Saturday, April 22, 2017

Waiting for green cards, Indian visa-holders see hope in Trump review

Guru Harihara, the CEO of startup Boomerang Commerce, discusses business issues with director of finance Jaya Jaware at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California, U.S. April 21, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Nellis-Guru Harihara, the CEO of startup Boomerang Commerce, poses at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California, U.S. April 21, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Nellis

By Stephen Nellis | SAN FRANCISCO-Sat Apr 22, 2017

When Gokul Gunasekaran was offered a full scholarship for a graduate programme in electrical engineering at Stanford University, he saw it as the chance of a lifetime.

He had grown up in Chennai, India, and had a solid job offer with a large oil company after getting his undergraduate degree. He came to America instead, got the Stanford degree and now works as an engineer at a data science startup in Silicon Valley.

But for the past five years, he has been waiting for a green card that would give him full legal rights as a permanent resident. In the meantime, he is in a holding pattern on an H-1B visa, which permits him to live and work in the United States but does not allow him easily to switch jobs or start his own company.

"It was a no-brainer when I came to this country, but now I'm kind of regretting taking that scholarship," said Gunasekaran, 29, who is also vice president with a non-profit group called Immigration Voice that represents immigrants waiting for green cards.

Immigration Voice estimates there are some 1.5 million H-1B visa holders in the country waiting for green cards, many of whom are from India and have been waiting for more than a decade.

Many of these immigrants welcomed President Donald Trump's executive order this week to the federal departments overseeing the programme to review it, a move that may lead to H-1B visas being awarded to the highest-paying, highest-skilled jobs rather than through a random lottery.

Their hope is that merit-based H-1Bs might then lead to merit-based green cards.

"I think less random is great," said Guru Hariharan, the CEO and founder of Boomerang Commerce, an e-commerce startup. Hariharan, who was previously an executive at Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc, spent 10 years waiting for his green card and started his own company as soon as he got it.

Green cards can be a path to naturalization and Hariharan expects to become a U.S. citizen soon.

H-1B visas are aimed at foreign nationals in occupations that generally require specialised knowledge, such as science, engineering or computer programming. The U.S. government uses a lottery to award 65,000 such visas yearly and randomly distributes another 20,000 to graduate student workers.

'INDENTURED SERVANTS'

The H-1B and the green card system are technically separate, but many immigrants from India see them as intimately connected.

The number of green cards that can go to people born in each country is capped at a few percent of the total, without regard to how large or small the country's population is. There is a big backlog of Indian-born people in the line, given the size of India's population - 1.3 billion - and the number of its natives in the United States waiting for green cards.

That leaves many of those immigrants stuck on H-1B visas while they wait, which they say makes them almost like "indentured servants," said Gaurav Mehta, an H-1B holder who works in the financial industry.

Mehta has a U.S.-born son, but he could be forced to take his family back to India at any time if he loses his job and cannot find another quickly. "He's never been to my country," Mehta said of his son. "But we'll have no choice if we have to go. Nobody likes to live in constant fear."

The H-1B visa is tied to a specific employer, who must apply for the visa and sponsor the employee for a specific job laid out in the visa application. To switch employers, the visa holder must secure their paperwork from their current employer and find another employer willing to take over their visa.

Some H-1B holders suspect that employers purposely seek out Indian immigrants because they know they will end up waiting for green cards and will be afraid to leave their employers.

But changing the green card system away from country caps to a merit-based system would require an act of Congress. Some executives also worry that allocating H-1Bs and green cards based on salary - while it would be done to counter the argument that immigrants undercut American workers - would hurt startups that cannot afford high wages.

In the meantime, H-1B holders like Nitin Pachisia, founding partner of a venture capital firm called Unshackled Ventures, are taking more practical measures. His firm specializes in taking care of the legal paperwork so that H-1B holders can start their own companies, a process that is possible but tricky.

Pachisia is hopeful that changes to the H-1B visa programme could revive interest in making the entire system, from H-1B visas to green cards and eventual citizenship, more merit-based and focussed on immigrants who are likely to start companies and create jobs.

"If the purpose of our high-skilled immigration programme is to bring in the most talented people, let's use that as a lens. From that perspective, it's a good thing we can focus on the most talented, and I'd say most entrepreneurial, people," he said.

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Frances Kerry)

International Man Booker Prize: Six shortlisted authors revealed

Two Israelis, three Europeans and an Argentinian have been chosen for this year's international shortlist.

Six books have been shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize

By Duarte Garrido, Entertainment Reporter-Friday 21 April 2017

A shortlist has been revealed for this year's prestigious Man Booker International Prize.

The UK-based award celebrates works of translated fiction and is given to both the author and English-language translator.

International Man Booker Prize.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Early hip fracture surgery will save hundreds of lives

SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYImage captionSurgery on hip fractures within 24 hours leads to a lower mortality rate in frail, elderly patients

SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYImage captionData recording the outcomes of quarter of a million hip fracture patients was used in the Southmead Hospital study

20 April 2017

Hundreds of lives could be saved if patients with hip fractures were operated on in under 24 hours, a new study reveals.

Researchers in Bristol found 8% more patients died after 30 days if they were operated on between 24 and 36 hours after admission to hospital.

The delay is thought to have caused 670 excess deaths in four years.

Project leader Timothy Chesser said it was the "first time" the benefits of early surgery had been revealed.

Data was collected by a team at Southmead Hospital from the National Hip Fracture Database, the largest such list in the world.

The study focussed on 241,446 patients across England and Wales who were admitted to hospitals with hip fractures between January 2011 and December 2014, and the mortality rate for these patients 30 days after they were admitted.

Improved outcomes

Guidance issued by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in 2011 called for patients to be operated on either the same day, or the day after, hospital admission.

But the new report says that even earlier surgery can improve outcomes for elderly patients who are often frail, with multiple medical problems.

"We found 8% more patients died if they were operated on between 24 and 36 hours compared to those given surgery within 24 hours, and the risk increased to 20% for those receiving surgery after 48 hours," said Adrian Sayers, the lead author on the paper.

Timothy Chesser, the clinical lead of the research project, said early surgery was not advisable for every patient, but was beneficial in the majority of cases.

"We have shown for the first time that early surgery is much better for patients," he said.

"The caveat is some of these patients are very sick and would benefit from greater time to get better before surgical procedures."http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-39655669

Friday, April 21, 2017

Why Dayan Can’t See That The Presidential Executive Is Dead & Awaiting Burial

By Shyamon Jayasinghe –April 21, 2017

Shyamon Jayasinghe

If I was running a school for logic and reasoning, Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka provides me with a surfeit of case studies in bad logic. To be fair, Dayan is eminently educated. His problem is that he has a horrible bee in his bonnet: Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. In order to discredit Ranil, Dayan seizes anything he can get his hands on. Besides, he sees in every little crisis in Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe’s impending downfall.

DJ’s latest ballistic missile is the Meetotamulla garbage issue. He writes to Colombo Telegraph on 16/4 an article captioned, “Meethotamulla & The Mother Of All May Days: Avoiding Mixed Messages,” where he states: “A faction of the Government led by Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and supported by his TNA allies, propose to weaken the Sri Lankan State by abolition of the Executive Presidency..”

The article purports to show the inadequacy of the reintroduction of the former Westminster inspired model of Parliament running government with a Prime Minister and cabinet at the head- the key change offered by the proposed new constitution. DJ wants the Executive Presidency kept. His above quote reveals why he wants that: it is the key platform of Ranil Wickremesinghe!

DJ sets aside the fact that sixty two lakhs of people, who ousted the former regime had been fed up of Presidential Executive rule and wanted and wants it done away. He forgets that the broad civil movement for yahapalanaya originally led by the late Revd Maduluwawe Sobitha, which was the hard back of the political campaign for ousting the former regime, wanted it and wants it as a precondition for anything that can be called good governance.

In the quote, DJ smuggles in a bit of racism by aligning Ranil with the TNA! That is Dayan Jayatilleka – our political analyst.

Unfortunately, in his enthusiasm DJ cites the recent Meetotamulla garbage tragedy as a God-given lesson of the need for the retention of the pure Presidential Executive system of Mahinda Rajapaksa. DJ slips his foot on this attempted high jump from the garbage to the need for the Executive Presidential model. Why? Because it is a terribly flaky example that cracks as one touches. The garbage dump was 100 meters high and could not have been built during the last two years of the new government. It had been building surely and steadily under the absolutist dictatorship of the Rajapaksa presidency. Sure, the responsibility of the current government was not to have quickly detected this time bomb and acted on it.

The Island editor asks: why did the previous regime not act on it for ten long years? I ask, why did such a strong Executive Presidency that invested itself with virtually unlimited power under the 18th Amendment and was noted for acting with immunity not act decisively to rid the area of this danger?

DJ brazenly connects his case with the recent referendum win by Turkish President, Erdogan. The bee in his bonnet deceives Dayan Jayatilleka again by seducing him to get hold of a wrong handle, once again. Erdogan asked for absolute power where he can appoint judges and act, on personal decree disregarding an elected Parliament. He won the referendum but that was a pyrrhic victory because almost fifty per cent of the electorate said,”no.” Even that near-fifty-fifty result was eked out by electoral fraud, the arrest of thousands of “no” supporters and the murder of some of them-all by the incumbent President, Erdogan. A secondary school kid will recognise that far from justifying a Presidential executive this Turkish illustration undermines any possible justification.

The mythical argument for Presidential Executive rests on its alleged efficiency and quickness in capacity to act. DJ clings on to this folklore. Let’s see why this argument does not hold: One can place different forms of public policy decision-making on a spectrum with one end being the practice where decisions are made by one person and the other end being the practice where decisions are made openly after broad consultation. Better decisions are more likely to come by under an open system as it is bound to capture the collective wisdom of a large group of people rather than relying on one or a few people. In the open process, exemplified by the Westminster system of a Prime Minister working with a cabinet of Ministers-all responsible to Parliament, the decision-making process tends to be highly inclusive allowing for consensus to emerge.

Under good leadership it is not a difficult thing to arrive at a decision after an open discussion. On the other hand, everyone is likely to cooperate in implementing a decision taken that way rather than arbitrarily by one person.

The institution of the Executive President belongs to the arbitrary end of the spedtrum. The claims for quickness and efficiency under such a system simply does not hold. The very ten year rule of the Rajapaksas is good enough illustration to demonstrate how allocative decisions were poor; how projects meant to show up the ego of the ruler were preferred to more urgently needed ones. This produced appalling White Elephants and reduced the country’s economy into an unsustainable position with a mounting foreign debt (US $ 57.4 billion) unable to be serviced given the revenue that the economy can yield. If not for receiving the first branch of the IMF’s Extended Fund Facility (EFF) it would not have been possible for the present government to go on. That, plainly, had been the final economic and fiscal legacy of the Executive Presidency under Malinda Rajapaksa. Sri Lanka never had a single year of trade surplus. Economic growth was, basically, debt -based.

Financial sector needs to be future-ready to ride the next wave

Friday, 21 April 2017

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has said many times that Sri Lanka needs a new phase of economic transformation to keep pace with the major changes in global and regional growth.

The proposed Colombo Port City project according to the PM is now set to become an international financial outpost in the Indian Ocean, as part of the 20-year framework plan.

Financial sector needs to be future.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Sri Lanka: I’m ready to prune down Executive Presidency — President

( April 21, 2017, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) President Maithripala Sirisena yesterday said he was either ready to abolish or prune down the powers of the Executive Presidency. “I am ready for either. That was my commitment,” the President said.

“We have now completed two and a half years in government- criticism, allegations and insults are in plenty.

They are very common features of a vibrant democracy,” President Sirisena said.

He referred to the past where there had been attempts made to extend the term of the government without holding elections and he brought in Turkeish President Erdogan’s example to substantiate his claims.

“These are not viable options in government. I am not going to talk about the circumstances or background of the story,”the President said while saying that a draft Constitution would be ready within the next two weeks for Cabinet to discuss.

“We have told the Expert Committee to expedite the matter,”the President said.

The President also said the National Audit Bill would soon be brought before Parliament after it has been discussed in Cabinet.

“During the previous Cabinet, I promised to bring it in January. I will now direct them to do it as soon as possible,”President Sirisena said.

Commenting on the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) and the runway, The President said there were various opinions expressed in newspapers about the standards of the runway which was rehabilitated. Despite these criticisms, the BIA, he said would very soon host Airbus 380; large aircraft and the contractors who did the work at the BIA were locals.

Talking of the duty free shops, the President said that duty free shops were given on an open contract.

“Earlier those shops were given to the cronies of ministers. “Now we are getting more income than what was earlier. We are getting up to 40 percent compared to the earlier 24 percent,” the President said.

He also said that his government expedited the Moragahankanda-Kalu Ganga irrigation projects,

“We have to build two more dams and a tunnel of 21km. This will enable us to give water to

Kurunegala and Kilinichchi in the North. “Within the city itself, we have started new projects and restarted projects that were abandoned. Nothing will be sold to foreigners on a platter. The Port City was a good example of that.

That was an outright betrayal in the history of this country. The previous government gave free hold land of 200 hectares to China and even my small helicopter could not go over it without the permission of the Chinese government.

That was the worst betrayal in our country,” the President added.

Referring to the UNHRC, the President said that his government had been able to put it off by two years, “We have to make submissions at the end of two years and we will do what we can.

I am confident that I can salvage the country out of this abyss while protecting democracy and the independence of the judiciary”.

The President also said that in the North, the government has completed nearly 60 percent of resettlement work. The primary task now, he said was to resolve the issue of missing people, “I will device a scheme for this,” the President assured.

Memoirs of a Christian and a Socialist

Featured image courtesy Sri Lanka Brief

DEVANESAN NESIAH on 04/21/2017

This fascinating autobiography of Vijaya Vidyasagara edited by Skantha Kumar and Marshal Fernando and published by the Ecumenical Institute for Study and Dialogue is excellent reading. Priced at Rs. 500/- and covering 300 pages this book is a very good buy for any reader interested in Sri Lankan society and politics. Having known Vijaya and associated with him and the Christian Workers Fellowship (CWF) for over half a century, I found the book difficult to put down. I read it from cover to cover within a few days. Vijaya was also the founder editor of the Christian Worker, an excellent quarterly, now defunct.

Memoirs of a Christian and a Socialist.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Six Inches Or Six Yards

By Thisuri Wanniarachchi –April 21, 2017

Thisuri Wanniarachchi

I never quite understood it; the logic behind the expectations of Sri Lankan women to wear sarees to work. In a country with humid weather, insane traffic, over populated public transport infested with casual sexual harassment, women are expected to wear six yards of cloth that plump them up and often expose their belly and back, to work. Men, on the other hand, can wear the “western” formal clothing, trousers, shirt, and/or tie. Nobody ever asked them to reciprocate and wear the national outfit; a convenient double standard, because, patriarchy. Some women rock the saree, it empowers them and they choose to wear it with pride. Hell, for some women in many parts of our country wearing a saree to work is an honor, a sign that they’ve made it, gotten a job that requires them to live up to the expectations of the average Sri Lankan professional woman. But just because some women choose to wear it, to assume that all women have a choice is presumptuous. In government institutions across the country, women are required to wear saree. In most of these institutions this isn’t a rule, but a norm. Rules are upheld by law. Norms are upheld by society. While there are many offices across the country at which wearing the sari is not mandatory for women, in most government offices the sari is the norm, a norm that is upheld as if it is a rule, and enforced by both men and women to maintain the traditional double standards women are handed on a silver platter all their life.

I have, in many instances, been informed by my male employers to consider wearing a sari to work, in some cases they have insisted that I do. In the United States, some parts of Europe and many parts of the world where social standards are upheld by legislature, this falls under sexual harassment. I know I’m not alone in this experience. I also know that countless women have faced much worse treatment in their workplaces. In a country such as ours, where social norms are bent towards sexist practices, it’s fair to believe that we need to establish legislature that gives women protection from the everyday exploitation they face in workplaces. In 2017 why is it that we are yet to establish this legislative infrastructure? The answer to this question is written all over our society and the many barriers women face in having equal rights and respect; one of the main reasons behind it being elite conservatism.

A year ago I wrote a piece for the Colombo Telegraph titled What Your Schools Didn’t Teach You. It was one of the most criticized pieces of my writing only second to my second novel The Terrorist’s Daughter. I wrote it fully aware of the backlash it is vulnerable to receive and the fact that it disavows much of the unique egomaniacal fraternized misogynistic culture Colombo society upholds. I specifically chose the Colombo Telegraph for the purpose of reaching the exact community that its target audience comprises. What Your Schools Didn’t Teach You didn’t belong in Sri Lanka’s elite print newspapers, or my books, or in the conversations had in coffee-shop-liberal forums. It had to be in a medium that could be freely accessed by those riding the wave of Colombo’s elite conservatism; and that, it did. And it trickled down to the very bases of our societal, government, business, and NGO/ IGO sectors that are overtaken by the essence of this elite conservatism. It stung them hard, and created a wave of backlash that pronounced the very misogyny that my writing was referring to.

There are instances when one can justify conservatism.This shouldn’t be the case, but in some parts of the country, where rural society is abandoned time and time again from the development equation, where basic resources don’t reach their schools or hospitals, creating many barriers to social development, rural conservatism and backward thinking is somewhat justified. But elite conservatism on the other hand, is inexcusable. Elite conservatism is a situation in which despite the existence of the optimal socioeconomic conditions for social progress, society blatantly chooses to discriminate, and not defend equal rights and respect for all. That is a problem. When we point out elite sexism, people immediately dismiss it, often using anecdotal evidence to prove that sexism doesn’t exist in Colombo. They point at Otara Gunawardene, Hirunika Premachandra and Rosy Senanayake and all the other Colombo women who overcame these challenges and made a name for themselves. They conveniently forget the character-bashing Hirunika had to deal with in the wake of her father’s murder, they forget that people found Gammampilla and Weerawansa to be more electable than Rosy, and that despite it being far from the truth, people like to talk about how Otara didn’t have time to be a mom because she was such a busy career-woman. Sexism in elite Sri Lanka is an undisputed reality.

Take our government, for instance. The decisions on public policy made by our government affect all Sri Lankan men and women alike. But out of our Cabinet of 47 members only 2 are women. Think about it, although women take up over 50% of our population, at the most powerful table in the country where the most crucial decisions are made, only 4% is women. Representation matters. Lack of representation nourishes oppression. In our schools, workplaces and government women face a constant double standard of scrutiny. The dress code is a symbolic element of the institutional sexism in this country that reinforces this deeper issue that leads to lack of women in places of power.

In some of the most powerful offices in the country, the saree is not a mere norm women adapt to fit in, to avoid shame from their peers, or live up to socialized standards set by society, it is an institutionalized protocol. Women are not allowed into certain parts of the parliament if they aren’t dressed in a long sleeved saree jacket. This institutionalized sexism is nourished in Sri Lankan elite society. Many elite schools in the country impose bizarre dress codes for mothers who come to pick up their kids. The excuse being, mothers exposing themselves to young boys may cause them distress; because apparently men are so fragile they cannot look at a woman in a sleeveless blouse or a short skirt without getting aroused. Why is it that it is the job of the woman to assure that men don’t get aroused by them? Hate to break the news to those who didn’t know, but not all women who choose to dress comfortably and fashionably in this humid country are looking to arouse men.

Forget the dress code, some Colombo elite institutions have established rules to ensure women are given a back seat in its organization and left out of its administration altogether. One of the most elite sports club in Colombo, the Sinhalese Sports Club (SSC) as a rule, does not allow women to be full members of their board, women are only allowed Associate Member status and do not get to vote. Several years ago when some women attempted to change that rule and allow women too to have voting board seats, male board members who hadn’t set foot in club meetings for years, including bed ridden men in wheelchairs showed up at the meeting and voted no to allowing women into the board. To this day, women are not allowed in the SSC Board nor are they allowed full membership. Don’t tell me we don’t have a problem of elite sexism in this country, because we most certainly do.

Hambantota Port is set to go to China with an impending deal that will see China Merchants take an 80% share for a specified amount of years. AFP PHOTO / LAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHI

Wade Shepard -

APR 21, 2017

As regional powers like China, Russia, Japan, and India vie for political and economic position throughout the eastern realms of Eurasia, many of the less powerful countries caught in the middle are employing what could be called a ‘multi-vector strategy’ as they engage openly with multiple suitors in an attempt to balance out their respective influences — and ultimately bringing in more investment, financing, and development for themselves.

It is a move pioneered, dubbed, and popularized by Kazakhstan — a country which sits right between Russia, China, South Asia, and Europe — in the era following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Rather than being a puppet state of Russia, Kazakhstan began opening itself up to other international powers, bringing in billions in investment and a higher degree of strategic autonomy in the process.

As China advances its program of increased internationalism — as delivered via its Belt and Road initiative — the country has rapidly become a major political and economic power pushing infrastructure development throughout Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa. More than any other, this new geopolitical player has shaken up the traditional layout of political and economic alliances, creating the counterbalance necessary for more less powerful countries to employ ‘multi-vector strategies’ of their own.

Sri Lanka is such a country. Traditionally aligned with India and the West, this position may have continued ad infinitum if it weren’t for the repercussions that came as a result of how Sri Lanka ended its decades-long civil war against the Tamil Tigers. Dubbed war crimes, the Sri Lankan government was called up before the UN Human Rights council in 2009, and the EU and US subsequently shut down most economic concessions and sources of aid to demonstrated their disapproval for the alleged abuses.

This resulted in a geopolitical backfire of perhaps unprecedented proportions. Instead of bringing Sri Lanka to submission, the country simply pivoted to China, who was more than willing to “help out” the suddenly politically and economically hamstrung nation. In the years that followed, China gave Sri Lanka $37 million in military aid, over $8 billion in loans, and the drive to go ahead with multiple Chinese-led mega-projects, such as Colombo Financial City — a $1.4 billion, 269-hectare new financial center — and the Hambantota developments, which include a giant deep sea port, an international airport, a cricket stadium, a conference hall, and an impending 15,000-acre, million-worker industrial zone, basically turning the country into a Chinese outpost of progress.

This sheer pivot to China made India feel more than a little ill at ease. A rising global economic and military power was suddenly firmly entrenched on their doorstep, and beyond weightless political posturing they really had no answer for it. It soon became clear that if India was to have any real influence on the island nation to the southeast that they were going to have to jump in, show the money, and build something.

Which has led to this:

According to “diplomatic sources,” Sri Lanka and India are expected to sign an agreement during PM Narendra Modi’s next visit to Colombo to develop Trincomalee port in the northeast of Sri Lanka.