Mike Tyson Tattoos

10 Reasons to Lobby for your cause (http://www.independentsector.org/programs/gr/10ReasonstoLobby.pdf) (courtesy krishna.ahd)

For many of us, lobbying is something other people do�people who wear fancy clothes and buy politicians lunch at expensive restaurants. But lobbying, or more simply, trying to influence those who make policies that affect our lives, is something anyone can do. And it is something all of us should do if we believe in a good cause and in a democratic form of government. Read on to find out why.

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Very nice post.

People who got GC are not facing any waves. That is why we need to get GC asap. If we struck in the GC process though we have a strong profile (careerwise, w2wise, taxwise, educationwise etc), we need to face waves like recession wave, backlog/perm wave, merging wave, economy wave, I140premium/nopremium wave, bipart wave, 2001 eb3stuck wave, magic visa bulletin wave, technology wave, visa stamping wave, uscis reform wave, dol wave, bulletin wave..

The evidence is overwhelming. The housing will go down so much that there will be hard lessons learned. No one will talk about investing in housing for a long time. I want to buy a house too. I just don't think you pay whatever the inflated price is demanded and throw away my hard earned money. You pay what is worth. Why do you insist that everyone has to participate in this ponzi scheme and keep the price inflated? Housing should be affordable and come to sane levels and I believe it will.
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Ok Dude, I will try just one last time, nobody is advocating buying a house when the market is bad. The question someone asked was is it ok to buy a house when I485 is pending, and the answer given was if he has found a very good deal, in a very good location and considering his situation if it is affordable then I485 should not be a hindrance. People who were still on H1 have bought a house when the market was good and they are doing well now. Some people who got GC might have bought a house just before the market came crashing down and they were plain unlucky. I myself bought a small affordable home when I had just my labor stage cleared. If when I bought this house the market was like this, I would not have bought but would have waited. Period.

And for those who become nostalgic. I myself was bought up in a small house, it had only two rooms, I repeat, the whole house had just two rooms, nothing else. We had to share a toilet with 3 other houses of similar size, was I happy then?, Of course I was happy, I used to play cricket and other sports on the street with other kids with vehicles passing by once in a while. Is the situation same here?. No, but do kids here have other ways of having fun, oh yes. It doesn�t matter if the kid is living in an apartment or a house, all that matters is if he is having fun. Somebody came up with a strange logic that our love for our kids will diminish if we buy a house. If you have bought a decent, affordable house your love will not diminish, it will only manifold.

I am not against renting, nor against people living in an apartment, I myself have lived in apartments before. I am against people who only want to save for god knows what, for people who are afraid to take small risks (for ex: buying a small home and not a mansion) when the market becomes good, they will ask you to prepare for the worst case scenario. They will say don�t buy a house because the sky will fall or don�t buy because the world will come to an end. Nothing is permanent here, not the job, not the location. You just have to take calculated risks. You just cannot console yourself saying you are from middle class and cannot do a thing, lift yourself up. If you want to buy a house but you are not doing it now because the market is bad, then I am not against you, so don�t jump on me.

A little touchy here are we. I thought we were skilled immigrants and could hold a mature conversation.



First of all, the President doesn't create policy, the Congress does. And please answer my question of why he should focus on a few hundred thousands when millions are out of their jobs, economy is in crisis and a couple of wars to fight. I'm just saying in terms of priorities we don't fit and I'm fine with that even though from a selfish perspective it hurts us. With regard to the unemployment rate:

1. Not all EB immigrants are tech sector employees (esp in EB3)
2. Even if we consider the population of tech EB employees, some in the American Congress and public *could* argue that lots of these jobs could indeed be done by Americans if they are trained. If you look at the trend of outsourcing you know that it's really not that hard to find somebody who can code in Java/C++ etc. I'm not saying that's true but just saying that's an argument that could be given forward by people who say that the nation's overall unemployment rate could be helped by training people for tech oriented jobs where unemployment rate is low. This is already happening with science and tech initiatives at the middle/higher education level.

What immaturity you have seen in saying that do not compare USA & India. may be your immature mind to understand.

