The other day, I was looking for links to videos of the Cohen & Grigsby debacle of 2007. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this incident, it caused a minor scandel in the anti-visa community. Essentially, Cohen & Grigsby, a Pittsburgh law firm specializing in providing H1-B services to employers, gave a conference on how the H1-B process works. They took videos of the event and were so proud of how well things went that they posted the videos on the web. It turns out that the videos documented C&G coaching attendees on how to skirt the requirements in the H1-B program that were designed to protect American workers.

(I am posting this content with permission from a letter a colleague sent to me...)

There are a lot of deceptions in the H-1B law and misleading terms of art. Many of these were designed to give our legislators plausible deniability and cover for what they were legislating [in order to garner re-election campaign funds from the the high-tech industry, its trade associations, its officers, and its lobbyists].

When it comes to illegal immigration, the Democrats have been dead wrong (on visas, both parties are in-the-wrong). This was the reason that I am now an independent progressive instead of a Democratic progressive. Things have changed a lot over my lifetime. When I was young, patriotism (also known as love of country) was a cherished trait. Today the word is used as a perjorative, often in conjunction with the word zealot. If you stand up for your country, you are now a nut.