India's tickets to US sold out (H1-B visas)

India's tickets to US sold out NEW DELHI - First day, first show, all tickets sold out. We are not referring to a highly anticipated Bollywood movie release here, but H1-B visas, which provide for the temporary passage of skilled Indian (mainly software) workers to the United States. A full year's quota of 65,000 H1-B visas, slashed from the earlier cap of 195,000 due to protests by American workers in an election year, has been reached on the very first day the new allocations opened, with no signs of respite in the near future. Indeed, media comment here has centered around Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry's use of the word "outsourcing" as a pejorative to describe Washington's handling of Afghanistan through Pakistan, during the first television debate with President George W Bush.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which processes applications for the H-1B program, is no longer accepting petitions for visas for initial employment for this fiscal year, which runs from October 1, 2004, to September 30, 2005. This is the first time the cap has been reached on the same day the new quota opened. According to reports, USCIS had received petitions amounting to 71% of the annual cap by August 18 this year and the remainder were received in the weeks since then. Based on applications already received, the State Department will issue the H1-B visas throughout the coming fiscal. This means that fresh applicants will have to wait for the 2006 quota.

Reacting to the early filling of the quota, India's National Association of Software and Service Companies - or NASSCOM, India's top association for software firms - has said start-up software firms will be affected in a major way due to the filling up of the annual limit for the controversial guest worker program through the H1-B visas.

However, NASSCOM expects any new administration in the US to ease the H1-B visa norms, allowing more information technology (IT) professionals to fly to the US, NASSCOM president Kiran Karnik said in a statement. "At the macro-level, I don't see this having a major impact on the industry. However, new and start-up IT firms certainly will face a problem," Karnik said, adding that he "expects some form of relaxation in the norms by Jan-Feb 2005 after the new administration takes over in the US". "The US industry also recognizes the need to have more professionals to service their industry," Karnik said, adding that the slashing of H1-B visas was "too huge and unrealistic".

A Times of India report datelined Washington says that news of the first-day filling of the H1-B quota has "stunned" the tech industry. "At this point of time, the economy is showing an upsurge and there is a shortage of tech workers in certain areas. The cap should be raised to at least 90,000," said Andy Iyengar, chief executive officer of Sysfour Solutions, a New Jersey-based IT services company. Iyengar warned that the reduced cap would simply result in the flight of more jobs from the US. But he did not foresee any change in US policy in the next few weeks given the election season and the controversy surrounding labor issues. However, he warned that there is an acute shortage of tech workers in several new high-tech areas, as evident in job notices on sites such as monster.com.

The Times report says that news that the cap has been filled is particularly dismaying to students who have just graduated and are hoping to get H1-B visas via employment offers following their training period. Many businesses and corporations are seeking an exemption from the annual cap for foreign students graduating from US schools with masters and doctorate degrees, but domestic labor groups oppose the proposal and are in no mood to relent, even if there is a mismatch between skills and US needs.

Observers here view the limit on H-1B visas as likely to affect Indian software firms, which have a large number of clients in the US, though it would bring more offshore work to India from the US. The restriction will curtail the flexibility to reinforce onsite teams at various stages in the software development lifecycle (system requirement study, testing and implementation phases) if adequate and proactive planning is not in place, says a statement by Satyam Computers, a company with large US clients.

However, it is felt that big companies such as Wipro, Infosys, HCL and Tata Consultancy Services have already built robust H1-B visa banks, with a shelf life of six years, in anticipation of a shortage; it is the smaller IT firms that will really have to grapple hard for new business while servicing current clients. Wipro Technologies, for instance, already has 1,000 visa-ready professionals based in India waiting for their onsite assignments in addition to about 2,000 employees who are already in the US. Infosys is estimated to have close to 7,000 H1B visas, of which only about half are currently utilized, and it has also applied for about 4,000 fresh visas in the current year. According to Laxman Badiga, chief executive (talent transformation) of Wipro Technologies, "We knew about the problem since October and today we have quite a number of visas. Each H1-B visa is valid for six years. Additionally, the availability of L-1 visas [used for intra-company transfers] can mitigate a situation like this."

But the overwhelming view is that the limit on H1-B visas will drive back more offshore work to India, without affecting overall business. "The offshore component has grown for most of the IT companies in 2003-04," said Badiga, adding that the lowered visa cap would facilitate "transfer of knowledge" as people from the client-side would spend more time here training people at the offshore delivery centers.

According to Anu Sharma, vice president of human resources at iGATE Global Solutions, the restriction on the H1-B visas would drive more clients to get work done offshore. This, in turn, would lower costs. "With many companies operating on the global delivery model, this means more business. iGATE recruits local talent in all geographies, which reduces visa-related risks for its business," she said.

