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Microsoft Seeks Trump Order Exemption for Workers With Visas (bloomberg.com)
Microsoft is asking U.S. officials to grant exceptions for law-abiding, visa-holding workers and students from President Donald Trump's immigration order, channeling the outrage expressed by many in the technology industry with a proposed solution. From a report: Such individuals are low-risk -- having already undergone a rigorous vetting process -- and face immediate hardship as a result of last week's order, Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said in a letter Thursday to the secretaries of State and Homeland Security. Smith said he believes the two officials are empowered to take the necessary steps to allow certain people entry into the country. The exemptions sought would cover workers with visas sponsored by U.S.-based companies and students with ones obtained via a U.S.-based school.
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ALL: ALL
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That's what he wants. It's what he needs to feel important and the more you give into it, the more he's going to keep doing these stupid, stupid things.
This isn't about getting more Americans employed. It's about punishing people who wouldn't kowtow to him and his corrupt cronies. It's about hurting those he thinks need to be hurt.
He doesn't understand the world or how it works. He couldn't care less about you or I or how well we are employed. Neither can anyone else in his administration. Don't fool yourself into thinking that is a good thing. It's not. It's only going to hurt us more and more each day it goes on. It's going to hurt the prestige of the nation. It's going to hurt the economic prospects going forward. It's going to affect each and everyone of us in subtle and not so subtle ways. It already has.
Speaking as someone who has spent thousands of dollars in legal assistance getting the appropriate visa in place allowing me to work in the US (but luckily am not from one of the countries in the executive order)... go fuck yourself. This isn't about American jobs, its about screwing over people you don't like and trying to win political points with morons.
People have spent years getting those visas. People may have even been living the in US for decades. This is not a moratorium on new visas, this is retroactively screwing people who have followed the process to get into the US legally.
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Here is spacious NYC 550 square feet is a decent sized one bedroom.
My Silicon Valley studio apartment is only 475 square feet. Could be worse. A relative bought a $1M+ five-bedroom house in Gilroy that had a wet bar larger than my kitchen and a kitchen larger than my apartment. Very obscene. Although the mountain lion watching the BBQ from the other side of a 20-foot-tall wired fence was very cool.
The workers MS bring in AREN'T cheaper, they are paid at the same rate as US workers or in most cases higher.
But you can't hire Americans and ask them to work 80+ hours a week under the threat of deportation.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Well to be fair, what's the point of having a country at all if it doesn't entitle you to anything? Just somewhere to throw away your taxes in the hope that you'll get drafted for a war you don't wanna fight?
A friend of a friend on Facebook is Iranian by birth. She has lived 20+ years in Australia and is an Australian citizen. She has also previously lived 5+ years in the UK and is now in the middle of a 5+ year stint in the US. She does not have a green card but is working in the US under a valid US work visa (but I don't know which class). She has had to cancel 5 international business trips in the short term because as per Trump if she leaves the US the immigration lawyers at her work have said as a best guess that she won't be able to re-enter.
How's that for fucking over your friends.
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If we pull Men's and Boys's Cotton Shorts and Trousers manufacture to American factories from China, a few things will happen depending on a few factors.
If we pay the factory workers more than $18/hr, we'll lose American jobs. There will be fewer American jobs in total. This is because the ability of Americans to buy MBCST decreases thanks to the price increasing. As the wage increases, the price increases; and as the price increases, fewer factory jobs are created and more infrastructure jobs (shipping, retail, etc.) are lost.
If we pay the factory workers less than $18/hr, we'll gain total American jobs for the same reason.
The more we pay the American factory workers, the greater the increase in total hours Americans must work to pay for MBCST. That is to say: Americans become poorer. The median wage today is $27/hr, and the average cost of a pair of MBCST is 0.55 labor hours at $27/hr. If we pay the factory workers $21/hr, then the average cost to the median American income is 1.87 hours; and if we pay them $8.25/hr (minimum wage), the average cost is 0.93 hours.
This works inversely for the factory workers themselves: the less we pay them, the poorer they are. That should be obvious; the only thing worth indicating here is that raising factory worker pay takes the same American monetary spending power (amount of dollars spendable) and concentrates it into fewer hands (number of workers receiving that money). At current, a $21/hr worker pays 0.71 hours for a pair of MBCST; if they were made by $21/hr factory workers, the factory workers would pay 2.4 hours per pair. Likewise, an $8.25/hr worker pays 1.81 hours today for a pair of MBCST; if we pay the factory workers $8.25/hr, then they will pay 3.03 hours per pair.
