H1b visa caps hinder our economy

Borui applied for an H-1B visa this year after creating his own company Polarr and hiring 3 Americans. Last week, he brought his story to Capitol Hill to advocate directly for immigration reform.

Posted by FWD.us on Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Is Obama like Lincoln?

Is Obama similar to Abe Lincoln?

lincoln-obama

If Obama comes out with an executive order to help a marginalized and highly oppressed portion of our society gain legal status to live in the US, then, yes, he will be.

On January 1, 1863 Abraham Lincoln issued an executive order to free Slaves in Confederate held lands. It did not free all the slaves.  This executive order was issued without Congress voting on it, and gave slaves the right to create their own destinies, free from the fear that they could be captured and returned to previous owners.

The people who wanted the white man to always have dominion over the inferior black man, were very hateful and vocal about their anger over this issue. So much so that Lincoln would later be killed by one such person.

This is very similar to what Obama will be introducing in the next few days. His executive order is expected to give some 5 million undocumented immigrants (not all of them) permission to live within our borders without fear of being captured and sent back to their former country.

Let us also not forget that Abe Lincoln was a Republican, which should make the loud, hateful Republicans pause, but of course, it does not. Anything that Barack Obama wants, these guys want the opposite–even if it’s in their own best interest. Their hate can  be read in every immigration article’s comment section online.

So let’s hope our  Conservative lawmakers and their supporters don’t get their panties in a bunch over what will inevitably be another step in our country’s racial evolution. History truly does repeat itself. This has already happened, and it is happening again.

Get over it.

In a World. . . where Republicans rule supreme.

Where Democrats don’t have much say in government and are left to sit on the sidelines and complain about what could have been.

 

A young man gets shot by someone who bought a gun and some ammo at recent gun show and robbed him of his cell phone and wallet. The hospital bill is in the tens of thousands of dollars, even though he was released that same day, because the Affordable Health Care Act was repealed and Medicare has been gutted to barely care for some of the necessities of senior citizens who cannot afford their own private medical insurance.

He goes home and fixes the same thing he eats every day—Ramen noodles. Sometimes, for a special occasion, he will add a few Ketchup packets he boosts from the fast food restaurant he started working at, ever since all the immigrants got deported, creating a vacuum in the economy and causing chain layoffs as companies lost people who could afford their products. Job choices are slim since many other college graduates have flooded the foodservice, hospitality, homecare and other menial job markets.

This bright, intelligent, 26 year old man is thinking it might not be too late to join the military, the only healthy industry left after the Republican dominated government cut all the “parasitic social services” in order to create tax breaks for the rich and reduce spending to balance the budget, not to mention motivate those people “addicted to government subsidies.” Balancing the budget was supposed to be the main goal, but with all the other problems with the economy and the new wars breaking out with the Russians, Chinese, Chechens, Iraqis, Syrians, Iranians, Afghans and those pesky Pakistanis. America understands it’s hard to think about the budget at times like these, so they will wait until times are better and they can afford to focus on such things. Until then they will support an ever growing military budget and still find room to blame our overspending on the few remaining social programs that are struggling for survival.

A woman he met at a party a few weeks ago comes to his home and informs him she’s pregnant, having lost any access to birth control services she previously used, and since abortion is outlawed, they must have the baby. They both struggle to figure out how they are going to be able to support their child, let alone each other.

The day is not a total loss as they are both invited to a going away party for two of the young woman’s gay friends who are leaving for Europe, where Gay relationships are not so harshly punished and they will even be able to get married and enjoy family benefits. They are both excited at the prospect of possibly scoring some food at the party, or at least a few beers.

At the party, the main discussion makes its way to the usual topic of late; life in America and how it changed so much in just a few years.

With his wallet gone, he’s without a license, so he won’t be able to vote in next week’s elections. Everyone at the party agrees they would vote for someone other than a Republican, except they keep producing these great video promos that play all the time and really convince everybody that things will get better and we, as a society, are returning to a better, more “pure” America, just like in the good ol’ days.

Everyone can hardly wait.

An American Iron Curtain

We are creating an American Iron Curtain

US Mexico border fence with barbed wire

When I was a boy growing up in the sixties and seventies, the only places we got our news was radio, TV & the newspaper. Being young, I wasn’t much on reading because I was having a difficult time learning the language. English is not the easiest language in the world to learn. Some of the rules still don’t make much sense, so, as a kid, I mainly just stuck with TV, and even then I wasn’t much interested in the news. Grown-up TV was scary.

The John F. Kennedy assassination, then the Bobby Kennedy assasination, Martin Luther King & Malcolm X murdered too, the Vietnam war, Watergate, the civil rights riots, the Black Painters.