We people will only argue and discuss and never do anything solid that is the Nature unfortunately. How do you know The President's Priority? Why do you want to use "coulds "and "can" and "may be???? just for argument sake and that is what they call "IMMATURITY "in superlative Degree

Why You Would Want To Run A Gas Station

• You can raise prices every hour and everyone blames the government.

• You can sell obsolete lottery tickets but it's okay--they lose anyway.

• You always have the oldest dated milk in the cooler, and its the last one left, so they have to take it.

• No matter what the question is from a customer, you cannot understand it.

• You enjoy raising the prices on the pumps when these signs outside show the old prices.

• You make sure that the receipts on the machines don't work so they have to come inside to get one and buy other items.

i can not speak for everybody but
i bought in east coast in 2004 for $330K. it peaked to $425K in 2006 and now it is somewhere $350K. it may go even go down to $300K

I will break even if i stay for another 3 years. (total 7 years)
If renting then : 110K in rent with no benefits for 7 years.

Good Side:
- Tax benefits with dual income. ( proabably $300 per month)
- Bigger house

Bad Side:
Maintenance
IF i have to sell now then will be loss for me for sure so key is location and how long u stay.

Why is tax benefits such an issue:confused:. It is after all tax on interest, not on the principle. It declines every year and probably worth nothing in 10 years? For every 100K you borrow you are charged an interest of 100K for a typical loan. Rents are cheap compared to the owning a home. This is why home prices are falling. Until they reach equilibrium, housing will continue to fall. Assuming the difference is 1000$, if you rent for 7 years you will be saving 80K(approximately)- which means you pay a bigger downpayment and hence saving 80K in interest.
All these calculations are done assuming that the home price stays flat. If it falls, you gain additionally by how much if falls. Plus there is insurance, property tax.

but most of the people that I know of, who have very young kids ( 1 - 5/6 year olds) ..buying a house was a right decision. (and common sense says the same thing).
I know people who bought townhouses, not big houses (thus paying mortgage which is slightly more than the apartment rents). They are not slogging extra and they are having single income. I keep re-iterating that what I meant is when things are conducive and situation is right. I do not know which part of that you do not understand.
I said there are exceptions ..which part of that you don't understand !!
since you are resting yr case ..I won't drag this more.

Lou Dobbs is the founder of the failed Space.com site. He might realize that he could not have even got the business started without Indian H1B's.

Had he run the business properly he would also have been a .com success story by now and would have been a key note speaker at Diwali and Navratri functions in NJ.

�I am a .com success story because of you hard working H1B�s�-------- Dobbs.

�But now I make a living by bashing them.�

Both are problems. The misuse of H-1B visa petitions prevent honest people from obtaining such a visa. That is not right. The issue of the illegal immigrants in this country is an ugly one as well. In my personal opinion, I do not believe any talks of amnesty should affect people with green card petitions pending. People given amnesty should go to the very back of the line and pay a serious fine on top of that.

Whether you like it or not legalization will affect all petetions . If you know enough about 245i provision you would understand how it affects every one legal or illegal or skilled or unskilled . Its not about when an undocumented person will get his GC , even making so many people eligible for filing applications itself will make things worse. Imagine how long it will take for issue of receipt notices for all these petetions . If you think legalization will not affect your green card petetion processing then you are simply dreaming.

Both these incidents make you shudder in disbelief and disgust for those who believe in wars and bloodshed.

I think I agree with quite a lot of what you say. But I think there is some truth in Pakistani fears that India is already supporting anti-state actors in Pakistan, like in Balochistan.



I don't think we all want that.
I don't think even all Indians want that.
I don't think its in the interest of India, or anyone else for that matter, to have a huge Afghanistan on its Eastern border.

Well my personal opinion, I don't believe it is true. Actually Pakistan doesn't need India for all this. It is capable by itself. By sheltering Dawood and Azhar Masood what do you expect? A university of peace?

Come on!, give me a break. You guys are now worried that EB3 will spoil your (what I still consider, ill gotten) party by PD porting. You now come up with arguments about what is EB2.

