Monday, August 18, 2008

H1B visa video

Here's something guaranteed to make your blood boil. A law firm by the name of Cohen & Grigsby apparently gives presentations to employers on how NOT to hire American workers, so as to be able to justify hiring cheaper foreigners with H-1B visas.

Representative quotation (at about 1:45): "our goal is, clearly, not to find a qualified and interested US worker. And, you know, in a sense that sounds funny, but it's what we're trying to do here!"



Can anyone explain why so many on both the left and the right consider big business "conservative?" Whether it's for multiculturalism or just for profit, they want to destroy America too.

Lou Dobbs discussed this video around the time it became public:

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, I'm completely liberal about immigration, but this is absolutely ridiculous.

togo said...

Leftards generally DEFINE conservatism as big business interests . Thus,
non-liberal Christianity and a special affinity for one's own kind (if you're a Euro, that is) are just epiphenomena that are supposed to somehow serve corporate interests by implanting "false(non-leftist) consciousness".

Laurel Loflund said...

Hi, Hermes,

I know this isn't really the topic of your post (I'd seen these videos quite a while ago, and my blood boiled as well), but I am curious to hear what you think the impact will be on the medical profession and a Christian's place in it as a result of the recent California court decision regarding the two fertility doctors who are Christians who refused, on moral grounds, to artificially inseminate a Lesbian.

Calif Top Court: Docs Can't Withhold Care To Gays
http://www.cbs8.com/stories/story.137872.html

God bless,
Laurel

Hermes said...

icr, that's true; my question was somewhat rhetorical, since I know that "big business=conservative" is an axiom of the left. When you become a traditionalist and spend a lot of time reading traditionalist sites, one of the things that strikes you upon returning to the mainstream debate is how far out of touch with reality it is. Like when I talk to my father, who's adopted the view that all the world's problems are caused by George W. Bush, oil companies, and the rich, and realize that he thinks that all the apparently non-conservative things Bush does, like promoting open borders, giving weekly radio addresses in Spanish, passing a huge Medicare prescription drug entitlement, praising "single moms" as "heroes," are all a ruse, just part of his master plan to help oil company executives get even richer.

laurel, I have seen that disturbing story and plan on posting about it soon.

Laurel Loflund said...

Thanks, Hermes, I am looking forward to your post.

We've been discussing the issue over at Kinism.net here:

http://www.kinism.net/index.php/forums/viewthread/305/

God bless,
Laurel

Laurel Loflund said...

Interesting news from the Feds.

Feds protect doctors from being forced to perform abortions
'Freedom of conscience is not to be surrendered upon issuance of a medical degree'

http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=73125

Thought you might like to know about it for your post on freedom of conscience.

God bless,
Laurel

Anonymous said...

India is a mess. It's that simple, but it's also quite complicated. I'll start with what I think are India's four major problems--the four most preventing India from becoming a developing nation--and then move to some of the ancillary ones.

First, pollution. In my opinion the filth, squalor and all around pollution indicates a marked lack of respect for India by Indians. I don't know how cultural the filth is, but it's really beyond anything I have ever encountered. At times the smells, trash, refuse and excrement are like a garbage dump. Right next door to the Taj Mahal was a pile of trash that smelled so bad, was so foul as to almost ruin the entire Taj experience. Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai to a lesser degree were so very polluted as to make me physically ill. Sinus infections, ear infection, bowels churning was an all to common experience in India. Dung, be it goat, cow or human fecal matter was common on the streets. In major tourist areas filth was everywhere, littering the sidewalks, the roadways, you name it. Toilets in the middle of the road, men urinating and defecating anywhere, in broad daylight. Whole villages are plastic bag wastelands. Roadsides are choked by it. Air quality that can hardly be called quality. Far too much coal and far to few unleaded vehicles on the road. The measure should be how dangerous the air is for one's health, not how good it is. People casually throw trash in the streets, on the roads. The only two cities that could be considered sanitary in my journey were Trivandrum--the capital of Kerala--and Calicut. I don't know why this is. But I can assure you that at some point this pollution will cut into India's productivity, if it already hasn't. The pollution will hobble India's growth path, if that indeed is what the country wants. (Which I personally doubt, as India is far too conservative a country, in the small 'c' sense.)

