Mike Tyson Tattoos

What men say and what they actually mean . . .

� "I'M GOING FISHING" Means: "I'm going to drink myself dangerously stupid, and stand by a stream with a stick in my hand, while the fish swim by in complete safety."
� "YES, DEAR..." Means: Absolutely nothing. It's a conditioned response.
� "IT WOULD TAKE TOO LONG TO EXPLAIN" Means: "I have no idea how it works."
� "TAKE A BREAK HONEY, YOU'RE WORKING TOO HARD". Means: "I can't hear the game over the vacuum cleaner."
� "THAT'S INTERESTING, DEAR." Means: "Are you still talking?"
� "I WAS JUST THINKING ABOUT YOU, AND GOT YOU THESE ROSES". Means: "The girl selling them on the corner was a real babe."
� "WHAT DID I DO THIS TIME?" Means: "What did you catch me at?"
� "I HEARD YOU." Means: "I haven't the foggiest clue what you just said, and am hoping desperately that I can fake it well enough so that you don't spend the next 3 days yelling at me."
� "YOU KNOW I COULD NEVER LOVE ANYONE ELSE." Means: "I am used to the way you yell at me, and realize it could be worse."
� "YOU LOOK TERRIFIC." Means: "Please don't try on one more outfit, I'm starving."
� "WE SHARE THE HOUSEWORK." Means: "I make the messes, she cleans them up."

You have no arguments that make sense. You are arguing that doing something illegal is a great thing to do. Not so. And yes, I do support the bill as it will weed out some fraudsters from amongst us, who give the H-1B program a very bad rep.

The problem is not that it will "weed out some fraudsters from amongst us", the problem is that it will also force deserving people to leave, people waiting in line for 6 or more years in green card line. No one is arguing that "something illegal is a great thing to do" but the argument is, it is justified to implicate and screw-up someone who has done nothing wrong. Durbin-Grassley bill says that it intends to stop abuse and it goes ahead to screw-up everybody. Do you think that everybody here waiting for employment based green card is "illegal"???

A Bridge to a Love for Democracy (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/us/30iht-letter30.html) By RICHARD BERNSTEIN | New York Times

I write this, my last �Letter from America,� looking out my window at my snowy Brooklyn neighborhood. It�s midmorning Wednesday, three days after our Christmas weekend blizzard, and my street has yet to receive the benefit of a snowplow.

Cars, as the prize-winning novelist Saul Bellow once put it, are impounded by the drifts. The city is still partly paralyzed, pleasantly, in a way. There�s nothing like a heavy snowfall to give one a bit of a respite, to turn the ordinary, like walking to the corner store, into a little adventure. And there�s the countrylike stillness of this city block filled with snow, absent the usual traffic.

It seems a good moment, in other words, to pause and reflect. My thoughts turn to a very unsnowy moment in 1972 in a village called Lowu, which was the last village in the Crown Colony of Hong Kong just before the border with China. I was a graduate student in Chinese history and a stringer for The Washington Post going to the territory of Chairman Mao for the first time in my life.

There was a short trestle bridge at Lowu. I�ve often wondered if it�s still there. The Union Jack flew at one side, the red flag of the People�s Republic of China at the other. The border town on the other side was a little fishing and farming village called Shenzhen, now a modern city of skyscrapers and shopping malls, an emblem of China�s amazing economic development.

I was favorably disposed toward China as I strode across the bridge, ready to experience the radical egalitarianism of the Maoist revolution, which was generally viewed with favor among American graduate students specializing in China. I was a member of a group, moreover, that partook of a certain leftist orthodoxy. We had learned the �Internationale� so we could sing it for our revolutionary hosts. We were supposed to return to America and report the truth about China, which was, essentially, that it was the future and it worked.

But it took only about 24 hours on that first journey to China for me utterly to change my mind and, indeed, to become a lifelong anti-Communist and devotee of liberal democracy, to find great wisdom in Winston Churchill�s dictum about its being the worst of all systems except for all the others.

The noxious cult of personality around Mao was the first thing that effected my political transformation. But deeper than that was the pervasive odor of orthodoxy, the uniformity of it all, the mandatory pious declarations, which, if they were believed, were ridiculous, and, if they were forced, illustrated the terror of it all.

Many of my American fellow travelers felt very differently about this. In my intense discomfort, I found myself in a sort of Menshevik minority, criticized by the majority for what I remember one person calling my �Darkness at Noon� mentality.

