Indian IT companies, such as Tata
Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro, as well as multinationals like Google,
IBM and Facebook send engineers on work visas to work on client locations in
the US. They account for nearly 70 per cent of H1B visas issued every year to
high-tech workers.
Shrinivas Kuchibhotla (32) was one of
the thousands of such employees. Since ten years, he resided in Olathe, Kansas,
working for Garmin. His wife and he were planning to start a family. On Feb 22
2017, he was shot dead in a bar by a 52 year old Adam Purinton- a Navy
veteran, IT specialist, former pilot and air traffic controller , who lives in
a comfortable house, and certainly isn’t someone whose job was taken- who screamed ‘’get out of my country ‘’ before pulling the
trigger. Another Indian colleague , Alok Madsani (32)was was injured badly.
This incident is a blot on humanity. The
scum who shot Srinivas needs to be locked away for life, if not executed. He
brings a bad name to his people and also to the institution of US navy that he
served in. But at the same time, lets not forget the hero who tried to stop him,
24 year old Ian Grillot. While he is being rightly hailed as a hero in Kansas
state, the news channels are largely silent about him. Maybe because he’s not
from the favourite skin colour or religion of the left controlled media.
Here are the entire details of the incident and aftermath
from the local media:-
Sushma Swaraj, India’s external affairs minister also hailed
him as a hero:-
The White House did condemn the incident , but President
Trump added that merit based immigration needs to be implemented. During his
presidential election,he had called for tougher
immigration laws for technology companies, and had threatened to impose taxes
on companies that offshored. The National Association of Software and
Services Companies (Nasscom), the trade association of Indian IT firms, has
said outsourcing helps generate 50,000 jobs in the US and about $20 billion in
taxes. It added that the US might face a shortage of over a million software
engineers in the coming years. Excerpts:-
//On Tuesday night, in his first State of the Union address
to a joint session of the US Congress, Trump said, “Nations around the world, like
Canada, Australia and many others, have a merit-based immigration system. It is a basic principle that those seeking to enter a
country ought to be able to support themselves financially.” He also said,
“Switching away from this current system of lower-skilled immigration, and
instead adopting a merit-based system, will have many benefits; it will... raise workers’ wages, and help struggling
families — including immigrant families — enter the middle class.”
“Protecting our workers also means reforming our system of legal
immigration. The current, outdated system depresses wages for our poorest
workers, and puts great pressure on taxpayers,”.“Real and positive immigration reform is possible as long as it focuses on the goals to improve jobs and wages for Americans to strengthen the country’s security and to restore respect for laws.”//
Lets get some facts straight.
*The IT revolution in
India is not about innovation. Its about providing a large number of software
engineers who have the skills to be employed by any IT firm in the world. To
its credit, its not just about ‘’cheap’’ services as many westerners like to
scoff at, but also quality. No reputed company worth its name can maintain its
place by merely going for cheap options. But then, lets stop treating the
software engineers who go onsite as some kind of next Bill Gates, Vinod Dham or
Dennis Ritchie. Thats retarded. They are skilled employees, and not innovators.
And they need to go lightyears before they can even ask for respect similar to
what the Indian doctors, Indian businessmen etc have earned in US. Thats
because a huge section of the IT crowd has
no sense of belonging to either the country they come from nor the one they
reside in for their employment. There are things that some of them indulge in
viz showing off newly acquired possessions, limiting socialization to with one’s
own regional compatriots etc, not giving back anything to the country of the
residence (I pay my taxes isn’t the answer, contributions aren’t always
financial). This needs to change.
* The people who are using Mr Kuchibhotla’s death to forward
their own agenda (in other words, journalists from USA and also in India) are
liars and need to be discredited asap (eg this piece by you know who https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2017/03/01/the-kansas-shooting-teaches-indians-a-few-lessons-about-trump-and-the-united-states/
). Hate crimes in US against immigrants or between different races didn’t start
with Novemeber 2016 election. They have been there since a very long time. It
was the Democrats who brought Jim Crow laws. Race related riots have reached
their peak in period 2010-16. But then, Obama is the media’s darling. He can get
a pass for anything from Fergusson riots to bombing Libya into the stone age.
