February 20, 2008, - 10:42 am
A Passage From India: The Aftermath of H1-B Visas and Julie Myers
By Debbie Schlussel
This site proudly has many Indian Hindu and Sikh readers who have seen what Islam–and its 150 million adherents–are doing to their country. (Many Sikhs valiantly fought Muslims in India.) Many of those readers live here in America and are sad to see that our country has no limits on the number of members of the moongod cult it admits for “visits” and citizenship.
This post is not against or even about those readers. Indians in America tend to be educated, skilled, patriotic, and do not impose their culture or religion (unless they are Muslim) on you or me–unlike other alien groups. They are among the hardest working and entrepreneurial, working very hard to make a go of small businesses.
Again, this post is not about them.
But a story in the San Jose Mercury News about an estimated 400,000 Indian natives who are here in violated of their H-1B visas is important. As I noted earlier today, ICE has not made visa overstay investigations a serious priority, preferring to mug in front of meat factories for the cameras. And that’s why out of the estimated 400,000 who are no longer working as required under their H-1B visas, fewer than 500 are deported.
So, since they are not largely criminals, why is this a problem?
Well, for one thing, many H-1B visa-holders are here legally to legally take the jobs of the many American citizens who are out-of-work skilled technology workers and computer programmers. That’s been well documented by many of them. And many of those Indians that come here on H-1B visas are not the preferred Hindus. They are Muslims with an agenda (repetitive phrase).
It’s a problem. But like I said–and the appallingly low deportation numbers bear out–ICE just doesn’t care about enforcement of visas and pursuit of violators:
The Bay Area has a piece of the nation’s fastest growing group of illegal immigrants. But don’t assume you know who they are.
Turning stereotypes on their head, a recent federal analysis of unauthorized immigration says the most rapidly growing source of illegal immigration is India – the same country whose engineers and programmers help power Google and other Silicon Valley companies, whose doctors heal the Bay Area’s sick, and whose entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have become a force on both sides of the international date line.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimates that there are 270,000 unauthorized Indian natives in the United States – a 125 percent jump since 2000, the largest percentage increase of any nation with more than 100,000 illegal immigrants in the United States.
The number of undocumented Indians is dwarfed by the estimated 6.6 million illegal residents from Mexico, according to the estimates from homeland security’s Office of Immigration Statistics. Yet, considering the high level of education of many Indians, immigration experts say the federal report hints at a new phenomenon: a high-skilled undocumented workforce to go along with the nation’s sizable numbers of low-skilled illegal workers.
If trends continue, within three years India would trail only Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala as a source of illegal immigration. Another national immigration expert, Jeffrey S. Passel of the Pew Hispanic Center, estimates that the number of illegal Indians is even higher, at 400,000 people.
Virtually all entered the United States legally but violated the terms of their visas, say experts who study the nation’s much maligned immigration system.
“How do you get in? You come across the border, or you arrive here with a visa,” said Lindsay Lowell, policy director for the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University. “Indians aren’t going to be walking across the border like Mexicans.” . . .
It is certainly a minority of the local Indian community, however, and probably a very small one. Half the people of Indian ancestry living in Santa Clara County are already U.S. citizens, either by birth or naturalization, according to census data. Thousands of others are legal permanent residents, or they are here legally on student, tourist or work visas.
Local immigration lawyers say that particularly among Indians, the ups and downs of Silicon Valley’s economy since 2001 are one reason why Indians have fallen out of legal status. . . .
“They come here as professionals, most often in the H-1B program, and given the fluctuations of Silicon Valley, the business climate, these guys lose their jobs. They get laid off or they wager their hands on a start-up coming in,” Jack said. “The problem with the H-1B program is, you can’t have any significant time between jobs” without falling out of legal status.
Indians made up 44 percent of H-1B applicants in the 2005-06 fiscal year, five times the number from second-place China, according to federal data.
Because an immigrant’s status can be dependent on the status of a spouse, the break-up of a marriage can also create an illegal immigrant.
Among Indians in the United States, “there has been a rapid increase in the divorce rate. If they are on an H-1 . . .” said Navneet Chugh, an immigration lawyer whose firm is based in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles. . . .
The United States has deported slightly less than 500 Indians a year in recent years. In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, “we have substantially expanded our effort to find visa violators,” said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. [DS: That’s a big lie.] The government, she said, pursues cases based on public safety, rather than focusing on a specific country of origin. [DS: Another big lie and not logical–public safety is often dependent on deporting immigrants from Muslim nations. Get a clue, ICE.]
Silicon Valley companies such as Google say they need to recruit the world’s best talent to compete – and about one in 12 of Google’s U.S. employees, roughly 900 people, are H-1B visa holders. “We have not seen major problems with prospective candidates being out of status,” said Adam Kovacevich, a Google spokesman. . . .
Unless Congress reforms the immigration system, “we are going to see this high-skilled, illegal workforce emerging,” said Frank D. Bean, director of the Immigration Research Center at the University of California-Irvine. “From a narrow economic point of view, it might work. From a social justice, fairness point of view, it’s a time bomb.”
If ICE actually pursuit a significant number of Muslim visa violators and criminal illegal aliens, I’d say, look the other way on these Indians. Priorities must be set in immigration policy.
The problem is that their really aren’t any serious priorities at ICE (other than manufactured, good PR for Julie Myers), and it is ICE that is largely looking the other way on ALL visa violators.
Our country is sliding every further and more speedily down the bottomless slope.
Tags: a recent federal analysis, Adam Kovacevich, America, California, China, Congress, director, El Salvador, Frank D. Bean, Georgetown University, Google, Guatemala, head, immigration lawyer, Immigration Research Center, India, Institute for the Study of International Migration, Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, Jeffrey S. Passel, Julie Myers, Julie Myers By Debbie Schlussel, Lindsay Lowell, Los Angeles, Mexico, Navneet Chugh, Office of Immigration Statistics, out-of-work skilled technology workers, Pew Hispanic Center, policy director, Salvador, San Jose Mercury News, Santa Clara County, Silicon Valley, spokesman, spokeswoman, the San Jose Mercury News, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration, United States, University of California, Virginia Kice
Facts like these need to be considered when we hear politicians or ‘conservative’ talk-show hosts or writers say that of course they are for border enforcement to control illegal immigration. They say that border enforcement needs to be established first, and then we can set up a path to citizenship.
The issue of VISAs is one way to assess whehter these individuals are serious about enforcing the law or whether they are just being demagogic. If they din’t mention VISAs, it is a giant clue that they are not serious, and are just trying to mislead and fool people.
c f on February 20, 2008 at 11:45 am