SAN JOSE -- With thousands of Central America refugees converging on the U.S. southern border, the issue of immigration is heating up this week. It's a fight that usually centers on a fear of Americans losing their jobs. But there are some immigrants who were invited here specifically because their skills are needed and they say even they are being let down by the system.

The thirty or so people who marched in San Jose Sunday were not immigrants demanding to enter this country. They've already been here -- some for decades. They were recruited from India to work in the Silicon Valley tech industry using H1B visas. Using H1Bs, employers can legally hire foreign workers who have specific skills and, once here, they usually qualify for a permanent green card within a year or two. Unless, that is, they come from India...

"We all have applied for a green card and it has been approved. Only thing is, we need to wait 150 years to get a green card," said Akhilesh Malavalli. "A hundred fifty years! I'll be dead. I'll be dead by the time we see a green card."

There is a cap on the number of skills-based green cards that can be issued to any one country of origin and there are so many workers from India, getting one has become practically impossible.

Sunday, the workers protested in front of the San Jose home of congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, demanding that she fulfill a promise to bring a bill to the House floor for a vote. HR 3648 would remove national origin as a consideration for getting a skilled-worker green card.

"What we are fighting for is basic equality," Malivalli said. "Treat us based on what skills we bring to this nation and not necessarily based on where we were born."

That's vital to the protesters because, with H1B visas, workers who lose their jobs for any reason have only two months to find a new employer who would be willing to apply for a new H1B on their behalf.

"You know, there will be layoffs and suddenly you're lost," said Prashant Prasad. "You have 60 days to find another job and stay in the U.S. and otherwise you become illegal."

Even if they maintain their jobs, under H1B children of workers must leave the country when they turn 21 even if they've lived here their entire lives. Unlike green-card status -- which also covers dependents -- if an H1B worker should die, their entire family must leave the country.

"Every month, there's someone who passes away," Prasad said, "And their dependents are now suddenly -- their lives are in disarray because, legally, they cannot stay here. So, they have to go back."

It doesn't sound like the proper way to treat an invited guest.

"You do everything right to be here. You probably are among the best in the industry in terms of skill sets," Prasad said. "But, when it comes to this, you're stuck."

Representative Lofgren is the lead sponsor of the HR 3648 and chair of the House subcommittee on immigration. The protesters said they want her to bring the bill up for a vote in the coming week.

Now that World Cup is over can we take a moment to thank mota bhai for providing millions of Indians free World Cup streaming on jio cinema without any interruptions from ads .

— Sagar Bandodkar 🇮🇳💹 (@sagarbandodkar2) December 18, 2022

This doesn't have any ads every 45 seconds like my match fixing premier league

Like how do you watch a full game and even think ads in the middle are realistic? Fricking maraturds man. The ones I see irl make bimarus look like geniuses.

asking a telugu guy for gaalis in 'malayalam' to trigger chennai guy

Why are northies like this?! @CantBanMe @Sasanka_of_Gauda pls give explanashun immediately

cc @George_Floyd

https://old.reddit.com/r/hyderabad/comments/zppf9b/what_i_have_to_go_through_on_a_daily_basis_as_a/?sort=controversial

The spread of the New Maratha Empire is coming along nicely.

In a Facebook post, Ashraf said the deceased had worked in the Middle East for decades and had not gone home in the past five years. He died earlier this week and after the family was informed about his death, the wife and two children unanimously said they didn't need his body.

I heard about this Bangladeshi working in muttistan with a similar story, he wanted to go back home cause he had sent back tons and his family had become fairly affluent but literally everyone told him he can't go back and he should keep sending them dollars and stay where he is. He was an illegal migrant so going back would be a one way trip, this dude spent his whole life slaving for people to whom he's basically just a stranger who gives them a monthly cheque.

I saw this other case where the dead man's daughter arrived and she didn't even go to the body, first thing she asked was for the death certificate(necessary to get his pension). Imagine dying and your daughter only cares about how much money she can squeeze from the corpse.

Surrender of #PakArmy Brigade Cdr…seen removing ranks and belt and handing them to Maj Gen Dalbir Singh, JAT Regt, GOC 9 Inf Div… At Jessore Khulna & the famous battle of Garibpur …

This a rare video from #India #Pakistan 1971 War.#VijayDiwas pic.twitter.com/fwlJdoyBGh

— Lt Col Sundeep Parija 🇮🇳🇺🇦 (@sundeepparija) December 16, 2022

A Sanskrit grammatical problem which has perplexed scholars since the 5th Century BC has been solved by a University of Cambridge PhD student.

