Chủ Nhật, 3 tháng 7, 2011

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  • Macaca
    05-29 08:22 PM
    The Newest Lobbying Tool: Underwear (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/28/AR2007052801091.html) By Cindy Skrzycki (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/cindy+skrzycki/), Tuesday, May 29, 2007

    It was inevitable. In the Internet age, interest groups seeking influence in Washington are joining presidential candidates in discovering a new electronic tool to press their agenda: YouTube.

    "Send your underwear to the undersecretary'' urges the actress in the Competitive Enterprise Institute's stinging 66-second anti-regulatory video posted on YouTube, a free video-sharing site that is a subsidiary of Google. The video blames a 2001 Energy Department rule for an energy-efficiency standard that it says has made new models of washing machines more expensive while getting laundry less clean.

    The underwear video illustrates what other advocacy groups are finding out: YouTube is a cheap, creative way to get a message to a potentially vast audience. This slow migration is in addition to more traditional lobbying approaches, such as direct mail, Web sites and scripted phone calls to federal officials.

    "This is the next step,'' said Missi Tessier, a principal with the Podesta Group, a Washington lobbying firm. She said her company is working on a YouTube piece pushing for more federal funding for basic research for one client, the Science Coalition, a group of research universities. "We are always trying to find ways to get our message out.''

    Concerned Families for ATV Safety, which wants to keep children off all-terrain vehicles, turned to YouTube to lobby for more federal oversight at the agency and congressional level. One of the parents produced the video and posted it May 18.

    "We decided to put it on to raise awareness about how dangerous the machines are,'' said Carolyn Anderson of Brockton, Mass., who lost a son in an ATV accident and is a co-founder of the group.

    Some of the presidential candidates already have calculated that YouTube postings will reach the same younger audience that regularly visits social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. A few federal agencies have taken the plunge, too.

    Officials at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said it expects its YouTube messages to be ridiculed, laughed at, remade and spoofed. And they are. Its anti-drug message is also reaching the right demographic.

    The Consumer Product Safety Commission realizes that YouTube would be a great way to broadcast product recall and safety messages, though it has not produced a video for it.

    "There are a tremendous amount of people who use that Web site,'' said Scott Wolfson, an agency spokesman. "But we worried about the integrity of the message being changed by users.''

    The YouTube audience hardly seems like a demographic that would be interested in washing-machine efficiency. Still, the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, which opposes energy-saving fluorescent bulbs and increasing the gas mileage of cars and trucks, has 43 videos on the site. Many of them are snippets of speeches and testimony with few user "hits."

    And then there's the underwear video.

    "We figured we would try a very fast, inexpensive campaign that would go viral," said Sam Kazman, general counsel at the CEI and head of its Death by Regulation project. The video went up May 16 and had 1,306 hits in the first week, a respectable showing, especially considering the subject matter.

    Kazman said the campaign cost virtually nothing. He wrote the script and one employee did the acting and another filmed it.

    The CEI Web site links to the video and to a June Consumer Reports magazine article that rated top- and front-loading washing machines for energy efficiency and performance. The magazine found that since the Energy Department issued an efficiency rule in 2001, the performance of various machines has varied widely.

    "Not so long ago, you could count on most washers to get your clothes very clean," the article says. "Not anymore. Our latest tests found huge performance differences among machines. Some left our stain-soaked swatches nearly as dirty as they were before washing. For best results, you'll have to spend $900 or more.''

    Kazman, who said he owns a 21-year-old Whirlpool washing machine, took this as confirmation that predictions his group made in 2001, that the rule would wreck a "low-priced, dependable home appliance," have come true.

    The manufacturers of home appliances, energy-efficiency groups and regulators who are being mocked in the video disagree.

    Celia Kuperszmid Lehrman, deputy home editor at Consumer Reports, said the underwear campaign takes the ratings out of context. "We support energy standards for washing machines,'' she said. "There are alternatives that will wash as well as older machines. They cost more to buy but not to operate."

    "I think it's obnoxious; I don't think this dog barks,'' said Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project in Boston, a coalition of industry, consumer, environmental and state interests.