And that was just in this country.

The news coming out of Russia was even scarier. People who disagreed with the government disappeared, the KGB was out to get everyone, The Gulag or forced labor and torture camps sounded like hell on earth,  their highly censored media, and severely restricted travel and career paths. Our freedoms were as countless as the stars at night and you could thank heaven for growing up in this wonderful country.

For a long time (all throughout the Cold War) it seemed as if our whole national identity revolved around how superior we were to the Soviet Union, the number 2 world power at the time. We compared ourselves to Russia in almost everything: who had the most gold medals in the olympics, the first man in space, the first satellite in orbit, the first man on the moon, the most nuclear weapons. . . and of course, we compared our cultures; we had freedom– they didn’t.

In America, you could go anywhere you wish, freely, and without restriction.  In the USSR,  you needed travel papers before leaving your state, or entering another. In the USSR if you were born into a farmer’s family, you would grow up to be a farmer too. In America you could grow up to be whatever you wanted to be.

In America our society thrived on diversity. We imported some of the best minds from around the globe and became a super power because of it. In the USSR their lack of diversity, and their rigid control of everything, kept growth, innovation, and prosperity to a minimum.

berlinwall

In the USSR there were very scary structures like the Berlin wall, that symbolized their leader’s fear of freedom and transparency.

This wall served two physical purposes:

  1. To keep their own people in,
  2. To keep meddling westerners and their ideas out.

The wall had social, emotional, psychological and philosophical effects on those living on both sides of the border too. Families were separated, many people were unable to return to their jobs or their homes, and the desire to leave grew more intense for those who found themselves trapped within.

In the USA we can come and go as we see fit. The world is our playground.

iron-curtain-europeIn the sixties and seventies we were told, in school and in the news, that people trying to get in or out through the Berlin wall were shot and killed by guards in towers. They had bright search lights to find people trying to get in or out in the dark of night. The images we were shown were cold and loveless and this wall, as well as all the other walls set up to segregate the west from the USSR, were given a cold and loveless name, “The Iron Curtain.” Just the sound of it coming out of the TV was enough to create nightmares in your dark and silent room at night. This was definitely something we would never do to our people.  This wall was evil, and so were the controlling ideologies behind it.

It was something that should be stopped.

Growing up in the USA may have given me a slightly biased point of view regarding much of what we were told and shown, but many of the facts were quite visible; such as the Berlin Wall itself, its guard towers, search lights, and armed guards, barbed wire, dogs, minefields. A lot of thought, time, energy and money went into the creating and maintaining of this security system.

Today I find the news equally as disturbing as when I was a child. Millions of Americans are living nightmares that we are creating for ourselves. We are building a fence between our country and Mexico for many of the same reasons the Russians did in East Germany and all along the Soviet Union’s borders with NATO countries. Today we are deploying more than just armed border agents, some dogs and a big fence. We also have ground sensors, spotlights, double walls separated by many yards of open space, barbed wire, and even drones. There is talk of sending the National Guard to the border. The techniques of the past with the weapons of today.

We are spending more per year on border security than in any other single government agency. We aim to keep people out of our more prosperous nation and protect ourselves from the percieved negative influences of Mexico and beyond.

us-iron-curtain

We, too, are dividing families and communities that once moved freely back and forth from Mexico to the US and back again. Many migrant workers who used to come north during harvest season and go back home to Mexico when the harvesting is done, are now forced to either stay here in the US for fear of not being able to return to work when the picking seasons start up again, or stay in Mexico and search for new places to live and new means of sustaining the family.

Going back to the early sixties and seventies and the Berlin wall, even with all of the money and effort and labor that went into that fortification, it was far from 100% effective. It is said there were around 2,000 people who escaped through the wall. There were always people looking for ways to get something in, or smuggle something out. It is estimated that around 200 people were killed trying to escape.

So far, aside from the anonymous postings of hateful cowards, few people have publicly said they were in favor of shooting people trying to immigrate to the United States like they did in Germany and in various other countries in the Soviet bloc. “Joe the Plumber”  is a notable exception, and some so-called Patriots on the Mexico-American border. Herman Cain spoke of electrifying the border fence, but he quickly back-pedaled when called on it.

Someone should tell Joe, Herman, and all those “Patriot” nuts at the border that the Berlin wall has come down. It was viewed as a testament to the failure of Communism as well as the relentless attraction of Democracy, a sign that all men seek freedom and self-determination as a meaningful and important part of human nature that cannot be separated from us by any man made object.

President Ronald Reagan gave a speech shortly before the wall was taken down. He criticized the wall and pushed for its destruction. In that speech was a simple philosophy behind such idea:

“We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace.”

