Thread: The Weeping has begun

This from www.immigrationvoice.com:

[i]"There is no sign of any compromise that could be reached between Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and other senate members who wanted to convince him to let some immigration relief provision into the last minute bills passed on the congress.

Congress adjourns today and the new Congress will come into session on January 4th.

There are several reasons for no successful legislation this year:

1. The biggest impediment has been the House Judiciary committee, and the Republican leadership of the House that stalled the Comprehensive reform. The Comprehensive reform's presence and controversy prevent any other discussion on anything related to immigration taken place.

2. Its not just Immigration Voice that is working on our issues. There are several hi-tech companies who have tried till the last moment for the whole year to get SKIL bill passed. If the entire IT industry, hi-tech lobby, with all its might and decades of lobbying experience and political clout could not even get their single most important issue -- H1B quota done -- it just shows how stubborn some members of congress have been in blocking this legislation.

3. Its not the lack of effort on IV core or IV members and its not the lack of funds or hard work that has been in any way responsible for lack of outcome. If we had worked 10 times harder with 10 times more funds, the outcome would probably still have been the same. This congress has been absolutely dysfunctional. However, that does not mean we shouldnt have tried or our efforts are in vain. The strengthening of organization resulting from our efforts last year will make a difference next year.

Although this is demoralizing, we request people to relax wait for the next congress that will have much more incentive to fix immigration with CIR.

IV core sincerely and whole heartedly thanks all the members and visitors for their support."

My comments:

1. Although they knew to call "their" representatives (even though as foreigners those representatives were supposed to be on our side not theirs), there seems to be no recognition or even awareness of our calls and communications. Their failure is put down solely to stubborness and ignorance on the part of individual legislators, Sessions being mentioned in particular on that board.

2. They do not understand how the industry (i.e. Microsoft et. al.) could have lost. I find this a cultural difference between us and them, there is great reliance on rank-based authority in India and the highest ranking name is supposed to settle any matter.

3. They will be back. So we also need to be. We also owe Sessions a big thank-you.

Anti-American subversives from the immigration voice are preparing to start an anti-Lou Dobbs website using domain name: LouDobbsAmerica.com
as described here
http://immigrationvoice.org/forum/showthread.php?t=2510

Thank you Jeff Sessions!!!

Check out this frank blog: http://desicritics.org/2006/09/11/003324.php

BetsyRoss wrote:

We also owe Sessions a big thank-you.

I agree 100%! Rep. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has been very vocal against anything coming to the Senate floor that slightly resembles amnesty! Actually he's pretty much been our most active and loudest supporter in the U.S. Senate.

Originally Posted by BetsyRoss

This from www.immigrationvoice.com:

[i]"3. Its not the lack of effort on IV core or IV members and its not the lack of funds or hard work that has been in any way responsible for lack of outcome. If we had worked 10 times harder with 10 times more funds, the outcome would probably still have been the same. This congress has been absolutely dysfunctional. However, that does not mean we shouldnt have tried or our efforts are in vain. The strengthening of organization resulting from our efforts last year will make a difference next year.
Although this is demoralizing, we request people to relax wait for the next congress that will have much more incentive to fix immigration with CIR.
IV core sincerely and whole heartedly thanks all the members and visitors for their support."

My comments:

3. They will be back. So we also need to be. We also owe Sessions a big thank-you.

="BetsyRoss
I'M LOST...WHAT IS THIS GROUP? for or against illegal aliens?? what is IV core or IV members ?CIR? please enlighten me ...thanks

This is a group of 'immigrants" supporting increased H-1bs, allowing their wives to work, etc. While we were calling in, so were they - not citizens, just calling OUR reps as if they were. They were counting on their desires triumphing, and are dismayed that even Microsoft could not prevail against us. They will carry on their fight to get what they want with the next congress.

YOUR RIGHT ..HERE IS THEIR PAGE TELLING THEM TO CALL AND THEIR TALKING POINTS....WE NEED TO KEEP A WATCH ON THIS PAGE

Click here: National Council of La Raza: Action Alerts
http://capwiz.com/nclr/callalert/index. ... id=9033966

Legislation to allow police to enforce federal immigration law TO COME UP IN HOUSE BILL THIS WEDNESDAY!

Please call and send a strong message to Congress that this proposal makes us all less safe!

Call Now

This week, the House introduced various bills that do nothing to fix our nation’s broken immigration system, but are designed to produce good sound bites in the run-up to the November elections. One such bill is H.R. 6089, which includes provisions from the CLEAR Act and H.R. 4437 to turn state and local police into immigration agents.

