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Bret L Bret L is offline
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Default The Case of Tunnel Rat

H-1B Bodyshop vs. U.S. First Amendment: The Case Of "Tunnel Rat"

By Rob Sanchez

"The blogger who goes by the nickname “Tunnel Rat” has the status of a folk hero for American computer/IT and engineering professionals. He is celebrated for his acerbic commentaries on his website, ITGrunt. At least a portion of Tunnel Rat’s mystique derives from his persona as a geeky Lucha libre-type masked hero. The internet has been rife with speculation by both by his fans and detractors as to his identity and whether his writings represent reality or fantasy. All of that buzz adds to his legendary status..


“Tunnel Rat” expresses the popular rage of American high-tech
professionals as they are dispossessed by immigration and outsourcing.
His blogs are hard-hitting, profane and politically incorrect,
especially in regards to corporate politics, stupid managers, and
unqualified H-1B visa-holders from India hired as programmers and
engineers by high-tech companies. VDARE.COM’s Patrick Cleburne has
described ITGrunt as “the go-to source for H-1B/ American Worker
Displacement atrocities”.

But don’t bother going to ITGrunt’s website now, because it and
several other websites have been removed from the internet. (Remnants
of the site are still in Google’s cache but they are disappearing
fast). This happened on December 23rd because of litigation by the
Indian-owned bodyshop APEX Technology Group. Apex is run by Sarvesh
Kumar Dharayan [email him]. APEX has been demanding that various
websites—some apparently run by desis from India!—remove all mention
of its name.

Judge James P. Hurley of The Superior Court of New Jersey ordered the
internet service provider Godaddy.com to cancel the domain addresses
associated with ITGrunt.com and endh1b.com . In addition,
discountASP.NET was ordered to remove the pages from its web servers.
Although Judge Hurley’s order was issued right before Christmas, these
companies were required to act within 3 calendar days.

Godaddy [Email them] and discountASP.net [Email them] complied with
the order with no further resistance.

Godaddy even went one step further: it confiscated the domain name
ITGrunt, and so far has refused to release the domain back to its
owner, “Tunnel Rat”.

Godaddy’s action prevents “Tunnel Rat” from moving his website to a
different web server. “Tunnel Rat” once moved his website to Panama to
avoid censorship in the United States. It could be argued that Godaddy
has no right to keep the domain address because it would normally be
considered property of ITGrunt.

The judge issued a similar order to NetworkSolutions to shut down
guestworkerfraud.com. But at this time of writing, it remains live.

Judge Hurley has also embarked on a search to discover who is behind
ITGrunt is. He has ordered Comcast and Yahoo to reveal the identity of
one emailer, although it is not clear that the email address belongs
to “Tunnel Rat”. Whoever owns that email address could be sucked into
this conflict without even knowing what hit him for no other reason
than he posted information on ITGrunt. In addition Judge Hurley
ordered Facebook, where “Tunnel Rat” has a page, to divulge his
identity by Monday, December 28.

Unmasking “Tunnel Rat” could expose him to reprisals such as
blacklisting so he can’t get jobs. Or worse—he has even received death
threats.

The judge is in New Jersey, but the defendants and the websites are in
other states. Attorney John Miano, former President of the
Programmer’s Guild, practices in New Jersey but was unable to stop the
court from in effect claiming jurisdiction over the entire Internet.

So what, you may ask, did ITGrunt do to deserve this? In a
“Certification of Notice”, a law firm representing APEX claimed that
blog posts on the ITGrunt website damaged the bodyshop’s reputation
and therefore makes it more difficult to recruit H-1Bs.

Ironically, the statements Apex complains of were not made by
Americans but, apparently, by an H-1B worker who’s complaining that
APEX was ripping him off. The reputation of APEX in the desi community
was established way before ITGrunt came along. You can still read some
of the posts here.

The APEX rampage against “Tunnel Rat” began when an anonymous Indian
poster who claims to work for APEX posted a copy of an APEX employment
agreement that he asserted imposed penalties of up to $35,000 for
quitting. He wrote:

“If you join a company (including any level between you and APEX) then
pay $35,000 or face a law suit, $9,000 for legal, training and guest
services when you quit. $35,000 if you quit in between a contract…etc.
The legalities of the agreement are convoluted, abstract and can/will
be used against you if you displease APEX Technology Group Inc. So
once you sign that document you are at the mercy of the employer and
much worse than a bonded laborer in India."

APEX hasn’t denied the authenticity of this agreement, but it asserts
its copyright has been violated.

Suing websites for postings made by third parties is problematic. The
Electronic Freedom Foundation describes Section 230 of Title 47 of the
United States Code (47 USC § 230) as follows:

“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be
treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by
another information content provider.” This federal law preempts any
state laws to the contrary: “[n]o cause of action may be brought and
no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is
inconsistent with this section.”

So why APEX is taking such drastic actions against ITGrunt and other
web sites?

The explanation could be as simple as corporate self-interest. Or
there could be something deeper going on.

Perhaps we are seeing a clash of cultures between Americans who
believe in values such as free speech in the First Amendment of the
Constitution, and foreign cultures that don’t share the same
enthusiasm.

Immigrants of this type won’t hesitate to subvert our Anglo-Saxon
heritage when it suits their needs.

My question: why we are allowing people into this country who are
antithetical to our value system and heritage?"

http://www.vdare.com/sanchez/091227_tunnel_rat.htm
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Default The Case of Tunnel Rat

On Dec 29, 11:46*pm, Bret L wrote:

snip

My question: why we are allowing people into this country who are
antithetical to our value system and heritage?"