Still, that discomfort, and the unwillingness of most of the others to experience it, has informed my work as a journalist ever since. I have to admit it: When I went to China as a correspondent for Time magazine seven years after that first trip, my impulse was not so much to look with fresh and impartial eyes on a country that had just opened up to a degree of foreign inspection as it was to expose what I felt many Americans were missing in those rhapsodic days. Namely, that the country under Mao and after belonged to the 20th-century totalitarian mainstream � that it was a poverty-stricken police state and not a viable alternative to Western ways.

There was a degree of bias in this view, and it led me into some mistakes. On China, in particular, I was perhaps focused too single-mindedly on its totalitarian elements so that I underplayed other elements, notably the speed of change in China, and perhaps even the unsuitableness of many Western democratic ways for a country so essentially backward.

And perhaps, too, I extrapolated a bit too much from the China experience when it came to other places and other times. When I covered academic life in the United States, for example, I tended to see vicious Maoist Red Guards in the phenomenon of what came to be called political correctness, and, while I don�t think this was entirely wrong, it was an exaggeration.

And yet, it seems appropriate in this final column to say, as well, that my nearly 40 years in the journalism game haven�t shaken me from the essential belief that formed during that first, memorable visit to China.

Ever since, despite all our infuriating faults, our wastefulness, our occasional self-satisfied sluggishness, our proneness to demagogy and other forms of anti-intellectualism, our crumbling infrastructure, the Fox News channel, the cult of Sarah Palin, the narcissistic self-indulgence of our urban elites, the detention center in Guant�namo Bay and our crisis-creating greed and shortsightedness � despite all that � I continue to believe that, not to put too fine a point on it, we�re better than they are.

This doesn�t mean that I think we�re perfect, or that our impulse toward a kind of benevolent imperialism has always had benevolent results. But I have stuck for 40 years to a belief that, yes, our ways are superior � and by our ways I mean such things often taken for granted as a free press, strong civil institutions, an independent judiciary and, perhaps above all, the belief that the powers of the state need to be restrained, and that the institutions of government exist to serve the individual, not the other way around.

The essential difference with China, even the much-changed China of today, and most of the other non-Western political cultures, is the absence of this sense of restraint, and the primacy of the collective over the individual.

That�s the idea that I was actually groping toward when I crossed the bridge at Lowu. It�s the idea that I want to end with here on this snowy day in New York in my final sentence on this page. Goodbye.

I'm sure you meant Larry David ;)

I am not sure which season this was from. If it was before season 7 (?) I bow to your superior knowledge.
-a

Hello Hiralal,

Indeed! But if the individual 'affordability' is such that you can pay the monthly payments even after moving out of US due to job loss/485 denial, and if the purchase lowers your tax bill, then it may make more sense to buy the house...

Personally, I've always had intentions of buying real estate in US, EU and India.... have it in India, considering it in US and exploring how to buy it in EU... :) Wish had much more 'cash'... :D

I would agree if rent = monthly payment, then buying would make sense. On the west coast ca/or/wa, the rent where i live is 1500 (2b 2b), however; when I buy a house , I want a 4br so that I am in for rest of my life. Those houses are 550K, with monthly payment of 2700 usd per month. Does not make sense to go for it at the moment

Because when Eb3 ROW were getting approved they had no personal friends getting approved but suddenly now with Eb2 India moving forward they know people who will get GC soon and this hurts, when then see these people (friends) in temple or get together who will be (soon) GC holders and so this cry of fowl play comes in behind the mask of anonymus user id a vieled attack


Woah, I did not know I wanted my GC because I could tell my friends that I have my GC. Thanks for telling me about it. I used to think that I wanted my GC, so that I could be worry less about H1 status, think about buying house, maybe think of some business ideas etc. I did not know it was all so that I will feel ashamed of my friends.

I guess you have the solution for all of use. We will stop my friendship with everyone, that way we dont have to worry about being the NON-GC guy among our "friends".

Also, we will make friends with the undocumented workers, so that we can feel superior, which will boost our morale.

There is some excellent information on this thread. Pls add it on http://immigrationvoice.org/wiki/index.php?title=Buying_a_house_in_USA&action=edit

as well
http://immigrationvoice.org/wiki/index.php/Immigration_to_US
There are some new Miscellaneous topics created in the wiki. Please help us by adding content in those titles as well so that this valuable information helps everyone. Do add links to relevant IV threads wherever possible.

Some paras from Slowing Down The Revolving Door (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/04/AR2007030401201.html)

A House committee has approved legislation that would lengthen employment restrictions for federal procurement officials who take certain jobs when they leave government, from one year to two years. It also would prohibit newly hired procurement officials from awarding contracts to their former employers for two years.