    DeLaski, who was involved in the negotiations that led to the 2001 rule, said it was expected at the time that prices would go up but that consumers would save on utility bills.

    "That's a regulation working pretty damn well," he said, adding that consumers can expect to save $80 annually on utility bills with the new models.

    Michael McCabe, a senior engineer at the Energy Department, said that nine out of 10 models Consumer Reports tested are in the price range the department predicted when it issued the rule, an extra $250.

    On the underwear front, Kazman said he sent his own (clean) underwear to the Energy Department. The department said the mailbox of Undersecretary Dennis R. Spurgeon is still empty.

    Kazman blamed the late delivery on another government policy, which subjects packages to irradiation.




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  • GC_Optimist
    12-26 06:57 PM
    There was news about CIR on CNN. and according to Senate Majority leader Reid . Democrats have been voted to
    pass CIR . Kennedy was working on this and it would be discussed as a priority.
    Democrats are hoping for support from President on this.




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  • willIgetGC
    08-12 07:51 PM
    We will get GC if they Outsource these jobs to India and China, any ways these people are not working zimbly telling name checker, they dont want to yearn meney.




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  • sanju
    05-15 05:42 AM
    hey guys,

    M new to this. I have applied for a H1 B this year ....i went thru the pdf on bill S 1035 ...& it states the following:

    Section 2(e) Prohibition of Outplacement
    1. Employer cannot place, outsource, lease, or otherwise contract for the
    placement of an employee on H-1B. (This prohibits any consulting work for
    an employee on H-1B).
    2. This applies to all the application filed after the enactment of this bill.

    Does it mean that all existing consulting work will also be in danger??

    YES

    M a bit confused as point 2 states that it will be for all applications after the enactment of the bill. Does that affect H1-b holders frm this year itself??

    YES




    Durbin-Grassley going after 9 firms.

    http://www.team4news.com/Global/story.asp?S=6514384&nav=0w0v

    U.S. Senators question companies about visas

    Two US senators are questioning several companies about their use of a visa program for highly skilled workers. Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Dick Durbin of Illinois are focusing on nine companies -- several of them foreign-based. Those companies used nearly 20,000 of the 75,000 H-One-B visas that were available last year. H-One-B visas are for high-skilled workers and are heavily used in the high-tech industry. The industry has long complained that too few visas are available. Grassley and Durbin, both on the Senate Judiciary Committee's immigration subcommittee, sent letters to the nine companies asking questions about visa use, wages and layoffs. The top users were identified with statistics from Citizenship and Immigration Services. The letters, posted on Grassley's Web site, were addressed to:

    Infosys Technologies Limited in Freemont, California
    Wipro Limited of Mountainview, California
    Tata Consultancy Services Limited of Arlington, Virginia
    Saytam Computer Services Limited of Andhra Pradesh, India
    Patni Computer Systems of Mumbai, India
    Larsen & Toubro Infotech Limited of Mumbai, India
    I-Flex Solutions of Mumbai, India
    Tech Mahindra Americas of Englewood, Colorado and
    Mphasis Corporation of Bangalore, India
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Here is a letter from Sen. Durbin and Grassley to these companies
    http://grassley.senate.gov/releases/2007/05142007.pdf



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  • needhelp!
    09-29 11:21 AM
    And oh.. we already bought a house in 2002 (had never imagined that my status would still be "temporary" after 9 years of doing the right thing)




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  • pitha
    04-08 10:04 PM
    Could not agree with you more on this. They have systematically targeted people of particular races. This is nothing but high tech lynching. If these people are against H1 just come out a say that. But these hypocrites don�t have the balls to say that so they are targeting a particular race.

    Imagine telling an Indian or Chinese doctor to treat only Indian and Chinese patients and not anybody else. That�s what this law is essentially doing to technology consultants. You can only work within the company but cannot do consulting. But if you are an American citizen you can do consulting, body shopping etc but you cannot do that with H1!!!!.

