ZVM’s Indian Undercurrent

From Vaks & Co

The Germans had thoroughly prepared for the welcome. To make their new foreign colleagues feel at home from the start, the employees of Frankfurt-based software company Portum went through an intercultural training session.
And they were ready: Indians eat rice and take their shoes off before entering the house , the company’s German computer specialists learned. And Indians greet each other by laying the palms of their hands together with their fingers pointing upward. Then they bow their heads and say, “Namaste.”
The Germans did exactly that when they met Jagjit Sethi for the first time, but were stunned by their new colleague’s reaction: He simply greeted them with a friendly “hello” and tried to shake hands, as is custom in most of the Western world. “We all had a good laugh,” Mr. Sethi recalls.

Nevertheless, he did find his colleagues’ questions rather strange at first: How do your jeans feel? You are wearing Levis for the first time, aren’t you? Do you have pool tables in India, too? Those questions struck Mr. Sethi as odd because Indians do not view it as a paradox that modernity and tradition can coexist.

Folks, a post I recently read reminded me of the evolution of the Indian accent in Hollywood. The very first memory of seeing someone remotely Indian was in the kids movie “Short Circuit” - played by Fisher Stevens the whitest guy you could find! As usual, Stevens played the sterotypical Indian nerd, but lets be honest I was glad he was even there in the movie.

Soon after, I remember seeing Vijay Amritraj the Indian tennis star in a James Bond movie.I always mixed him up with the other Amritraj - Ashok. He’s a successful Hollywood Producer with over 92 movies to his credit.

IMDB says this about him:

As Chairman and CEO of Hyde Park Entertainment, Ashok Amritraj is one of the most successful producers in Hollywood today…

He came to the U.S. from India to play professional tennis with Jerry Buss’ L.A. Strings, with teammates Chris Evert and Ilie Nastase, winning a World Team Tennis Championship in 1978 and the Most Valuable Player Award. Amritraj has played in every major tennis tournament during his nine-year career including Wimbeldon and the U.S. Open. Part of the Amritraj tennis dynasty, he was also a finalist at the 1974 Wimbledon Junior Tournament. He is on the Foreign Film Board of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and is on the International Council for the Emmy Awards.

And then, I missed out seeing Indian accents for some time until just recently - in the Guru which is back to Indian accents.

Now, with the emergence of Indie cinemas, there are tons of movies that talk about immigrant Indians, such as “Green Card Fever” and others. I personally liked Flavors which does a much more modern job at depicting the spectrum of immigrants and does not stoop to stereotype as the only form of humor.

Finally, the Gurinder Chaddha classic that almost all non-Indians have seen has got to be “Bend it like Beckham”:

Drop me a line if you have any other good movies in mind that you’d like for us to review.

So here’s my take on poor folks here on H1-B visa - you can’t vote, you don’t have credit history so you cant get a loan nor a credit card BUT you pay taxes! Native citizens believe that you are out to take their jobs but you believe that you are highly underpaid!

It takes six years on an average and you are very lucky to get a Green card, and 5 years after to get an apply for a citizenship - which is half a lifetime almost. Should be easier to walk across the border… in fact, folks on H1 who are probably highly qualified are treated similar sometimes, which is disturbing.

From today’s WSJ Article by Gary Becker (see below), the noted economist says:

The right approach would be to greatly increase the number of entry permits to highly skilled professionals and eliminate the H-1B program, so that all such visas became permanent. Skilled immigrants such as engineers and scientists are in fields not attracting many Americans, and they work in IT industries, such as computers and biotech, which have become the backbone of the economy. Many of the entrepreneurs and higher-level employees in Silicon Valley were born overseas. These immigrants create jobs and opportunities for native-born Americans of all types and levels of skills.

Absolutely! Please remove the ridiculous caps on H1-B and let the market decide on demand. At the end of the day, it results in lesser regulation, lesser paperwork for everyone involved. Use the H1-B guys to fix the horrible government systems which needs it from 20 years. It is cheaper and it probably will be the right investment in the long run. Protentionist measures will only go so far.

USA taught the value of free trade to the rest of the world, time to read a few pages and implement it locally before its too late.

Mr. Becker, the 1992 Nobel laureate in economics, is University Professor of Economics and Sociology at the University of Chicago and the Rose-Marie and Jack R. Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.