Michelle Malkin's Immigration Rants

As one of the comments at Huffington Post said involving the Dunkin Donuts ad, "Why is malkin such a racist? I know she isn't white." to which one of the response was "The two aren't mutually exclusive. There is no such thing as reverse racism. Racism is racism." This may be true but while not all right wing whites are anti-immigrants but so far all anti-immigrants have been right wing whites. Michelle Malkin is the only exception and the reason she is given so much visibility by the right wing media is because she lends credibility to the notion that it's not just whites who oppose (illegal) immigration. Some would even call her leading a PAC "Immigrants against Immigration". It might be interesting to note that Malkin is of Phillipino heritage and as some of the very right wingers who seem to echo her would call, "an anchor baby".

I do not support illegal immigration and I certainly oppose public welfare for the illegal immigrants but I believe the US needs a whole lot of unskilled labor and needs to find a solution to the current problems to maintain their lifestyle. The reason I bring this up is because there are particular elements in the lunatic right wing who are implicitly racist by demonizing immigrants of a particular region and especially target their rants on issues involving immigrants from South America, Asia and Africa. Not many Middle Easterners immigrate to the US but they tend to club all these immigrants and their issues together in their self-feeding rants. To them being illegal or legal is a small difference that gets ignored in their rants. I believe while they may not show that they oppose legal immigration, they will do nothing to improve it but will do every thing to attack the racial aspects of illegal immigration and there by implicitly malign all immigrants with those backgrounds.

EU Blue Card Update

A while back I posted about the 'Blue card' visa program from the EU to compete for the high skilled brains of the world. I recently came across one of the best analysis of this program here. You would think what is the motivation for the EU economies for such a program considering their large native population and generally better off economies? Well, here are some reasons:

85% of unskilled labor migration goes to the EU and 5% to the US, whereas 55% of skilled labor goes to the US and only 5% to the EU.

Imagine the scenario where even 25% of the world's skilled labor goes to the EU. What would that do to the US competitiveness?

In 2007, 270,000 high-skilled Europeans emigrated to the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

So, the region is experiencing a brain drain for better options but that only leaves openings for people from the rest of the world to fill in. I have to remind the readers that the looking at the June 2008 visa bulletin, you can see how much more quicker it is for people from Europe to get US permanent residency compared to the people from over subscribed countries like India or China.

1 EUR = 1.57 USD (as of today)

If salaries were a deciding factor, this equation above fixes a lot of the disparity. (As a side note, I just heard that a bunch of European tourists with their fatter wallets have landed in Martha's Vineyard for the summer. It's cheaper for them to vacation here than in Europe.)

In times of immense competition for the world's talent, only the most competitive immigration policies will attract the best talent. The US was the preferred destination for many of these but faced with the long and difficult immigration policies of the US, many of these would opt for the easier and better rewarding options in the EU.

Development of Immigration Legislation Proposals on the Senate Side

From attorney Mathew Oh's blog

• Thus far, it is the House that has been active in introducing immigration bills, particularly the employment-based immigration bills and the Senate has remained in low keys. However, according to the AILA, there was some movement on the Senate court as part of the Emergency War Supplement Bill. AILA reports that the following bills were introduced and added to the bill in the form of amendments to the Supplement Bill in the yesterday's mark-up session of the Senate Appropriation Committee:
  • AgJobs bill, introduced by Sen. Craig and Sen. Feinstein
  • H-2B bill on 3-year returning worker extension, introduced by Sen. Mikulski
  • Bill on recapture of unused EB immigrant visas, and early adjustment filing, introduced by Sen. Gregg and Sen. Murray
  • Bill to reauthorize the EB-5 Regional Center Investment Program
• The movement in the Senate side took a strategy of attaching the immigration bills to another bill unlike the House approach to legislate the immigration bills as independent bills.

[Update: This bill passed the senate on 5/23/08 without any of the immigration related amendments fearing a veto from the White House.]

With H-1B in limbo, Congressional backers push Green Cards

Efforts to increase the H-1B cap have been stuck in a legislative swamp, but U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) has introduced three bills in the last few weeks to help foreign nationals already working in the U.S. to obtain permanent residency. She announced her latest legislative effort late Wednesday.

