Lou Dobbs and Associates fuming over Immigrants' success

With the limited success the legal immigrant group has had by getting the USCIS and DOS to honor the original visa bulletin, and the media coverage this relatively small group has had, it seems now Lou Dobbs & Associates (loose term for Lou Dobbs and like minded extremists) are venting their frustration on the legal immigrants. It just solidifies the point that these people are pure restrictionists. Have a look at the responses to this article from BusinessWeek has had.

Bruce
Jul 20, 2007 8:40 PM GMT
No one is against REASONABLE number of LEGAL immigrants but the H-1B visa program is essentially a scam. It's simply a way for firms to reduce their labor costs by increasing the number of available candidates for employment. Truth be known, Indians are famous for taking advantage of the H-1B program, for cheating it by not exiting the USA when their visa expires which they are supposed to do according to the law. It's all a scam - just like the now defunct immigration "reform" bill in the Senate last month. Foreign lobby groups pay off US politicians to allow more of their people into our nation. Time for this corrupt practice to wind down.

RG
Jul 20, 2007 8:23 PM GMT
In case you "immigrants" fail to read your H-1B visa, it is called a NON-IMMIGRANT VISA. That means you are supposed to leave the USA when the visa expires. Understand? Not bring a dozen of your relatives here to live with you forever. Why don't more Americans go into such "great" fields as IT? Young Americans now know that that once good field has been so diluted with foreigners, and salaries have come down due to an excess of labor. IT is no longer a desired occupation.

These are examples of hate-radio listeners who are getting so emotional over something that hardly affects their lives. 140,000 immigrants per year in a nation of 302,000,000 people is not even 0.05 percent of the population. Are we supposed to believe that the tiny fraction of the Americans who are against this represent the 300 million Americans? It's a democracy and its the majority opinion that counts and majority of Americans want high skilled legal immigration, period. Amen!

The Gandhi Protests Pay Off

Facing political pressure and legal action, the U.S. government may speed up green-card processing and make more slots available

Read the complete article at BusinessWeek

This post at ImmigrationVoice's forum is worth the read:

I've had it, I am moving to Canada
byeusa:
Dear Friends, I had it... I am moving to Canada in the next 2 months to work for guess who? Microsoft. Came to USA in 1997 for my masters, worked at Legato, Documentum and Opentext. Had to restart my GC twrice, once as the company laid me off and next for career progression. GC is still years years away. Interviewed with MSFT last month and got an offer to work in their Enterprise Collaboration team. MSFT looked at the visa mess I was in and offered me to work in Vancouver. I get my Canadian GC in 6 months and my wife can work from day one. I am abandoning my US dream for good;guess I would be satisfied with touching my 4 year old son's American passport.

I worked for a canadian company in US and now would be working for a US company in Canada. This is globalization. True Globalization. Any for those whiners belonging to IEEE and its propoganda machine, I would like to mention that I drew salries which were above way above the norm. I am sure I would be drawing more than 2 of his programmers combined. Ron- ask your folks to learn to compete and update their skills. They probably studied studied 'history of mathematics' as a math subject in high school instead of calculus. They were happy that they had the coolest Nintendo games while many like me were burning the midnight old figuring out data structures at Berkeley.

I hope Berney Sanders and his club of the CIR days are hearing the developments. Berney, fix the broken education system for job protection rather than building fences to prevent legal workers to come to this gifted country. More companies will leave for nearshore if the mess continues. Fix the system by closing the H1B loopholes that a small percentage of companies are exploiting. Don't bad mouth the H1B system which has given you so much talent that you could have never groomed, the talented individuals who have contributed to the society, social security system and what not. Patch the holes in the fence, do not erect a higher fence for which people need to pay $ 5000 to cross. And by the way if you have the inclination and the time- fix the broken LEGAL High Skilled immigration system.

Fate of U.S. Senator Vitter on the Edge for Involvement in the Madam's List

From Mathew Oh's website: This Senator from Luisiana who vigorously underminded and killed the CIR 2007 by introducing tons of amendments to S. 1639 for the purpose of filibuster turned out to be a customer of the madam services in the Beltway, according to the news report, and reportedly confessed himself that he was the sinner. He is the first term Senator. This has brought him to the edge of a thread for his political future. The madam's phone list has been recently released, putting a number of prominent legislators in the Beltway restless. The politcal enemies are fumbling through the stacks of phone lists to look for the names. Hmm.................................... Wonder who else are there?