Tightening employment restrictions will bring more accountability to government, contends Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Recent lobbying and procurement scandals are proof that something needs to be done, he points out.

Congress has been trying to regulate the revolving door -- the rotation of federal officials and business executives into and out of government -- since at least 1872, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Over the decades, Congress has sought to protect the government from former employees who took sensitive information with them and used it to promote the interests of a private party. Congress also has devised rules to discourage federal employees from cashing in on their inside knowledge or becoming snarled in conflicts of interest with companies doing business with the government.

I have changed the H1b after my last entry to usa. My I-94 in passport and in the H1b approval notice numbers are not same. Out of all 10 digits only 6th digit is different. I think it is a typo by uscis. What should I do?? The difference is very hard to figure out that I noticed it only when I was filling out I-485 by myself.

Any suggestions

You can file Form I 102 with USCIS , if it is the mistake of USCIS there is no charge. If I 94 is mutilated,lost or stolen then u have to pay a fee for it.
I would suggest take an infopass appointment with local USCIS office and talk to a immgration officer he will be able to help you.

what did that dumb O bama do with 60 senators and 260 congress democrats in the house-------GHANTA.......he is the most useless guy on earth....

Indians always seem to think Democrats will help them but they are like our Indian politicians only, all promises no action


Come the November Elections, Dems could lose 10 in Senate..

And we are back to square one.

Dejavu 2007/2008 ;

If this happens, no bill will pass, leave alone Immigration Reform.

Republicans will keep sending bills and Obama will Veto 'em.

:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D
HERE COMES THE BEST JOKE OF THIS THREAD

I got a RED dot for this post.

Comment - "Racist Joke".

Five Englishmen in an Audi Quattro arrived at an Irish border.

Checkpoint Paddy the officer stops them and tells them: "It is illegal to put 5 people in a Quattro, Quattro means four".

"Quattro is just the name of the automobile," the Englishmen retorts with disbelief "Look at the papers: This car is designed to carry five persons".

"You can not pull that one on me," replies Paddy "Quattro means four You have five people in your car and you are therefore breaking the law"

The Englishmen replies angrily, "You idiot! Call your supervisor over I want to speak to someone with more intelligence!".

"Sorry," responds Paddy, "Murphy is busy with 2 guys in a Fiat Uno"

Despite of several warnings by Israel, Hamas (that is elected by Palestine people) was launching rockets on the civilian population of Isreal. (and hardly any in Islamic world condemned it)

What were they thinking? They were just provoking Israel, and when it retaliated, suddenly all those Palestine and Hamas sympathizers are crying foul asking for mediation and intervention. I would say Israel has a right to wipe out any element that was involved in attacking their civilian population.

If some cowards are hiding behind their own women and children and launching attacks, rockets on Israelis then shouldn't they be asked to stop using innocent civilians for cover and fight like soldiers?

SEE THE 1999 ARTICLE IN NY TIMES.
Bush get the blame for every thing in the world.


Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F9582 60&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

NYT said:
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.



NYT said:
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

I emailed Sen Hutchinson from Texas to vote NO for the DREAM Act and I called it "Organized and Controlled" amnesty as illegal kids who will get GCs will be able to sponsor their illegal parents for GC after 4 years.

All the illegals who have kids in college will get get GC's in 4 yrs after their kids pass college while EB3 has to wait for 20 years. This is a joke. Look at the reply from the Sen below:

On March 26, 2009, Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) introduced S. 729, the DREAM Act, which would allow states to offer in-state tuition rates to long-term resident immigrant students. The bill also would allow certain long-term residents who entered the United States as children to have their immigration or residency status adjusted to conditional permanent resident status or permanent resident status. The DREAM Act has been referred to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, on which I do not serve. Should S. 729 come before the full Senate, you may be certain I will keep your views in mind.

here is the link.

Becausing of uploading issue: follow this link.

http://www.uscis.gov/uscis-ext-templating/uscis/jspoverride/errFrameset.jsp

from there click on a-1 certification; decisions issued in 2004; click on second decision from the top. If someone can download the pdf and attach then we can discuss.

The attachment upload fails for me as well but goddamn UN, you are unbelievable.

1. Your knowledge of the specifics and technicalities and access to information is very impressive

2. And you go out of your way to share it with others

That being said, I skimmed through the document real quick and the part that caught my eye was the AAOs point on the applicant never having resided/lived in the same state as the employer, which you had also mentioned in one of your earlier posts.

Wouldn't that be quite common in most consulting scenarios? What if the beneficiary/applicant has never lived in the same state as the petitioning employer but has lived in and worked for the employer (at client locations, offsite assignments) in nearby bordering states, from before the labor was filed and until long after the 485 was filed. Do you see the USCIS ever having issues with that?

