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China News Digest - US Regional Services (Bo Xiong) --------------- Date: Sat, 25 Nov 1995 08:00:10 -0500 Sender: Newsletter on Chinese Community From: acca-2@ACCAIC.ORG Subject: National Committee on Immigration NewsRelease #9531 To: Multiple recipients of list CCNL Status: RO **************************************************************************** Association for Chinese Community Affairs(ACCA) Public Broadcasting System Made possible by generous support from http://www.superprism.net/ **************************************************************************** >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> National * Committee * on * Immigration <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< News Release #9531 Saturday, November 25, 1995 ============================================================================ +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= The National Committee on Immigration is a coalition of Chinese Students, Scholars & Professionals who work against the anti-immigration bills +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= ============================================================================ 1. Harvard CSSA in Action: Letters to Senator & President .............. 146 2. A Letter from University of Cincinnati - For the National Interests! . 25 3. Displaced American Workers in Action - Testified Before Congress ..... 30 4. Letter to ACCA Officers .............................................. 92 ============================================================================ ============================================================================ 1. Harvard CSSA in Action: Letters to Senator & President .............. 146 From: In an effort to lobby against Simpson Bill, HCSSA has written two letters, one to Harvard University president, Neil Rudenstine, and one to Senator Kennedy. The contents of these two letters are posted below. We welcome your input on this matter! Meanwhile, we encourge our fellow students to contribute their individual efforts in this campaign against Simpson Bill. Here are a few things you could do before the markup date, Nov. 29: 1. Email to each of the senators involved Alan Simpson, Chair R-WY senator@simpson.senate.gov Charles Grassley, R-IA chuck_grassley@grassley.senate.gov Jon Kyl, R-AZ info@kyl.senate.gov Arlen Specter, R-PA senator_specter@specter.senate.gov Edward Kennedy, D-MA senator@kennedy.senate.gov Paul Simon, D-IL senator@simon.senate.gov Dianne Fenstein, D-CA senator@feinstein.senate.gov OR email to one of the email aliases for all above addresses: immigration@caledonian.cs.ucla.edu stop_s1394@umich.edu 2. Fax or phone each of the senators involved Phone Fax Alan Simpson, Chair R-WY 202 224-3424 224-1315 Charles Grassley, R-IA 202 224-3744 224-6020 Jon Kyl, R-AZ 202 224-4521 224-2207 Arlen Specter, R-PA 202 224-4254 228-1229 Edward Kennedy, D-MA 202 224-4543 224-2417 Paul Simon, D-IL 202 224-2152 224-0868 Dianne Fenstein, D-CA 202 224-3841 228-3954 Or, call 202-224-3121 or 800-972-3524 for the Capitol Switchboard. The operator will connect you with the senator's office by request. 3. Spread the words, and engage more people to lobby against this bill. More information regarding the Simpson Bill can be found on HCSSA Home Page: http://fas-www.harvard.edu/~yhu/ ------------------------------- LETTER TO PRESIDENT RUDENSTINE: ------------------------------- President Rudenstine Harvard University Dear President Rudenstine: As an organization representing over 300 Chinese students and scholars at Harvard University, we are writing to bring to your attention the anti-immigration bill that will be put to vote by the US Senate Immigration Subcommittee on November 29th. The passage of this bill will substantially jeopardize interests of our university. Recently, US Senator Alan Simpson has introduced a bill S.1394 which will restrict the ability of US colleges and universities to attract and retain the best international students and scholars. Currently, there are over a thousand international students enrolled at all levels of learning at Harvard University, and substantial number of international post-degree scientists, lecturers, research associates, technicians, and post-docs. If the aforesaid bill is passed and becomes law, institutions such as ours will suffer tremendously. The situation is very serious as the National Association of Foreign Students Advisors has put out an urgent call opposing this bill. As a result, deans and presidents of US colleges and universities are writing letters and making phone calls to their senators urging them to vote NO on this bill. The magnitude of this campaign mirrors what happened earlier this summer on the funding crisis for scientific research, only this one is more serious because it threatens the supply and quality of the intellectual work force. As the leader of one of the top universities in the country, your opinion on this issue will be very important to the senators on Capitol Hill when they are trying to make informed decisions on this bill. We thereby appeal to you, that you urge US senators to vote against this bill. We also urge that you contact deans and presidents of other universities to lobby against this bill. Sincerely, (signed by HCSSA president) ------------------------------- LETTTER TO SENATOR KENNEDY: ------------------------------- The Honorable Edward Kennedy Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and Refugee Affairs United States Senate Washington, DC 20510 Dear Senator Kennedy: As an organization representing over 300 Chinese students and scholars at Harvard University, we are