Microsoft moves north

Unable to meet its hiring needs because of U.S. immigration policy, the software company is opening an office in Vancouver

MICROSOFT CORP. is expanding in the Pacific Northwest, hiring several hundred software wizards to help develop new products. Instead of landing at the Redmond, Wash., mother ship, however, the new workers will toil in Vancouver, British Columbia. Here's why, according to the company's news release (emphasis added): "The Vancouver area is a global gateway with a diverse population, is close to Microsoft's corporate offices in Redmond and allows the company to recruit and retain highly skilled people affected by immigration issues in the U.S."

LA Times link: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-microsoft10jul10,0,3731138.story

A Gift From Gandhi - Floral protest

Washington Post: Frustrated Green Card Applicants From India Use Methods Of Master

The idea for the protest began with the Indian immigration community on the online forum Immigration Voice, a site devoted to issues facing skilled, legal workers seeking permanent residence in the United States. Their method was inspired by Mohandas K. Gandhi, who spent years campaigning nonviolently for India's independence from Britain

Reversal Frustrates Green-Card Applicants

The government's surprise offer, then abrupt reversal, of an opportunity for thousands of skilled foreign workers to obtain permanent residency in the U.S. highlights the problems of the overtaxed immigration system and the frenzy that results from a chance to apply for a green card.

The scramble has put tens of thousands of workers and their families in limbo after many of them and their employers spent thousands of dollars in hopes of securing permanent residency. It may result in a class-action lawsuit against the government by frustrated applicants.

Article link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118359095890657571.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Citigroup to cut 17,000 jobs, but India headcount set to rise

PTI reports World's largest financial services firm Citigroup Inc today said it will eliminate 17,000 jobs or nearly five per cent of its global workforce, even as it plans to move 9,500 positions to India and other low-cost locations.

The company could move a large chunk of its jobs -- which could be in the range of 5,00-8,000 -- to India, especially for equity research, investment banking and back-office transaction-related activities, sources close to the developeent said. The total number of jobs to be eliminated equal more than half of the total number of positions Citigroup added to its workforce in 2006.More than 9,500 jobs will be moved to lower-cost locations, both domestically and internationally, the company said.

ISB student bags $274,000 job offer

From Hindustan Times:

In a world where any job offer is better than no offer, a graduate of the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad has walked away with a Rs 1.18 crore (over $274,000) annual package at the end of another great year of placements at the campus. The student from the Class of 2007 attracted the highest international cost-to-company annual package of Rs 1.18 crore, while the average global CTC stood at Rs 59.5 lakh, the school's dean M Rammohan Rao said, announcing the results of the placement season.

IBS as some of you may know was founded on December 20, 1999 by a group of Fortune 500 entrepreneurs in collaboration with Andhra Pradesh's state government. Nara Chandrababu Naidu, the then chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh played a key role in establishing the institution. IBS partners include London Business School, Wharton Business School and Kellogg School of Management.

Signs of changing times?

March Visa Bulletin

The reason I didn't blog the March visa bulletin is simple, it's exactly the same as the February visa bulletin. Absolutely no movement in any of the employment-based visa dates. So the USCIS is telling each of the half a million applicants, please wait another month to see if there is any change. What a joke! I can't believe this is supposed to be the most advanced nation in the world. If the USCIS were a company, they would be bankrupt by now!

Update on the Developer position

It's now over three months since we started the job search. We had a candidate last week, who also got two other offers in much bigger firms. Come on all you unemployed, under employed programmers/developers, where are you? Ron Hira would like us to believe there are plenty of them but we can't find any!

Labor substitution to be eliminated

The U.S. Department of Labor(DOL) is planning to eliminate a provision whereby companies who filed for Labor Certification for a candidate could replace it with another candidate. This may seem as if DOL is getting strict, but the fact is that companies use the approved labor certs to lure new candidates or even sell it to unscrupulous elements when the person for whom the original labor cert was filed is no longer with the company. With the backlog elimination expected to be completed by September, there are going to be a lot of older labor certs approved where the person is now no longer with the company. It is only fair for the people waiting in the retrogression queue to get the visa numbers before new candidates are sold these approved certs with earlier priority dates.

Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill

It's round two of the CIR bill drama. Senator Kennedy (D-MA) is planning to introduce the bill in the Senate this month with most of the action due in April. Watch for more anti-immigrant rhetoric appearing among the "Faux" news crowd. Last time around, the Senate had passed the bill by a majority (and the Indian news media celebrated as if it was already a law!), but the bill was left in the dust by the House Republicans. It was election year and no one wanted to get caught with mud on their hands. This time around it's a different story, the Democrats control the House and the Republications who did the maximum mud-slinging, all lost their seats. It would be interesting to see what Tom Tancredo (R-CO) and Co. do this time to stop this bill from being passed.