6/12/87 President Ronald Reagan

That would also mean it would be analogous to say prohibiting human liberty would be anathema to world peace, too.

Are the anti-immigration reform people opposed to World Peace, because a good part of their platform doesn’t seem to support that idea very much.

The old Soviet Union is far from the only country that tried and failed to overly control it’s citizens. There are many other examples of a failed fortified stance against immigration/emigration.

Every day there are news reports of security breaches in the Israel-Gaza wall, the Egypt-Gaza wall, and once in a while someone infiltrates or escapes from North Korea.

No wall ever built has been 100% effective at keeping people in or out.

berlin-wall-soldier

The great wall of China, arguably the largest, longest living, and most expensive border security barrier ever built, failed to keep many invaders out. It is a living testament for the entire world that erecting barriers to keep people out of one area or another does not work, and it stands as proof positive that you can spend all the money you want and take centuries to build something, but you still won’t prevent the entry of people who are determined to get in. Not even the walls and moats surrounding relatively tiny pieces of real estate, such as castles and forts kept people out who were highly motivated to get in. We have tried for aeons to fence things off and keep people out or keep them in. Prisons have escapees. Alcatraz was hugely successful, having a strong current and  hundreds of yards of bay surrounding their fences and guard towers, yet a few people escaped from there too.

Even if we were to figure out how to build an Alcatraz like system all along the 2000 miles of border between the US and Mexico, and even if we had the money to build it, that is not the only access point that is vulnerable to people wanting in or out of our country. We have airports, shipping ports, thousands of miles of coastlands, as well as our border to the north with Canada, and our Hawaiian Islands as well as the thousands of Islands in and around our country. It would take generations of Americans working full-time and many trillions of tax dollars to fortify all of our access points. It would take untold billions of dollars to install security systems capable of monitoring every person’s movement, and billions to install devices on each citizen or visitor within our country to ensure they have a right to be here.

Which brings up a very important question: What would a 100% secure America look like? Prison? East Germany? The Gaza strip? Israel? Would you want your children to grow up in a place like this? Would you want to live in even a colorful, sunshiny prison? Where would we vacation, on a beautiful sandy beach surrounded by high fences with concertina wire and armed guards in towers with spotlights at night?

If the old USSR isn’t a good enough reminder for us that isolation is a nation killer, we will surely follow in their footsteps, walling off our nation and isolating ourselves from much of the outside world, stifling innovation, killing our economy and relegating us to the land “formerly known as the USA.” We will have to watch as a new super power emerges to lead us into the 21st or 22nd century.

Is this the legacy we want to leave behind?

us-medico-border-barbed-wire

Do we want to be known as the generation that lead to the end of our status as the leader of the free world?

If you would like to prevent this from happening, please enter your email address and become a part of the movement that seeks to end this un-American ideal. Join me and the thousands of other people working to ensure we leave a healthy, vibrant country to our children and grandchildren. They will thank us for it.

 

California State Trust Act- making our communities safer

The California Trust Act that Gov Jerry Brown signed into effect in May 2013 is having a very positive response from law enforcement.

Monterey County Sheriff Scott Miller and Salinas police Chief Kelly McMillin are stating publicly their intention to opt out of any detentions and arrests based solely on a person’s immigration status, whether known or unknown.

So why would such high ranking law enforcement officers take such a stand? For many reasons:

  • It makes our jails less crowded.
  • It makes the judges calendars less crowded, affording them to take more time and consideration when reviewing cases, reducing errors in sentencing due to rapid pace hearings.
  • It enables law enforcement to focus on solving crimes rather than assisting ICE in doing their jobs.
  • It helps immigrants trust law enforcement, not having to fear getting deported just for reporting a crime.
  • Increases in crime reporting reduces actual crime numbers by letting would-be criminals they are not just going to be given a blank check to do whatever they want without fear of justice.
  • It keeps more bad guys off the street by apprehending more criminals instead of undocumented immigrants.
  • IT makes our neighborhoods safer.

When all is said and done, having law enforcement focusing on law enforcement instead of spending much of their time on immigration enforcement, helps our communities where we really need it.

US Immigration Reform PLAN A Conclusion

Before we finish there needs to be something addressed here that is not in the US Immigration Reform PLAN A ideology.

Some of the conservatives in the audience will notice there is no mention of border security in this bill. There are two very sound reasons for this:

1)   The border is more secure now than at any time in our history. More resources, money and manpower have been shifted to the border than during any other time in our history. As a result of our extensive efforts to stop people at the border, we are apprehending a record low level of  people not seen since 1971.  People crying about securing the border before working on any new immigration bill are really just stalling. No border in the history of the world has ever been 100% secure, and our border with Mexico has never been more secure than it is right now.

