Understanding the US - Again

[Vayutuvan]

(Just in case some people are wondering) FTFY is a commonly used acronym for "Fixed That For You" on the internet.

[Amber G.]

<snip>
Contemptible.

We learned of this girl's detention because of someone else who was detained but released after 3 weeks or so.
This following is a second-hand report: https://medium.com/blog/what-its-like-t ... e1c46f8de1

Thanks, for this and the detailed previous post ..I was going post something similar but your post is excellent. To add, I was following one case ..

A real episode involving the Trump administration's Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Supreme Court. The case was (if someone wants to get more deatail_:

Maslenjak v. United States (2017)

Background: Divna Maslenjak, a Bosnian-Serb woman, became a U.S. citizen in 2007. Later, the government found she had lied during her immigration process by concealing her husband's involvement in a Serbian military unit accused of war crimes.

The DOJ argued that any lie, even minor or immaterial, during the naturalization process should be grounds to revoke citizenship.


Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Stephen Breyer in particular expressed concern that the DOJ’s position would give the government too much power — potentially enabling revocation for any trivial misstatement, like forgetting to disclose a speeding ticket.

Justice Breyer said something to the effect of:

"I can’t believe the government is arguing this."

Roberts gave a hypothetical:

So you’re saying someone who once drove 60 in a 55 and didn’t report it could be deported?

The Trump DOJ took a very aggressive stance on denaturalization, including establishing a special unit at DOJ in 2020 focused on identifying cases for revocation.

Remains to be seen what happen in the future ..
.(In that case The Supreme Court unanimously rejected the DOJ's broad interpretation.)

[pravula]

They have changed the wording AFAIK. The criteria now seems to be "if we had known about this, we would have rejected the citizenship application"

[Vayutuvan]

Later, the government found she had lied during her immigration process by concealing her husband's involvement in a Serbian military unit accused of war crimes.

That is not minor. It all depends on whether she lied or simply didn't know that the military unit her hubby was in was accused of of war crimes. IANAL leave alone an immigration lawyer.

I have to deploy my precious and limited resources, time and money, to good use. I cannot afford to dig into every injustice that had been done to every immigrant - legal or illegal - by the US legal system.

[KL Dubey]

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Stephen Breyer in particular expressed concern that the DOJ’s position would give the government too much power — potentially enabling revocation for any trivial misstatement, like forgetting to disclose a speeding ticket.

Back before the trump first term, the question on form I-485 (adjustment of status to LPR) had explicit wording: "have you ever been charged, arrested, cited etc........, excluding traffic violations?" (bolding is mine).

In 2017, that last part was removed, essentially putting the onus on the applicant. Obviously, this leaves room for abuse/overreach by the sarkar, which was exactly why the SC used this same example.

I hope these days any good LPR/naturaluzation attorney is guiding applicants on what to declare. There are about 250 million licensed drivers in US. 50 million traffic tickets are issued each year, i.e. 1 in 5 drivers. Basic probability math says more than 70% LPR applicants already in the US for 5 years or more would have 1 or more traffic tickets. For naturalization i am assuming 95%+ applicants would have traffic tickets.

[pravula]

But if you were cited, you would know...Its not asking if you ever broke the speed limit...

[KL Dubey]

^^its asking if you were processed by law enforcement for an offense. The point is that omitting to declare such things as traffic tickets on the form ( i.e. just checking No) can be construed as an offense by trump sarkar.

[Najunamar]

Breaking News: Earlier today there were protests at the ICE building in downtown LA that turned into blockades of the building resulting in tear gas, arrests.
https://www.youtube.com/live/WoOvM_s9K50?feature=shared

[Amber G.]

But if you were cited, you would know...Its not asking if you ever broke the speed limit...

To be clear the scenario he (Justice) described wasn't even about getting a ticket (or cited or caught — it was simply about committing the act and not reporting it.
Here’s the more complete version of what Roberts said during the hearing: (I just checked)

Let’s say I fail to disclose that I drove 60 miles an hour in a 55-mile-an-hour zone. Five years later, they find out — not that I got a ticket, but that I drove 60 in a 55 — and they start a denaturalization proceeding.