    I didn�t have much of an opinion regarding a path to citizenship to illegals, I could not understand why Kennedy was spoiling the whole CIR by stressing on path to citizenship for illegals. Now I understand exactly why Kennedy and some others stress about path to citizenship for illegals. They don�t want the illegals to go through these same gotchas that they are trying to put us h1's through. Kennedy knows that unless the illegals are given a path to citizenship they will be constantly exploited like we are.

    The people who are sponsoring this law are xenophobes masquerading as h1 reformers. Of all the groups who claim they are trying to reform h1 you can easily weed out the pretenders and the real ones. The only real one is IEEE-USA They know H1b is necessary but don�t agree with some exploitation going on with the system. So the IEEE-USA made some of these proposals
    1. Give green cards to US educated students directly instead of H1
    2. Delink H1 from employers which will make them more mobile and not subjected to exploitation by employers.

    Now IEEE-USA was truly interested in reforming H1 that why they made the above proposals. Now these xenophobes who proposed this draconian law did not include any of these proposals, why? Because there objective is not to reform H1 but to throw us out and kill h1 based on an excuse called reforming h1. If they were really interested in reforming h1 they would have included the above proposals in the bill.

    This bill will pass one way or the other. The only solution for us would be 485 without priority date. But do we have the will and more importantly the resources to pull that off. Other than the personal effort of the core team and 200 odd contributing members who do we have to count on. People atleast now contribute, even before we could take one step forward we have been pushed 2 steps backward. As logiclife has said its no longer just about green card our very own existence is being eliminated. Please contribute atleast now for your own good.



    So all said and done, we may now go down based on a racially motivated bill. I am not sure what it takes to educate the law makers, I would like to see the senior personnel at IV and more analysts to look into what can be done on this bill.



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  • waitnwatch
    06-01 09:16 AM
    jkays

    my comment was all tongue in cheek. My only point is that Lou comes off as more conservative than Shaun Hannity and isn't that something.

    Even then, in his previous avatar, wasn't Lou licking the boots of the corporates! How come he has gone off in a diametrically opposite direction.




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  • smuggymba
    07-28 02:57 PM
    what did that dumb O bama do with 60 senators and 260 congress democrats in the house-------GHANTA.......he is the most useless guy on earth....

    Indians always seem to think Democrats will help them but they are like our Indian politicians only, all promises no action

    Atleast republicans listen to Microsoft, Google etc and gives some visa etc...AllObama does is warn about Indians and Chinese growth



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  • langagadu
    12-26 11:29 PM
    I would say india should start war and move every a** out of POK.



    Amma,

    I agree with you. We can start the war. But what next? How to end it? US is struggling to end the war in Iraq. And India is not US and Pakistan is not Iraq. It would be a closely fought battle although we have some edge.

    Whenever talka bout war breaks out, Pakistan does nuclear sabre-rattling.
    Indian leadership should tell the world in no uncertain terms that if pakistan uses any unconventional weapons, then all pakistan's cities and towns would be wiped off. Yes, we may loose people but 'proud nation' of pakistan would disappear from the map. I'm against death of innocent but my point is to remove the threat of nuclear weapons.

    India should say that our options are not limited by presence of absence of nuclear weapons. If pakistan uses nuclear weapons, then the guy that pulls the trigger should know that there wont be pakistan anymore. We shud deploy some of the weapons in South and in Sea to give a fitting reply in case one is lobbed at us. This response should be the default option and ingrained into the psyche of Military leaders. And PM and all military chief should sign a declaration to that effect. Again, I'm against innocents but my point is to remove the threat of nuclear weapons.

    Having said that, we need to do a conventional warfare. But I guess that, it would be more of a dogfight that would bleed us economically. Meanwhile, we need to strengthen the laws but also ensure it is not abused ( corruption and bias are something that is prevalent among people with power..it wud be very hard but people with power shud be very disciplined). Diplomatically pressurize the failed nation of Pakistan and do undercover ops in Balochistan and NWFP. Collaborate with Sindhi Mujahirs and create a division between Urdu speaking Punjabis and Sindhi speaking Mujahirs and Pashutun groups.
    IK Gujral stopped the covert ops. It need to be restarted.

