Alberta is wooing H1B holders with cheesy shots of its picturesque downtown
img: via Philly.com

On one hand, Alberta seems to have a lot to offer in terms of quality of life, infrastructure and employment opportunities.

An oil boom. A robust economy. Universal health care - free next year.
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There’s more. Highly lauded schools. Low crime rates. Low unemployment. Low taxes. A surplus of jobs.
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…. anybody, would probably enjoy living in a province where the largest city, Calgary, population 1.1 million, had just 30 homicides in 2007. And the health care will be free, thanks to all the oil and gas royalties. Prices for new houses rose nearly 5 percent in 2007.
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There’s no provincial sales tax, the equivalent of state sales tax. The lowest provincial income-tax rate in Canada. (A flat tax of 10 percent for singles earning over $16,853 and $39,655 for a family of four.)

On the other, they’re finding it difficult to attract highly skilled workers.

But there’s the rub: Not enough workers to fill the positions, expected to top 110,000 over the next decade, according to estimates provided by Alberta. So, government representatives have been visiting cities worldwide - including a stop today at the Westin Philadelphia Hotel - to entice potential employees to think Alberta.

To attract highly skilled workers, mostly the equivalent of US H1B holders, Alberta seems to be laying out the red carpet including ads in papers, offers of permanent residency and even a website touting its wares.

My personal opinion? I’ll pass. Not only is the cold weather a factor in my decision (I live in the Sunshine State of the East Coast) but the overall reputation of Canada also. Rightly or not, the desi community is chock full of stories of Canada with this reputation of easy immigration laws to lure immigrants who find it difficult to find employment once they reach there. On the other hand, if I was struggling to find employment or my H1B was in danger, who knows?

Being that a large section of our readers hold H1B visas or at least know someone close to them who holds a H1B visa, what is your personal opinion? Hypothetically, would you move to Alberta, Canada, with its promises of more opportunities and better life quality? If yes, why, and if not, why?

This is also an opportunity for someone with more expertise on Canadian immigration to chime in and dispel or reinforce some of the myths surrounding it.

May I suggest a medley of Himesh Reshammiya, Bappi Lahiri and Anu Malik?

More Indians in India are driving, while Indian-Americans are cutting down on their driving habits.

The comparisons between Indians of the des and Indian Americans are strictly anecdotal and may or may not be related but certainly indicative of the times. Personally, over the last few years so I’ve cut down on rice in general but that is a personal choice. As for driving, high gas prices have certainly played a role in reduced driving. The last recession (dotcom bust) was when I was graduating, and jobs were extremely hard to come by, especially for H1B seekers.

How is the slowdown in the US economy affecting you, if any at all? Job search? Groceries? Driving? Vacations? Retirement funds? Daily life, in general? Do you think America is in a recession currently or is former Senator and former McCain adviser right about America (including Indian-Americans) being “a nation of whiners”? Any economic gurus/market experts feel free to chime in.

The perfunctory celebrity sighting happened (as did the first of two Love Guru related conversations of the weekend) when just before the show began, Manu Narayan (yes THAT Manu Narayan) politely asked this blogger if the seat down the row was taken. Oh yes, that was a Love Guru related conversation. Oh, enough already. Let’s not argue semantics now.

After a dreary Friday, Saturday found me up and about early, just like a normal workday. With NYC’s famed transport system seemingly in chaos, with subway closings and at least one tunnel closure all happening on the same day, it was a tense bus ride into the city that set the ball rolling on what proved to be a fulfilling day. But thanks to my decision to take a cab (and a misjudgment about the day’s schedule) I was one of the earliest to collect UD’s press pass. Yup, like last year, I was imitating a press pass carrying citizen journalist. But unlike last year, when I sleepwalked wide-eyed through most parts of the convention, this year was that I actually was expecting to hobnob with the best of them.