He was incredulous at the idea that a minor, unreported, and irrelevant action could be grounds for stripping citizenship. His question was part of a broader pushback against the DOJ’s stance that any false statement, no matter how trivial or unrelated to eligibility, could trigger denaturalization.

The Court ultimately ruled that only lies that are “material” — i.e., directly relevant to naturalization — can justify revoking citizenship.

Roberts specifically framed it as not even having received a ticket, but merely failing to disclose a trivial infraction — and he used that to show how unreasonable the DOJ’s interpretation was.

(BTW that was in 2017.. in DJT's new term there are/could be more such fights..

[pravula]

Yes, I interpreted it the same way based on current guidance. But "it was simply about committing the act and not reporting it." is similar argument as if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it...That was never gonna fly...

[Amber G.]

Denaturalization Unit was created by Trump’s DOJ and it's mission is to aggressively pursue denaturalization cases not only for terrorism, war crimes or serious offenses but also for fraud.

As A_Gupta gave example(s) there have been a few controversial cases for old minor frauds that weren’t material. ( There were few with terrorism and security concerns years after naturalization too).

Along with Baljinder Singh (first denaturalization under the Trump-era crackdown), another famous case was for CEO of Chobani Yogurt (far-right blogs and conspiracy theorists claimed he had obtained citizenship fraudulently). it was not resulted in formal legal actions challenging his U.S. citizenship but it did make his life difficult.

[Vayutuvan]

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=3241044

(Un)Civil Denaturalization
94 New York University Law Review 402 (2019)
Case Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2018-14
70 Pages Posted: 30 Aug 2018 Last revised: 26 Jun 2019

Cassandra Burke Robertson
Case Western Reserve University School of Law
Irina D. Manta
Hofstra University - Maurice A. Deane School of Law

Date Written: August 29, 2018

Abstract
Over the last fifty years, naturalized citizens in the United States were able to feel a sense of finality and security in their rights. Denaturalization, wielded frequently as a political tool in the McCarthy era, had become exceedingly rare. Indeed, denaturalization was best known as an adjunct to criminal proceedings brought against former Nazis and other war criminals who had entered the country under false pretenses.

Denaturalization is no longer so rare. Naturalized citizens’ sense of security has been fundamentally shaken by policy developments in the last five years. The number of denaturalization cases is growing, and if current trends continue, it will continue to increase dramatically. This growth began under the Obama administration, which used improved digital tools to identify potential cases of naturalization fraud from years and decades ago. The Trump administration, however, is taking denaturalization to new levels as part of its overall immigration crackdown. It has announced plans for a denaturalization task force. And it is pursuing denaturalization as a civil-litigation remedy and not just a criminal sanction—a choice that prosecutors find advantageous because civil proceedings come with a lower burden of proof, no guarantee of counsel to the defendant, and no statute of limitations. In fact, the first successful denaturalization under this program was decided on summary judgment in favor of the government in 2018. The defendant was accused of having improperly filed an asylum claim twenty-five years ago, but he was never personally served with process and he never made an appearance in the case, either on his own or through counsel. Even today, it is not clear that he knows he has lost his citizenship.

The legal status of denaturalization is murky, in part because the Supreme Court has long struggled to articulate a consistent view of citizenship and its prerogatives. Nonetheless, the Court has set a number of significant limits on the government’s attempts to remove citizenship at will—limits that are inconsistent with the adminis- tration’s current litigation policy. This Article argues that stripping Americans of citizenship through the route of civil litigation not only violates substantive and procedural due process, but also infringes on the rights guaranteed by the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Finally, (un)civil denaturalization undermines the constitutional safeguards of democracy.

OK folks. Stop analyzing at a superficial level and look at this paper. There are several other links that came up in my DDG search.