Indeed, the US-India visa story has been mixed in the past few years, especially post-September 11, 2001. While the number of students heading to the US indicates a perceptible drop, non-immigration visas issued for tourist and business purposes continue to rise at a fast rate. Most, however, expect a revamp of the current regime once the new government is in place in the US. That won't be too long even as there seems to be a realization in the US that anti-outsourcing attitudes won't work. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently vetoed offshoring bills, while independent research indicates that if the US labor shortfall is not met, the US economy will lose $2 trillion by 2010.

whites may conclude that that's the only way they can survive and/or retain some of their property

For every action...you know the cliche.

As you have pointed out on many of these threads, such reaction is already quite apparent in Europe in general and Britain in particular (e.g., BNP).

Eventually the governments will probably end up confronting the choice of violently suppressing some backlash, or simply letting it happen and hoping it'll all work out in the end. If the former, they will probably lose all legitimacy as governments having the "consent of the governed", and systemic collapse will occur. Apres moi, le deluge...

Regardless, I think the average caucasian, be they European or American, no longer believes that the government is "theirs", i.e., that it is on their side even in a neutral sense. On the contrary, as one article I read put it, sometime around a half century or so ago the governments in the West decided that the people they governed were the problem, and that their prime role was to restrain them. In other words, a civil service attitude was replaced with an overseer attitude, and the citizenry is now regarded by the governors with suspicion and even overt hostility.

Not exactly what the Framers had in mind, at least in this country. And strangely, near as I can tell, not what the monarchs and feudal aristocracy had in mind in historical Europe, either. They at least had some sort of fealty to their genetic countrymen, something that appears to have evaporated under "democracy".

As best as I can tell, we have mainly the judiciary to thank for that, but the legislators were certainly complicit.

For every action...you know the cliche.

As you have pointed out on many of these threads, such reaction is already quite apparent in Europe in general and Britain in particular (e.g., BNP).

Indeed, such movements are already prevalent in Europe. However, while the forthcoming American white nationalist movement will share a common ideology with the extreme Right of Europe, I believe it will skip the step of attempts at "legitimacy" a la the BNP or the Front National or the Vlaams Blok and go straight to the street fighting.

Why do I think so? Two reasons. One is the sheer size of the minority population in the United States. Even in the European country with the largest concentration of ethnic minorities--France--such minorities comprise only as much of the population as did non-non-Hispanic whites of the American population in the middle of the twentieth century. Moreover, the minority populations in Western Europe are recent arrivals--within the last few decades. Not so in the United States, where there has always been a significant presence of minorities who were once slaves. To integrate blacks into society, we had to have a "civil rights" movement. Europe, by contrast, skipped this step altogether.

So, unlike in Europe, I think the minority population in the U.S. is too large and holds too much clout to make room for a purely political white supremacist movement on any measurable level. I do not believe we will see the American Nazi Party rise to power; rather, I believe we will see a split in the military and police forces accompanied by a mass recruiting of ethnic militias sparked by gang violence in areas with large concentrations of Mexican immigrants, like Los Angeles.

Not exactly what the Framers had in mind, at least in this country. And strangely, near as I can tell, not what the monarchs and feudal aristocracy had in mind in historical Europe, either. They at least had some sort of fealty to their genetic countrymen, something that appears to have evaporated under "democracy".

You have just struck ideological gold, if I may opine so. I am a Royalist, and for that I am often accused of dictator-style authoritarianism. While the ideals of chivalry and community in Old Europe were sadly often not lived up to, they served as powerful guardians of the societies they permeated. The tales of the duplicity, violence, and cruelty that accompanied the Medieval system are too well-known to bear repeating here. Yet it would be a mistake to attempt to form a social policy that rules out each and every kink of life. Old Europe--and even federal America--knew this and knew it well, because Old Europe and federal America were Christian. They believed in Original Sin: the imperfect condition of man inherited from Adam. And while Baptism into Christ's Church cleans the soul of Original Sin, true Salvation is progressive, and is never finished in this lifetime. That reality must be accomodated by anyone wishing to live on God's Earth.

Liberalism, by contrast, has rejected the concept of Original Sin in its entirety, and substitutes instead

I believe it will skip the step of attempts at "legitimacy"

Good point. I'd add that in addition to how far things have gotten here since 1965, there is a mechanism which essentially forces violence as the first and only stage: the existence of an unbalanced, politically charged approach to civil rights enforcement, where any overt expression of ethnic nationalism on the part of whites is immediately singled out for legal action, whereas any other "group" may engage in the most overt, even seditionist and illegal, behavior, and not have to worry about really anything. This sets up an unstable situation: there's only a binary situation of no activism at all (out of fear) or all out civil war (might as well go for it, because winning it all is the only option).