First argument: "EB2 requires advanced degree"

If that is the case, there is no one who is eligible for Eb2, as "Advanced degrees" is not a degree that is offered by any university in US. Mostly the ones I know offer, Masters and PHD and likes. No one says I am offering "advanced degree". ;)

Further more, advanced degree is subjective. Bachelors is advanced compared to Diploma, which is advanced compared to 10th passed, which is advanced compared someone who failed 10th.


Second: It is not fair to allow EB3s to port.
It is in the law. that part is not grounds for a lawsuit. If you still want to complain, then complain about the fact that AC21 allows you to jump jobs without even getting your GC.

Third (these are my own points)

When people got their F1, they said there are here without immigrant intention. Why is USCIS giving them H1 and then also accepting GCs for them. Come to think of it, OPT is not required by any university for granting the degree, so why are F1s even allowed to work??


The point I am trying to make is that if you try to open one can of worms, everyone else has a Costo or a Sams club to go to and buy a boat load of cans of worms to open - that is going to put you in a bad situation.

Free Ai Weiwei protests are 'condescending'? No, they are about the fear of where China is heading (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peterfoster/100087793/free-ai-weiwei-protests-are-condescending-no-they-are-about-the-fear-of-where-china-is-heading/) By Peter Foster | Telegraph Blog

China is smarting over the negative publicity that has accompanied its arrest of Ai Weiwei. The Deputy Foreign Minister, Mme Fu Ying, who is the former Chinese Ambassador to Britain, said in Hungary yesterday that Europe and America were being �condescending� towards China by their refusal to just shut up about the arrested artist.

Earlier a hurt-sounding foreign ministry spokesman said China was �unhappy� and �baffled� that some countries were trying to treat a �crime suspect as a hero�.

Both of these highly disingenuous remarks are designed to touch a key nationalist button in China in which all criticisms of China are framed as part of a plot by the waning Old Imperial powers to constrain the :Dglorious rise of the new China:D. It is a seductive narrative, but also a fallacious one that needs to be squashed.

In a globalised economy the US and the EU have a �common interest� in China�s peaceful rise, and on the evidence of the last few months (you might say years, going back to the crushing of the pre-Olympic Tibetan crackdowns of 2008) they have legitimate cause to be worried about the direction China is taking.

Ai is merely a lightning rod for that concern.

China is absolutely correct that the US and EU have no �right� to interfere in its judicial affairs, and nor do they seek to. But that doesn�t mean that democratic governments and their citizens don�t have a duty (to themselves, as much as anything else) to speak out about Ai Weiwei, and what his detention might portend.

China talks about Ai being a �crime suspect�, but the fact that hardly anyone outside China (and a fair number inside China) have any confidence in the due process of the Chinese law should in itself give Beijing serious pause for thought.

Popular concerns about Ai are not, as Mme Fu would have it, some silly political point-scoring game. His detention is an expression of naked State power that Europeans and Americans, who lived through totalitarianism not so long ago, find both worrying and revolting.

So when someone asks, as the Chinese do, �what�s it to us?�, the immediate answer should be �absolutely everything�.

China is going to shake the world over the next 50 years � for good or ill � and the shape of the Chinese state is therefore of concern to us all. China can bluster all it likes, it can posture and ignore the criticisms, but modern China does not exist in isolation.

It has emerged as a rising power precisely because it has engaged with the world, signing up to a host of international agreements on trade and politics that imply certain norms of behaviour. The benefits of rejoining the world community can�t come, as Chinese foreign policy mandarins say, with �no strings attached�.

This is why the democratic world feels that Ai�s detention is worth shouting about. It signals a deeply worrying trend in China and while Mme Fu tries to spin these protests as mere �condescension� they are nothing of the kind.

They are about the real fear of where China is heading.