    We need to do all we could do to tell Pakistan that this wont be a free ride ANYMORE!!

    One of the Pakistani General remarked to Benazir saying "Madam, creating trouble in Kashmir using Jihadis is like maintaining an extra brigade with no cost to tax payers"

    We need to show that it comes with a COST. War is not an option.

    Typically, the media and Indians living abroad beat the drums of war a bit more than people actually living there now.

    If you have any Pakistani friends/neigbors/colleagues in USA, how many of you have talked to them about this situation? And what is the response?


    Peace,
    G




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  • gc28262
    12-24 03:45 PM
    What a tiresome thread!!!

    Several years ago, people actually made an effort to make IV an organization representing all skilled workers, from all parts of the world. Now, immigration matters are totally irrelevant on the forums. Heck, forget about being an exclusively India focused forum, as this thread demonstrates, it is a venue to vent on matters even more narrowly focused - My religion, my sect, my opinion, my petty prejudices. If this is not irrelevant enough, we have enough threads on red dot-green dots to justify a whole separate category of forums :rolleyes:
    Anyway, it does a pretty good job of turning off people. I guarantee you this thread alone has contributed significantly in influencing many planning on attending the March rally to change their mind. It sure did mine.

    Can't agree more. I wonder when IV core will wake up and start moderating these threads.

    IV has become a platform to turn away people than uniting.
    Maybe we can start the count-down for the death of IV as an Immigration site.



    .



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  • damialok
    04-07 02:24 PM
    I firmly believe in the Contrarian Theory. When speculators run, its time to get in and BUY. I owned two homes and I am in the process to getting a third one. I would be a good candidate for those TV shows on HGTv/TLC. I buy a home build equity(through appreciation) and flip. This will get me closer to my DREAM home. I cannot see myself in a home for more than 5 years.

    The inventory glut in (SF Bay Area) is not desirable, they talk about east contra-costa and south Santa Clara but there are not much available in core bay-area. The inventory is basically non-desirable.

    Simple math, just estimate the number of immigrants that will be ready to buy a home in SF Bay. Just look at the inventory in desirable neighborhoods. They dont match.
    Stretching (financially) yourself is always uncomfortable but it can reap you huge dividends. If you are not comfortable, then I would say keep aside monthly payments that would cover 6 months and your home should be sold incase you need to get out of it.

    No other investment in US(for individuals) is as leveraged as homes/real-estate. You invest 5% and reap the benefits(or losses) of the rest.




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  • thakurrajiv
    03-26 05:01 PM
    So what do you advise, is it right time to refinance or wait it out and why?
    Unfortunately, there are no simple answers. Mortgage rates are tied to 10 year bond rate, so they generally are not affected much by short term fed rate. With credit crunch, bond market is in real bad shape.
    Fed is trying to supply short term funds to ease this crunch. I don't know how low Fed will go for this. What I am seeing is mortgage rates being stable or going down a little in near term bcoz of Fed easing. For long term, I believe rates will go up as bonds have to become attractive to get new investors.This may not be the best ( absolute bottom) but definitely very good time to refinance if it makes sense for your conditions.
    For first time buyers like me, there are a lot of parameters to be considered. In my opinion the parameters are tilted towards faster house price drop . Hence I am waiting at least for a year. I will not do anything till next spring.



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  • GCScrewed
    07-13 06:34 PM
    Needless to say that the distincation between EB2 and EB3 has become so meaniningless now. How many positions really satisfy the EB2 requirements? From what I heard that most people just try to get around the system to get an EB2. One of the persons who filed EB2 told me that a high school graduate would probably be able to work in that position too.

    Just my observation.

    If you believe this to be the case. ie that a high school graduate should be able to do that job. Then that person should not get a green card for that job.

    People, please think before you post and write letters. It is important to be rational and not put your foot in your mouth.