Realistic politicians would discreetly seek to rebalance such a social situation. Not ours. Well, a few. But they dare not speak the name of the beast.

I am a Royalist, and for that I am often accused of dictator-style authoritarianism

In the past I would have automatically reacted to that. I'm the 11th generation of Yorkshire men and Scots-Irish from Ulster who came to America in the late 17th, early 18th century. Also Palatinate Germans, Anabaptist millennialists (the "Dunkers"). I can't count my Revolutionary ancestors; it's rending to go to places like King's Mountain and see my name on the memorials. Hard to get a grip on that. Royalism...my families were the people who bucked it off, took the Earl of Granville's land in the Carolina's for their own. And yet....

It appears that a benign Constitutional Monarchy with rigid rights can be stable, and political freedom quite liberal. I think it's because the monarch can be the real court of last resort: the one person with the incentive to do the right thing, and the authority to make it stick.

The American Republic was supposed to have that; the Framers were not unaware of the necessity. "Who will police the police". The answer? It was supposed to be the Congress itself, the people's house. It's not an accident that the Constitution contains the jurisdiction stripping clause, which allows Congress to limit judicial review. They knew there were going to be some things that should be beyond such. But Marbury v. Madison was the first usurpation, and the top of the slippery slope. The judiciary wished to insert itself as the monarchs. That should have prompted another round of the Constitutional Convention, to clarify just what were the roles and the rights. At this point, just such a new convention is needed. Only that will buy the Constitutional Republic a chance to vindicate itself.

As for Christian Europe, and the role of Original Sin, I like to tell this to the 20-somethings I work with about the America I grew up in: everyone, even 12 year olds, had a gun. But...murders and other gun violence were quite low. Why is that? Welllll...everyone believed, really did believe, that if you killed someone unjustly, you'd go to Hell. Oh, yes, the Sophisticates weren't convinced...but they had tenured positions at the local university and weren't about to indulge themselves in an orgy of violence for which they suspected there was no penalty in the afterlife. But most of the ordinary people did, and that's enough. They police themselves. Love They Neighbor As Thyself, and don't blow him away when he forgets to return the lawnmower. (note to Sophisticates: so maybe it is just a stable social code. Wouldn't that be a Natural Law, and...who might have created a Natural Law? Hmmm?).

The Christian West depends on a lot of things. Christianity informing it's people and laws are foremost.

Such is the belief of all those who insist that our carnal desires and behavioral flaws be recognized as marks of beauty rather than sins and moral vices

And the first example of this was the Jacobinist revolution in France, which told Locke and Jefferson that there might be a downside to the glories of revolution.

Every "ism" which has led to mass liquidation owes its roots to the ridiculous French "revolution". The Viet Cong? The first Communist was Ho himself, the founder of the Vietnamese Communist Party in 1921 on the Left Bank. "Ho wasn't a Communist, he was just anti-colonialist", how many times did I hear that crap in the 70's. BULLS..well, you know. And who did he learn from in Paris...we all know, and we know their intellectual roots.

All the sterile, theoretical, inhuman and areligious madness of the last 150 years stems from the Jacobins. They were the first. Washington ran a respectable revolution; they had a bloody orgy, an unending riot.

Good point. I'd add that in addition to how far things have gotten here since 1965, there is a mechanism which essentially forces violence as the first and only stage: the existence of an unbalanced, politically charged approach to civil rights enforcement, where any overt expression of ethnic nationalism on the part of whites is immediately singled out for legal action, whereas any other "group" may engage in the most overt, even seditionist and illegal, behavior, and not have to worry about really anything. This sets up an unstable situation: there's only a binary situation of no activism at all (out of fear) or all out civil war (might as well go for it, because winning it all is the only option).

Exactly what I was thinking. Only I couldn't find the words to put it. Thank you very much. :)

The American Republic was supposed to have that; the Framers were not unaware of the necessity. "Who will police the police". The answer? It was supposed to be the Congress itself, the people's house. It's not an accident that the Constitution contains the jurisdiction stripping clause, which allows Congress to limit judicial review. They knew there were going to be some things that should be beyond such. But Marbury v. Madison was the first usurpation, and the top of the slippery slope. The judiciary wished to insert itself as the monarchs. That should have prompted another round of the Constitutional Convention, to clarify just what were the roles and the rights. At this point, just such a new convention is needed. Only that will buy the Constitutional Republic a chance to vindicate itself.

Well, I think there's room for disagreement on the Royalist question. However, I will tell you that I do not advocate monarchy for the United States. My reasoning (and I admit this is somewhat biased, coming from my Roman Catholicism) is that America has an Enlightened Protestant soul. The Enlightened Protestant soul is naturally rebellious in a way that cannot be constrained by the Old Order.

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