Ai Weiwei and China�s assault on truth (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/12/ai-weiwei-and-chinas-assault-on-truth/) By Phelim Kine | The Washington Times
CHINA'S MEDIA:
A STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE (http://www.themontrealreview.com/2009/China-Media-a-Struggle-for-Independence.php)
By James F. Scotton | The Montr�al Review
A founding document for a new China (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-founding-document-for-a-new-china/2011/05/12/AFT5CV1G_story.html) By Michael Gerson | The Washington Post

I am not convinced with the whole systematic preadjudication logic at all. I think it has to do with the mistakenly released memo by USCIS and the criteria which is listed in it. Companies meeting the criteria listed in that memo's H1s/I140s are being looked at and I485 app in the same file. There is no trend in the posts on this site by people who received RFEs to suggest systematic preadjudication, they are all over the place. EB2, EB3 - priority date-years ranging from 2001 to 2006, received RFEs.

USCIS seems to be making a coordinated attempt to preadjudicate in order to avoid future backlogs (to achieve their metrics on processing times). See thread on Processing Time Targets they have set for themselves: http://immigrationvoice.org/forum/showthread.php?t=24747

Why did they not take the employer to court? Why make the EB2 line suffer for these employer's faults?

If an employer wrongly files your case under EB3 instead of EB2 or EB1, then the onus is on you to challenge them and take them to court if need be.

So an employer cheating him into applying in EB3 is an honest way?

A man went into the proctologist's office for his first exam.

The doctor told him to have a seat. In the examination room and that he would be with him in just a few minutes. When the man sat down and began observing the tools he noticed there were three items on a stand next to the exam table.

A tube of K-Y jelly; A rubber glove; and A beer.

When the doctor finally came in the man said, "Look Doc, I'm a little confused. This is my first exam. I know what the K-Y is for, and I know what the glove is for, but can you tell me what the BEER is for?"

At that the doctor became noticeably outraged and stormed over to the the door. The doc flung the door open and yelled to his nurse.......

Dam it Helen! I said a BUTT LIGHT

Commercial Venture

Turning SKS into a commercial venture allowed the firm to tap an unlimited pool of funds from private investors. That, in turn, let the company grow and reduce rates, Akula says.

�Interest rates have come down over time,� he says. �Because it works, she comes back year after year,� he says of his customers.

His autobiography, �A Fistful of Rice� (Harvard Business Review Press, 2010), provides a glimpse of the expansion drive.

Akula, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant, studied McDonald�s Corp. and Burger King Holdings Inc. in 2005 to learn about their speedy training of unskilled workers. He devised a two-month course to train as many as 1,000 new loan officers a month.

�I now had one goal for SKS; to grow, grow, grow as fast as we could,� he writes. �We could practice microfinance in a way that would serve more poor people than anyone had ever thought possible.�

Akula says the commercial model of microfinance isn�t the only way.

Returning to �Roots�

�It�s an important complement to other forms of finance,� he says. New microfinance companies don�t spend time to build trust, Akula says. �As an industry, we need to go back to our roots,� he says.

The Reserve Bank is scheduled to report on the industry in January. The finance ministry is planning new rules.

Sequoia Capital�s Chadha says he�s concerned about �regulatory uncertainty� created by the state ordinance and prefers federal regulation. Nationwide rules would prevent individual states from damaging credit discipline by waiving loans, Microfinance Institutions� Prasad says.

�It is no different than needing good regulation for stock investing or starting a manufacturing facility,� SKS investor Khosla says.

�People, Not Profit�

From Yunus�s perspective, it�s essential that the industry move away from seeking maximum profits and get back to focusing on the poor.

�If not, you are not helping poor people�s lives,� he says. �You are not patient. You are not restrained. You don�t have empathy for the people. You are just using them to make money. That�s what blinds you when you are in the profit-making world. We need to see the people, not profit.�

Any such changes would be too late for Atthili Padma and Shivalingam, a young couple in Andhra Pradesh�s cotton-farming village of Chennampalli.

Padma, a 22-year-old mother of two, walked out of her house on Oct. 7 with her 18-month-old son and 4-year-old daughter, according to Maruthi Prasad, a superintendent at the police station in Shankarampet.

