Desi Diaspora, Immigrants News

NEW JERSEY, DEC 10: Two former New York city workers were accused of defrauding the medical examiner�s office of millions of dollars provided by the federal government after the 2001 terrorist attacks, reports AP.

One of them is an an Indian-American Natarajan Venkataram, 41, from Queens, New York.

Both Venkataram and Rosa Abreu, 38, also of Queens, were arrested Wednesday on charges that they defrauded the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, authorities announced Friday.

Prosecutors said about $5.5 million in funds had been transferred at Venkataram�s direction to bank accounts in India, says the report.

The pair reportedly embezzled millions of dollars by submitting invoices for goods and services that were never provided or by inflating what was owed.

In a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, prosecutors said the pair was involved in a personal relationship when they began � even before Sept. 11, 2001 � to steer contracts to entities that did little or no work.

After the terrorist attacks, the Federal Emergency Management Agency forwarded millions of dollars to help the office buy computer hardware, software and support services to identify victims through forensic analysis of body parts and other means. Prosecutors said the defendants steered one $11.4 million contract to a company that was controlled by a close associate of Venkataram. Venkataram and Abreu were administrators in the medical examiner�s office, which has more than 700 employees.

The defendants made an initial court appearance Thursday. U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew Peck ordered Abreu held pending a bail hearing while Venkataram�s bond was set at $1 million, secured by $400,000 in cash. Venkataram also will be required to submit to electronic monitoring. Prosecutors said about $5.5 million in funds had been transferred at Venkataram�s direction to bank accounts in India.

`No Pakistanis, Saudis in U.S. Please�

NEW JERSEY, DEC 10: A renowned US professor, Gary S Becker has advocated that the US should be careful about admitting students and skilled workers from countries "that have produced many terrorists, such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan".

Mr. Gary S. Becker who is a 1992 Nobel laureate in economics, is Professor of Economics and Sociology at the University of Chicago and the Rose-Marie and Jack R. Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.

"My attitude may be dismissed as religious profiling, but intelligent and fact-based profiling is essential in the war against terrorists. And the terrorists come from a relatively small number of countries and backgrounds, unfortunately mainly of the Islamic faith. But the legitimate concern about admitting terrorists should not be allowed, as it is now doing, to deny or discourage the admission of skilled immigrants who pose little terrorist threat, says Mr Becker writing in the influential conservative American financial newspaper The Wall Street Journal.

Mr Becker opines that the right approach would be to greatly increase the number of entry permits to highly skilled professionals and eliminate the H-1B program, so that all such visas became permanent. Skilled immigrants such as engineers and scientists are in fields not attracting many Americans, and they work in IT industries, such as computers and biotech, which have become the backbone of the US economy. Many of the entrepreneurs and higher-level employees in Silicon Valley were born overseas. These immigrants create jobs and opportunities for native-born Americans of all types and levels of skills. This is mistaken policy, he says.

With border security and proposals for a guest-worker program back on the front page, it is vital that the U.S. -- in its effort to
cope with undocumented workers -- does not overlook legal immigration, he says. The number of people allowed in is far too small, posing a significant problem for the economy in the years ahead. Only 140,000 green cards are issued annually, with the result
that scientists, engineers and other highly skilled workers often must wait years before receiving the ticket allowing them to
stay permanently in the U.S, Becker observes.

An alternate route for highly skilled professionals, according to Becker -- especially information technology workers -- has been temporary H-1B visas, good for specific jobs for three years with the possibility of one renewal. But Congress foolishly cut the annual quota of H-1B visas in 2003 from almost 200,000 to well under 100,000. The small quota of 65,000 for the current fiscal year that began on Oct. 1 is already exhausted!

So it seems like a win-win situation, he says. "Permanent rather than temporary admissions of the H-1B type have many advantages.
Foreign professionals would make a greater commitment to becoming part of American culture and to eventually becoming
citizens, rather than forming separate enclaves in the expectation they are here only temporarily. They would also be more
concerned with advancing in the American economy and less likely to abscond with the intellectual property of American
companies -- property that could help them advance in their countries of origin."

"Basically, I am proposing that H-1B visas be folded into a much larger, employment-based green card program with the
emphasis on skilled workers. The annual quota should be multiplied many times beyond present limits, and there should be no
upper bound on the numbers from any single country. Such upper bounds place large countries like India and China, with many
highly qualified professionals, at a considerable and unfair disadvantage -- at no gain to the U.S."

"To be sure, the annual admission of a million or more highly skilled workers such as engineers and scientists would lower
the earnings of the American workers they compete against. The opposition from competing American workers is probably the
main reason for the sharp restrictions on the number of immigrant workers admitted today. That opposition is understandable,
but does not make it good for the country as a whole."

"Doesn't the U.S. clearly benefit if, for example, India's government spends a lot on the highly esteemed Indian Institutes of Technology to train scientists and engineers who leave to work in America? It certainly appears that way to the sending countries, many of which protest against this emigration by calling it a brain drain."

"Yet the migration of workers, like free trade in goods, is not a zero sum game, but one that usually benefits the sending and the receiving country. Even if many immigrants do not return home to the nations that trained them, they send back remittances that are often sizeable; and some do return to start businesses."