That's easy. Because they're better educated and more motivated than
most of the people here. We're importing those people for their
skills, not their political views.
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Bret L Bret L is offline
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On Dec 30, 4:03*am, "Shhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"
wrote:
On Dec 29, 11:46*pm, Bret L wrote:

snip

My question: why we are allowing people into this country who are
antithetical to our value system and heritage?"


That's easy. Because they're better educated and more motivated than
most of the people here. We're importing those people for their
skills, not their political views.


Most of them are not, although I concede that there are an inner core
which is.

Most H-1B tech visa holders have no practical experience and they
come from educational systems that are big on drill and rote. They are
more often than not people who went to the schools they attended
specifically because of the H-1B opportunities and they are most
definitely not held to the standards US IT workers are in recruiting.

For years, prior to the influx, US IT hiring was done on a ridiculous
basis of demanding outrageous micro-detailed experience requirements,
with companies sifting through thousands of resumes for the right buzz
words and allowing positions to stay empty for long periods of time,
churning through employees. No reasonable person could seek to prepare
themselves for employment in any rational fashion.

Good programmers have high cognitive skills, and understand the basic
concepts of coding in a couple or three representative languages well,
and the basic workflow of the tasks required. They can and do learn
new tools as required. What IT HR and recruiting people attached to
employers-many of which have never written one line of code themselves
and have never been asked to-demanded was something completely
different, they wanted someone with set (neither too much nor too
little) amounts of paid employment having done each of perhaps dozens
of separate, often unrelated, tasks.

With H-1B hires what they want is young college graduates who they
can treat as indentured servants, getting 80-100 hours a week out of
them, and expecting them to learn on the fly a good deal of what they
need to know. They generally do, and the company has its sense of
larceny stimulated in that they think they are getting over on
society.

But even conceding your point, which is true less often than not, it
doesn't matter if they are all Richard Stallmans. The needs of
society, any healthy society, to not be inundated with people
incompatible with that society ARE SENIOR TO the needs of corporations
to squeeze more profit out of their businesses.

Smart American kids are not attending EE/CS programs in the numbers
they otherwise would because they know that they will have to run the
H-1B gantlet when they graduate. The very top level people, the kind
people fancy MIT and Caltech turn out (they do, to an extent, but many
of those are actually not desireable employees inasmuch as there is a
fine line between genius and insanity) do okay, but everyone else
winds up looking for a sales engineering or support engineering job or
leaves engineering, or applies to professional school.

In other words, the guy who graduates in the first third but not the
top tenth at, say, Purdue-the traditional bread and butter of any
modestly sized company's engineering department-is ****ed.

Tax offshoring and get rid of H-1B and you will lose a few crappy
bottom feeder businesses, but you will make electrical engineering a
reasonable career choice for reasonably smart American kids. I really
don't believe you are too stupid to comprehend that, just too
Politically Correct. Or, a whore for some big corporation.
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Default The Case of Tunnel Rat

On Dec 30, 12:12*pm, Bret L wrote:
On Dec 30, 4:03*am, "Shhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"

wrote:
On Dec 29, 11:46*pm, Bret L wrote:


snip


My question: why we are allowing people into this country who are
antithetical to our value system and heritage?"


That's easy. Because they're better educated and more motivated than
most of the people here. We're importing those people for their
skills, not their political views.


*Most of them are not, although I concede that there are an inner core
which is.


snip


I have friends in a company (Pictos) which makes cellphone cameras.
They sell their wares to Motorola and the like. Nearly the entire
engineering/design staff are H1B. They are all Masters degrees or
higher. They've got a fetish for higher degrees there. I'm not sold on
the "degree" strategy, but it works for them.

I'm a fan of the H1B, even the lower level types. The immigrant
mindset is very ambitious. It takes an ambitious person to want to
travel halfway around the world to seek a better life. It leads to
more competition here, but in my opinion, competition is good. The
more competitive mindsets we have here, the better off our economy
will be for the coming challenges.

If you're scared of competition, this isn't the country for you. Move
to Europe - they're better at trying to protect the old guard. They're
also less innovative. The leader of the tech world is in Silicon
Valley for a reason and yes, there are a crapload of H1Bers there.

Competition. That's where it's at.
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John Atkinson[_2_] John Atkinson[_2_] is offline
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Default The Case of Tunnel Rat

On Dec 30 2009, 11:56*pm, "Shhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"
wrote:
I'm a fan of the H1B, even the lower level types. The immigrant
mindset is very ambitious. It takes an ambitious person to want
to travel halfway around the world to seek a better life.


I came to the US on an H-1B visa, please note.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


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Default The Case of Tunnel Rat

On Jan 2, 6:08*pm, John Atkinson wrote:
On Dec 30 2009, 11:56*pm, "Shhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"

wrote:
I'm a fan of the H1B, even the lower level types. The immigrant
mindset is very ambitious. It takes an ambitious person to want
to travel halfway around the world to seek a better life.


I came to the US on an H-1B visa, please note.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


There are a rash of forgers recently. This started on the Chargers
group. This was from 67.164.122.131 which is located in California.
I'd imagine someone from that group is responsible for this post.


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On Jan 3, 5:53*am, "Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"
wrote:
On Jan 2, 6:08*pm, John Atkinson wrote:

On Dec 30 2009, 11:56*pm, "Shhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"


wrote:
I'm a fan of the H1B, even the lower level types. The immigrant
mindset is very ambitious. It takes an ambitious person to want
to travel halfway around the world to seek a better life.


I came to the US on an H-1B visa, please note.


John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile


There are a rash of forgers recently. This started on the Chargers
group. This was from 67.164.122.131 which is located in California.
I'd imagine someone from that group is responsible for this post.


PS: That's not to say that I want to boot your British ass out of here.
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