voicing our concern and opposition regarding S.1394 bill introduced by Senator Simpson, which calls for drastic reduction of legal immigration. Currently there are hundreds of thousands of foreign students and scholars studying or working at top US universities and colleges. Senator Allen Simpson's bill will severely restrict the ability of US universities and colleges to attract the brightest minds from all over the world. Bill S.1394 will also severely cut down employment based immigration, which over the years has been an indispensable supplement to the dire need of skilled workers in the high-tech industry. Regarding the long-term US national interests, we believe this bill is penny's gain and pound's loss. The United States has owed a large part of its past hundred years of success to an immigration policy that attracts skilled legal immigrants. Continued input from legal immigrants has fueled the social and economic development of this country. In face of an increasing global economical competition, retaining the best qualified work force is essential for maintaining the competitive edge of this country. We understand that Senator Simpson plans to join S.1394 to his previously introduced illegal immigration bill S 269, at the full judiciary committee level. We urge you to persuade Senator Simpson not to do so, as legal and illegal immigration are two very distinct issues and should not be mixed. We believe you are a leader with vision and courage. We therefore appeal to you, that you strongly voice your oppositions to S. 1394 bill. Furthermore, we urge that you persuade Senator Simpson not to join S. 1394 with S. 269. Thank you for your consideration. We look forward to your response! Sincerely, (signed by HCSSA president) ============================================================================ 2. A Letter from University of Cincinnati - For the National Interests! . 25 From: Mukesh Kumar Subject: Immigration bill S1394 November 24, 1995 Honorable Senator, S1394 unfairly blames legal immigrants for problems they did not cause. The problems of high unemployment, welfare abuse, higher taxes, and crime would not go away even if all legal immigrants left tomorrow. Problem lies somewhere else. A mistake now will cost a lot in future, due to the high competitiveness of the current technological market. S1394 forces aliens educated in the United States to work outside the U.S. for other countries to compete with U.S., which is against U.S. national interest. I hereby appeal to you: please vote NO on S1394! Sincerely, mukesh.kumar@uc.edu | Department of Electrical Engineering http://ucunix.san.uc.edu/~kumar/Homepage| University of Cincinnati, OH 45221 ============================================================================ 3. Displaced American Workers in Action - Testified Before Congress ..... 30 Editor's Note: SoftPAC is a nationwide organization represents displaced American Programmers - those whose jobs were allegedly taken by temporaries - those from India and other countries with H-1B visas, due to the downsizing of American firms which lay off expensive native employees. Bay Area Coalition for Immigration Reform is one of the many organizations which are actively involved in lobbying FOR anti-immigration legislations. Recently BOTH organizations TESTIFIED before Congress to support S 1394. From: Bay Area Coalition for Immigration Reform Subject: Testified Before Congress Reich is sympathetic to Softpac's demand that the H-1B visa rules be tightened up, and agrees that foreign nationals are being hired to displace American engineers and programmers. Reich had some very nice comments for Softpac when he met Larry Richards when both of them testified recently before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Immigration. From: SoftPAC (Software Professionals' Political Action Committee) Subject: Business Lobby winning on S1394 Sec. Robert Reich's office called me just now to let me know that we are being clobbered by the business lobby. IF YOU HAVE NOT SENT EMAIL YET, DO SO IMMEDIATELY! I also talked to an aide on Arlen Specter's staff, and when I mentioned that I was interested in employment-based immigration, he told me not to worry, that Specter was going to weaken the bill. When I told him that I was sorry to hear that because I was a programmer who lost his job because of our immigration laws, his response was a very subdued "Oh?!" Once again, those email address are (WRITE NOW! WRITE AGAIN!): (Senators's directory ommited) Larry Richards ============================================================================ 4. Letter to ACCA Officers .............................................. 92 From: ENTM073@UNLVM.UNL.EDU Dear ACCA officers, Thank you for providing information on S1394. I am F-1 visa holder and concerned with this immigration bill, I have sent my email to the related senators. I have suggestion, because everybody is very busy with their study and research, when I talked this issue to my friends, many of them do not know this matter. I suggest you send emails to the leaders of Association of Chinese Student and Schoolar at all universities in the U.S. and ask them to organize the movement to act aginst this bill. I think we have to get more people involved. Thank you! \\\\\\\\\\\\////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\//////////// Editor's Response Dear ENTM073@UNLVM.UNL.EDU, Thanks for your mail. ACCA/NCOI has, in fact, been working on the immigration issue together with many other organizations around the country to stop or soften the various anti-immigration bills since last July. Since the onset of our effort, we have collected various indepth information/analysis; and