[svlug] Russian programmers (getting way off topic....)

[Hans Reiser]

People have an amazing ability to rationalize their self-interest as good in
the abstract rather than good for them.  I must lack some socio-biological
instinct as a result of mental retardation.

Customs and the INS are inherently evil: the exceptions being with
regards to agricultural pests, and preventing criminal flight.  These exceptions
do not justify their cost to society.

No one has any right to lock another out of participating in our society so
as to support the cost of his own labor.  That is simply evil, and such
social lockout is the focus of every major social movement in our history.
200 years ago it was the nobility and the British merchant societies, then
it was the blacks, now it is immigrants, and soon it will be those denied
access to source code.

The statue of liberty should be sold for scrap.  It is pure hypocrisy to keep it
around with our current immigration policies.

Hans

javilk at polly.mall-net.com wrote:

> > > >
> > > > Hi. I hate to put something like this out on svlug, but the economic
> > > > situation in Russia has deteriorated to such a state that I think it
> > > > justified.
>
> >   More programmers than money at this time.  Sorry.
> >
> > But hey, we ship soon, so maybe my funding level will change in 6 months.
>
>     It is up to the Russians to get their own economy together.  One does
> not do that by removing from their arena the best and the brightest, but
> by encouraging and helping them to develop their own economy OVER THERE.
> Will bringing their best here, make their lands better?
>
>      Ed Yourdon wrote a book, "The Decline and Fall of the American
> Programmer", decrying, among other things, the influx of foreign national
> programmers destroying part of our domestic programmer's income base.  He
> even has a newsletter that is against the importation of underpaid foreign
> national programmers for the purpose of laying off Skilled older American
> programmers. HP has been sued over this issue in the past.  These are
> cheap mental grunt workers, the mental equivalents of cheap "wet-back"
> laborers "wet-mind" laborers.
>
>      I grew up among immigrants, I am the son of an immigrant engineer and
> freedom fighter. Many of my friends are "Americanizing" engineers and
> other professionals who are learning what makes America the international
> success story that it is, and investing in it.  (Despite the Hilly and
> Billy Washingtoon show...) I am not opposed to capable and decent people
> who are investing in America with their own blood, sweat, and tears in
> effort to improve this nation and themselves.  Many are my friends, like
> Raffi, and others.  Even Linus is one of them. I know that there are a lot
> of entrepreneurial foreign nationals here who could not have done over
> there (wherever "there" may be,) what they are doing here.  Many of them
> are taking risks a lot of us don't have the courage to take.  These are
> NOT the people I am against!  They are more American in the heart than
> some of the lazy native born SOB's I see in the streets.  More power to
> them and this society for their investing in it.
>
>      BUT... a number of my older friends have been marginzlized by the
> rampant importation of sub-wage foreign national wet-mind workers.  These
> Americans are wonderful people whom I have worked with on and off, people
> who teach more than they learn because they have been around forever, and
> often pull strange things out of their experiences that really help
> projects.  I am alive today because one of these older gents flew me out
> here for medical treatment twelve years ago when I was dying.  That is
> friendship and loyalty!  We still talk every now and then on the phone.
>
>      Industry is giving these people the boot, "laying off" these people
> just before their retirement plans vest, without any regard for them. Some
> times it is the economic cycles, sometimes it is the pain killers and
> prescription or over the counter medications that fail them in drug tests.
> (Many companies have a NO EXCEPTIONS policy -- you get tested the day you
> took Aleive, bam! You are out the door!  NO EXCEPTIONS!  Even Federal
> documents say those tests have a 20 percent false positive rate on KNOWN
> Government supplied reference samples!) It is pathetic seeing some of my
> former co-workers trying to eak out a living at Fry's, Radio-Shack and
> other places that are... not so much below their dignity, but Really below
> their WORTH to SOCIETY in general!  They have EARNED their place in this
> society a hell of a lot more than I have!!! They fought in our wars,
> weathered our financial storms, natural disasters, helped build this
> valley and other places, scrimped and saved to put their kids through
> college; and now Industry imports cheap wet-minds so they can kick them
> out sans retirement plans, and sometimes sans their ability to make
> mortgage payments on homes that are so Excruciatingly close to paid for!
>
>      I have also seen several companies nearly go out of business because
> of the reliance on inexperienced foreign nationals, as well as management
> failures due to the excessive use of mixed groups of foreign nationals.
> (If you use foreign nationals MAKE SURE THEY ALL SPEAK THE SAME LANGUAGE
> and DIALECT!!!!  Is that a secret some managers don't understand???)
> Conditionals are the last thing foreign nationals learn. They are the core
> of programming.  If they can't talk to each other about uncertainties and
> nested conditional groups clearly, the project is DOOMED! As a consultant,
> I've seen it happen more than once.  I have also worked with some
> tremendous foreign nationals as well; I have nothing against them as
> individual people.  I am against the tide sweeping many of us out of work.
>
>      I urge each of us to think carefully about the impact of importing
> wet-minds.  Help them in their nations, yes!  DO help them!  But if you do
> not help them IN THEIR OWN LANDS, we will just unleash a torrent of
> sub-wage wet-minds that will wash us out of work just as they have washed
> a lot of other highly skilled and highly experienced people out of work.
> And devastate THEIR OWN LANDS in the process! Many of us are next.
> Between the warping of our culture faster than we can help the newcomers
> adjust to, the tax games they play with independent programmers, and the
> immigrations games... we American Programmers are being marginzlized
> across the nation, especially the Older American Programmer. Many are
> giving up, sliding away to live in cheaper places. And depriving this
> society of what, with their vast experience, they could create had we
> shown our own kind a little more faith, and a little more kindness.
>
>      Think about the consequences of what you are doing, for in the end,
> you will end up done to as you did to others.
>
> - javilk at mall-net.com -----------------------------
> -------- MS asks "Where do you want to go?" -------
> ------- Linux asks "What do you want to do?" ------
> -- It is doers, not goers, who built this world! --
> --------- Member: http://www.svlug.org/ -----------
>




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