News Link: http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=E9FCCA76-17A4-0F78-31943D83ADDC573B

Visa Bulletin - June 2008

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 gain permanent residency. This bulletin breaks down the numbers based on the category and also separates 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 June 2008 visa bulletin:

For persons born in India:

Category	Cut-off Date	Movement from previous month
EB1	Current	No change
EB2	01 Apr 2004	Advanced by 3 months
EB3	01 Nov 2001	No change

For persons born in China:

Category	Cut-off Date	Movement from previous month
EB1	Current	No change
EB2	01 Apr 2004	Advanced by 3 months
EB3	22 Mar 2003	No change

For persons born in Phillipines:

Category	Cut-off Date	Movement from previous month
EB1	Current	No change
EB2	Current	No change
EB3	01 Mar 2006	No change

For persons born in Mexico:

Category	Cut-off Date	Movement from previous month
EB1	Current	No change
EB2	Current	No change
EB3	01 Jul 2002	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 2006	No change

Most IT related applicants would fall under EB3. That's retrogressed by over 6 years now for applicants born in India.

Special announcement on EB-3 availability in the future:
Demand for numbers, primarily by Citizenship and Immigration Services Offices for adjustment of status cases, is expected to bring the Employment Third preference category very close to the annual numerical limit in June. As a result, this category is likely to experience retrogressions or visa unavailability beginning in July. Such action would only be temporary, however, and a complete recovery of the cut-off dates would occur for October, the first month of the new fiscal year.

Dollar's purchasing power

Don't want to sound like an economist because I have almost no formal education in that field but from what I have read and understood, prices of everything is going up while the value of the US dollar is going down.

It started with the housing bubble as home prices shot up much faster than income due to greed and some creative financing from Wall Street . As it turned out, without a rise in income, there's no way these mortgages could be paid. The results were mortgage defaults and a fall in home prices. This resulted in a credit crunch were no one wanted to lend money to anyone because of fear of not getting their money back. To stave off a financial breakdown, the US Federal Reserve decreased interest rates to almost negative rates(real rates considering inflation) at a time when Oil was already trading at record highs. The smart money saw what was coming and invested out of dollars and into anything that is real and necessary. Oil, metals and lately food commodities have all risen in prices as a result.

I also don't want to sound political but I believe Oil prices are also a derivative of the Iraq occupation but this is where we stand now. Take a look at the chart below to compare what $1 in 1800 means today and more particularly the steep decline in the recent past.

Decline in the U.S. dollar's purchasing power (1800-2005)
Source: Barron's

So, you may ask what this has to do with immigration to US? Well, it only means that the purchasing power of the dollar is decreasing as each month goes by while the salaries are staying the same (actually going down considering inflation). So, consider this when you make the financial decision to relocate to a new job here.

Bills introduced to replace lottery visas with advanced degree visas

Senator Judd Gregg (NH) introduced a bill "to replace the diversity visa lottery program with a program that issues visas to aliens with an advanced degree." This bill is co-sponsored by Sen. Lamar Alexander (TN). Sen. Elizabeth Dole (NC), Sen. John Sununu (NH), Sen. John Cornyn (TX), and Sen. Orrin Hatch (UT). These Senators are proposing to expand the immigration opportunities for Advanced Degree holder foreign workers in STEM or related fields without increasing the total annual number of immigrant visa under the current immigration system. Interesting legislative bill.

Some PR from the Senator who introduced this bill:

Sen. Gregg stated, "Talent is a nation’s most important resource in today’s information age, and our nation’s immigration policies need to catch up to this economic reality. In addition to increasing the number of H-1B visas and employment-based visas for highly skilled workers, I believe that Congress should realign our immigration programs so they better meet our economic needs, including the well-documented shortage of workers with advanced degrees in the math and sciences. By converting a lottery visa program that has marginal skills requirements into one that is focused on the best and the brightest, we strengthen our competitive advantage, spur economic and job growth here in the United States, and deter employers from sending work overseas where highly skilled talent is located. Our visa lottery programs should not just benefit those who are selected, but should have significant positive ramifications for our nation as a whole. I look forward to working with my colleges on this measure and other immigration proposal to keep America competitive."

New bills introduced to address employment based immigration issues

There's new action appearing in the high skilled immigration circles. Some new bills have been introduced in Congress to deal with the employment(skill) based immigration issues. One bill introduced by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D. CA) seeks to eliminate the per country limits on the immigration numbers and to end the spill-over of unused immigrant visa numbers between employment-based and family-sponsored categories. Finally, someone is trying to differentiate between skills and diversity.

Another bill brought on by the powerful healthcare lobby and introduced by Rep. Robert Waxler seeks to reserve 20,000 visa numbers out of the annual total for exclusive use by Nurses and Physical Therapists in the Emergency Nursing Supply Relief Act. The healthcare lobby always tries to be non-controversial to mainstream America by demanding new visa numbers but at the same time not increasing the total numbers. This at a time when there's almost 6 years worth of applicants in the queue. Not to mention the fact that each year, there are a lot of visa numbers wasted due to inefficiency in communication between the agencies.