Oh, and I think I should elaborate just a little more.

I am not asking whether the USCIS can or cannot exercise scrutiny on approving 485s where a person, under AC21 provision, switches to a small consulting company.

Of course they can, the 485 is for a full time job, and whether a job with a small consulting company is of a full time nature or not, is up in the air and they can 'scrutinize' it all they want, if they choose to.

My question to UN is whether he thinks if they will choose to go after 485 AC21 job switches to small consulting companies like he thinks they will for small consulting company H-1Bs, and not whether they can.

Thanks again,

You see on all these ac21 issues we rely on uscis memos. Every one of these memos state pending change to the regulations; we are going to follow the principles of this memo.

it has been 8 years and they still haven't changed the regulations. Memos can be changed at their whim at any time.

Currently; uscis position is that if someone ports to another company; they are not supposed to check the ability to pay criteria. However; they left themselvees an out that theey can check the genuineness of the ac21 employer. Becasuse of this last statement; what they have been doing is asking for ac21 employer tax returuns, and quarterly wage reports. If you are already on payroll then size of company doesn't matter. However; if you are not on payrroll and it is a very small company then they can challnge it.

btw; I am not epecting quota to finish early this year. Many companies/lawyers are very frustrated with h-1b right now. I was talking to education evaluator and he told me that there is litteally no business right now. Companies I know of how filed 70 cases last year are not filing any this year due to a combination of issues (iowa issue, lack of approvals and great demand for tansfers by thos who were laid off or had theirr h-1b's cancelled.

Right now; newer companies who don't have much experience with h-1b are going into the lions den without knowing there is a lion in there.

Does anyone know that the closing has to be before November 30th in order to get this 8K tax benefit?


It is December 1st not November 30th.

http://www.federalhousingtaxcredit.com/2009/faq.php

See the link. Palestine TV teaches the kids to be a terrorist. Through micky mouse.
Pathetic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi-c6lbFGC4&NR=1


See this poor boy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPU4UN03t7E&feature=related

If the past employer didn't pay salary, you can file a complaint with DOL regarding unpaid wages (I believe that there are some time limits for such complaints - please check).

Even if you are not going to file such a complaint, you might be able to use it to get the required experience letter from the past employer if needed.

I definitely feel that EB3 should go ahead with this campaign. there has to be some fairness ...if we don't speak up then year after year, the same thing will happen and maybe in 2015, EB3 will get spillover visas. those who are writing against EB3 --tell me this, if a person who has come to US in 2007 and he has applied during the july fiasco ..and if he gets preference over a EB3 person who is still stuck with a PD of 2002 ..would you still say that the system is fair ???
my point is let there be a little spillover ...maybe in a ratio of 2 to 1 ..but a little bit atleast ..is that asking for too much ???


yes, we should continue with the campaign. However, I am more concerned about getting what has been already made available to us. While I am willing to play by the rules and wait, I am not willing to cede my place in the line.

Asking for 2 to 1 ratio etc. is something new, and will require legislative process, on that I am not an ardent supporter, there we can just request (and hope for the best), but in making sure we are getting what we were promised is demanding the best.

Hello,

Great discussions...remember a similar thread that was hot in 2008.. :)

IMHO, buying house has little to do with 'status' in the country, but much more to do with your financial capabilities, location and timing...

1. Financial Capabilities
a) Can I afford to make payments even if I've to leave US and settle somewhere else?
b) Does buying house give me any tax breaks in US that I otherwise won't get?
c) Do I have 'reserve' funds (5-6% of purchase price) to take care of maintenance etc of the house?

2. Location
a) Is the neighbourhood dependent on a stable source of economic activity (e.g. tech industry areas like Bay Area or traditional industry areas like Texas)
b) Can the house be rented (if not, I would be cautious)?
c) Is the demographics well off (if not, bad economy may have a larger impact)?

3. Timing
a) Has housing appreciated by more than 2-3% per annum in the neighbourhood since 2000 (if yes, I would be cautious)?
b) Can I get 1-time tax benefits?
c) Can I make more money through other investments (leverage adjusted)?

The final decision is always personal and is neither right or wrong...its just a choice that the individuals make... good luck to those who are considering home ownership....

@pmpforgc,

Make as low a down payment as possible as the money supply is cheap as of now....if interest rates are higher than what you can get as investment return in the market, then making as large a down payment as possible makes sense... as of now, cost of money is at 5-6% and you can get more than that through investments...just my 2 cents!