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October 19, 2004
The One-Day Window
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
How times have changed. While the standard to come and live in this country used to be simply a desire to "breathe free" the bar is a tad bit higher nowadays. Hence the story of the H-1B visas.
The San Diego Union Tribune carried an article earlier this month that showed just how high that bar has become:
Last Friday – at the beginning of the federal fiscal year – the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services stopped taking applications for H-1B worker visas, which are intended for foreign workers in such specialized professions as engineering, medicine and computer programming.
The government is allowed to issue up to 65,000 such visas each year. By the end of the day Friday, the immigration service had received enough applications to meet that quota. It will not accept any more applications, although it will consider those filed before Friday.
It was the first time in the history of the H-1B program that the annual quota had been depleted in just one day.
A few months back I received a large manila envelope in the mail which I thought was junk mail. But to my surprise, as I opened it up, I realized it contained a photocopy of a letter to the editor I wrote to the WSJ that had been published a month before. My closing paragraph was highlighted and on the side margin was a note telling me that I should learn about "the real costs of immigration". The letter was from The Programers Guild and they implored me to read their newsletter, which was also enclosed, to learn about the true costs.
Unfortunately, it seems they ignored the true point I was trying to make. How is it that if I was born only 30 miles south of where I am currently sitting that this would deny me the right to enter into a voluntary agreement with a U.S. employer? This question has never been answered to my satisfaction.
Posted by Peter Mork at October 19, 2004 9:39 AM
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» Programmer's National Party from Mike Linksvayer
A couple days ago I linked to Peter Mork. Later I noticed that Mork has some postings on immigration that I find agreeable.
Here's a quote from his latest, The One-Day Window:
A few months back I received a large manila envelope in the mail whi... [Read More]
Tracked on October 24, 2004 10:03 PM
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