The topic of the US immigration policy is obviously of interest to yours truly – recall I am a Canadian residing in the US. An article of interest appeared today that I wanted to share.. apparently US Senator McCain paid a visit to the Googleplex recently and was asked a number of questions in his “job interview”… the topic of immigration came up… “If Google is going to be able to maintain its supremacy in the world, it is going to have to continue to get the best and the brightest from all over the world, and I accept with your gigantic egos, that you are the best…we need an H1B visa program that works”. I frequently scour the web for material about the H1B visa – recall this year the quote expired on day 1 leaving many people out of luck – one day??? 2 years ago it took months to hand out 65,000 H visas WTF??? It’s interesting to see how the topic dominates the India press – I guess it should since they hoard about 80% of all the H1B visas – a little heavy in my opinion.. how about spreading them around a bit eh? Aussies also have an unfair advantage and have an assured quote of Visas made available to them – a pretty cozy arrangement. The H1B visas topic is important to the high tech industries (even geospatial) and will affect many big names (think ESRI, Autodesk, Sun, HP, Google, and many others). Finally, it will be interesting to see if illegal residents are provided amnesty and a chance at getting a green card simply by paying up $5k (gee, I wish I had that opportunity)… until then those seeking to work in the US legally have it tougher every year. More on this topic in this blog post over at ZDnet – http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-markets/?p=1393
GIS, Maps, Geo and Location Technology by @gletham