This bill will jeopardize public safety. By gaining the trust of the community, state and local law enforcement have reduced crime and victimization across the country. If immigrants see state and local police as federal immigration agents, they will be less likely to come forward and report information about crimes that they witness or experience; the trust needed for effective community policing will be destroyed. Many law enforcement agents have expressed opposition to this provision because they do not want to lose the trust of the community.

This bill is not about apprehending criminals. Police officers already have the duty to arrest those people in our communities who are committing crimes. The bill’s supporters claim to simply recognize an inherent authority for police to enforce federal immigration law. But if this is the case, then why would such a law be needed? This is a back-door attempt to turn state and local law enforcement into federal law enforcement agencies.
This bill is a waste of taxpayer dollars and takes state and local police forces away from job number one: fighting crime. Cities and states don’t want to use scarce police resources to enforce immigration law. There is no question that the federal government has failed to enforce our immigration laws. But instead of tackling this difficult issue, the House is simply passing the buck to state and local police, and asking them to enforce civil immigration laws while also fighting crime and keeping our communities safe. The top priority of our state and local police officers should be investigating, solving, and preventing real crimes. H.R. 6089 is not only a distraction from that mission, but will make their jobs harder and our communities less safe. Victims of domestic violence and other crimes will have good reason to fear the police if this bill passes. Under this new legislation, every contact that crime victims have with the police will be fraught with peril because their immigration status can be called into question.
TAKE ACTION!

Call your Representative TODAY and ask them to vote NO on HR 6089!Tell them that:

Turning state and local police into immigration officers will jeopardize public safety.
This is simply another ineffective enforcement-only bill and the federal government’s latest attempt to pass the buck to the states.
We want solutions, not sound bites. Congress must act on real immigration reform, not piecemeal measures that harm our communities and solve nothing.


WHO WOULD BELIEVE THIS DUCKY SAUCE

To save you all the trouble of having to register on that site, here are a bunch of their after-losing comments to analyze. This will show us what they plan to do. These folks are primarily Indian, wanting more H-1bs and easier Green Cards. Numbersusa finally got some credit (at the end).

"The friggin Bas$^$^@ will eat their S*&t next year when CIR passes.

They will have a christmas like we've been having for the past two years!!

My restrictionist friends-- enjoy it while it lasts..cheers!

While I dont utter the same words on the public forum, Its true that Senator Sessions just wanted to prove that he is loyal to his contingent. He knows that his opposition to SKIL ain't good as it will be passed sooner or later. He just delayed it for some more time. I am sure people on these IV forums feel more stronger today because of United States Senator Jeff Sessions from Sweet Home Alabama.

I was thinking that if we stop talking about increasing numbers but just try to get legilators to realize that backlog problems are due to 7% quota for each country, no matter whether its Iceland or India or China or Timbuktu. It itself sounds so ridiculous that most people ,who hear it, are amused at the logic.

Maybe if we had focused on having quotas removed, would that have helped. Any thoughts from Core members or someone who knows more about this?

Another thought is to form an offshoot organization, under core team, that could possibly liasion with the Indian Embassy, and work on quota upliftment.

- Whether Senator Sessions is re-elected in new congress? If Yes, then how we should "tackle" him in 110th Congress? What "strategies" we should have to "nullify" his views?
- How many "Sessions" are in New congress/Senate?
- Whether ONLY one senator can "topple" whole Bill and big houses/companies like Microsoft?

Oppostion was strong for H1B increase compared to GC increase. Immigration numbers generally increased by H1b not because of GC increase because anyone can stay unlimited number of years by H1B itself. As a pro immigrant this bill is excellent and there will not be any issue for qualified people for next 10 years for immigration. But for a Neutral US employee there is no protection in this bill though it gives to lot of benefits to newcomers to USA. Their fear is not addressed. Corporations tried with last mintue back door politics but were beaten same backdoor politics. Unless some compromise( I do no not know how to convince anti immigrants) it is tough to pass.

Firstly the agenda will be set by the democrats and I hope they are more amenable.

Secondly given the short time there was "unanimous consent" needed for the bill to go through. What that means is that everyone had to agree for the bill to go through.

