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:-
http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article134459444.html
http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/kansas-hero-ian-grillot-bats-for-equality-wants-to-visit-india-in-near-future-ht-exclusive/story-U0kbUalENi3UlyCp000AEN.html
Sushma Swaraj, India’s external affairs minister also hailed him as a hero:-
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/india-hails-ian-grillots-heroism-external-affairs-minister-sushma-swaraj-leads-chorus/articleshow/57388974.cms
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 off-shored. 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. That’s retarded. They are skilled employees, and not innovators. And they need to go light years before they can even ask for respect similar to what the Indian doctors, Indian businessmen etc have earned in US. That’s 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 November 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” (Fulldetails: 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.