More after the jump.

The second issue, infrastructure, can be divided into four subcategories: roads, rails and ports and the electrical grid. The electrical grid is a joke. Load shedding is all too common, everywhere in India. Wide swaths of the country spend much of the day without the electricity they actually pay for. With out regular electricity, productivity, again, falls. The ports are a joke. Antiquated, out of date, hardly even appropriate for the mechanized world of container ports, more in line with the days of longshoremen and the like. Roads are an equal disaster. I only saw one elevated highway that would be considered decent in Thailand, much less Western Europe or America. And I covered fully two thirds of the country during my visit. There are so few dual carriage way roads as to be laughable. There are no traffic laws to speak of, and if there are, they are rarely obeyed, much less enforced. A drive that should take an hour takes three. A drive that should take three takes nine. The buses are at least thirty years old, if not older. Everyone in India, or who travels in India raves about the railway system. Rubbish. It's awful. Now, when I was there in 2003 and then late 2004 it was decent. But in the last five years the traffic on the rails has grown so quickly that once again, it is threatening productivity. Waiting in line just to ask a question now takes thirty minutes. Routes are routinely sold out three and four days in advance now, leaving travelers stranded with little option except to take the decrepit and dangerous buses. At least fifty million people use the trains a day in India. 50 million people! Not surprising that waitlists of 500 or more people are common now. The rails are affordable and comprehensive but they are overcrowded and what with budget airlines popping up in India like Sadhus in an ashram the middle and lowers classes are left to deal with the overutilized rails and quality suffers. No one seems to give a shit. Seriously, I just never have the impression that the Indian government really cares. Too interested in buying weapons from Russia, Israel and the US I guess.

The last major problem in India is an old problem and can be divided into two parts that've been two sides of the same coin since government was invented: bureaucracy and corruption. It take triplicates to register into a hotel. To get a SIM card for one's phone is like wading into a jungle of red-tape and photocopies one is not likely to emerge from in a good mood, much less satisfied with customer service. Getting train tickets is a terrible ordeal, first you have to find the train number, which takes 30 minutes, then you have to fill in the form, which is far from easy, then you have to wait in line to try and make a reservation, which takes 30 minutes at least and if you made a single mistake on the form back you go to the end of the queue, or what passes for a queue in India. The government is notoriously uninterested in the problems of the commoners, too busy fleecing the rich, or trying to get rich themselves in some way shape or form. Take the trash for example, civil rubbish collection authorities are too busy taking kickbacks from the wealthy to keep their areas clean that they don't have the time, manpower, money or interest in doing their job. Rural hospitals are perennially understaffed as doctors pocket the fees the government pays them, never show up at the rural hospitals and practice in the cities instead.

I could go on for quite some time about my perception of India and its problems, but in all seriousness, I don't think anyone in India really cares. And that, to me, is the biggest problem. India is too conservative a society to want to change in any way. Mumbai, India's financial capital is about as filthy, polluted and poor as the worst city imaginable in Vietnam, or Indonesia--and being more polluted than Medan, in Sumatra is no easy task. The biggest rats I have ever seen were in Medan!

One would expect a certain amount of, yes, I am going to use this word, backwardness, in a country that hasn't produced so many Nobel Laureates, nuclear physicists, imminent economists and entrepreneurs. But India has all these things and what have they brought back to India with them? Nothing. The rich still have their servants, the lower castes are still there to do the dirty work and so the country remains in stasis. It's a shame. Indians and India have many wonderful things to offer the world, but I'm far from sanguine that India will amount to much in my lifetime.

Now, have at it, call me a cultural imperialist, a spoiled child of the West and all that. But remember, I've been there. I've done it. And I've seen 50 other countries on this planet and none, not even Ethiopia, have as long and gargantuan a laundry list of problems as India does. And the bottom line is, I don't think India really cares.