    This is EB immigration and it is hierarchial. That is quite simply a fact not an opinion. The sooner people understand that, the better, and then everyone can channel their frustrations into broader fixes. Unless that can be done we will see these less than well planned, less than well coordinated, fitful efforts, and an internecine warfare that will make us a laughing stock and undermine the heroic efforts of IV core.[/QUOTE]

    I am just stating the fact. The position was not my position. So I can't speak too much about it. But that was the person who worked there told me. The most important point is that a lot of EB2s do not deserve it at all. This is especially true for smaller companies including those body shops, where a lot of wiggle room exist on how you describe the job requirements. In large companies, they tend to have more strigent requirments on what category to file. A lot of people filed under EB3 before the retrogression starting in late 2004 and 2005 because they did not pay too much attention on this issue (that's their bad - lessons learned).

    Although I don't see the data yet, I bet if you compare the proportion of EB2 applicants (or EB3 applicants), you will see a great difference before and after late 2004. Why? Because that's when the EB3 retrogression started and people began to move onto EB2. Are there so much more EB2 positions after 2004 than before? I doubt.

    I think that's what really make people upset, esp. those got stuck in every stage, from BEC, I140, from name check and 485. All these simply because they changes something without considering those in line already.




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  • satishku_2000
    05-16 05:12 PM
    Both are problems. The misuse of H-1B visa petitions prevent honest people from obtaining such a visa. That is not right. The issue of the illegal immigrants in this country is an ugly one as well. In my personal opinion, I do not believe any talks of amnesty should affect people with green card petitions pending. People given amnesty should go to the very back of the line and pay a serious fine on top of that.


    In earlier posts you were talking about how people have to leave if they can not get their H1 renewed under new law saying some one who cannot find "real job" should leave.

    What kind of real jobs these undocumented people have , that your beloved Senator loves them so much ? Shouldn't they be deported first according to you law and order folks?



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  • logiclife
    05-16 12:14 PM
    No need to have Durbin's bill. Just ban Outsourcing, then all jobs will come back and everybody will be happy here in US.

    US congress cannot force investors to invest money only in US and get work done only in US.

    Its not possible for US Government to ban outsourcing. The only thing they can do is create incentives to limit outsourcing. However, if a company still wants to outsource jobs overseas, Congress cant do ANYTHING about it.




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  • abracadabra102
    12-30 09:48 AM
    at the risk of adding to this "no longer relevant" thread - there is a huge difference between US and India gaining independence.....in case of the former - it was some Britishers now settled in America fighting other Britishers (loyalists to the throne) for autonomy and independence......

    India was perhaps the first successful example of natives gaining independence from a colonial European power....

    also - to brush up on some more history - India was not occupied in 1600 - actually East India Company was established in that year.....the real establishment and consolidation of territorial control happened between two historical events (Battle of Plassey in 1757 and Sepoy Mutiny in 1857).....if we consider the 1757 date as start of colonization in true earnest - then India was independent in 190 years (1947 - 1757) against your calculation of 189 years for USA (as per your post - 1789-1600) - so not bad for a mostly non-violent struggle :-)

    Also - one of the reasons Atlee thought it was too expensive to maintain colonies was because of all the Quit India and Civil Disobedience type regular movements -these movements took much political and military bandwidth that Britain simply did not have after the war.....if maitaining a colony was easy sailing - i doubt Britain would have given it up easily and we have to credit the non-violent movements for helping India becoming a pain in the neck for Britain......

    1600 was the time Britishers set foot in US and India. You are right that the actual consolidation of power (in India) started around 1750s in India. At the same time, the actual American revolution started in 1775 and is over effectively by 1781 when George Washington's army defeated Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown. (This Cornwallis bloke returned to UK with his tail between his legs and was appointed as Governor General of India and he was very successful there. As usual we made a tiger out of a mouse :-) ). After Sepoy revolt of 1857, we had to whine for a good 90 years for our independence. Americans started it in 1775/76 and is over by 1783, in just 8 years. Before 1775/76, Americans were willing subjects of British crown, but Indians were not.



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  • baala9
    08-06 10:07 AM
    I do agree that points raised by Rolling Flood is not well received by most in this forum.But I would pray that no one gets personal and keep the exchanges healthy.

