Recently, the Programmer’s Guild filed over 100 complaints against companies violating the rather lax laws governing H-1b visas.

The Programmers Guild, a group representing IT workers, has begun filing what will amount to about 380 legal complaints against U.S. companies advertising that they prefer to hire foreign workers with H-1B visas.

The group has filed about 100 complaints since May and plans to file about 280 more over the next six months, said John Miano, founder of the Guild. The complaints, made to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), accuse several companies of advertising that they specifically want H-1B workers, a violation of U.S. law.

What is especially interesting is that the story is being discussed on Slashdot. For a long time, discussion of H-1b visas was a major taboo on that forum(my own story, The Jobs Crunch, managed to open discussion of H-1b visas on Slashdot when this topic was much more rarely discussed). Slashdot has regularly been carrying immigration related stories more recently.

Here’s a sniffler from National Public Radio, which is quick to note the discomfort of illegal aliens from the law enforcement efforts of the local sheriff in Butler County Ohio. Interestingly, the illegal immigration crackdown of Sheriff Jones has the desired effect. Latinos Rattled by Ohio Sheriff’s Mission   [6/21/06]

“I’ve heard about what is happening with the new laws and, honestly, I’m scared because we don’t have our papers,” says Alejandra, a Hispanic woman pushing her toddler son down the street in a stroller.

She has just come from collecting clothes at a church and looks as if she can’t get home fast enough. As she speaks, her eyes dart all around. Alejandra says she tries to stay off the streets as much as possible these days. Her husband has a job in a factory, but they’re so worried that they, too, might be arrested by the sheriff that they just might give up on life in the United States.

“In two, three months, we might go back to Mexico and not come back again,” Alejandra says. “I even have a brother-in-law, his company has told him he has one more month and then there will be no more work for him. So we’re going to have to go.”

Attrition, aka self-deportation has another advantage: there is no taxpayer money needed to ship the foreigners to their native countries since they buy their own tickets.

Joe Guzzardi’s valuable column last night, apart from drawing attention to an extraordinary concession by professionals on the other side

“Restrictionists [that’s us!] are flooding Congressional phone lines and email inboxes with angry demands that their Senators and Representatives vote against any legislation that provides a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Their calls for an enforcement-only immigration policy are louder and more aggressive than ever and there are 400 of them for every 1 call from us.”

usefully cites an important article by Carolyn Lochhead of the San Francisco Chronicle [House GOP doing it their own way on immigration Wednesday June 21 2006]

This article is well worth reading:

Republican leaders are betting that campaigning against illegal immigration will help them retain their precarious House majority…Weeks of White House barnstorming seem to be making no headway against what Republican senators and House members heard in their districts after the Senate passed its sweeping immigration overhaul.
Some senators who backed the measure, denounced as amnesty by opponents, returned from a Memorial Day recess telling their colleagues they had made a political blunder… (VDARE.com emphasis)
Vulnerable House Republicans have reportedly told party leaders they are content to run on the border-crackdown measure that passed the House last December, despite a provision that makes it a felony to live in the country illegally. That provision ignited mass protests last spring and provided momentum for Senate passage of its bill.

Euphoria at this point on this issue is unwise. The forces wishing to abolish America are extremely determined, and they will be back. But if the hacks in Washington comprehend that associating with this cause could be dangerous, the task confronting the other side will be much more difficult