Rishi Rajpopat, 27, decoded a rule taught by Panini, a master of the ancient Sanskrit language who lived around 2,500 years ago.

Sanskrit is only spoken in India by an estimated 25,000 people out of a population of more than one billion, the university said.

Mr Rajpopat said he had "a eureka moment in Cambridge" after spending nine months "getting nowhere".

"I closed the books for a month and just enjoyed the summer - swimming, cycling, cooking, praying and meditating," he said.

"Then, begrudgingly I went back to work, and, within minutes, as I turned the pages, these patterns starting emerging, and it all started to make sense."

He said he "would spend hours in the library including in the middle of the night", but still needed to work for another two-and-a-half years on the problem.

Sanskrit, although not widely spoken, is the sacred language of Hinduism and has been used in India's science, philosophy, poetry and other secular literature over the centuries.

Panini's grammar, known as the Astadhyayi, relied on a system that functioned like an algorithm to turn the base and suffix of a word into grammatically correct words and sentences.

However, two or more of Panini's rules often apply simultaneously, resulting in conflicts.

Panini taught a "metarule", which is traditionally interpreted by scholars as meaning "in the event of a conflict between two rules of equal strength, the rule that comes later in the grammar's serial order wins".

However, this often led to grammatically incorrect results.

Mr Rajpopat rejected the traditional interpretation of the metarule. Instead, he argued that Panini meant that between rules applicable to the left and right sides of a word respectively, Panini wanted us to choose the rule applicable to the right side.

Employing this interpretation, he found the Panini's "language machine" produced grammatically correct words with almost no exceptions.

"I hope this discovery will infuse students in India with confidence, pride and hope that they too can achieve great things," said Mr Rajpopat, from India.

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I only see Indians doing this and it's mostly Indian guys. When did you guys start doing this? Is it religious and on purpose? Or is it an emotional reaction similar to how Italian men use expressive movements with their when talking about pasta?

The mainstream media has found the root cause of the chaos at Delhi Airport - caste. pic.twitter.com/dohsouHEnE

— Ajit Datta (@ajitdatta) December 14, 2022

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/delhis-t3-mess-trouble-believing-rules-apply-to-everyone-equally-8321569/

But the bigger, and more deeply ingrained problem, is that as a deeply caste-riven society, the concept of equality does not come naturally to us. We don’t believe rules apply to everyone equally and everyone is supposed to follow them. We don’t even believe everyone is equal before God, as “VIP queues” at any popular temple demonstrate.

Talk about reach. Fml never was able to use my Brahmin privilege to get into those VIP queues. I guess I'm a chamar after all, where da reservations at?

There are operational reasons for the T3 mess, such as an inadequate number of counters, the holiday rush, and limited security staff. But that does not explain why people insist on making a bad situation worse, by being unruly, unmanageable, and generally unpleasant. A common complaint is that “all kinds of people” can now afford flight tickets, who don’t have the manners and etiquette of seasoned fliers.

We don’t just have a civic sense problem, we have an entitlement problem. We lack a sense of fraternity, of “we are all in this together”. The dominant castes (still overwhelmingly the dominant class) believe they should be able to pay/brawl/brag their way out of a difficult situation, and if in the process, they are making that situation more unpleasant for others, it is not their problem. All the poor civic sense traits we display – jumping signals, cutting queues – are not just to get ahead, they are to overtake, to secure one’s own exit, even if the mess continues forever.

Those darn upper chuds being able to afford flying ruined it all Back when only brave Dalitx and Muzzx flew there never was any issues. Sure 50% of the flights with the latter would spontaneously explode mid air but that's the price we must all pay for true equity

🇵🇹#Portugal

Portugal’s first Indian Prime Minister says he wants Portugal “to be India's gateway to Europe”

Reaffirming his commitment to India, António Costa continued to say: “Portugal will always be a strong advocate of India in Europe”

Where do you think his loyalty lies? pic.twitter.com/vS3R3tzhME

— Klaus Arminius (@Klaus_Arminius) December 13, 2022

They're becoming annual events lol.

India's vying for a piece of China's pie in higher end manufacturing.Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images

• China's zero-COVID policies are pushing companies to diversify supply chains away from the country.

• They were already moving out due to geopolitical tensions and tariffs from the Trump era.

• But it isn't easy to fully replace China's supply chain ecosystem in any country --- even one as vast as India.