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/th ... ilty-pleas

The Denaturalization Consequences of Guilty Pleas
20 OCT 2020
Amber Qureshi
ABSTRACT. The Obama and Trump Administrations have engaged in a systematic effort to revoke the citizenship of foreign-born U.S. citizens. The denaturalization program has targeted naturalized citizens who allegedly committed a crime before obtaining citizenship but were arrested for that crime post naturalization. The federal government is pursuing denaturalization on the basis that these citizens committed fraud during the naturalization process by failing to disclose their criminal conduct. This Essay presents a novel legal theory to protect the Sixth Amendment and due-process rights of those facing denaturalization on this basis. Under the Supreme Court’s groundbreaking decision in Padilla v. Kentucky, criminal-defense counsel have a duty to advise noncitizen clients of the deportation consequences of pleading guilty. This Essay argues that, under Padilla’s reasoning, criminal-defense counsel and judges must also advise defendants who are naturalized citizens of the potential denaturalization consequences of pleading guilty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_d ... ted_States

From 2001 to 2019, most non-nazi denaturalizations happened during Obama years.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ ... 180969733/

Stripping Naturalized Immigrants of Their Citizenship Isn’t New
The United States has a history of denaturalization spanning more than a century
Kritika Agarwal, Perspectives on History
July 24, 2018

In January 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice revoked the citizenship of Baljinder Singh a.k.a. Davinder Singh, a naturalized Indian American. Singh, who first arrived to the United States in 1991, was accused of misrepresenting his identity and failing to disclose a deportation order on an asylum application. “The defendant exploited our immigration system,” said Chad Readler, assistant attorney general for the department’s civil division.

Singh’s case was the first to be concluded under the Operation Janus program of the Department of Homeland Security. Begun during the Obama administration, the program exists to identify individuals who may have committed naturalization fraud, by consulting fingerprint records collected by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Under Operation Janus, USCIS intends to bring denaturalization proceedings against an additional 1,600 individuals.

This effort has in turn spawned Operation Second Look, another DHS program to follow leads obtained from Operation Janus. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s proposed fiscal year 2019 budget, the agency seeks to hire staff to review about 700,000 “alien files” for naturalization fraud under Operation Second Look. The first citizens to have been caught up in this new dragnet include a 46-year-old Bangladeshi American woman and a 56-year-old Haitian American woman, both living in Florida. Another Florida resident, a 63-year-old woman who migrated to the United States from Peru in 1989, recently received a letter from the DOJ about an impending denaturalization lawsuit against her.

The reactions to these cases—as well as to USCIS director L. Francis Cissna’s recent statements to the Associated Press about hiring dozens of lawyers and immigration officers to review cases of naturalization fraud—have been a mix of shock, disbelief and fear.
...

So Pandora's box was opened by Obama, Trump used that to denaturalize folks he did not like, Biden opened the borders, KD did nothing due to her incompetence and political exigencies (future vote bank for DNC), and now Trump mia is using the same program to go berserk.

https://www.aila.org/library/featured-i ... s-by-uscis

If people are worried about their near and dear, then they should go through this website carefully, take legal advice, and stop acting like know-it-alls.

Having achieved a modicum of mastery over one narrow field of study is no guarantee that one would be able to achieve the same level of mastery in other fields.

Humility folks, humility.

[vera_k]

^ Good find. Won't be long before tax lawyers start offering this up as a way to save on taxes.

[Mort Walker]

The Trump administration is going after OPT students, particularly those completing MS & PhD, who are getting employment past 60 days after grace period. If an employer files for an H-1B 60 days after the grace period, ICE waits until 90 days are done, then arrests them outside of their workplace to deport them. Given the current employment outlook, getting a job within 60 days after graduation is becoming difficult.

[A_Gupta]

https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage? ... &id=&page=
Frost, Amanda. "Alienating citizens." Nw. UL Rev. Online 114 (2019): 48.

ALIENATING CITIZENS

Amanda Frost ABSTRACT- Denaturalization is back. In 1967, the Supreme Court declared that denaturalization for any reason other than fraud or mistake in the naturalization process is unconstitutional, forcing the goverment to abandon its aggressive denaturalization campaigns. For the last half century,

the government denaturalized no more than a handful of people every year. Over the past year, however, the Trump Administration has revived denaturalization. The Administration has targeted 700,000 naturalized American citizens for investigation and has hired dozens of lawyers and staff members to work in a newly created office devoted to investigating and prosecuting denaturalization cases.

