Zis & Zat

Great news ... but wait ...
April 1, 2007 was a wonder day ... for those concerned with specialized worker visa (H1B) applications. The cap of 65,000 was reached on the first day. On April 1, 2007 CIS was flooded with 150,000 applications prompting officials to lottery visas available.

So Americans feel we're invading their work space. Fine. The solution?

The Bill Will Eliminate The Current Application Backlog For Employment-Based Visas And Make 380,000 Green Cards Available Under The Merit-Based System - Up From 140,000 Employment-Based Visas Available Today

They'll keep the H1-B quota down but they'll increase the quota for Green Card applicants for skilled workers. (A H1-B visa worker will, at some point, pay tax like a resident, yet will never get benefits of SS and Medicare like a Green Card holder will.)

So, if I understand this, they don't want temporary skilled workers, but are fine with the ones that'll potentially stay here forever. Hmm.

Does that make sense to me? No. Does it bother me? Hell no. Good move, America! (and I don't say this just because it potentially makes my life easier ... but I really think the US can benefit more in terms of maintaining its competitive edge with the global market)

The best recourse for legal immigrants is ...
... to become illegal. Yup, we've heard it before.

Annual quota for legal skilled immigrants is miniscule compared to undocumented immigrants: Jay Pradhan, a Computer Programmer says, “The annual Green Card quota available to undocumented immigrants under the proposed Z visa would be approximately 2.2 million per year for the first 5 years. Compare this to the current legal, employment based Green Card system that faces backlogs of 5-6 years – not including the various processing delays. The annual quota of 140,000 Green Cards for legal skilled immigrants has been reduced to 90,000 instead of being increased. One wonders who the so called ‘Comprehensive’ Bill benefits? Certainly not the legal high- skilled workers, who have worked so hard and followed all Laws of this country.”

Pradhan needs to update his stats a wee bit, though.

Stephen Colbert on the new Bill :

"I totally understand the need for cheap labor. You see this Bill here, I've not had time to read it. I'm going to hire a Mexican to read it. "

Russians on Global Warming :

He said one million tons of aerosol would enable a reduction of solar irradiance at the Earth's surface of 0.5-1%, and a lowering of air temperature by 1-1.5 degrees Celsius

Pardon me if I don't know anything about anything but I'm sill apprehensive about pumping the atmosphere with sulfur compounds. Not much out there about this 'solution' yet, but I can't wait to hear more opinions.

What goes on in Vegas, don't stay in Vegas
... no mo'!

Google, in general : cool. This : not so cool.

Incidentally the way they generate the pictures is by having and army of camera mounted vehicles traversing the streets. So far they've done parts of Google's home cities, San Fransisco and New York City, and just to scare the Bachelor party lushes, Las Vegas as well. The Druge Report goes on to identify people outside strip clubs (of course, maybe he was just feeding the meter, or maybe he was supposed to be at the other end of town) and adult book stores(can't find the link anymore).

Yeah, the people part is worrisome. (Go ahead. Say you think i'm up to weird shait that i want to hide :-) ) The actual tool is, as usual, pretty darn impressive.