On the other hand for a bill brought up in a regular session there can be debate and then the bill gets voted on and ultimately only a majority is needed. Of course for the senate there should be atleast 60 of the senators willing to go ahead to prevent a filibuster but it appears that we should be beyond that.

my guess is we have a chance as long as Nurses are aslo Effected
and may be do something before the Next H1b season Opens
they will not leave us alone this time and give them to RN

1. Continue membership drive. We should have more than 10K by end of this month. Everyone of us can get five members, we shall be able to achieve it easily.
2. Write personal letters to your Congressmen and Senator. It should emphasize our problems. We can send it along with holiday greetings.
3. Strengthen state chapters, have monthly con calls on state chapters. We should elect couple of state chapter coordinators.
4. State Chapter coordinators should meet Senators and Reps.
5. We can try to organize rally at the beginning of 110th Congress provided, we are able to have at thousand people.
6. Core Team has been doing great job and should continue to focus in DC(Senate Judiciary Committee) as well as try to involve some corporations who are willing to help us. State Chapters coordinators should try to meet Judiciary Committee members and explain problems.

We have six months to get anything done in this congress. If we do not succeed by summer then it is going to be long before we get this done.

We have to look how previous legislations were passed in last 10 years. In 2000 major bill was passed to increase h1b for only 3 years 195k and some releif for EB people. People worked for compromise and tryed to satisfy all kinds of people including anti immigrants. Couple of years back 20k H1Bs for MS people was passed(which was initiated by Intel) without big oppostion because increase is moderate. I think they satisfied opposition by justifying that not much increase in immigration numbers. But Corporations and pro immigrants frustrated that they have to go everytime congress to increase H1b and green card by putting exemptions for H1b and green card quota apart from increasing H1 and gc. So where is the chance for negotiation to reduce the opposition? Relatively more oppostion for H1 compared to Gc but Corporations are in badly need of H1. But they want GC provision also to keep good people in USA.
Capitalism provided a great freedom of hiring and firing people for the survival of company in tough times and also to improve the productivity. But some companies too much greedy and do major layoffs and outsource in good times also to save the cost. But in reality it is question whether they are saving cost really. So oppostion grows.

1. Broaden the base and state chapters.

2. Have 1 or 2 appointed leaders to direct the members in situation like yesterday and the day before. These leaders ought to be available to make any mid-point changes to the execution plan.. such as focussing on "sessions-likes" or not.

3. Automate Web-Faxes

4. Carry the same passion and momentum, trust the CORE. Yes, it is easier to get carried away and frustrated, but we must remember that as long as we are all aligned with our strategy, we WILL WIN.

Friends once again a big set back to all of us. This is the third battle we lost (S 1932 Dec 05, CIR May 06 and Skil Dec 06). This time I was optimistic due to genuine efforts of big hightech industries. I think, Bill Gates needs some lesson from Dhirubhai Ambani. If Dhirubhai Ambani was in place of Bill Gates, he would have buy everything to get passage of skil bill.

Only positive part of last two days was that IV members have pro-actively reacted and it was positively noticed by some of organizations and office of lawmakers. Our problems are genuine but no body is listening.

I strongly believing to start Ganghigiri to address this issue and immidiate attention of media and law makers.

1. Send a one line message in a background pict of Mahatma Gandhi, one flower on behalf of High Skilled Immigrants to key anti-immigrant lawmakers and key lawmakers who are responsible for table the agenda

2. Offer a community servises like training to primary and middle school kids for Math and science. Inspite of lot of injustice to our community, we are offering goodies. This will feel them ashamed (probably !!)

3. If step 1 and step 2 are not enough, last drasticle step is to go on hunger strike at Capitol Hill. (Do or die !!)

yesterday someone called webmaster@ilw.com was on the forum advising us to call sessions, even before we got the message from iv core.
he had some good insights, might be worthwhile contacting him, if he has any suggestions on strategy (just verify it is really the webmster by emailing him directly first).
one thing he mentioned was that if sessions is introducing a bill, and he needs other senators to support it, maybe we can get in touch with those senators and ask them to influence him to approve skil in return for their support.
in my opinion, this is what qga hould be advising and helping us to do, keeping us updated on anti-immig senators bills, who they need to support them, and how to pressurize them.

another thing i heard vaguely was sen. lamar alexander talking yesterday about competitiveness and brain power increasing in india/china. is this relevant to us, if so how about approaching him about a new bill next year?

finally, last night, dont know bec if it was the last night for the outgoing congress, but there seemed to be many "package" bills, where 3 or 4 completely unrelated and different issues were being bundled.
perhaps, snce our provisions are relatively minor (not like cir) we can slip them in with other larger bills, especially if they are unrelated.