* Lets not forget the Ian Grillots while condemning the Adam
Puringtons. The former outnumber the latter. Had it been the other way round,
US would have been still in its pre civil rights days.( Over USD 200000 have
been raised for Shrinivas, and his widow will return to Olathe to resume her
work.http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/kansas-shooting-sunayana-prefers-to-return-to-ground-zero/articleshow/57421953.cms
)
*It is high time that Indians in US stop supporting ‘’open
borders’’. Open borders do not bring skilled workers, but hordes of lawless
people who are no good for creating anything but ghettos . The Open borders will not benefit Indians, because
Indian immigrants in US (like the
Vietnamese, Chinese, South Korean) do not come there for menial jobs, but mostly
for white collared jobs that are paid well. Open borders does not aim at
bringing white collared workers in (because there aren’t that many jobs to
absorb them), it aims at changing the demography of the country by flooding the
country with a low skill, low cost vote
bank to come to power. When this unrestrained immigration gets totally out of
hand, the backlash will get bad, and it will not differentiate which immigrant
is which. Everyone will be a target.
(And most of these hordes today are Syrian ‘’refugees’’) .
* The number of Indian Americans as people’s representatives
at city, state or national level in US is miniscule. The Indians in US (or in
any foreign nation) must understand that they cannot be a force to reckon with
with cushy jobs, winning spelling bees, buying huge assets and flashing them or
being inward looking. They need to develop good representatives (not Bobby
Jindal types) of theirs be a political
power (they largely suck at it). They need to be able to defend their own
against hate attacks, or for that matter any type of crime. There is scarcely
any Indian origin citizen in US who keeps a firearm, let alone getting good
with it. The weak image that Indian living in foreign countries have projected
doesn’t make them anyone’s favourite, it makes them fair game.
To give a glaring example, here are excerpts from the letter
published in Jersey Journal by Dotbusters (a hate group that particularly
targeted Hindus, particularly women, in
NJ in late 1980s) in July 1987:-
"I'm writing about your article during July about
the abuse of Indian People. Well I'm here to state the other side. I hate them,
if you had to live near them you would also. We are an organization called the
Dotbusters. We have been around for 2 years. We will go to any extreme to get
Indians to move out of Jersey City. If I'm walking down the street and I see a
Hindu and the setting is right, I will hit him or her. We plan some of our most
extreme attacks such as breaking windows, breaking car windows, and crashing
family parties. We use the phone books and look up the name Patel. Have you
seen how many of them there are? Do you even live in Jersey City? Do you walk
down Central avenue and experience what its like to be near them: we have and
we just don't want it anymore. You said that they will have to start protecting
themselves because the police cannot always be there. They will never do
anything. They are a weak [sic] race physically and mentally. We are going to
continue our way. We will never be stopped” (Full details: http://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/12/nyregion/in-jersey-city-indians-protest-violence.html).
Now imagine if even 100 of those then 9000 Indian immigrants
had even a .22 with them, would any racist thug have dared to put a hand on any
of them? Sadly, the Indian immigrants in US or elsewhere don’t get it, even
today. All the best with your nerdy kids winning spelling bees, folks. Hope
your kids grades help you fight racial attacks and home invasions.
*Unlike most politicians, Donald Trump hasn’t forgotten who
has elected him. His policies aren’t going to be exactly great for immigrants. Donald
Trump isn’t exactly an ideal person or a president, but neither were most
American presidents . Instead of whining about it, accept that he is the
president for the next four years atleast. Devise plans to work around it.
Discourage the people who want to use any means to go to foreign shores (their
number is frighteningly high),may it be fake degrees or paying a fortune to ‘’agents’’
to be shunted across the seas . There needs to be an awareness campaign via
mass media to make such ‘’ambitious’’ people understand that life for an
illegal immigrant in US or any other country is a nightmare, first of all
starting from the fact that they wont ‘’exist’’, have no rights and will be
exploited and abused all the time.
*Lastly, understand that when you leave the security of
home, you are responsible for your own safety. The law cannot protect you, it
can only avenge you. If new opportunities bring prosperity, they will bring
danger as well. The crimes that are a staple in your adopted homeland will soon
find a way to you. The only way is to ensure that you can defend yourself from
them.
How committed is our government machinery to protecting the
safety of non resident Indians or bringing diplomatic means for the same, is
the next stage. Just like daddy didn’t
come to save you from the school bully, law wont come to prevent you from
getting thrashed from dotbusters or KKK. Shed this weak image that you put
overseas of being nothing but a meek bunch of people who are at home only in
front of a computer or running a grocery store or being comfortable in gated
societies. Rest will follow.
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