A common theme of permissive-immigration boosters is the generosity of "immigrants" and America's thoughtless ingratitude: foreigners from around the world come with love in their hearts, their only wish being to serve us. But we cruel Americans just reject their entreaties. The Mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, is famous for his speech declaring, "We clean your toilets!" as an emotional appeal.

Besides improving our cleanliness, better educated foreigners believe America's complicated gizmos would fall apart without auslanders keeping them operating with hi-tech skills (sold at bargain-basement wages). Immigrants from the subcontinent apparently overrate their importance, particularly about who built Silicon Valley. The Indian fellow shown in the photo (an activist from ImmigrationVoice) has a sign reading "We Gave You Google" — does he think the useful search engine was created in India?

In fact, half of the founding inventors of the vastly successful Google firm is Sergey Brin, who was born in Moscow, not Bangalore. So the "we" is a little squirrelly, to say the least. But the appeal to guilt is clear enough.

Chandrakanth Vemula was frustrated with trying to get an employment-based green card. He paid his taxes, was a law-abiding legal resident and contributed to the country’s economic growth and development.

Vemula, 31, got into a predicament back in 2005, when he was laid-off from his job as a software analyst at a consulting firm in Atlanta. He was in the sixth year of his H-1 visa, a document granted to highly skilled workers.

U.S. immigration law permits six years for an H-1 work visa, through the sponsorship of an employer. The visa can be extended however, if a green card application for permanent residence has been pending for more than a year.

But with the lay-off, Vemula’s green card application was essentially terminated.

”Nobody was giving me proper guidance — it didn’t seem like anyone cared,” said Vemula. [Frustrated legal immigrants mobilize at a grassroots level to get lawmakers' attention, Medill Reports 10/17/07]

Ahem. An H-1B Visa is admittance for a temp job, with no guarantees: you are here to be exploited, bub.

But anyway, shouldn't all these warm-hearted folks be expressing their love of humanity and desire for service closer to home? Just a thought.