Wonderful Article by Bill Gates in Washingtonpost

Bill Gates wrote excellent article last week and now he gonna appear for testimony to Senate panel on March 7, 2007 (Wed.). This is really a very good for EB community.

http://today.reuters.com/news/artic...MICROSOFT-GATES-CONGRESS.XML&rpc=66&type=qcna



khodalmd said:
Right now Senate Judiciary committee have hearing with Secretory Commerce and Secretory DHS. In the first hours of discussion, I heard, at least, three to four times the Bill Gates article on Washingtonpost was discussed. How important that article is as far as skilled legal immigrants are concerned. It appears that all the lawmakers and policy makers have read that article along with comments posted on that article.
Many time I requested to post comments in favor of skilled immigrants. We missed the flight as lot of anti-immigrants have posted against that article! Timely action is highly needed.
I don't know, if we are not convince about EB GC reliefs, how come other people convince about it and shower GC to all of us!
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pswami said:
You may be right. I would not use the word pursuaded because Microsoft is too big and Bill Gates is too big to be pursuaded by a small group. But my friends working in Microsoft told me that ImmigrationVoice.org was making presentations early last month to Microsoft top people about Greencard problems and requested them to include Greencard issues along with H1B when Bill Gates speaks in the Senate hearing. His Article in Washington post was also connected with this hearing.
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Let me get this right. Bill Gates ONLY wanted to talk about H1B increase, but this great IV organization made presentations to Bill Gates, and it is because of this that Bill Gates decided to include the green card issue in his column and speeches. I have heard that story before in the context of some provisions.

Pswami: go and post this BS on IV; there will be many takers for it there. :) Actually, three of my closest friends (whom I went to high school with) work at Microsoft at high positions (senior product managers etc), and I just called two of them. They said there have not been made aware of any presentations of any kind at MS from any groups. In fact, they tell me that Bill Gates was pressing this even in mid-2005 immediately after retrogression hit --- even before IV was formed.
 
Easy qplearn! easy.... Let's stay on course about Bill Gates. One of the most important on immigration reform came from Sen. Kennedy (since we already knew how BG felt about immigration reform). On his question of urgency about the reform, BG said, ''acute."
Definetely a good sign with very positive vibes. The only point of contention seemed to be the number of H-1b's but overall the SKIL Bill looks on track.

qplearn said:
Let me get this right. Bill Gates ONLY wanted to talk about H1B increase, but this great IV organization made presentations to Bill Gates, and it is because of this that Bill Gates decided to include the green card issue in his column and speeches. I have heard that story before in the context of some provisions.

Pswami: go and post this BS on IV; there will be many takers for it there. :) Actually, three of my closest friends (whom I went to high school with) work at Microsoft at high positions (senior product managers etc), and I just called two of them. They said there have not been made aware of any presentations of any kind at MS from any groups. In fact, they tell me that Bill Gates was pressing this even in mid-2005 immediately after retrogression hit --- even before IV was formed.
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nyc8300 said:
Easy qplearn! easy.... Let's stay on course about Bill Gates. One of the most important on immigration reform came from Sen. Kennedy (since we already knew how BG felt about immigration reform). On his question of urgency about the reform, BG said, ''acute."
Definetely a good sign with very positive vibes. The only point of contention seemed to be the number of H-1b's but overall the SKIL Bill looks on track.
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qp, I agree with nyc8300.
why waste time on this clueless group anymore. this is the reason many people here are not in iv anymore.

Let's focus on our issues. Bill Gates has provided a big boost.
But I dont think we can get too excited because many of the senators were asking more about educating American students than immigration.
What was encouraging was the number of senators and press who attended his hearing. Lots of photographers, big turnout, which is almost non-existent with most hearings.
Also, there were many big names like Clinton, Leahy, etc. Clinton, however, was focusing on education, not immigration. And I read in the New York Sun that she and Schumer are pro-Irish immigrants, but not "immigrants of color".

On CSpan 3, the House had a counterattack which I saw later that evening, with the usual suspects like sessions and other lawmakers from Georgia, spitting out their anti-immig agenda. For the first time, one guy (forgot his name) stated clearly that they were opposed to increasing LEGAL immigration as well. Thankfully, there were not too many important names there, no Clinton, Leahy, Reid, etc, and mostly lesser known people. No photographers.

But of course, everyone's vote is equal, so dont know how much Bill's clout will help us. Unless the big names are able to pressurize the smaller guys.
 
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No matter what people in the House say and inspite of the lawyers on this forum trying to drag the high skilled legal immigrants down in rules etc, everybody on the forum needs to see what Bill Gates has said and take it as a floor.
For Bill Gates, it is about 'welcoming' specialized high skilled immigrants and then the synergy that is created leading to greater things.
Most of the country is still thinking of legal immigration as a way to fill vacancies. However, specialized legal immigrants are much more than that.

We need to believe that the country owes it to the highly skilled legal immigrants and it is not for legal immigrants to prove their worth. The statement from Bill Gates has essentially laid that down.

Also nobody in the country can morally say that they oppose legal immigration when their grand dadies came over from Ireland on a boat.

The big thing is that the world knows we exist, now just wait for your GC's in the mail.... I am still debating if a GC is desirable though because if you are a US citizen/GC holder u continue to pay 1/3rd to Uncle Sam wherever you live.
Ok. if you live here but not otherwise....


gcwhenever said:
qp, I agree with nyc8300.
why waste time on this clueless group anymore. this is the reason many people here are not in iv anymore.

Let's focus on our issues. Bill Gates has provided a big boost.
But I dont think we can get too excited because many of the senators were asking more about educating American students than immigration.
What was encouraging was the number of senators and press who attended his hearing. Lots of photographers, big turnout, which is almost non-existent with most hearings.
Also, there were many big names like Clinton, Leahy, etc. Clinton, however, was focusing on education, not immigration. And I read in the New York Sun that she and Schumer are pro-Irish immigrants, but not "immigrants of color".

On CSpan 3, the House had a counterattack which I saw later that evening, with the usual suspects like sessions and other lawmakers from Georgia, spitting out their anti-immig agenda. For the first time, one guy (forgot his name) stated clearly that they were opposed to increasing LEGAL immigration as well. Thankfully, there were not too many important names there, no Clinton, Leahy, Reid, etc, and mostly lesser known people. No photographers.

But of course, everyone's vote is equal, so dont know how much Bill's clout will help us. Unless the big names are able to pressurize the smaller guys.
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Well, no wonder Bill Gates is lobbying for this:

government data shows tech companies pay H-1B workers $13,000 per year less than American workers in the same jobs). “They say they need H-1B’s because they can’t find a qualified American,” whispered one permatemp in the hall outside his office. “What they really mean is they can’t find a cheap American.”

I took this from this article
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/30/EDGRJN7CFB1.DTL
 
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