The first session of the day was a panel discussion about the historic Presidential campaign this year. Leslie Wayne (NY Times), Aswini Anburajan (NBC), Nick Timiraos (WSJ); Rebecca Kutler (CNN) and Andrea Bernstein (WNYC) shared their experiences while on the road with the candidates. One of the interesting points to come out of the session was the universal agreement among the panelists that campaign meetings akin to tourist attractions with entire families using their vacations to drive long distances to listen to stump speeches.

Then sports won over politics. The unique opportunity to interact with a sportscaster with a unique perspective drove me toward the East Lounge where Kevin Negandhi, ESPN’s first desi anchor was waiting for us. Kevin, a graduate from Philadelphia’s Temple University has been anchoring on the ESPN Networks for more than a year now. An entertaining hour and a half with him followed - filled with the couple of the common (and a few uncommon) desi backstories. Yours truly managed to shoot a few questions at him, more as a sports fan (and perpetual ESPN viewer) than a desi, though I did manage to slip in a cricket question.

Another panel, this time geared more toward true blooded journalists than hacks like me, titled Blogging To Augment Your Reporting, followed. Sewell Chan and Jennifer Lee (of the NY Times’s City Room blog) and Mark Seibel, (of McClatchy’s Washington Bureau) discussed their experiences while blogging to supplement their reportage and presented a tidy how-to on efficient usage of blogs for journalists. As for me, certainly not part of the target audience, this panel introduced me to City Room, which in the two weeks since has become a must read on my feed reader.

And then came the session that I was mostly looking forward to - a salon with Fox News’s Jerusalem based Middle East correspondent, Reena Ninan. However having been sidetracked into an interesting discussion with someone, I walked in late to the session only to find it metamorphing into a lecture on India (not really because of Reena, who was mostly a silent spectator).

Coming to the fag end of the day, I wanted out earlier than last year to go and meet up with my boss and some clients for dinner. Waiting around to thank Sree and take my leave for the day, I found myself standing next to a gentleman who was in a conversation with someone else. And then a glance at his id tag made me do a double take. I had found myself standing right next to Vineet Chander, the Communications Director for ISKCON (America).

Once I got past my excited surprise, I waited around and once he got done with his conversation, I pounced on him and told him about UD being Love Guru Central. He said he knew about UD and appreciated our finding our niche among all the desi blogs. He graciously agreed to talk to me about The Love Guru and the various related issues that plague Hindu American society in general.

That last conversation with Vineet brought the curtain down personally on an interesting SAJA weekend. Sunday being match day (I play in a local tennis ball cricket league), I had to give the traditional Sunday brunch a miss. Next year though, we will be there for sure through the whole convention.

Thanks Sree. Our calendars are already marked!

“The victim was not interested in marrying, nor remaining married to her husband,” the police report said, citing information authorities received from Rashid’s wife. “This was causing a great deal of friction between the victim and her father,” so much so that the two had not spoken in two months, the report said.

This one has been filed under “honor killing” which is a great misnomer - there is zero honor in the slaughter of innocents in the name of some undefinable , vaporous idea of “honor”. One sensible quote in the article:

“My immediate reaction was that this is an anomaly in the South Asian community,” Ajay Nair, associate dean of multicultural affairs at Columbia University, told CNN Tuesday. “Most South Asian-American families enjoy wonderful relationships within their families.”I

I think there’s ways that we can rationalize it and make sense of it, particularly in thinking about new immigrant communities in the U.S. and thinking about some of the struggles that they face and the generation gap and the cultural differences that children do face,” he said. “I think there are some issues there, but by and large, this isn’t a rampant problem within South Asian communities. What is a problem, I think, is domestic violence, and that cuts across all communities.”

Without minimizing the horror of a crime when a parent deems it fit to kill his offspring over a choice that she made about her own life , I’d like to point out the inevitable playing up of the “arranged marriage ” angle by the press.See this for example. This is unfortunate because it implies that arranged marriages are the cause of such heinous crimes, whereas the issue is far more complex and has more to do with antediluvian attitudes towards women and lack of cultural assimilation. Its sad because while simultaneously sweeping the real and terrifying aspects of domestic violence under the carpet, it vilifies the institution of arranged marriages. From what I have seen - though not having had an arranged marriage myself- the vast majority of them work. There is a difference between an “arranged ” marriage and a “forced” one- a distinction that unfortunately seems to escape most journalists.