    I do feel that this porting rule is a double edged sword with both pros and cons.But the question is : is it flawed enough to scrapped??

    I must add though, I see were Rolling flood is coming from.Just consider this scenario: Two guyz A&B graduate with a Bachelors degree at the same time.A decides to pursue higher studies and B takes up a job. After a year they file for B' EB3 at his work, while A is still at school.By the time A graduates and a EB2 is filed for him , B is also eligible for EB2.But here is the catch,B gets a much earlier PD than A.So was A a dumb dude that he decided to go to grad school.Does academic experience count for nothing against work experience???

    Its something to ponder upon.




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  • SunnySurya
    12-22 04:32 PM
    My feeble mind is unable to decipher your point, please explain a sentence a two.
    Only thing I know is group of 10 killed 300 in Mumbai
    and group of 21 killed 2000 in New York
    Where is the gray in there?
    Alright! Let us be adults. It is like Sri Lanka going all over and telling the world that LTTE is as lethal as Al Qaida and is a threat to US, UK, Israel and Europe. Although US and UK has declared them as terrorist organization, I think it was more because they had a hand in Rajiv Gandhi's assasination.
    Agreed, LTTE is a terror org and their issue is Sinhalese treatment of Tamils.
    (another example of the tyranny of the majority against minority) .
    Lankans may be followers of Buddha but when it came to Tamils, they were far from being a Buddha and more like anti-buddha!


    And Israel did the same thing too. It projected its conflict with Palestinians as part of Bush's global war on terror, the centre piece of which was a war-of-choice in Iraq. Russians tried to project their conflict in Chechnya as part of Global war on terror. Now Georgia is trying to project it as a victim. The line between aggressor and the victim is becoming increasingly blurred. That is the reason I believe, this issue is much more than black and white with a shade of Gray all over it. We can argue till the cows come home but until the countries understand the motivation of (any) enemy, the enemy is not going to be defeated.




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  • Macaca
    12-30 06:57 PM
    A Bridge to a Love for Democracy (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/us/30iht-letter30.html) By RICHARD BERNSTEIN | New York Times

    I write this, my last �Letter from America,� looking out my window at my snowy Brooklyn neighborhood. It�s midmorning Wednesday, three days after our Christmas weekend blizzard, and my street has yet to receive the benefit of a snowplow.

    Cars, as the prize-winning novelist Saul Bellow once put it, are impounded by the drifts. The city is still partly paralyzed, pleasantly, in a way. There�s nothing like a heavy snowfall to give one a bit of a respite, to turn the ordinary, like walking to the corner store, into a little adventure. And there�s the countrylike stillness of this city block filled with snow, absent the usual traffic.

    It seems a good moment, in other words, to pause and reflect. My thoughts turn to a very unsnowy moment in 1972 in a village called Lowu, which was the last village in the Crown Colony of Hong Kong just before the border with China. I was a graduate student in Chinese history and a stringer for The Washington Post going to the territory of Chairman Mao for the first time in my life.

    There was a short trestle bridge at Lowu. I�ve often wondered if it�s still there. The Union Jack flew at one side, the red flag of the People�s Republic of China at the other. The border town on the other side was a little fishing and farming village called Shenzhen, now a modern city of skyscrapers and shopping malls, an emblem of China�s amazing economic development.

    I was favorably disposed toward China as I strode across the bridge, ready to experience the radical egalitarianism of the Maoist revolution, which was generally viewed with favor among American graduate students specializing in China. I was a member of a group, moreover, that partook of a certain leftist orthodoxy. We had learned the �Internationale� so we could sing it for our revolutionary hosts. We were supposed to return to America and report the truth about China, which was, essentially, that it was the future and it worked.

    But it took only about 24 hours on that first journey to China for me utterly to change my mind and, indeed, to become a lifelong anti-Communist and devotee of liberal democracy, to find great wisdom in Winston Churchill�s dictum about its being the worst of all systems except for all the others.

    The noxious cult of personality around Mao was the first thing that effected my political transformation. But deeper than that was the pervasive odor of orthodoxy, the uniformity of it all, the mandatory pious declarations, which, if they were believed, were ridiculous, and, if they were forced, illustrated the terror of it all.

