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Garmin Engineer Shot And Killed By Man Yelling 'Get Out Of My Country!' (theverge.com)
lxw56 writes:
Garmin engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla was shot and killed at a local bar in Olathe, Kansas, the U.S. headquarters of Garmin. Co-worker Alok Madasani was also injured along with bystander Ian Grillot, who attempted to help the men. "The suspect in the shooting, Adam Purinton, was drinking at the bar in Olathe, Kansas, at about 7:15 p.m. that night," reports The Verge. "A witness said he yelled 'get out of my country' to two of the victims, reportedly saying the men, believed to originally be from India, were 'Middle Eastern.'" In 2015, Garmin employed 2,700 workers in Olathe and has plans to double this number, which the article notes has led to "increasing diversity" in the community.
I work for Garmin in New Zealand and have been to Olathe a few times. Garmin has great inclusive culture to it and I am genuinely saddened to hear of Srinivas' death.
I am disappointed to read posts that somehow infer that Srinivas' employment in the Olathe office was at the expense of a US resident getting a job. That is simply not true. There is a world wide shortage of skilled workers. We have two US employees in our Auckland office and no one here complains about them taking our jobs. We employee every skilled Kiwi we can find but the shortage means over half my team are from China and Taiwan. We welcome them as we need more skilled people to get keep our business competitive. None of the locals, such as myself, see these people as stealing our jobs.
It is the same in Olathe, they will employ any US citizen with suitable skills ahead of a foreign worker as it is less hassle but they can not get enough staff with right skills, in part because Garmin set the bar quite high when it comes to skill levels. I have meet people with a wide range of backgrounds in the US Garmin offices and have never seen even a hint of racism or sexism.
My mind can not comprehend how the shooter could feel justified in taking a life even if he really thought immigrant were taking local jobs. These kind of people need to stop blaming immigrants for stealing jobs and take a good hard look at themselves.
Just about every other developed country in the world disagrees. The few that have a similar (well, within a 2-3x factor, the US is just that much of an outlier) level of gun ownership (like Switzerland) do it in a way so incredibly different it may as well be another concept entirely.
It just so happens that the rest of world is also doing fine without all those guns.
We all come from the same stock, sport.
Silly excuses for killing other humans. For the record, contrary to what you may have heard from Fox News, Obama did not touch the H1B visas. Under section 214(g)(1)(A)(vii) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1989, only 65,000 H1B visas may be allocated each fiscal year, and that has remained so. The only thing Obama did and his powers were very limited as the President, is that he allowed spouses of H1Bs called H4 visa holders to work legally, and he allowed H1Bs who were already waiting for green cards to change jobs without losing their position in the green card queue, which makes H1Bs less like bonded labor and makes the employment market fair for all.