Using information gathered from responses to Freedom of Information Act requests, legal filings, and interviews, this Essay is the first to describe the Trump Administration's denaturalization campaign in detail. The Essay then situates denaturalization within the Trump Administration's broader approach to immigration. Under a policy known as "attrition through enforcement." the Trump Administration has sought to discourage immigration and encourage self-deportation." Although attrition through enforcement is typically described as a method of persuading unauthorized immigrants to leave the United States, the denaturalization campaign and other Trump Administration initiatives suggest that the same approach is now being applied to those with legal status.

[Vayutuvan]

Do OPT folks need an H1B? I thought they can work for one year on OPT. A lot of them are using up their OPT time during summers to earn money and pay off the loans they took back home.

There is also oversupply of programmers and that is where most jobs are. Many folks are coming to the US to get MS in LIbrary and Information Sciences in which they do take mostly DBMS/SE/Data Management/Information Science (not Information Theory) and were offered jobs at even places like Deloitte, Banks, etc. Those jobs have dried up now. Usually companies employ the consulting companies to do in -house development projects. Once they are done, their own IT takes over the maintenance with very few consultants if any. This was always the case. Now AI driven tools like copilot have thrown a big spanner into the works.

[A_Gupta]

This is re: Trump 1:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=3706313
Hashemi, Saman. "Denaturalization and the Negative Effects of Widespread Insecurity in Citizenship for Naturalized Citizens." Hastings Const. LQ 50 (2023): 113.

Operation Janus

Operation Janus began under the Obama Administration after the gov-ernment realized that it had failed to upload fingerprints from immigration records in the early 1990s to its centralized database.56 This mistake allowed for some individuals to naturalize as U.S. citizens, even though they had previously been ordered for deportation under a different name.57 While previous deportation orders alone were not a basis for denaturalization, the government argued that if they had been aware of these deportation orders, then they may have denied citizenship to some or all of these individuals.58 Further, had these individuals lied about the fact that they had been previously ordered deported, then they would have “conceal[ed] a material fact” and engaged in “willful misrepresentation,” which is, in itself, an independent basis for denaturalization.59

By September 2016, the Inspector General (“IG”) issued a report finding that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) granted citizenship to more than 800 individuals whom the government had not realized were previously deported under different identities.60 These errors came not just from individuals who willfully hid the fact that they had previously been ordered deported, but also from individuals who had no idea that they had been previously ordered to leave the country due to the lack of fingerprint data on the government’s behalf.61 Further, the IG reported that the U.S. Attorney’s Office planned to pursue denaturalization in some cases, but only if those individuals posed a particular risk to national security.62 However, by the time President Obama left office in January 2020, no individual had been denaturalized as a result of these investigations.63

B. Operation Second Look

While Operation Janus did not begin as a denaturalization program, the Trump administration escalated the program into an explicit denaturalization effort, investigating over 700,000 naturalized citizens and bringing more de- naturalization cases per year than any presidential administration since Lyndon B. Johnson.64 While Afroyim barred the federal government from denaturalizing citizens based on their speech, conduct, and political affiliations, the Court did note that the government could continue to denaturalize individuals for fraud or error during the naturalization process.65

In September 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it was filing civil denaturalization cases against three individuals identified through Operation Janus.66 All three had been ordered deported in the early 1990s and had subsequently naturalized under different names than those which they had been deported.67 The government claimed that the three individuals were “exploit[ing] our immigration system” and were seeking to “defraud the United States.”68 By January 2018, the government claimed its first successful civil denaturalization case under Operation Janus, stating that the individual had “exploited our immigration system and unlawfully secured the ultimate immigration benefit of naturalization, which undermines both the nation’s security and our lawful immigration system.”69