China's zero-COVID policy may just be doing what Donald Trump didn't manage to fully achieve during his term as president --- shifting global supply chains away from China for the first time in 40 years.

In 2018 and 2019, Trump levied stiff tariffs against China to counter what he called unfair trade deals with the US, spurring retaliation from Beijing and kicking off a trade war.

And while many companies started discussing moving supply chains out of China as a way to distance themselves from geopolitical risks, it was really the pandemic --- and China's zero-COVID policy --- that drove home the importance of not depending on one country for its supply chain.

"The geopolitical tensions in themselves may not have resulted into this level of realignment of supply chains, but COVID certainly provided that extra vision extra fillip, the extra fuel to the fire," Ashutosh Sharma, a research director at market researcher Forrester, told Insider.

Tech giant Apple provides the latest example of being burned by an overreliance on Chinese production lines, with iPhone output hit by China's relentless zero-COVID pursuit. Apple is now speeding up its push to shift its production out of China to other Asian countries. But where to go?

Major Apple supplier Foxconn's top pick is India, and so is that of other chipmakers, after the Biden administration in October imposed export controls on shipping equipment to Chinese-owned factories making advanced logic chips.

"India has a large labor pool, a long history of manufacturing, and government support for boosting industry and exports. Because of this, many are exploring whether Indian manufacturing is a viable alternative to China," Julie Gerdeman, the CEO of supply chain risk management platform Everstream, told Insider.

But the move is easier said than done.

India is the world's largest democracy, and that makes decision-making a lot more complicated

As a large economy with a young population, India has the potential to be a manufacturing powerhouse. But the South Asian country is also infamous for its bureaucracy and hindering red tape.

"It's far from a place where businesses can simply come in and open a shop without having too many company compliances," said Sharma, who is based in India. "I'm sure China has those issues too, but its ability to move fast on those compliance requirements is much higher than in India, because India is much more democratic and there are just too many stakeholders to satisfy here."

India came in at the 63rd position in a World Bank list of 190 countries ranked based on their ease of doing business in 2019. While this was an improvement from its position in the 142th position in 2014 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office --- it still lagged behind China, which was in the 31st position in 2019 --- the last year the index was compiled before the World Bank discontinued it after a data rigging scandal. Data irregularities improved China's position in 2018, according to a World Bank audit published in December 2020.

India also has a history of protectionism, which makes it less competitive in terms of attracting large investments.

"China manufactures at scale, while most factories in India are small and midsize due to federal regulations and protections designed specifically for SMEs," said Gerdeman.

China has built a manufacturing ecosystem over 4 decades

India's Prime Minister Modi has been working on attracting foreign direct investments, or FDI, since he took office in 2014, sending FDI to a record $83.6 billion in the last fiscal year, according to government data.

"India certainly has advantages in terms of demographics, in terms of geography, in terms of the infrastructure that exist, much of which has been built in the last few years," said Sharma. "It can obviously increase the scale, but what it does not have is all the pieces of the puzzle."

What he means is that China has managed to build up a value chain so extensive that almost everything required to make a product can be sourced and acquired in the country, which allows for low-cost manufacturing on a large scale. In contrast, India doesn't have this capability yet, which takes years to build up.

That's because manufacturers always start factory operations with the assembly line before starting to develop local supply lines for the finished products in a "backward integration" of processes, said Sharma.

"That supply chain takes time for it to build because even when you are sourcing it internally, the quality is not that good initially, your scale is not that high, and you run into those issues. So yes, it can be done, but it takes time," he told Insider.

Once burned, twice shy companies aren't going all in on India this time

In any case, companies are unlikely to flock en masse to India like they did to China because it's just been proven too risky, the experts said.

And it's not just Foxconn and Apple that have gone all in on China and are now suffering for it: US sportswear giant Nike, Japanese carmaker Toyota, and South Korean tech titan Samsung all number among the many companies experiencing prolonged supply-chain issues because of their reliance on the manufacturing giant.

"They are looking to diversify their sourcing," said Sharma. "If you look at Foxconn and Apple, they have already moved a significant part of production to India and I'm sure to other countries like Vietnam, and a few other places. That's precisely because they want to diversify, from having dependency on one country, like China, to a couple of locations."

This means more complex supply chains, but they will be diversified all from raw material stages, he said.

"If they can build two or three dependable places where they can source from, they will still have alternative sources even if something happens to one location in the future," said Sharma.