Padma�s Death

Instead of heading to her parents� house as she often did, she walked 2 kilometers in the opposite direction. She came to an old Hindu temple where villagers worship Lord Shiva, the god of destruction. Padma continued until she stood in front of a well once used to irrigate crops, her father-in-law, Pochaiah, says. There, with no one to dissuade her, she jumped into the well with her children.

The day before she died, Padma had visited her parents after arguing with her husband over loans they couldn�t repay, according to Mangamma, the couple�s neighbor.

Their marriage five years ago was arranged by their parents and the couple had become close and hadn�t fought before that day, Mangamma says. The loans totaled 20,000 rupees, Pochaiah says.

Padma�s death is recorded as a microfinance-related suicide in the list by the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty.

�Sad Day for Microfinance�

Police arrested Padma�s husband, Shivalingam, on Oct. 13 for allegedly abetting Padma�s suicide. They also alleged that he�d harassed her to provide money to marry him, which is illegal in India, according to Narayana, a constable at the Shankarampet police station.

Police made two further arrests on Nov. 8: Share Microfin managers Sriram Raghavender, 27, and Polapalli Kumaraswami, 22, also for allegedly abetting the suicide, according to superintendent Prasad. The two managers and Shivalingam have been released on bail and are awaiting a court hearing, Prasad says.

Advocates and investors such as Khosla say microfinance -- when it works correctly -- is the best way to give the rural poor a shot at better lives.

The tragedies in India present the worst possible outcome, says Cashpor�s Gibbons, whose Nov. 15 speech opened a morning session of the annual Microfinance India Summit in New Delhi.

�This is a sad day for microfinance,� said Gibbons, who has promoted the movement for the past two decades.

�Often people asked me, �What are you doing here?�� he told the audience. �I�ve been always proud to say, �I�m doing microfinance.� Now, when people ask, I feel embarrassed. I feel like hiding somewhere.�

"Refugee_New", dude I like your enthusiasm to answer not only one but many users at the same time but you may want to watch out for the red dots as well they are increasing like anything on your profile.

To everyone,
Peace Peace & Peace
Once again I condemn all the acts that leads to the deaths of innocents especially the kids.
Every problem in this world can and should be resolved by negotiations. I pray that both sides should come forward and resolve this issue diplomatically.

Said that now please work together for all the EB immigration issues.

bfadlia, i sent you a PM. Respond me when you have time.

BiggerPockets.com looks like a nice website. It's for real estate investors. I just signed up on this web-site as I'm closing on a 4-family house next month.

If you make money using Biggerpockets... send me $100.:D

Yes, they definitely have...Hamas should stop using school kids as human shield before complaining. Heres link for you - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elyXQ6g-TJs

Gaza is a small town where more than 1.5 million people live there. Hamas is part and parcel of Gaza because they are elected by palestinian people and wherever they go, its full of people. Its a small land with crowded people. Gaza is like a crowded market.

Again you are trying to justify the killing of innocent school kids and civilian. This is a big LIE constantly told by media to cover up the massacre. This is part of their divide and rule strategy. This Lie is something similar to WMD claim.

Do you think Indian police will bomb the crowded street in order to kill a theif, then blame the theif that he is hiding behind civilian?

When they get bribes, why bother about pay? Sorry, I've no respect for these low lifes who take bribe and make common man run from pillar to post.


I think before we get into the generics of bribery and corruption - we should examine it from the context of the lack of security. Blaming the local police force for everything wrong that goes on is a natural reaction. This was my initial reaction too.

Yes, the Bombay police has not been effective but you must realize that when the police is underpaid, they will remain incompetent I'm not justifying bribery and corruption, just trying to suggest that provide them with proper arms and give them proper remuneration. Most of the retired police commissioners have also complained of lack of free hand and interference by officious politicians.

Major Unnikrishanan received a paltry compensation of Rs 500k with humiliation to his father as a bonus. Abhinav Bindra - an olympic gold medalist - received Rs 5 million.
Is there a sense of proportion? Obviously, we don't care for our fallen heroes, we don't care for our security forces...

Would you rather be a sportsman or a Bombay policeman/a commando? Decide for yourself.