Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 21:03:14 -0700
From: Norm Matloff <matloff@cs.ucdavis.edu>
To: Norm Matloff <matloff@cs.ucdavis.edu>
Subject: keeping the riffraff out of the political process

To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter

I of course receive tons of e-mail messages each day (sorry, I'm too
much of a purist to call them "e-mails").  Among the ones arriving
today, there were two in stark contrast to each other:

In the morning, an engineer who feels he has been displaced by foreign
workers, and who feels that Congress cares nothing for people like him,
said he had come to the conclusion that we have a "secret
government," impenetrable by ordinary folks.

In the afternoon, a consummate DC insider chastised me for having the
audacity to publish the actual name of a staffer for Senator Durbin, in
plain sight of all those aforementioned ordinary folks.  

The DC insider's message was tantamount to saying to me, "We do indeed 
have a secret government, and as someone with a [tiny] bit of access, it
is your responsibility to keep it secret."  Keep the riffraff out.  I
guess we've come a long way since Andrew Jackson invited the public,
muddy boots and all, to come to the White House.

Those who donate the big bucks, meaning industry lobbyists such as
Compete America, AElA, ITAA, AILA (the immigration lawyers association),
Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Oracle, Google, etc. etc. can meet with Senator
Durbin any time they want.  But as to the populace being even informed
of an aide's name, well naturally that's verboten.  The great unwashed
are not supposed to gain access.  Anyone knows that, right? 

And remarkably, even the few who present the views of H-1B critics--and
they are indeed very few in comparision to those who represent the tech
and immigration law industries--often have agendas that are unknown to,
and/or contrary to the views of, their putative "constituents."  A good
example of this is IEEE-USA, which criticizes the H-1B program but
promotes fast-track green cards for tech foreign students.  The latter
policy would be almost as harmful as H-1B, for reasons I've given many
times, and in any case are directly contrary to the wishes of most
concerned programmers and engineers that I know.  Yet the message people
on the Hill get is that America's programmers and engineers support
fast-track green cards for foreign students.

My own congressperson, Rep. Ellen Tauscher, refuses to see me.  She even
refused when another constituent met with her and requested that she see me.

Once in a blue moon, the little guy gets at least fleeting attention
from our secret government, if not direct access.  The "TubeGate"
videos, I'm told, were first discovered by a person whose name almost
none of you would recognize, and who is far from DC both geographically
and in degrees of separation.  But this of course is rare.

Something is dreadfully wrong with this picture.  DC Insider, and a
couple of other people who implicitly sent me similar messages are so
wrapped up in the DC milieu that they are missing the ongoing demise of
our democracy.  Indeed, they are hastening it.

On the bright side, after I posted this heinous breach of protocol, two
earnest Durbin staffers called me, endured my rants and offered me some
background on what led to the gutting of Durbin's amendment.  None of
this cancels the substance of my remarks, and I must say that I think
these two ought to watch that Cohen & Grigsby video excerpt again (or
better, all 20 full videos), but I do appreciate their call, and maybe
there could be a ray of hope there.

Norm