Meanwhile in the annals of reality TV, we will soon get to see “Arranged Marriage” ( tip: Karthik via email) - a proposed reality TV show that - and I quote from the website here, plans to :

introduce America to an ancient practice that may have a great deal to teach our modern relationhips……

In my opinion, this is okay. If you can allow abominations shows like Tila Tequila’s Shot at Love and Flava Flavs messy attempts at finding love- why not a show on arranged marriages? This one actually seems to approach it from the viewpoint that the majority of these marriages work. It will follow four couples through the first year of their marriages - which would have been “arranged” by their close family and friends.

Maybe some good will come of the reality show.Maybe people will realize that deranged actions of abusers are not morally equivalent to marriages arranged by concerned families and friends.

“V” for visa, Modi seems to be saying
img: via BBC

The invite was extended to him by the Association of Indian Americans in North America (AIANA) and is being opposed by the Coalition Against Genocide (CAG), an Indian American group formed in the wake of the Gujarat riots of 2002. To visit the US, Modi would need a B1/B2 tourist visa. His previous application for a visa was denied in 2005 by the US Department of State, when he was invited to speak at a Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA) conference [TOI]. The reason for the denial was “for restricting religious freedom”.

However, the US policy on visits by tyrannical rulers with spotty human rights records is vague. Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of those leaders with spotty human rights records allowed to visit the US and give speeches. [WaPo]

Keeping that in mind, how does one reconcile this issue? On a personal level and as a tax paying resident of the US, I’m opposed to any sort of visa issuance for Narendra Modi. But, like Ahmadinejad, Modi is a democratically elected leader, probably elected under freer and fairer circumstances than the Iranian President, if I may say. Granted that he is not a resident of the US, but between the two tyrants, can the US really justify denying one democratically elected leader while allowing another? On the other hand, if the US lets him visit, wouldn’t it be a slap in the face of the victims of the Gujarat riots i.e. citizens of a democracy?

So many thorny questions, whoever said governing a free society was an easy task. So what do ye, our uber readers think? Thoughts? Opinions?

Previous post on Narendra Modi on Über Desi.

A few weeks ago, barely days after the deal was signed, UK’s premier car magazine, Autocar, reported that Tata had toured Jaguar and Land Rover’s facilities for a week and come off complimenting the ‘can do’ spirit of the companies. While that is not cause for any surprise really, what caught the eye in that article was that he was going to tour the US later on and meet with the dealers of the two brands.

And as Autoweek has reported (via Autoblog), this tour has taken some of the oldest and the biggest dealers of the two brands in the US (who opposed the deal vehemently) by pleasant surprise (link).

“I was wrong,” Gorin now admits, speaking by phone on Friday, June 27, from Jaguar’s design center in Whitley, England. “Any concern I may have had has been completely dispelled. I couldn’t be more impressed.

If one was to believe the words of the dealers, Mr. Tata’s tour seems to be setting benchmarks for the whole auto industry (link)

“I’ve been a Jaguar dealer for 40 years,” says Norm Tompkins, owner of San Jose British Motors near San Francisco, whom Tata invited to lunch. “In all the years Ford owned us, I never met a single Ford executive.”

Tata’s entourage which has included several members of his top management team was flown in on his own personal jet and his personal touch seems to have reached out to the hearts of the dealers and made them rue the lack of similar treatment from their own parents.

“I was never hugged as much by my own father as I was hugged by him,” Aron admits. Aron, one of the first Jaguar dealers in the United States, invited Tata to his 55-year-old Imperial Motors store in Wilmette, Ill.

“He embraces you and touches you, which is a good thing. To me, that’s the sign of a very warmhearted person.

