Mar 2009 - My flight on the way back from Orlando to San Jose was rather interesting. No, there wasn’t a blonde sitting besides me, wish there was. I reached the airport duly on time, got in to the security checkpoint and out again, realized I had a can of coke that I didn’t want to throw away. So I out again to finish my coke and got back in.
On the way to the airport, my Indian cab driver, who had by now become an acquaintance, who used to ferry me to and from the hotel to my office for the week that I spent in Orlando, told me a interesting news. He mentioned that they (the federal government) were thinking of passing a bill where in immigrants in the US, better known as H1B workers would get another way to gain permanent residence in the country. There are many a thousands of Indians who would want to settle down in the US. Basically, want to quit India and live their life in the land of opportunities.
I must admit, I too have contemplated of keeping myself an option of having permanent residence in US. But somehow I haven’t been fully convinced enough to take the first step, that of getting a H1B visa.
So the new proposed Bill would grant green card to those individuals who have purchased a house in the US. This is yet another bid to get some movement in the bottomed out real estate market.
I was surprised to hear this as it was in stark contrast to Obama’s stance on the H1/L1 immigrated people in the US. Just recently there were talks of making it harder for people to get H1B’s; on the other hand, he also wants to discourage companies who are engaged in the outsourcing model. While he has the right to pass any law or bill that is in the best interest of US, it is interesting how human beings evolve, define laws and fight wars against the wrong doers.
Back to my flight, it was a long 5 hour journey. Luckily I had the morning edition of US Today. I pulled it out of my bag and noticed the picture on the front page. It was a camper sitting outside his tent. While the title of the main article referred to job loss I was confused for a brief moment on how it was related to a camper.
Then as I read the under script, it dawned upon me. It was a jobless person being forced to live in a tent as he couldn’t afford to pay the rent for his apartment.
A result of current recession, thousands of people across the country have been forced out of their homes and onto streets, tents, municipal shelters and some even have chosen to live their lives out of their vehicles – mostly cars! The article quoted many American individuals, most of them singles, who had managed to have a mediocre job, some of them even maintained middle class status, having being suddenly forced to become homeless. These were the work force from the housing, construction, real estate and some even from the automobile industry.
One person quoted was an electronics graduate who worked in the auto sector. It was indeed heartening to read these first hand stories of these individuals.
The third page of US Today again caught my attention; it carried yet another interesting article titled “Tribes wait for US recognition”. One would think of these tribes to be probably belonging to some of the recently invaded countries, namely Iraq or Afghanistan. But instead the story was about a tribe of Native Americans who are strangely referred as Indians!
Per the article, there are about 562 recognized Native Indian tribes within the US while another 250 are in line to get recognized. It is very shocking to read that even after 200 after their declaration of independence, you still see justice not granted to some of the poor Native Americans who lost their beautiful land to the European settlers aka invaders!
If we put the numbers together it would appear that there would be in all 800 odd Native American tribes who originally belonged and rightfully owned this American soil. Of which 1/3rd are still awaiting to be recognized as US citizen!
It’s ironic that today the US boosts of being a world super power and takes it upon their own freewill to decide how other countries should or should not conduct. And if found inappropriate get into self proclaimed wars against injustice, all in the name of good humanity! And for such a nation, they still have to recognize 1/3rd of the original population of the native soil that these invaders proudly proclaim to be US.
If the Native Americans are being made to face such humiliation, it is easy to imagine how should one Asian Indian would treated by this land of double standards.
And if today, Obama is coming up measures to curb Asians from settling on the US soils, perhaps it is time for the Asians to learn a lesson or two from the earlier settlers at how to succeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment