Monday, May 14, 2001		Letters to the Editor

THERE IS a flip side for the downslide in the new economy and the fortunes of some of our H1B visa holders who made a beeline to the USA with youthful enthusiasm, energy and the will to succeed. Let me explain it in an anecdotal fashion.

A young man from my own family came to the US, armed with an H1B visa through the mechanism of ‘body-shopping’. He had a degree in engineering (under graduation in US terms) from an Indian University followed by some useful training in computer software, specifically Oracle. Application Suites. He was assigned initially to one mid-sized American firm who let him go after two weeks. His ‘body shopper’, an Indian firm located in the US, managed to reassign him after a brief ‘benching’ period to a renowned telecom multinational at comfortable hourly wages. I happened to meet him when he was just two months into his new job.

On enquiry, he told me in a patronising way: "You know, these guys in my company aren’t really that smart. I really don’t know how they (the company) became so big". I was aghast that he — a young and inexperienced person — thought of pre-eminence after years of hard work.

His next remark was equally vainglorious. It was about a new GM mid-range car he had bought just a few weeks earlier. "You know, this jalopy is not good enough for me. I’ll get rid of it soon and get myself a Lexus (a Toyota luxury car)". Today he is without a job and very much humbled.

The moral of all this, if there is one, is that the predilection to show off a peculiar trait of some of our young software professionals making a start in their lives, is not a quality that will endear them to the American public. Our Indian culture specifically ordains that the higher one goes, the humbler he or she becomes. Our H1B visa holders are now learning their lessons the hard way.

I AM a regular reader of Log in ... Tribune. While going through the Cyber Kids section in the issue dated May 7, I was surprised to find that the link www.sin.org was not working.

After trying various combinations I concluded that probably the author wanted the readers to go to the Science Learning Network which is at www.sln.org.

Narinder Singh, Patiala

Note: The error is regretted.

— Editor