"Experience shows that countries providing a good economic and political environment can attract back many of the skilled men
and women who have previously left. Whether they return or not, they gain knowledge about modern technologies that becomes more easily incorporated into the production of their native countries."

Experience also shows that if America does not accept greatly increased numbers of highly skilled professionals, they might go
elsewhere: Canada and Australia, to take two examples, are actively recruiting IT professionals, Mr Becker adds.

Since earnings are much higher in the U.S., many skilled immigrants would prefer to come here. But if they cannot, they may compete against us through outsourcing and similar forms of international trade in services. The U.S. would be much better off by having such skilled workers become residents and citizens -- thus contributing to our productivity, culture, tax revenues and education rather than to the productivity and tax revenues of other countries.

Mr Becker continues " I do, however, advocate that we be careful about admitting students and skilled workers from countries that have produced many terrorists, such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. My attitude may be dismissed as religious profiling, but intelligent
and fact-based profiling is essential in the war against terror. And terrorists come from a relatively small number of countries
and backgrounds, unfortunately mainly of the Islamic faith. But the legitimate concern about admitting terrorists should not be
allowed, as it is now doing, to deny or discourage the admission of skilled immigrants who pose little terrorist threat.

Nothing in my discussion should be interpreted, he says, as arguing against the admission of unskilled immigrants. Many of these individuals also turn out to be ambitious and hard-working and make fine contributions to American life. But if the number to be admitted is subject to political and other limits, there is a strong case for giving preference to skilled immigrants for the reasons I have indicated.

Other countries, too, should liberalize their policies toward the immigration of skilled workers. I particularly think of Japan and
Germany, both countries that have rapidly aging, and soon to be declining, populations that are not sympathetic (especially
Japan) to absorbing many immigrants. These are decisions they have to make. But America still has a major advantage in attracting skilled workers, because this is the preferred destination of the vast majority of them. So why not take advantage of their preference to come here, rather than force them to look elsewhere?

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"No more birthright citizenship in USA"
By Masood Haider

NEW YORK DEC 10. A group of 92 conservative US lawmakers will attempt next week to force a vote on legislation that would revoke the principle of "birthright citizenship," part of a broader effort to discourage illegal immigration ,said the Los Angeles Times in a report Saturday.

For nearly 140 years, any child born on U.S. soil, even to an illegal immigrant, has been given American citizenship according a US law. But conservatives believe that many women from mostly developing countries come to the United States to have children just to secure American citizenship for their children.

The newspaper said that the push to change the citizenship policy is backed by some conservative activists and academics. But it could cause problems for the White House and the Republican Party, which have been courting Latino voters. GOP officials fear the effort to eliminate birthright citizenship will alienate a key constituency, even if the legislation ultimately is rejected by Congress or the courts.

The principle at issue rests on the first sentence of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 to guarantee the rights of emancipated slaves: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."

Some US lawmakers advocating tougher immigration laws contend that the amendment has been misinterpreted for decades. Conservatives maintain that although illegal immigrants are subject to criminal prosecution and are expected to abide by U.S. laws and regulations, they are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States in the full sense intended by the amendment's authors � and their children therefore fall outside the scope of its protection.

Those who want to change the interpretation acknowledge that illegal immigration is largely driven by the hunger for jobs at U.S. wages. But they also say that for some immigrants, automatic citizenship provides another compelling incentive to cross the border. They note that the United States is one of few major industrialized nations that grant birthright citizenship with no qualifications.

"Illegal immigrants are coming for many different reasons," said Rep. Lamar Smith, (a republican), one of the lawmakers pushing for the House measure. "Some are coming for jobs. Some are coming to give birth. Some are coming to commit crimes. Addressing this problem is needed if we're going to try to combat illegal immigration on all fronts."

"This is about attempting to deal with a serious policy problem by going after people's babies�. It doesn't have to become law for this kind of proposal to offend people," Cecilia Mu�oz, vice president for policy of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group told LAT. "This one really hits a nerve."

The 92-member House Immigration Reform Caucus, headed by Rep. Tom Tancredo, a republican from Colorado , wants to attach an amendment revoking birthright citizenship to a broader immigration bill scheduled to be taken up sometime next week, the newspaper said.

Although several revocation bills have been introduced in the House, the most likely one to move forward would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who are not citizens or permanent resident aliens.

The newspaper noted there is no official tally of the number of children born to illegal immigrants; unofficial estimates range from 100,000 to 350,000 a year. Smith and other critics of current immigration law say that 1 in 10 U.S. births � and 1 in 5 births in California � are to women who have entered the country illegally.

Upon reaching the age of 18, a U.S.-born child of illegal immigrants can petition to obtain permanent legal residency for his or her parents and siblings. Although it generally takes years for such requests to be approved or rejected, parents who receive visas then can begin the process of applying for full citizenship.

Because of the length of time involved, some immigration experts say that birthright citizenship is not a major incentive for the vast majority of illegal entrants.

However, the supporters of birthright citizenship expressed hope that they could head off the revocation measure in the House, or failing that, on the other side of Capitol Hill.

"There is no support for the concept in the Senate," said Sen. Judd Gregg , a republican from New Hampshire . "There are certain things that we have done as a nation for a long time that I don't think we're going to change. Rolling back the clock is not going to solve the problem of immigration."

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