    Many of my American fellow travelers felt very differently about this. In my intense discomfort, I found myself in a sort of Menshevik minority, criticized by the majority for what I remember one person calling my �Darkness at Noon� mentality.

    Still, that discomfort, and the unwillingness of most of the others to experience it, has informed my work as a journalist ever since. I have to admit it: When I went to China as a correspondent for Time magazine seven years after that first trip, my impulse was not so much to look with fresh and impartial eyes on a country that had just opened up to a degree of foreign inspection as it was to expose what I felt many Americans were missing in those rhapsodic days. Namely, that the country under Mao and after belonged to the 20th-century totalitarian mainstream � that it was a poverty-stricken police state and not a viable alternative to Western ways.

    There was a degree of bias in this view, and it led me into some mistakes. On China, in particular, I was perhaps focused too single-mindedly on its totalitarian elements so that I underplayed other elements, notably the speed of change in China, and perhaps even the unsuitableness of many Western democratic ways for a country so essentially backward.

    And perhaps, too, I extrapolated a bit too much from the China experience when it came to other places and other times. When I covered academic life in the United States, for example, I tended to see vicious Maoist Red Guards in the phenomenon of what came to be called political correctness, and, while I don�t think this was entirely wrong, it was an exaggeration.

    And yet, it seems appropriate in this final column to say, as well, that my nearly 40 years in the journalism game haven�t shaken me from the essential belief that formed during that first, memorable visit to China.

    Ever since, despite all our infuriating faults, our wastefulness, our occasional self-satisfied sluggishness, our proneness to demagogy and other forms of anti-intellectualism, our crumbling infrastructure, the Fox News channel, the cult of Sarah Palin, the narcissistic self-indulgence of our urban elites, the detention center in Guant�namo Bay and our crisis-creating greed and shortsightedness � despite all that � I continue to believe that, not to put too fine a point on it, we�re better than they are.

    This doesn�t mean that I think we�re perfect, or that our impulse toward a kind of benevolent imperialism has always had benevolent results. But I have stuck for 40 years to a belief that, yes, our ways are superior � and by our ways I mean such things often taken for granted as a free press, strong civil institutions, an independent judiciary and, perhaps above all, the belief that the powers of the state need to be restrained, and that the institutions of government exist to serve the individual, not the other way around.

    The essential difference with China, even the much-changed China of today, and most of the other non-Western political cultures, is the absence of this sense of restraint, and the primacy of the collective over the individual.

    That�s the idea that I was actually groping toward when I crossed the bridge at Lowu. It�s the idea that I want to end with here on this snowy day in New York in my final sentence on this page. Goodbye.




    unitednations
    03-24 01:16 PM
    You are wrong - many other categories are allowed to be adjusted to the status while being in the country. For example look into latest CSR report - you will know that in year 2007, USCIS adjusted 621,047 foreign nationals to LPR status among this number EB's are only around 160K remaining or in other statuses.



    The family based immigration is important and can be very painful for some cases - like spouses and sons/daughters - and that is why congress has correctly amended laws to make these cases as exceptions (there are no numerical limits and also no country quotas). That was a correct thing to do and any wait in those relationships is much more painful. But for other categories in the family based immigration - like the cases you gave as examples (like brother and sister of a US citizen) - I dont really consider them as more painful than ours actually I dont even consider them as even comparable to ours. I dont know your case, but I came to US in late nineties with couple graduage degrees and acquired one more here - started my career here and justifiably feel that I considerably contributed to success of atleast one company which grew to 200+ people at one point. I emotionally and careerwise invested here. Now after 10+ years still no greencard and know how many career moves I had to let go becuase of this. While the decision to pursue the greencard is mine and I am not trying to blame anyone here, I dont think that our pain is less than someone who is "waiting" because his brother or sister sponsored him/her doesnt make sense (note: well I do have brother and sister and cherish those relationships but expecting a lifelong/career move based on their location of living is not there; and even if there is an expectation I wont consider that even comparable to someone living there and letting go many opportunities despite of talent just because of administrative issues).

    You are right - things are getting worse - there may not be any congressional activity on this issue for sometime and if USCIS try to screw us in other ways - then its going to be a rough ride. But the EB community activism (congressional or otherwise) will actually help in at least staying things more fair towards us.



    Yes; I read all of the reports and I have intimate knowledge of how all of this works.

    Fact only dual intent visas are H/L/O and K visas.

    All other visas are non immigrant intent. Therefore, how do we have so many 485 approvals.

    Just about all family base i-485 adjustment of status approvals are people who overstayed their visitor visas, student visas, etc and adjusted status by marrying a US citizen or used 245i to forgive their unlawful status and got greencard through a different way.

    Many people who got aged out and weren't able to come with their parents wanted reunification but it would take many, many years for them to come to USA. They get student visa; lie that their parents are not in USA and when they get here then they go through EB route.

    Many people who overstayed their visas got 245i protection through a family member and then went through EB route because it was faster then family route. Here is an example;

    Person comes from India in early '90s. Wants to stay and winds up overstaying. Lawsuit is filed against 1986 amnesty and people win that USCIS has to open it up and allow people to file even though it is many years after 1986. People start faking things to show that they were here during that time. At same time they get 245i protectin by getting relative to file petition for them. They see none of it goin anywhere and then get labor substitution through eb and go this route and finally get greencard this way.

    There is so much of this that goes on with immigration and in USCIS heavy handed way they go after everyone to try to get the people who they think are dirty.

    I think everyone needs to understand that this is employment base immigration. It is not on your merits it is based on an employer needing you. H-1b was created to mainly get poeple here because it took too long for an employer to get a body by going through consular route; same concept with K-3 visas;.

    In many of the compalaints I see on the forums; people start thinking that EB greencard is a humanitarian greencard. It is very simple and employer needs you on a permannet and full time basis. If they have the resource then they generally do not care how long it takes you to get the greencard. Like it or not this is the way it currently is.

    I remember taking a local office appointment with San Jose local office to determine where my file was. It mistakenly got sent to San Diego office. Officer said I should write to San Diego and get them to transfer it to San Francisco which had jurisdiction to where I was living. I told here why doesn't she request it and I made the comment that I had been waiting for four years since I had filed the 485. Her response with a straight face was hey that's not too bad; some people are waiting for last 20 years.

    Talk to a normal American and they are not going to think that you are being disadvantaged because you are allowed to live and work here while waiting for the greencard.

    If there was no h-1b or no seventh year extensions and employers couldn't get the workers then you would really see some action because employers wouldn't be able to get the resources.

    Nurses generally weren't able to get h-1b's and they had to go through consular route. Since, employers couldn't get the resources then that is why they set aside extra 60k greencards for them a couple of years ago. It had nothing to do with the individual but rather the employer needs in getting the resources.




    srkamath
    07-13 02:15 PM
    Whoever, plans to put their name and signature on this letter ......

    " Let me take you back to the situation in 2001-2003..when a lot of current (EB3) applicants were qualified under EB2 and RIR category(many of whom had masters degrees from TOP US universities) our Labors were sent back from DOL saying that the Economy was slow and hence cant apply in EB-2. So we were forced to apply in EB3 non RIR categories, but when the economy improved in 04-05 you introduced the PERM system and most people applied in EB2 and got their Labors cleared in few months time while the folks who applied in 2001-2004 were stuck at the backlog centers for 3 plus years. " - sounds awkward, someone with better writing skills needs to re-write this.

    "....most people applied in EB2 and got their Labors cleared in few months time.... " - So why didn't/couldn't/wouldn't you?

    "After having followed the rules set by DOL and the USCIS and waited patiently in line ignoring the short cut routes of substitute labor or converting to EB2 categories we applied for I-485 in June 07 to get our EAD's. " - I-485 to get EAD ??? Doesn't make sense....

    The whole letter sounds like you are demanding some kind of entitlement......and are suggesting that those who applied for EB2 under PERM did something wrong?



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