“I’m telling you this,” Aron says, growing serious: “He’s going to make something out of Jaguar. We’re in good hands now. My son can see his future here now.”

And Tata seems to have conveyed the message that he means business by calling a few Chicago area dealers for a dinner meeting.

Over steaks, the chairman and his secretary took notes on the comments. Dealers asked the new owner for a convertible Jaguar sports car. They alerted Tata that Bentley, owned by Volkswagen AG, has become a fierce new competitor for them and that Jaguar must have a higher-end car to compete with Bentley.

And during subsequent visits to these dealers’ facilities, Tata and his team gathered minutiae about the day to day operations.

“Can I tell you what he wanted to know?” Aron asks in mild amazement. ” ‘Mr. Aron,’ he said to me, ‘How many technicians do you have here? What is your profit margin on parts? What is your absorption rate?’ ” Aron says, referring to the percentage of a dealership’s operating costs covered by the service department.

“What is your absorption rate! Can you imagine the head of an automaker bothering to travel around the world to sit here and talk to me about such day-to-day business details? And he wrote down my answers!”

While this visit seems to have done a great deal towards establishing goodwill for Jaguar/Land Rovers’ new owners among the dealers, a lot of work still needs to be done. Both Jaguar and Land Rover have seen decline in the past years thanks to some unimaginative management by Ford. In the same period, competitors like Bentley and Aston Martin have grown impressively, both in terms of market share as well as brand consciousness.

A complete divorce from Ford’s legacy of mismanagement is perhaps needed. And Tata’s pleasantly unexpected visit is possibly the first step toward a turnaround that should, IMHO, most certainly include more offerings like the new XF. Maybe there’s some hope for these brands after all.

Every politician knows this, well every American politician knows this and if you ever have dreams of signing a few bills when the President is getting his colonoscopy, then you better be extra careful. Because every thing you do will fall under the radar. When you are in consideration, you triple check everything you do.

But it looks like Bobby did not get the memo, that or he was inspired by John Kerry to pull off a move after the master flip flopper.

Here is what unfolded according to LA Times blog.

So to recap, first Jindal promised to stop the pay raise, then told legislators he wouldn’t stop the pay raise, then — looking at his own political mortality — reversed direction again and stopped the pay raise. Jindal fell on the sword Monday, thanking “the people for their voice and their attention” — that would be the recall petition — and added: “The voters have demanded change. … I made a mistake by staying out of it.”

I guess it is the season for potential candidates to screw up their possibilities of being the second most powerful person in the world.

A spokesperson for the family has this to say [Via SAJA]

“Vinay was an amazing soul who inspired all of us with his will to live. We take some comfort in knowing his journey may have saved lives through the campaign, and in all the lives he touched with his love and spirit.”

I cannot imagine the pain his family, friends and others who worked hard for the cause are going through, but everyone needs to take solace in the fact that Vinay galvanized a lot of us to register at one of the bone marrow drives. Even the normally lazy person like me, took time to register.

If you are not already in the registry, please take some time to get yourself registered.

Thursday:
Viewing is from 5:00 - 7:00 PM ET
Folks will be saying a few words around 5:30 PM
Location: Mann and Rodgers Funeral Home
Located in JP on the corner of South Huntington and Centre Street

Friday:
Rites/Service will be held in the morning from 9:30 AM onward for about an hour.
Location: Mann and Rodgers Funeral Home
Located in JP on the corner of South Huntington and Centre Street

A private cremation for family members only will be held at 10:30 in the Forest Hills area.

Some of you have inquired if you could do something in Vinay’s memory. We request that you do not send flowers or other gifts. If you would like to make a donation in Vinay’s memory, we would suggest that you donate to the National Donor Marrow Program.

Feel free to also donate in Vinay’s name.

Vinay’s commitment to finding other South Indian’s a match has been made evident to the work that him and the group, helpvinay.org have done thus far for the South Asian Community.

Would you call Vaibhav Chopda a victim of the system or victim of legalized theft?