The Trump Administration’s denaturalization campaign continued to escalate in the summer of 2018. The ICE Fiscal Year 2019 Budget overview described two programs dedicated to denaturalization.70 The Budget first described Operation Janus as an “interagency initiative designed by DHS to prevent aliens who received a final removal order under a different identity from obtaining immigration benefits,” and Operation Second Look as a pro- gram designed to “address leads received from Operation Janus.”71 Further, the Budget noted that both programs needed to hire more staff to “support the review of an estimated 700,000 remaining alien files.”72

By early 2020, the Trump Administration codified this new denaturalize zation regime into the structure of the government, creating a new Denatu- ralization Section within the Department of Justice dedicated to “investigat[ing] and litigat[ing] the denaturalization of terrorists, war criminals, sex offenders, and other fraudsters.”73 The press release announcing this new program stated that the “growing number of referrals anticipated from law enforcement agencies motivated the creation of a standalone agency” dedicated to denaturalization cases.74

[A_Gupta]

While unlikely to be such cases here, adoptees born before March 1, 1983 need to read this:
https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/cgi/v ... ontext=wlr

[Vayutuvan]

Investigating 700,000 cases will take decades. There are only dozens of lawyers. Good joke that. Compare that to Biden (or was it Obama?) hiring 80000 new IRS employees to go after tax scoffs.

If Trump is serious about it, that is how he should do it. I don't think he is serious. It is a ploy that there will be public debate which will bring all stakeholders to the negotiating table.

I am sure neither Democrats not GOPers want the middle class workforce be out of jobs. The fight is for the votes of the 34% independents. Dyed in the wool democrats are a sure thing for DNC. GOPers are a divided lot. That is expected as GOP has better internal democracy than DNC. DNC tends to dictate as we have seen in the case of The Bern, KD, Fetterman being made into a villain now, DNC going after David Hogg using some DEI rules (he doesn't fit their diversity profile being a straight white male), etc.

DNC is driven by vapid ideologues like AOC/Warren/The Bern on one side and plain vapid minded leaders like KD/JiIl Biden/Pelosi/Newsom/Walz on the other. There is no place for centrists like Shapiro (by the very fact that he was not picked for VP by KD) and Whitmer.

[Mort Walker]

Do OPT folks need an H1B? I thought they can work for one year on OPT. A lot of them are using up their OPT time during summers to earn money and pay off the loans they took back home.

There is also oversupply of programmers and that is where most jobs are. Many folks are coming to the US to get MS in LIbrary and Information Sciences in which they do take mostly DBMS/SE/Data Management/Information Science (not Information Theory) and were offered jobs at even places like Deloitte, Banks, etc. Those jobs have dried up now. Usually companies employ the consulting companies to do in -house development projects. Once they are done, their own IT takes over the maintenance with very few consultants if any. This was always the case. Now AI driven tools like copilot have thrown a big spanner into the works.

Forget CS, Data Sciences or MIS. They're going after people with hard graduate degrees with solid research in Aerospace, Electrical, Material Science & Physics.

OPT is valid 60 days after graduation, but if no paperwork approved after 90 days then automatic deportation. If company files for H-1B between 60-90 days, then ICE waits patiently for 90 days and knows where you work. After 90 days the law allows for automatic deportation without hearing. They jump you outside the workplace. Indians are easy targets because they follow the laws & aren't trouble makers.

[Vayutuvan]

They're going after people with hard graduate degrees with solid research in Aerospace, Electrical, Material Science & Physics.

What I am saying is that even those IT jobs have disappeared. Getting jobs in any of these engg areas is difficult even for US citizens. I am seeing as we speak. Personal experience.

[bala]

Not sure whether this thread is appropriate, but many of the topics covered are centered on the US and I am hoping that they are relevant here.

Firstly Marco Rubio in a speech spilled the beans on the reality of China and the compulsions that the US is facing. Many things were relegated towards China including API (raw material for medication/pharmacy), rare earths and so on. This were done deliberately by the previous US administrations and the deep state. You now see the US compromising on many things including DJT having to meet the Emperor. All other things are now in holding pattern but the intial DJT tariffs have done their damage to the Chinese economy. The US Auto industry (even Tesla), pharma and others are ready to chew DJT head off since the Chinese are choking supply of many critical stuff.