updated our readers, now more than 5,000 direct subscribers including hundreds of local CSSA mailing lists and hundreds of national non-Chinese lists. Our signature drive, conducted during last August, turned out more than 15,000 individuals, among which more than 75% are non-Chinese origin. As you have suggested, the power rests upon our readers. No matter how far ACCA/NCOI can reach, if there is no reponse, no actions taken, by our readers, there is NO HOPE at all. Recently I have met several individuals who should be concerned of this issue but had no idea what was happening. Many of them had excuses not to be concerned, since, they believe, "This legislation should not concern me since I am in the process of applying a GC" ,..., "in the process of applying a H-1B visa", ... ,"simply I'm in the States already", ..., "those who are not in the States should, but I do not have to", ... Wrong! If no one fights, those legislation should be in effect October 1, 1996, and takes care of NO BACKLOGS. Even those who have been on the waiting lists for 10 YEARS will be disqualified by the proposed new legislations! Another prevailing excuse is "I'm a busy student...". Yes. Everyone is busy. The three key organizers/editors of ACCA/NCOI team, Miao Ye, Yi Yan and me, Anne Frank, are either system manager, post-doc and doc candidate. All of us have tons of other projects to do for our livings, and, in addition, ALL of us are permanent residents, e.g., Green Card holders. I have not counted ACCA's supporting team. None of them are NOT BUSY. None of them are NOT PR. We simply carry on the spirit of CBS-IC. We simply uphold the sense of our community. To fight against the tremenduous odds, we have summoned, once again, our willingness to serve the community. Once again, we call upon you, our dear readers, to stand up with us! One typical response from our readers, is to rationalize the current anti-immigration legislations. It should not be. As the public opinion shows (refer to NR9530), the number one concern of Americans' is crime, and legal immigants ranks only ninth. Why shouldn't politicians deal with the most concerned problems FIRST? Well, there is the reason. To curb crime, we need more cops, more money in blue. That would increase the spending - raise taxes - lose votes - cost the political careers... None of the complicated social problems is cheap... In contrast, immigrants concerns much less population and much less votes. In addition, there is some one to blame for all the past/current failures/problems, as it is called, scapegoat. If you are ready to be victimized like this, then we have nothing to say. Unlike most of you are receiving this message for FREE, we, are sending out this to you on our own cost. None of the educational organization would like to provide free service to handle this huge mailing list for free, especially since we have thousands of redistribution lists in our file, and many of the mis-managered local lists will bounce back tons of junk mails to us. All of these force us to use private Internet service. As of this writing, each issue of our News Release takes ten hours to transmit outbound through our dedicated PPP connection, from an Intel486DX33 processor, which also handles a doctorate disertation in writing between issues of ACCA NR. Once again, if you read this far, please start asking friends around you to see if they are aware of this developement, if your local CSSA leaders and leaders of other concerned groups, educators, are aware of. Push them ALL into action. ACT BY NOW. ACT AGAIN. CALL/FAX the Congress. E-mail is FREE and EASY, but individual phone calls are MUCH MORE effective - just imagine all the Senators's operators are tied down by inbound calls - from you, not from SoftPAC! At this stage, you only have SEVEN Senators to call/fax. The task now is much easier. If you let the S 1394 go through the mark-up to the Senate Floor, then you have to call up all 100 Senators for the same effect - that will be 14 times difficult and 14 times more effort! ACT NOW! ACT AGAIN! ACCA CALLS UPON YOU! ACCA also supports family-based immigration - in short, immigrants are not responsible for the problems they did not cause. It is simply unfair to blame immigrants ONLY. ============================================================================ **************************************************************************** Editor of this issue: Anne Frank **************************************************************************** ============================================================================ To (un)subscribe our acca-l mails, please write to acca-2-request@accaic.org with "sub" or "unsub" in the "Subject:" field, from your individual or local network redistribution account. You may also send your local redistribution address to hr1915@math.luc.edu. Committee on Immigration needs everyone of your support to protect our community and rights. ACCA's HR1915 infor-center is at http://www.superprism.net/~acca or ftp://wabbit.superprism.net/pub/acca or gopher://wabbit.superprism.net:70/11/acca National Chair of ACCA, Mr. Lin Huang ============================================================================ In Germany, they came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist; then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew; then they came for the Trade-Unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Trade-Unionist; then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I am a Protestant; then they came for me, and by that time no-one was left to speak up. --- Martin Niemoller --- ============================================================================