Of final note: it costs under $1,300 to import a 40-foot shipping container from China, which carries 20,000 pairs of trousers. That's 6.5 cents per pair. The average cost of the trousers at import is $6.12; the average retail price is $14.97. Cashiers perform 998 scans per hour on average--at minimum wage, 0.83 cents per item. Nearly half the ultimate cost of trousers is shipping; and in general the businesses make around a 10% overall profit margin (gross margins are higher than real profit margins because they exclude the cost of running the business itself), so about 90% of the price is generally the actual cost. That means we're not going to save a damned thing on shipping over the water.
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I heard yesterday about a senior executive at Oracle who regularly travels internationally to places like China for meetings with suppliers. He manages about 500 people. He's now stuck in the country and unable to do a large part of his job because he happened to be born in Iran. "Make America Great Again" my ass.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
WRONG. http://www.snopes.com/presiden... Obama's deal only increased the time it took to get a certain type of visa. It didn't ban them outright as this is doing.
Obama's ban was a targeted response to a specific threat, where two Iraqi nationals were caught attempting to send money, explosives, and weapons to Al-Qaida. That ban was enacted in order to review how the vetting process allowed those individuals into the country.
Regardless, I don't see Microsoft being "outraged". They are making a specific request for providing exemptions to those who have been vetted, and the executive order allows exemptions to be granted at the discretion of administration officials.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Green cards are not visas. The two are completely unrelated.
A green card is a non-expiring, permanent resident work permit. It confers a right to permanent residency within the U.S., and provides a path to citizenship.
A visa provides temporary entry into the U.S. for various purposes, including tourism, work, education, etc. You've probably heard of some of the work visas, such as H-1B, H-2B, L-1A, L-1B, R-1, etc. There are also specific types of student visas, such as F-1, J-1, and M-1. Some visas allow you to leave and reenter the country, e.g. F-1 and J-1. Some allow you to work, e.g. H*, L*, R*, and J-1. And some just let you be a tourist, e.g. B-1, B-2, etc.
Allowing green card holders to come back to the U.S. is basically unavoidable. They're legal residents of the United States with homes, families, etc. That's also true for many of the visa types, but those folks are currently screwed, which is nothing short of appalling. And it is particularly heinous for students whose schools have a January term (and who thus took the month of January as an extended vacation) who are now trapped outside the country, unable to return to school, potentially losing scholarships, etc., all because our President doesn't know the difference between a green card, a visa, and refugee status admission.
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Or maybe, just maybe, the Iranian government screwed her over?
By your logic anyone who is Iranian by birth* is tainted and thus should be treated with distrust, and there no is manner by which they can prove their humanity.
Pissing off innocent people is not a good way to win hearts and minds and plays directly into the hands of those who would be easily radicalized. Thus making the global terror situation worse than it is now.
*Is there a lower age limit by which an Iranian is so tainted? Or in your mind does terrorism begin at conception?
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I know a lot of people that don't want to telecommute. There's value on having your team nearby and having the ability to work together in person.
And if she had a stamp in her passport from Israel, she would be executed upon entry into Iran (actually factually true).
True but irrelevant.
Sorry she comes from a shithole, but the "ban" is Trump's attempt to force those countries to vet the people getting visas so we can tell they are not terrorists coming to kill US citizens.
She already has the Visa. She has been vetted. She is already here.
Once those countries comply and allow proper vetting, they get taken off the list.
Umm .. you do realize that it is the US that is doing the vetting don't you? Do you?
They refuse to comply, the ban will be extended past the original 120 days. As soon as those idiots stop thinking coming to the US to kill us is a good idea, they will be treated better. Until then, I don't really care how long they are banned.
It's the banning the people who are coming here with good intentions that is the issue. But you seem hung up on THE EVIL TERRORISTS THAT LURK IN EVERY SHADOW.
When did it become evil to even TRY to protect US citizens from foreign terrorist? You realize you are arguing to benefit ISIS?
How the fuck is screwing over a person who has been vetted already has a visa protecting the US from terrorists? If anything it plays directly in to the easily radicalized by saying "look at how bad the US treats its friends. The US is obviously evil and doesn't want to give anyone else a fair chance".
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You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does. Who gives a crap about whether someone has a green card or not? There's no meaningful difference between a green card holder and an H1-B visa holder in terms of the impact on those people and their families when they suddenly are unable to return to their homes, to their families in the United States, etc. because of this idiotic and ill-conceived ban.
By that same logic logic, I have no right to complain when a terrorist takes a car and drives over hundreds of people, because I use a car to drive to work....
There's a huge difference between not allowing a bunch of homeless refugees to permanently come to the U.S. (as President Obama did) and not allowing technology professionals who already live in the U.S. to leave the country on business trips and be able to get back in (as President Trump did).
President Obama used the law to limit the rate of refugee entry into the country, and only refugee entry. He did not cancel existing visas. He did not ban people who had a preexisting legal right to enter the U.S. That's the difference. And it's an important difference that has a real-world impact on real people's lives.