The US Russia talks are now bogged down due to Ukraine knocking of Russian bombers and in retaliation Russia is bombing the crap out of Ukraine. Zels is hunkered into bomb shelter and DJT and Putin are at odds. Russia is well on its way to getting most of Ukraine under its control.

Next comes Iran and their refusal to give up nukes. Again this is ongoing discussions between Iran and US, with Israel keen on the outcome. The Iranians have been smuggling a lot of things from China via Pak using orders in HongKong supplied by China of course. These are missile parts, drones, chemicals, electronics and more in exchange for Iranian oil. China disavows such things since Pak is the middle doing things for them. BTW Iran and Pak are also at odds, 34 K pak individuals were expelled from Iran just yesterday.

BRICS collectively supports India in its war on terror, (what? China is part of BRICS). Pak is begging India to go easy on the water situation. India should insist on many conditions: no terror, give India the terrorists, return PoK, renounce nuclear dadagiri and more.

You notice that the two hegemons of the world are behind most things with China being more assertive and getting its way in world affairs. The US is having to repent for its previous mistakes of propping up China after WTO of B. Clinton's admission. DJT's plan on wrecking China is facing roadblocks of all kinds, the deep state does not want US to win with DJT, instead they want a pliable El Presidente to do what they dictate.

Sumit Peer in PGurus: Watch at your leisure time: youtube.com/watch?v=niOtKsFiPVs

[Vayutuvan]

@Mort ji, one more thing. After Obama and Biden expanded federal govt 2x-3x, there are lot of engg jobs which require US citizenship and the ability to get TS. Also they require people to have a PE. To get a PE one needs a year or two (?) of apprenticeship working under a PE. For that one needs a job in a company which has at least one PE.

[Mort Walker]

Vayu-ji,

Yes, there is a slow down in all engineering disciplines & IT. IT has been hit the hardest. Even for computer hardware engineers, entire jobs for FPGA/micro-controller design has been outsourced by the big companies. Only the defense contractors will hire hardware comp. engrs. but as you said they need citizenship & clearance.

Obama & Biden expanded the administrative & bureaucratic portions of the US government more than the math based sciences & engineering. A PE license is of value in civil/architectural/structural, mechanical & power systems engineering or any large scale construction.

That said, people in the non-IT disciplines who have graduate degrees from the top 100 US universities are fewer. Some companies value that.

[Mort Walker]

I'll bet they go after the easy targets on the 700K for de-naturalization. They won't go after jehadis or Pakis for whom fraud is just another day of life. Talking about fraud - I don't if anyone here has heard about CHEGG. The website where they have complied solved problems from text books. It was founded by a Paki Osman Rashid.

[vera_k]

Leaving this here since it seems relevant to the job market troubles.

The hidden time bomb in the tax code that's fueling mass tech layoffs

A decades-old tax rule helped build America's tech economy. A quiet change under Trump helped dismantle it

[Vayutuvan]

From the above

The tax benefits of salaries for engineers, product and project managers, data scientists, and even some user experience and marketing staff — all of which had previously reduced taxable income in year one — now had to be spread out over five- or 15-year periods.

I bet not many of the highlighted jobs were cut. I am not sure how important project managers are. Whenever I hear the word project manager, I am reminded of "The Mythical Man Month" by Fred Brooks (IIRC). Think about Twitter going to X and the workforce getting cut by 50%+. It has neither improved nor degraded. It never gave any value and doesn't give value to the user.

MS has done what in all these years, I ask. Same old same old Office with which you have to fight on every one of its formatting decisions. Redmond is rife with politics among mid-level managers. Talking about Amazon, people who don't know how to open a notebook are being given programming jobs, a majority of whom have come in through the southern border, DC federal contractors doing steak dinners on our tax dollars, etc. It is sickening, the waste in the govt.