Another attack on H1 visas

Ron Hira, the Indian born professor at Rochester Institute of Technology has come up with numbers that may pose this question. Indian outsourcers file the most applications for temporary H-1B visas. Are they using them to train staff for jobs abroad? Everyone knows that India is becoming the IT hub of the world. So is it any wonder that Indian companies use the most H1 visas? I wonder what he's trying to convey. That's when I did some research to find Ron Hira's history. (Note: Ron is not an Indian name, he probably changed it to Ron to make him appear more American, what a faker!)

Back in April 2005, he came out with a book, Outsourcing America: What’s Behind Our National Crisis and How We Can Reclaim American Jobs. So that's what it is, he's a book salesman. He will continue to twist numbers to suit his views in the book. He make these ridiculous claims without any credibility in economics.

I am on H1, and I am not training to be doing any work overseas. My hard work over that last few years have made this company grow more than 100%. And thank the press for publishing any story they can get on this topic without doing a background check on the person. I know three companies including mine who are trying to hire Americans for a senior developer position and can't get any good candidates. Two out of the five candidates we got for interviews were Asian Americans. This trend seems to be growing as we see the economy posting record growth.

NEWS FLASH FOR ALL H1B HATERS: We're out of the 2002 recession, so all H1 haters, wake up and go get a real job. There are so many out there. You may be my next colleague.

Immigrants behind 25 percent of startups - BusinessWeek

Foreign-born entrepreneurs were behind one in four U.S. technology startups over the past decade, according to this study by Duke University and UC Berkeley. BusinessWeek further reports from the study that immigrant entrepreneurs' companies employed 450,000 workers and generated $52 billion in sales in 2005, according to the survey. Their contributions to corporate coffers, employment and U.S. competitiveness in the global technology sector offer a counterpoint to the recent political debate over immigration and the economy, which largely centers on unskilled, illegal workers in low-wage jobs.

One of the study's biggest surprises was the extent to which Indians led the entrepreneurial pack. Of an estimated 7,300 U.S. tech startups founded by immigrants, 26 percent have Indian founders, CEOs, presidents or head researchers, the study found. Indian immigrants founded more tech startups from 1995 to 2005 than people from the four next biggest sources -- United Kingdom, China, Taiwan and Japan -- combined.

Without permanent citizenship, inventors are more likely to take valuable intellectual property elsewhere -- and U.S. companies would have to compete with them, Wadhwa said. "The bottom line is: Why aren't these people citizens?" Wadhwa said. "We're giving away the keys to the kingdom. This is a big, big deal once you figure out what this means for U.S. competitiveness."

Agriculture workers get preference over high skilled workers

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who has been relentlessly pushing the AgJobs bill since the CIR days, has introduced her puppy in the 110th Congress by itself. The bill plans to provide the previous illegals the Blue Card status for two periods of three years each. The Senate passed CIR bill of 2006 had these provisions in them and now they can't even wait for the bill to be re-introduced this year. Sounds a little surprising right? Well then here is the alarming part. Quietly worded in painstaking detail in the bill are provisions for their spouses to work too. This is an outright slap in the face of H-1B workers. Their spouses cannot work even if they have a Master's degree. Yet, spouses of former illegal aliens can now work legally? I'm not against their spouses working but does it sound fair on the thousands of spouses here legally on H4 visas?

The lack of legal work privileges for spouses of the skilled workers is why you see a majority of unmarried younger individuals on H-1B visas. Younger workers generally have lesser experience. Lesser experience means lesser starting salaries. This would then appear as if foreign workers are working for lesser pay than Americans. The anti-H1 groups then use this statistic to point out why they should restrict or stop the H1 visa program. This then causes the law makers to be extremely careful when enacting legislation, to not give too much away to the H1 workers. Not enabling spouses to work is one such restriction to prevent too many American jobs going to foreigners. Doesn't seem fair right? But that's how it is!

February 2007 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 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 February 2007 visa bulletin:

For persons born in India:

Category	Cut-off Date	Movement from previous month
EB1	Current	No change
EB2	08 Jan 2003	No change
EB3	08 May 2001	No change

For persons born in China:

Category	Cut-off Date	Movement from previous month
EB1	Current	No change
EB2	22 Apr 2005	No change
EB3	01 Aug 2002	No change

For persons born in Philippines:

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

For persons born in Mexico:

Category	Cut-off Date	Movement from previous month
EB1	Current	No change
EB2	Current	No change
EB3	15 May 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 Aug 2002	No change

Since the past eight months, EB3 India has not advanced beyond May 2001. This is the first visa bulletin in a while where there has been no change in any of the above visa categories. Must have been due to the December vacation month.

