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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JPR who wrote (10733)	2/19/2000 12:01:00 PM
From: sea_biscuit	Respond to of 12475

Good. Now it will be a slap in India's face if President Clinton makes a visit to Pakistan. Of course, Clinton will visit Pakistan. He will be there on Pakistan Day.

To: JPR who wrote (10733)	2/19/2000 7:16:00 PM
From: JPR	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12475

Aboutface: U.S. agency drops all charges against Indian programmers By Ashok Easwaran, India Abroad News Service Chicago, Feb. 19 -- In a dramatic turnaround, the United States immigration agency has dropped all the charges against 40 Indian-American software programmers it arrested last month in a raid at an air force base. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which had arrested the programmers in San Antonio, Texas, on Jan. 20 in a "workplace enforcement" raid, dropped all charges, apparently for not being on firm ground. "It is a happy day," Joe De Mott, one of the attorneys defending the programmers, told India Abroad News Service. "The INS has canceled the deportation proceedings, they have returned their passports and they can go back to work," he said, adding: "It is a vindication for these 40 workers. All along, the INS officials were talking in terms of visa scam and body shopping." The 40, including 10 women, two of whom were pregnant, had been handcuffed and paraded by gun-toting INS agents for what their defense attorneys called a "mere technicality." However, while the workers no longer face deportation, attorneys noted that the INS could still serve notice to the two Houston-based companies which sub-contracted the programmers to the air force base on why their H-1B visas should not be revoked for working at a site different from the one mentioned in the visa petition. This move, if taken to its logical conclusion, could lead to the programmers losing their visas and having to leave the country any way. Defense attorneys said the case dragged on for about a month, because the INS lawyers apparently felt "they were skating on thin ice." Shortly after the arrest, the INS took the case off its district center in San Antonio and handed it over to the regional center in Dallas. "The INS had no case," one of the defense attorneys told India Abroad News Service, "and they eventually referred the matter to the INS lawyers in Washington, before deciding to drop the proceedings." "Now that the INS has dropped the charges against the programmers, it may still go after the companies that hired them," said the attorney. The charges could be that the programmers were working in San Antonio while their visa authorized them to work in Houston. "It is a technical point," said Mott, "I am not sure how the INS will make the charges stick." Other attorneys said the INS action was uncalled for and relocating an H-1B worker to another site was not illegal. The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) had challenged the arrests. "It appears that the action was based on the fact that the individuals had been beneficiaries of the H-1B petitions filed by the employers located in Houston and that the amended petitions had not been filed to reflect the employees' temporary assignments in San Antonio," AILA chair Denyse Sabagh said in a letter to Michael Pearson, INS executive associate commissioner for field operations. "The placement of the employees at the San Antonio site is fully permissible under current law. Thus there is no violation on which to base an enforcement action," Sabagh said. The raids drew protests from several quarters. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Karl Inderfurth had expressed his "deep regret" to Indian Ambassador Naresh Chandra. Michael Clark, executive director of the U.S.-India Business Council, said he was "appalled," adding, "instead of being paraded, the programmers should be honored for the contribution they have made to the development of the industry in the U.S."