As far back as 1995-98 timeframe, Silicon Valley acquaintances used to brag that they finish their work in about 2 hours and rest of the time they are engaged in stock market analysis and trading. In bigger companies, whole day is occupied by meetings and productive work is done after hours.

The US economic system is unsustainable in the long run. Heck, world economic system is unsustainable in the long run.

(End of OT rant)

[Amber G.]

DJT:
Pakistan has very strong leadership... Some people don't like when I say this, but it is what it is. And they stopped that war... I'm very proud of them"

[bala]

Vayu ji, In any company around 20% of workforce does the actual work the rest 80% are in for the free ride. The more amount of BS and glib talking the higher you go up the chain. When you hear some people in upper echelons speaking you instantly know whether they are came up due to their capability or they are ace BSers (e.g. the Pak land defence mantri).

[Vayutuvan]

Leaving this here since it seems relevant to the job market troubles.

The hidden time bomb in the tax code that's fueling mass tech layoffs

A decades-old tax rule helped build America's tech economy. A quiet change under Trump helped dismantle it

This part is notable. I highlighted that part.

Repeal may come too late
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing to repeal the Section 174 change, with business groups, CFOs, crypto executives, and venture capitalists lobbying hard for retroactive relief. But the politics are messy. Fixing 174 would mean handing a tax break to the same companies many voters in both parties see as symbols of corporate excess. Any repeal would also come too late for the hundreds of thousands of workers already laid off.

[bala]

Ok, in Kalifornia, Los Angeles the showdown btwn ICE and protestors is culminating in DJT ordering the National Guard. BTW DJT has called Kalifornia Governor as Newscum in a tweet! Kalifornia needs a complete sweep of the state in all cities, every Home Depot (sells home goods like plumbing, paint, wood, etc) is filled with illegals in parking lots wanting a temporary job.

watch at leisure tv news: youtube.com/watch?v=p9xMHwRSQ-8

[drnayar]

Leaving this here since it seems relevant to the job market troubles.

The hidden time bomb in the tax code that's fueling mass tech layoffs

A decades-old tax rule helped build America's tech economy. A quiet change under Trump helped dismantle it

Quite a good one, wonder if India can have its version of Section 174 of the IRS Code

[nandakumar]

Leaving this here since it seems relevant to the job market troubles.

The hidden time bomb in the tax code that's fueling mass tech layoffs

Quite a good one, wonder if India can have its version of Section 174 of the IRS Code
[/quot
Indian tax law has an omnibus clause for deduction of all all expenditure incurred in the course of running a business which would include R&D expenditure. The Courts have interpreted this provision in a liberal way. The only requirement is whether a prudent business would incur that expenditure even if there is no immediate benefit from such expenditure. R&D expenditure would clearly fall under that. In addition there are weighted deductions too, ranging from 125 to 200% in some cases. The deduction doesn't apply to cost of land and buildings. But buildings are eligible for normal depreciation of 10% which can be claimed as business expenditure.

[chetak]

This could be a scene straight out of a police state in a “third world” country.

It’s LA in Trump’s America.

[Manish_P]

This could be a scene straight out of a police state in a “third world” country.

It’s LA in Trump’s America.
...

We might soon see IFVs with 30mm machine cannon... Come on Trump ji. Show them who is da boss.

[Tanaji]

We might soon see IFVs with 30mm machine cannon... Come on Trump ji. Show them who is da boss.

Saar even smallish police departments in US now have MRAPS. In fact the feds have a virtual Amazon style shopping portal with retired military gear that police departments can browse and buy. Only the 30mm is missing.

Apparently ICE ran over someone who was protesting in LA. Meanwhile, we will get lectures on human rights and ranked 1000th in human rights indices…

[Yagnasri]

This is Antifa fellows. They deserve what they get. They have been totally out of control for many years and are fully funded by woke moneybags.

[A_Gupta]

Maybe Antifa. Maybe older

Fifty-seven years ago, starting on March 5, 1968, thousands of Mexican American high-school students walked out of classes in Los Angeles protesting inequality in the public education system.