I think we also need to educate congressmen on the entire process. There is a lot of mis-information out there, and it is further twisted by the anti-immigrants. Just visit the numbersusa forums and you will see what I mean. We need to highlight that:

a) At the retrogression stage, we have already gone through an elaborate labor certification process. Thus it has already been proven that i) our wages are at par with those in similar jobs (i.e. we are not under-paid foreign workers) ii) our jobs cannot be filled by local workers.

b) The post-retrogression stage is merely an FBI background check process. If the labor certification process is foolproof, the check should be a mere formality.

c) While we are waiting for our visa number to become current, we cannot accept a promotion or move onto a more management-oriented role (essential to progress in your career). Thus, our career is at a standstill. This is the modern equivalent of bonded labor and flies in the face of 'equal opportunity'.

d) The percentage of foreign students in Masters or higher courses of learning in all the major universities is overwhelmingly high (easily 50%). This attests to the fact that there are not enough American students willing to prepare themselves for the high-tech jobs taken up by H-1Bs.

e) Indians and Chinese (the bulk of H-1Bs and EB GCs) have one of, if not the highest per capita income of any ethnic group. Thus, any notion of more EB GCs increasing crime is absurd. It is important not to confuse the Employment based GC process with Illegal immigration.

I think we need to 'dumb down' our explanations and keep it simple to get across to the large bunch of congressmen who do not have an independent opinion of EB GCs. There is no doubt that we deserve more H-1Bs and GCs. The only way to thwart the anti-immigrants is to present the truth and neutralize their rhetoric.

Instead of any long-winded letters or emails, lets just send small talking points similar to above to Senators so they can read them during the holidays. Knowledge is power!

1. Enlist members from each state to go and personally talk to each and every House of Representative and Senator to make them aware of our situation; specifically distinguishing us from the illegals and the benefits we bring to the US

2. Initiate a demonstration in front of Capitol Hill with media coverage the next time a favorable bill is going to get passed.

3. Try to focus on the anti-immigrant House of Representatives, Senators and find out their exact misgivings against immigration and formulate a strategy to influence each individual representative or Senator in a positive manner towards an immigration bill.

4. Organize and influence US citizens, who may have recently gone through the immigration process, in the constituencies of anti-immigrant House of Representatives and Senators to send letters and web-faxes expressing support for the pro-immigrant bill.

Since women are more sympathetic by nature, we should try to bring our plight in front of the wives of anti-immigrant senators, who may be able to knock some sense into their husbands.....

Just like a mother named Cindy Sheehan camped outside the Crawford Ranch of President Bush to express her anti-war sentiments, we should camp outside the offices and homes of anti-immigrant senators or House of Representatives to throw some extra visibility on our cause!!!!

Getting exemptions for MS degree holders, increase in number of EB visas, and visa recapture etc is catching the attention of numbersusa. These measures are anything but non-controversial. If they were indeed non-controversial, we would not be here today. Fact is numbersusa stalled our bill again, and Sessions is here to stay

Also, there is no point in trying to get Sessions to explain his stand and debate etc. His stand is like that of Lou Dobbs --- because of increased legal immigrants American kids are not getting jobs --- and he has lots of supporters."

While I dont utter the same words on the public forum, Its true that Senator Sessions just wanted to prove that he is loyal to his contingent. He knows that his opposition to SKIL ain't good as it will be passed sooner or later. He just delayed it for some more time. I am sure people on these IV forums feel more stronger today because of United States Senator Jeff Sessions from Sweet Home Alabama.

- Whether Senator Sessions is re-elected in new congress? If Yes, then how we should "tackle" him in 110th Congress? What "strategies" we should have to "nullify" his views?
- How many "Sessions" are in New congress/Senate?
- Whether ONLY one senator can "topple" whole Bill and big houses/companies like Microsoft?

yesterday someone called webmaster@ilw.com was on the forum advising us to call sessions, even before we got the message from iv core.
he had some good insights, might be worthwhile contacting him, if he has any suggestions on strategy (just verify it is really the webmster by emailing him directly first).
one thing he mentioned was that if sessions is introducing a bill, and he needs other senators to support it, maybe we can get in touch with those senators and ask them to influence him to approve skil in return for their support.

Also, there is no point in trying to get Sessions to explain his stand and debate etc. His stand is like that of Lou Dobbs --- because of increased legal immigrants American kids are not getting jobs --- and he has lots of supporters."

Sounds like Sen. Sessions is making a lot of friends among the so-called high-tech "visa" workers! [/code]