G’s Place

I blogged about this on myspace, and tried to add it to Metafilter (they deleted it, many saying I was an idiot for criticizing lawyers). It has also been discussed on /.
The story is that a law firm in PA had a conference on immigration law. Cohen & Grigsby posted the entire conference on youtube (videos have since been removed, but watch the Programmer’s Guild’s response). The entire conference was about how to use loopholes to obtain H1B visas for their corporate clients. In one of the sessions, they talk about what is required from the DOL as far as advertising the job. The conference leader makes a damning remark:

“…our goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker. And you know in a sense that sounds funny, but it’s what we’re trying to do here. We are complying with the law fully, but ah, our objective is to get this person a green card, and get through the labor certification process. So certainly we are not going to try to find a place [at which to advertise the job] where the applicants are the most numerous. We’re going to try to find a place where we can comply with the law, and hoping, and likely, not to find qualified and interested worker applicants.“

As the folks on Metafilter pointed out, the lawyers are doing the best job they can for their clients. What bugs me is that so many people think that people pointing out these loopholes are a bunch of angry old white guys who are bitter that they didn’t keep up with their skills and now they can’t get a job. But that just isn’t so.

Besides screwing over Americans (by making sure they do not recruit from the American domestic labor market) they are screwing over the immigrants they bring into the country. For example, in another part of the conference, one of the panelists recommends what to do if the prevailing wage set by the DOL comes back too high:

First, we have to remember that the wage offered to the [foreign] employee is the wage the the employee will be earning when he or she gets his or her green card, not the salary he’ll be making now.  So if the prevailing wage comes back $3,000 or $4,000 higher than the employee’s actual salary, then we can estimate that it will probably be three or four years until he gets his green card, then it is reasonable for that employee’s salary to be increased by that amount at the time he gets his green card.  Then we have no issues…

They are saying that wage listed on the application is not what the immigrant will be making now, but what they should be making in three or four years. But the law says the immigrants are supposed to make at least the prevailing US wage. So, people who have been brought into the country by companies using this firm are being cheated and misused too.
Some of the companies that have used this law firm to obtain H1B visas (according to the DOL) are Algor, Inc, Bayer Corporate and Business service LLC, Hexware Technologies, Marconi Communications, UBICS,  MEDRAD, and CM Technologies Corporation.
LouDobbs reported on how Congressmen have sent letters to the Labor Dept and Cohen & Grigsby.

This article mentions an interesting fact….2 of the 3 criteria to be diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome are society-based. Does that mean that the people are broken…or does it mean society is broken?

I wonder if in pre-industrial days, people with ASDs had a specific societal role. Sure, they are weird and hard to understand and deal with sometimes, but they have so many gifts. Like having an intense, focused interest on topics…so much so that they have to know everything (and I do mean everything!!) about the topic, and that makes them experts. You can’t really teach someone to be that way. So why aren’t we (as a society) taking advantage of that?

Also, it kills me that my daughter’s self-esteem is tied to what she **can’t** do. There is so much she CAN do. She can do stuff other people would pay money to be able to do (you should read her writing!). But she can’t figure out society, and that makes her feel like a loser.

That doesn’t seem right.

Here are the strawberries yesterday…

Radio Open Source linked to me for their program on the food stamp challenge. I didn’t get to hear the first part of the program, because I was cooking (we had crock pot chicken legs, turnips, rice, and corn that came from leftover corn on the cob from a barbque, and ceasar salad made from romaine from the garden).

The lady from Hillbilly Housewife was on, and she was great. I have read her blog for a long, long time.

She kept going back to the idea that there is nutritious, good food out there, but poor people have the least amount of time, and sometimes now skills, to be able to prepare that kind of food.

I’m lucky, I am a real southerner. I know how to make rice and beans, how to cook biscuits and corn bread from scratch.
How to can and freeze. I hope I have taught my children well enough.

Lots of poor folk don’t have that knowledge, and I think home ec would be good. I wish my kids could have taken it in school.

I still believe the economics here need to change. Poor folk have to try and make two 30-hr a week (read PART TIME) jobs work…and if anything happens to mess up their schedules they are in trouble. Thank goodness I am out of that situation now…it sucked so much.

I picked enough strawberries out of our patch to end up with 2 cups (enough for jam!). Although, I am pretty sure we are going to pick strawberries this weekend.

Plans are for one run of sugar free (6 - 8 half pints), and two runs of regular (12 -16 half pints).

The mom took them…I don’t know if it was cuz

1. It rained like crazy and they couldn’t stay dry
2. They were too big to be under the porch
3. She got pissed I was socializing them with people.

   But it makes me a little sad.

Kenny’s girlfriend has strep throat. Kenny tested negative, but his dr is treating him for it anyways.

great.

On the wild kitty front….we are only taking food out while we are out. Now, if we shake the bowl the mama will come running and will eat while we are near. We have seen 3 kitties eating the cat food.

Now hopefully, the shelter will take them. One of the small ones (there are 2) is very skittish. I worry about that one.

I like this, alot.

They are soooo sooo cute. The lady at the shelter says there is no room, and they need to be weaned. So we bought kitten food, and we are going to try and socialize them.

We can’t bring them in because of our kitties, we don’t know if the babies have diseases.

The shelter lady said to get some kitten food for them, and see if they will eat. They are obviously still nursing.

Also, we are going to try and socialize them the best we can without bringing them in. As mean as it seems, I understand why people leave kittens on the side of the road in a box.