In the backdrop of a tumultuous time, the significance of this event — the first major mass protest against racism undertaken by Mexican Americans in the history of the United States — is often lost to history.

However, the 1968 walkouts set in motion a transformation that bears greatly on the rapidly evolving June 2025 events in Los Angeles. As he orders the US military onto the streets of Los Angeles to enforce DHS workplace raids, Trump is awakening a sleeping giant.

Some brief history.

That same year, 1968, the Vietnam War was in full swing, headlined by the massive political impact of the January Tet Offensive by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. In April, Martin Luther King, Jr., would be assassinated. In June, RFK would meet the same fate. In November, Republican Richard M. Nixon would be elected as President, accelerating the political demise of the Democratic Party in the South that had begun during passage of the Civil Rights Acts.

The day before the Mexican American student walkouts, FBI Director Hoover had urged local law enforcement to prioritize "political intelligence work to prevent the development of nationalist movements in minority communities". At the time, the local Los Angeles political system remained under white majority control, led by Democratic Mayor Sam Yorty, a politician with a long and complex history who had transitioned from a New Dealer into someone who would later endorse Nixon and Reagan. To give the flavor of Yorty, when he ran successfully for reelection against Tom Bradley in 1969, he painted his opponent as a “dangerous radical, alternately of the black power or Communist revolutionary varieties” (Bradley, who would later win election as the first African American mayor of LA, had spent much of his career in the Los Angeles Police Department — the LAPD). At the state level, California was under newly elected Republican Governor Ronald Reagan.

Los Angeles had a long history of violent repression of Mexican Americans. Local history featured episodes like the WW2 era “Zoot Suit” riots in 1943 where American servicemen in LA and other US cities rampaged and beat Mexican American youths, and the 1951 “Bloody Christmas” LAPD beatings of jail inmates. During the Great Depression, in the early 1930s, the United States deported between 500,000 and 2 million people of Mexican descent (including 1.2 million children who were U.S. citizens) during what was called “the Mexican Repatriation.” Many of these deportees were from Southern California.

In sum, March 1968 was a very rough time for young Mexican American high school students in Los Angeles to carry out a mass walkout. But the movement was a volcano ready to erupt. So out they went. Thousands and thousands of them. Linked to parallel political developments like the 1962 birth of the United Farm Workers, it was the flowering of what would be called the Chicano Movement.

Fast forward to 2025. In the years following that era, some progress was made. Notably, Mexican Americans began to run and win races for local elections. The LAPD became more integrated. And school curriculums were improved. Today, one of California’s two US Senators is Mexican American and a significant number of California House seats are held by Latinos as well. It is also notable that, since the 1960’s, the Latino population itself has become very diverse, including many Latinos from Central and South America.

As a Mexican American myself, and a native of Los Angeles, my jaw dropped when I saw that Trump was ordering troops onto the streets of LA. Did he not know this history? Did he not understand the depth of memory?

Yes, Mexican Americans, like all people, support fighting crime. And the relationships between legal and undocumented residents can be complex.

But now it is clear to a much wider audience, beyond the immigrant rights activist core (which knew from the start this was likely where things were headed), that this was never about “violent criminals.” This is about returning Mexican Americans, and Latinos and other immigrants, to the dark days of “the great repatriation.” This is about promoting violent right-wing fantasies.

[Manish_P]

...
Saar even smallish police departments in US now have MRAPS. In fact the feds have a virtual Amazon style shopping portal with retired military gear that police departments can browse and buy. Only the 30mm is missing.
…

hence the anticipation, saar

[bala]

Illegal immigration is a well thought out plan of the deep state thugs. They want a set of low edu workers who can be controlled whenever there is a need. This is similar to how the Britshits created Pak land to terrorize India. The Deep State is into all kinds of illegal activities world wide - drugs, human trafficking, sex trade, gun running, gambling, you name it. The US is fighting all of this, DJT especially on drugs and illegal immigration. Every US state is now overun by illegal immigration but the primary ones are NY, Kalifornia, Texas, Florida after which they spread out to other states. The numbers are staggering at least 20-30 million.