Cisco's Grand India Ambitions

Here's the big story of the day and further proof that globalization is forcing companies to change they way they do business.

The networking-equipment maker is shifting 20% of top brass to India, in a bid to set up a global, developing-technology hub on the subcontinent. After 11 years of low-key presence Cisco is now investing $1.1 billion in India in a variety of initiatives. "This is the largest commitment outside of Silicon Valley, as India is important to our global strategy," said John Chambers, Cisco's chairman and chief executive officer.

So what is the reason for this sudden transformation? It appears that they have learnt a lesson or two from their experiences in China.

In China, homegrown rivals like Huawei and Harbour Networks have been grabbing share from Cisco. The other issue is cost. Huawei can compete against Cisco on price because of its cheap talent pool. Facing those pressures, Cisco will find it hard to maintain its high margins unless it develops its own vast force of low-cost engineering talent.

This is an excellent example of how globalization works. While it opens up vast new markets, it also makes the business extremely competetive. There is no way Cisco can compete unless it employs a model similar to its competitors. Closed-door restrictionists will only see one side of this story - Cisco is moving top jobs to India..waah waah, mommy help me!

... Cisco now wants to make India its global hub for developing technologies in routing, software, and network management. It is investing in a manufacturing facility in Chennai in south India, and has roped in global manufacturing partner Foxconn of Taiwan to help out. While Cisco will make specific voice-technology products initially for the Indian market, it will eventually use the facility as a global sourcing base to export high-tech products. To make all of this happen, Cisco is tripling its headcount in India to 6,000 in the next couple of years. The move comes at a time when India is facing a severe dearth of engineers and every big and small information-technology company is on a hiring spree.

All those who made New Year resolutions to changes jobs and move to U.S., think twice, as we will see more top companies shifting top jobs from the U.S. to compete globally.

Disadvantages of not having a green card

A green card(permanent resident card) is not just another DHS document. It has a lot of importance when you travel internationally, open bank accounts, apply for driver's license. A post on ImmigrationVoice summarizes the hassles caused to persons without the green card owing to indifferent government rules.

Transit visa required at many international airports such as London, Paris, Germany. None required if you hold a recent valid U.S. permanent resident card.

Hassles and extra paperwork to open bank accounts, applying for student loans, home mortgages. Many application forms specifically allow U.S. citizens or green card holders only.

Problems with job changes. This is the single biggest disadvantage to not having a green card. One post summarizes this well.

"The biggest disadvantage for us is in our jobs - so many jobs are advertised with a clear mention that they don't support visa. This is not restricted to some mom and pop tech shops even some bigger companies do that. Also in big companies where H1B's are welcomed (like Cisco, Microsoft etc); they dont take you if you have less remaning time on your H1B. I knew a case where a friend of mine was interviewed and offered a very good position in one such reputed companies. The interview/background check process took two/three months at the end of it they realized that the personal have only 1year 4months left on his H1B visa. So they told him they wont take him; reason given is company policy that they need atleast 2 years on your H1B so that they have enough time to sponsor greencard etc. There are so many such instances where we are losing big time on our careers in the peak of our lifes." - nk2006

Driver's license issues. Here it all depends on your luck as one post summarizes it all:

"I have been in different states and this drivers licence rule differ substantially. California / florida strictly goes with your H1b validity date. For H4, it is much more difficult and my wife did not get it in CA but somehow managed ot get it in FL. When I moved to wisconsin, they gave me 3+years over my H1b validity date and also for my wife. The entire DMV process took us 5 mins whereas in FL, we stood in line from morining 3 am till evening 5pm and eventually got appointment for next day. When I asked about this in WI DMV, they said Wisconsin does not follow this and they are not aware of this." - GCBy3000

Missing out on thousands of dollars in savings on federal programs for students.

"My son who is in high school goes for a federal funded summer program every year. he is cursing me now as he cannot claim the $1000 stipend since he doesn't have an SSN(green card)." - GCAmigo

These are the real life hardships that legal residents face when there is no judgment on their application for permanent residency even after years of filing their papers. Many people think that the green card is just a document granting them permanent resident status but the examples above summarize the many real life scenarios where that single card is the difference between a simple and smooth transaction or a stressed out experience involving a lot of time and money.

Happy New Year!

Wishing all of my readers a very happy new year 2007. If you like me are stuck in the legal permanent resident application black hole, I hope this is the year where we see some light.