Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:03:14 -0700 From: Norm Matloff To: Norm Matloff Subject: keeping the riffraff out of the political process To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter I of course receive tons of e-mail messages each day (sorry, I'm too much of a purist to call them "e-mails"). Among the ones arriving today, there were two in stark contrast to each other: In the morning, an engineer who feels he has been displaced by foreign workers, and who feels that Congress cares nothing for people like him, said he had come to the conclusion that we have a "secret government," impenetrable by ordinary folks. In the afternoon, a consummate DC insider chastised me for having the audacity to publish the actual name of a staffer for Senator Durbin, in plain sight of all those aforementioned ordinary folks. The DC insider's message was tantamount to saying to me, "We do indeed have a secret government, and as someone with a [tiny] bit of access, it is your responsibility to keep it secret." Keep the riffraff out. I guess we've come a long way since Andrew Jackson invited the public, muddy boots and all, to come to the White House. Those who donate the big bucks, meaning industry lobbyists such as Compete America, AElA, ITAA, AILA (the immigration lawyers association), Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Oracle, Google, etc. etc. can meet with Senator Durbin any time they want. But as to the populace being even informed of an aide's name, well naturally that's verboten. The great unwashed are not supposed to gain access. Anyone knows that, right? And remarkably, even the few who present the views of H-1B critics--and they are indeed very few in comparision to those who represent the tech and immigration law industries--often have agendas that are unknown to, and/or contrary to the views of, their putative "constituents." A good example of this is IEEE-USA, which criticizes the H-1B program but promotes fast-track green cards for tech foreign students. The latter policy would be almost as harmful as H-1B, for reasons I've given many times, and in any case are directly contrary to the wishes of most concerned programmers and engineers that I know. Yet the message people on the Hill get is that America's programmers and engineers support fast-track green cards for foreign students. My own congressperson, Rep. Ellen Tauscher, refuses to see me. She even refused when another constituent met with her and requested that she see me. Once in a blue moon, the little guy gets at least fleeting attention from our secret government, if not direct access. The "TubeGate" videos, I'm told, were first discovered by a person whose name almost none of you would recognize, and who is far from DC both geographically and in degrees of separation. But this of course is rare. Something is dreadfully wrong with this picture. DC Insider, and a couple of other people who implicitly sent me similar messages are so wrapped up in the DC milieu that they are missing the ongoing demise of our democracy. Indeed, they are hastening it. On the bright side, after I posted this heinous breach of protocol, two earnest Durbin staffers called me, endured my rants and offered me some background on what led to the gutting of Durbin's amendment. None of this cancels the substance of my remarks, and I must say that I think these two ought to watch that Cohen & Grigsby video excerpt again (or better, all 20 full videos), but I do appreciate their call, and maybe there could be a ray of hope there. Norm