	Current	Everyone can apply!
EB2	Unavailable	No one can file under this category
EB3	15 Apr 2001	Moved ahead by 14 days

For persons born in China:

Category	Cut-off Date	Movement from previous month
EB1	Current	No change
EB2	01 Mar 2005	No change
EB3	01 Mar 2002	Moved ahead by 5 months

For persons born in Phillipines:

Category	Cut-off Date	Movement from previous month
EB1	Current	No change
EB2	Current	No change
EB3	01 Mar 2002	Moved ahead by 5 months

For persons born in Mexico:

Category	Cut-off Date	Movement from previous month
EB1	Current	No change
EB2	Current	No change
EB3	22 Apr 2001	No change

For rest of the world:

Category	Cut-off Date	Movement from previous month
EB1	Current	No change
EB2	Current	No change
EB3	01 Mar 2002	Moved ahead by 5 months

Most IT related applicants would fall under EB3. That's backlogged by 5 years now for applicants born in India.

Immigrant Success Story

The anti-immigrants have to hate this immigrant success story. IIM, Calcutta and Yale University alumni Indra Nooyi is the first Indian-born CEO of PepsiCo. She is also only the 11th woman CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Congratulations to her! This has to be a wonderful Independence Day gift to her family and friends.

After spending her first 23 years in India and attaining an MBA from IIM Calcutta, she came to the U.S. on student visa to study at Yale University. She studied hard and worked nights to make ends meet. Twenty seven years later she is the CEO of PepsiCo, not only one of the biggest Fortune 500 company but also an icon of the Great American Dream. While at PepsiCo, Nooyi has played a vital role in starting Tricon . She also took the lead in the acquisition of Tropicana in 1998.

Where are the anti-immigrants now? If they had their way this woman would never have been in the U.S. in the first place.

Is opposition to H-1B racially biased?

With an overwhelming majority of H-1B visa holders coming from India, China or other Asian countries, may be there is a racial element to the opposition. Would there have been so much opposition and misinformation had it been that such large number of H-1B visa holders were Caucasian? Won't they have increased the visa numbers if they could not get in?

There is indeed such a visa in existance exclusively for Australians (where 92% of the population is Caucasian) called the E-3 visa which allows the same kind of people who are eligible for an H-1B visa to come in and work in the U.S. Moreover unlike H-1B visa holders they can stay indefinitely and their spouses can work too. Since the E-3 visa will also essentially have the same effect on American workers as the H-1B visa then why don't we see any opposition to this visa?

Obtaining U.S. permanent residence frustrates foreign professionals

News article from the Sacramento Bees: Hired hands: Wait for green card tries visa holders

Raghu Ballal, a civil engineer for the Shaw Group, plans to get his MBA in the United Kingdom after being frustrated at the wait for a green card in the U.S. He will apply for fast-track residency through the U.K.'s Highly Skilled Migrant Program.

"If I go to the United Kingdom now, I would be a U.K. citizen even before I became a green card holder in the United States," said Ballal, 30. Ballal's decision to try his luck in Europe is the byproduct of America's overtaxed system for legally admitting foreign workers, which could leave him hanging for five or more years and prevent him from pursuing a promotion while he waits.

Here again we have pricks at the Programmer's Guild talking crap to get attention. Their solution to end the green card wait? Kill the H1-B visa program.

"There wouldn't be so many people waiting for green cards if there weren't so many people on H-1B visas," said Kim Berry, a Sacramento high-tech worker who is president of a group called Programmers Guild, an anti-temporary visa group.

Brainiacs aren't they? No wonder then that they try to attract the unemployed with 1 dollar membership deals!

In the United States, about 140,000 employment-based green cards are available annually for applicants and their families. As of January of 2005, more than half a million applicants were waiting for visas, which are granted after a prolonged, multi-agency review.

In Britain's point-based system for highly skilled visas, Ballal's MBA from Berkeley or UCLA, not just Oxford, would give him a boost. So would his perfect English, education and work experience. Britain's highly skilled program doesn't require that an employer sponsor him for his initial visa. He can petition for himself even without a job offer if he can prove his skills are in demand. If he's accepted, he can change jobs and apply for the equivalent of a green card in two years, likely getting it in weeks. After two years he can apply to become a U.K. citizen, which would take months rather than years.

The truth about "H-1B only" ads

Many times consulting companies provide IT staff to other companies they call clients. These clients who don't want to deal with hiring their own IT staff outsource it to the consulting companies. The actual jobs exist at the client companies and not the consulting companies. The clients don't want to deal with recruiting, be it American programmers or H1B programmers and they look to the consulting companies for their IT needs. This business practice is called staffing and very common place in the U.S.

The consulting companies come in a variety of sizes from large (Keane, Oxford, IBM, Wipro etc) to small (Hanu Software). Whatever the size their business model is pretty straight forward - bill the client at a certain rate, take their cut for profit and pay the consultant the rest. Obviously as a consultant you wouldn't be happy if you are billed to the client at say $100/hour and what you get paid is $35/hour.

This is where smaller companies like Hanu Software come in. They target those candidates who have been at a client's project for sometime and are confident about them being there for some more time but want a better slice of the pie. So to attract these type of folks they put up ads in Dice or Monster and other community portals like Sulekha. The key here is that companies like Hanu Software don't have a job offer, it's the candidate they're looking for who has the job but wants to switch companies to get better pay. Companies like these are the only bargaining chip that seasoned consultants have to demand better pay since their visa is tied to the consulting company. The guild is actually hurting this unofficial competition and exposing the consultants to abuse by attacking these smaller companies.

Now Programmer's Guild is making a big fuss about these type of ads saying they're discriminating against Americans by only hiring H1B candidates. Are the people at the guild stupid or do they think the people who read their complaints are stupid?! It has to be one or the other. Which American would like to work with a company which takes half their pay when they can directly work for the client without a visa? There is no job! So how can they hire an American or anyone for that matter.

It is because there are not enough quality Americans for the jobs the client companies are outsourcing it to IT staffers in the first place. If there are more Americans readily available for the job, can't they easily undercut the consulting companies rates?

It seems with the IT job market now being very healty the guild is loosing its members and are making all the noise to get more attention and $$ via membership.