2)   When you focus on compliance and making it easy and financially accessible and ultimately highly beneficial for everyone to participate, the need for prevention will be greatly reduced. As compliance passes 80% the need for our current border forces will also be reduced, and the remaining force’s day to day activities will shift to rounding up drug runners and criminals, as all those who have nothing to hide will rather do things the easy, inexpensive, legal way. Catching fewer people should be easier than trying to stem the tide of a million immigrants a year, so our border security should even increase, while we reduce our expenses and shift our resources where they will be needed most.

If we begin here, we can begin to create a program that is good for the both the US, and the immigrant, is weighted more towards benefiting us, can be easily (relatively speaking) setup and maintained, won’t cost us anything, and quite possibly help us monetize and protect a resource of income, spending, and taxes, as well as protect and nourish a great part of our communities and culture.  With the emerging markets producing vastly more competition around the world, we could use all the help we can get. Immigrants of all kinds are needed to keep us leading the world in engineering, innovation, economy, and quality of life.

     Lastly,

The only thing I loathe more than censorship is hateful comments that contribute nothing to the conversation. The only comments that will be removed are the hateful, non-helpful ones, (trolls) and people who love to post the same comment over and over and over and over and over. . .

Please remember, any jerk can complain, and most usually do, but only those who genuinely care about helping, will offer suggestions as to how to make something better.

We need to hurry. Congress could surprise us and come up with something sooner than later. If that happens, the compromises that inevitably will find their way into the bill will likely cripple it, and hinder any future progress we might otherwise enjoy.

So tell me, do you have confidence in our government to put forth a well thought out, truly beneficial and successful bill that will propel our country forward for years to come?

Join the conversation now, before we have to suffer through what congress manages to cobble together, for the next thirty years.

<prev  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 next>

America Needs A DREAM

The problem with the immigration debate in this country these past several years has been the discussion is taking place on two different levels.

1) Immigration is bad for AmericaAmerica Needs a DREAM
2) Immigrants are people and deserve rights

Because our national discussion is happening on two different levels, it will just go around and around in circles, never really getting anywhere, until we start having the same discussion. It’s true that immigrants should be given equal rights in this country, but we need to defend our position on the same grounds we are being attacked.

Check out “America Needs A DREAM” for FREE in Amazon lenders library!

I have written an ebook that focuses on responding to the arguments the anti-immigration movement dishes out. We need to be talking about how immigrants are beneficial to the US, and how badly we need to correct the laws that are currently not serving our best interests.

w/ bonus Interactive DREAM Act Discussion Guides

In the back of the book are a few interactive discussion guides that will help keep this discussion on the same page and take away the arguments that the anti-immigration movement would like us to believe are truths. They are not, and I include links to studies and articles that back up these arguments, taking the wind right out of their sails, and exposing the lies.

Please go to Amazon.com and buy America Needs A DREAM, or, if you have an Amazon Prime account, you can check out the book for free. The interactive discussion guides in the back is well worth the $1.95 all by itself.

Don’t forget to sign up for my mailing list to be notified on important the Dishwasher’s Son events.

We all need to dig in and let our politicians know what we want them to do, and why they need to be doing it. Until we make this crystal clear, we are going to be living this debate indefinitely.

Mike J. Quinn
Author
America Needs A DREAM
The Dishwasher’s Son

Maybe We Should ALL Choose Self Deportation

Asking immigrants to accept self deportation after they arrive here without their greencard paperwork in order,  while we sit comfortably in our living rooms knowing we dodged that bullet, is highly hypocritical. How many of our fore-fathers had their paperwork secured and approved before arriving on our shores? Self deportation is a new term never before brought up in our vocabulary for a reason; only within the last fifty- years has there been a situation for such a term.

We are so backlogged with current greencard applications that we take forever getting them approved, and often lose paperwork, or ask for new paperwork because the original green card paperwork we asked for is now expired. Should we just tell our undocumented and under-documented immigrants, “that’s too bad” and ask them to accept self deportation because we are unable to handle the backlog for our current demand?

Speaking of legal and illegal immigration,  I wrote a series of articles on the language of hate. I like to keep abreast of new articles that are created by some of the more prominent hate groups parading as concerned American citizen organizations. Below is an example of the kinds of things they write about in order to enlist more followers. Obviously they are trolling the waters for the ignorant or misinformed. This sentence really jumped out at me:

 

“Legal immigration is people exchanging a culture of corruption for a culture that honors the rule of law.”

