Protesting with flowers

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Brown in America

Protesting with flowers

By: Santosh :+: Under: Brown in America, Immigration
On: ⋅ July 11, 2007 ⋅

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H1B and other legal skilled workers have a fight on their hands for their future in the United States.

Floral Protest Flowers, not brickbats
img: via TouchdownUSA.org

Faced with a bleak future after the USCIS stopped taking applications for pemanent residency to legal skilled workers in the US, the immigrants are fighting back by sending flowers to the USCIS - a non-violent but symbolic way of protesting.

This protest was admittedly inspired by the concept of gandhigiri from the movie, “Lage Raho Munnabhai”.

The protestors themselves are immigrants from multiple nationalities.

Although many media organizations used the Indian angle for this story because this event was inspired by an Indian movie based on Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals - the flowers were sent by nationals of numerious countries to USCIS and Immigration Voice represents all nationals affected by visa backlogs and the visa bulletin fiasco. Immigration Voice recognizes and appreciates the contributions and participation of the members of all nationalities. This was not an “Indian” effort, it was an effort supported and organized by all the legal skilled immigrants stuck in visa backlogs.

Good for them! Although they may want to come up with something new pretty soon.

The USCIS has however, come up with a novel solution and has now started re-routing them to an army medical hospital.

One of our readers, RobRoy4u, linked us to this article describing the frustrations of some of the affected folks. We @ UberDesi empathize with all those who have been affected by the recent developments.

To quote the man who inspired this protest:
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.“

Discussion

5 comments for “Protesting with flowers”

1: Karthik | July 11, 2007, 3:13 pm | Direct Link

A close friend of mine wanted to marry her fiance in a week so he could benefit from the turn of events.

That’s how serious this issue is.

2: Santosh | July 11, 2007, 3:18 pm | Direct Link

What gets me is they treat legal immigrants like crap and have all sorts of bills for better treatment of illegal immigrants.

3: Rahul | July 11, 2007, 4:19 pm | Direct Link

â€œFirst they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.â€

In this case, they will probably laugh at us, till they forget us and go back to ignoring us.

I am sure “it sounded like a good idea at the time”, but I don’t see this protest having any effect except denuding some flowering plants and making Gonzo look good to the vets.

All that said, I don’t know what effect the affected workers can have on policy. Only drastic moves like the big dev office announced by Microsoft in Vancouver could change the situation.

4: Santosh | July 11, 2007, 4:30 pm | Direct Link

Rahul,
Yup. I agree. That is why I advocate they come up with something new pretty soon.

Hit ‘em where it hurts the most, campaign money. If the top software companies (Indian and American) did that, you can bet things will change.

5: uber desi dot com » Blog Archive » Flower Power | July 18, 2007, 10:12 am | Direct Link

[...] when immigrants on a high-tech visa, including a large number of Indians protested against the USCIS by bombarding them with flowers? Well, that seems to have paid [...]