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Aww, she can't leave the country for a few months.
You really can't see past your nose can you. She is working in the US. Cancelling those BUSINESS trips causes financial harm to a US company. That screws over not just her but her fellow employees that ARE US Citizens. You know .. the sort of person you are, but with more common sense.
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Obama banned immigration from Cuba, and Carter banned immigration from Iran with no fanfare.
The "no fanfare" bit - was that because Obama and Carter were Democrat? Or was there some other difference(*) that no one has noticed?
First, there were some objections to the Obama action, but admittedly nothing like Trump. But the comparison is disingenuous, because what Obama did was end the "wet-foot dry-foot policy" that allowed Cubans who reached the US to get entry WITHOUT A VISA to request asylum. Trump, on the other hand, has banned people WITH VISAS, some of whom went through vetting processes for months or years.
In the equivalent case to Cuban refugees requesting asylum, the Cuban refugees were allowed entry with NO VETTING. In Trump's case, the vetting process for most refugees who now HAD VISAS has taken about TWO YEARS, including approvals from multiple security agencies.
As for Carter, we had an active hostage situation where diplomats from the US were being held by a foreign government. And even then, Carter did NOT CANCEL VISAS that had already been granted. He stopped new visa approvals and in some cases required recent Iranian immigrants to undergo additional screening upon arrival. There was no automatic cancellation of approved visas.
I've used this analogy before, but to take this into a different context, if Obama and Carter were running a business, what they effectively did was stop new applications for jobs, and perhaps require a bit of additional verification for those already hired. The equivalent for Trump in terms of many refugees would be if you were negotiating with a business for a new job for 2 years, underwent significant interviews for security clearances, had medical testing, etc., and you'd been approved for everything, bought your plane tickets to relocate, made arrangements for a new home where the company was... and then suddenly your hiring contract was summarily rescinded while you were in transit.
Add in the fact that this is a temporary ban
Yeah, a lot of people keep saying that as if it's some sort of minor inconvenience. Setting aside that some refugees are applying for such status while in FEAR for their lives, you also have all sorts of logistical issues that were simply tossed aside here. Many of the approvals for security or medical or whatever tests are done with a specific timeline in mind, and many of them expire over a period of a few months, essentially putting these people "back to the drawing board" after months or years. And what about all the refugee organizations in the U.S. who organized apartments and places to live for these people, etc.? There a hundreds of other little details that make this a MAJOR disruption within a system... not just a minor "temporary" inconvenience.
Can someone explain how this is anything to get worked up over?
Here's are a couple things, besides issues I already brought up above:
(1) What are Trump's actual problems with the vetting system right now? What are his suggestions for improvement? Is there ANYTHING specific he can point to that he intends to change about the vetting? If there were some major flaw in the two-year multiple-agency process for refugee approval we have now, I'd be right on board with you in saying, "Let's slow it down and see how to fix it." But Trump hasn't actually identified anything in our screening procedures he thinks are flawed or need reform. So why the sudden rush into this outright ban, disrupting a system that he doesn't have any specific criticisms of?... other than for the political capital with his supporters?
(2) If this REALLY were about fear of terrorism and proper "vetting," why are countries that actually have PRODUCED terrorists (e.g., Saudi Arabia) not on this list? If it were really so dire that we needed to cancel travel plans for thousands and thousands of people over the next few months, why aren't we looking int
How qualified would Eric Trump be if his last name wasn't Trump?
He has terrific qualifications. Everybody agrees, he has fantastic qualifications. So there's no problem with his qualifications, believe me.
It is truly astonishing the extent to which this type of uncertainty about your country's own laws has become normalised - and so quickly too. In a stable Democracy, the stability of law is incredibly important. Knowing what you are, and are not, permitted to do - and being able to have enormous confidence that tomorrow the situation will be unchanged - is fundamental. And yet, here is the United States, in which the population is actually in the position of not knowing whether or not a particular person is permitted into their country - despite their being in possession of their "papers".
The whole pantomime has several different aims. Firstly we have Trump separating his supporters from his foes, and dealing with these discovered enemies swiftly. Secondly, the presidential decree itself, which is deliberately over-reached, so that it may be dialled back to the position they really want, and be made to appear reasonable. And of course, thirdly, to create the situation described above. To create uncertainty in the law itself, and thus keep a population fearful of what they might not be allowed to do tomorrow. Controlling a population is much easier if they're never quite sure of what their rights are.
Though the US has a deeply unhealthy relationship with firearms, it might yet pull itself out of this apparent nose-dive into a form of corporate totalitarianism by forming a decent citizens army, and dealing with these people in the only way that they deserve.
Good luck.