 

This is a definition of legal immigration that really defines the length to which these organizations try to stretch the truth in order to justify their message. Nowhere in that sentence is there any room for an honorable immigrant.

Are all other countries corrupt?

Is the US the only one that isn’t?

Remember Enron? Arthur Andersen? Goldman Sachs? Lehman Brothers? Countrywide Home loans? Freddie Mac? Yeah, we sure honor our rule of law– after we get caught. Until then we fly under the radar and pray we don’t go to jail. (Sound familiar?) The difference here is, and it’s a big one, the people accused of this hateful group’s crime are just coming here to better themselves by circumventing a policy that is out-dated, confusing and extremely lengthy. Immigrants are often faced with rejection due to documents needing to be re-submitted because of a confusing and lengthy application process. As for the Americans that destroyed our economy (twice) in recent years; they knew they were doing very bad things.

The blog post also carries this theme further:

“Illegal immigration is people bringing the culture of corruption of their home countries with them.”

So, if I understand these two sentences correctly, the process of filling out an application is all that’s needed to save someone from corruption vs bringing corruption with them. Nice.

Since we all are products of immigrants, is this a confession that their forefathers brought the corruption of their home countries with them as well? Maybe that explains where we got our corruption from. According to them we could not have manufactured any corruption on our own. Perhaps we should all go back to where our ancestors came from and leave this land as pristine and corruption-free as we found it. I’m sure the native Americans would appreciate it.

 

Immigration reform in 2013 is not a sure thing.

Immigration reform in 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 Is anyone’s guess.

If you have been reading the news lately, it appears the pundits are all over the map when it comes to predictions about immigration reform in 2013.

 Some say immigration reform in 2013 is going to happen:

http://immigrationlegalnews.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/senate-gang-of-eight-to-lead-immigration-reform-in-new-congress/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-house-seems-poised-to-retool-deportation-laws/2013/01/03/7cb52930-55db-11e2-8b9e-dd8773594efc_story.html

 

Some say immigration reform in 2013 remains unclear:

http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/viewart/20121230/NEWS01/312300027/Immigration-laws-outlook-still-unclear

 

Some say immigration reform in 2013 is not likely to happen:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immigration-20121230,0,1823657.story

 

Some say it should happen and that immigration reform  in 2013 may even help stimulate our economy away from the fiscal cliff that so captures our national attention at present.

http://www.gazette.com/opinion/income-149099-debt-ratio.html

 

It is with this mixed bag of  uncertainty that we need to push the hardest we have ever pushed in order to get some immigration reform in place that will  help our youth achieve higher education goals,  help this economy grow, and make it safe for families to stay together.

Write your congressman NOW—TODAY, and let them know you want immigration reform THIS YEAR!

We all saw what pressure can do for Hurricane Sandy Relief. This could be our path to immigration reform in 2013 too.

Where is the DREAM today?

There are rumors of a new DREAM Act being developed by Senator Marco Rubio. He hasn’t provided any details yet, but his new DREAM Act will have one thing that the other three versions didn’t: a Republican author.

But what about the Democrats? Why would this version of the DREAM Act pass through Congress when theirs didn’t? Perhaps having a resentful Democratic veto is exactly what the Republicans are hoping for. Then they will be able to blame the Democrats for this stalemate, conveniently forgetting all of their own previous acts of sabotage.

No matter who you think is to blame for our constant inability to push immigration legislation through the Senate, one thing is for certain: any version of the DREAM Act conjured up by the Republicans will undoubtedly leave the immigrant as far from legal citizenship as possible.

The Republicans know they have done a great job of enflaming the Latino population. They cannot provide a path for undocumented immigrants to receive citizenship, even ten years from now, for fear the Latino voters will long remember the hardship they had to endure because of their shameful conservative attitudes and harsh anit-immigrant positions. New Latino voters will become a large and powerful anti-Republican force.

The DREAM Act as it stands right now has been crafted by both Democrats and Republicans. If that won’t help it pass through Congress, it stands to reason nothing will. Evidence of this position is clear from recent comments of some Republicans who are still labeling the latest, most stripped down version of the DREAM Act as “back door amnesty.”

I urge you to read the article below on the DREAM Act and what it really says about the bill, in its latest iteration. How could any sane person see this as a gift that will be used by masses of undeserving people? It is so restrictive and sets the bar so high for those to qualify and still doesn’t guarantee anyone citizenship– just the opportunity to apply for it. These will be smart, ambitious, strong, sacrificing people of high moral character who show a high probability for positive social and economical growth. Who wouldn’t want these fine young people to be a part of their nation?

DREAM Act text http://www.dreamactivist.org/text-of-dream-act-legislation/