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  • svn
    03-31 07:51 PM
    I am not convinced with the whole systematic preadjudication logic at all. .

    Didn't say anything about "systematic" at all - I think we all know better than to use "systematic" and "USCIS" in the same sentence!:D However, they definitely seem to be making some progress on adjudications even if none the country caps limit green cards issual. Aamazing how you can change behaviour when you set a goal and start to measure people on it - looking at the bits and pieces of info being released by USCIS, you can see something is changing and I would suspect a lot has to do with the new leadership in government, that has a mandate for greater transparency (unlike their predecessors). Given the lack of visibility to Case Officers of cases with old PD's (they track by RDs and not PDs), I cannot but believe this will be good for getting some structure into the system.





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  • reddog
    07-14 03:33 PM
    Why do you write 'I know this mess is depressing for EB3 folks' ?
    Is IV not with Eb3 folks? Or are they not important.

    Let me clear somethings.
    Earning in higher 70Ks in the year 2003 and with over 5+ years of progressive experience, they still went ahead a filed my app under EB3. Was that a mistake? Not mine. My employer knew that Eb3 would be slower.

    What happened? cases like mine were eye openers and learning experiences for comrades who were going to file and they filed under EB2, I asked friends and relatives and classmates of mine to file under Eb2.
    Am i happy for them? No, I hate them. Of course, I am happy for them. Very very much.

    So, why would you not fight for us?

    If people like me and filers before me had not filed under EB3, and not shared our experiences, how would we have progressed?

    Suddenly, 'You Eb3 folks are depressed' from 'We folks are depressed'. lol for chauvinism.



    I commend the initiative. But I see a few issues with it:

    You are complaining to DOS about USCIS and DOL. That will not work. Every agency has a specific role

    You are complaining to the official who sets visa dates. He has no authority to give relief just because some applicant/s are asking for it. He has to follow the rule every month and his responsibility is only to set the dates based on the statistics received from USCIS. This official has a very specific and limited role.

    The reasons are not compelling enough. You cannot just say you are waiting long enough and thus your date should become current. Rules cannot be changed just for that reason.

    If economy was down in 2001- 2003 and you were asked to file in EB3 and people in Perm could file in EB2 is your strongest reason, it may not work in your favor. Because by law you can file again and convert to EB2 and port your date. DOL and USCIS does not stop you from doing that.

    If you are qualified for EB2 but your attorney and employer filed in EB3, then it is not a fault of USCIS/DOL/DOS. You must talk to the company and the lawyer for it. If the company or the lawyer has broken any rule or employer has exploited you, then the letter should be complain to the appropriate authority about them.

    Please also note that labor is filed based on the degree and experience requirement of the job. By law if the requirement is only undergraduate degree for the job, the employer cannot file in EB2 just because the applicant has a masters degree or more experience than needed. So you cannot really put this arguement here because it will be against the rules.

    So I personally do not think this idea will work.

    While this mess is depressing for EB3 folks, we need to have a more compelling argument, determined membership and effective plan to get things changed.
    The root cause of the problem is limited greencard quota for EB3. And the solution is to get recapture, get rid of country limits, STEM exemption. Any single relief itself will be huge for all of us. With 179 phone calls and $16656 collected in last 3 months, I do not see that happening. It will need a far more bigger and determined effort. Such amount can be spent on full scale lobbying in just one month. 179 phone calls are nothing if we have to make a compelling case for ourselves.





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  • Macaca
    12-28 07:29 PM
    Flashy Office Space, Advertising India�s Allure (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/business/global/28sizzle.html) By VIKAS BAJAJ | New York Times

    A massive futuristic office complex is rising from a patch of spare, arid land here near the southern Indian city of Chennai. Six butterfly-shaped buildings dock like spacecraft to two long metal-latticed terminals.

    About 12,000 people already work at the campus, being built by India�s largest technology company, Tata Consultancy Services. It eventually will have space for 24,000 of Tata�s nearly 180,000 employees.

    Meanwhile Infosys, one of Tata�s biggest competitors, has added a corporate campus for 15,000 employees with buildings that resemble the Parthenon, the Coliseum and the Louvre�s glass pyramid. Infosys plans to build an additional 10 million square feet of custom office space by mid-2012, at various sites, adding 25,000 workers to its current 122,000.

    It is all part of a construction spree by India�s outsourcing companies, which are growing at a breakneck pace after the lull caused by the global financial crisis in 2008 and 2009.

    But the building boom is about more than making room for more workers.

    The outsourcing giants, which include Wipro and others, hope that architectural sizzle can help them compete for the nation�s top software programmers, while also burnishing their reputations with overseas clients and prospective customers.

    In this nation where world-class high-tech companies co-exist with urban slums and rural poverty, employers like Tata, Infosys and Wipro have set out to create avant-garde, environmentally smart corporate sanctuaries.

    And even if some architects and critics complain about the wisdom and taste of the efforts, the executives behind the building boom say their ambitious projects put a modern face on Indian business.

    T. V. Mohandas Pai, a director at Infosys, which has 15 campuses around India, said his company�s eclectic mix of designs from all over the world reflected this nation�s inclusive sensibility. �One singular thing is monotonous,� he said. �In India, we are a colorful people.�

    Like China a decade earlier, India appears to be at that phase of economic development where buildings are meant to help advertise the nation�s arrival on the world stage. But unlike China, where the government and state-owned corporations took the lead, private companies in India have headed the charge � not the government, which struggles to execute even basic construction projects.

    And within India�s business world, technology companies have been more adventurous than others, perhaps because of their outsize financial success and their need to hire tens of thousands of workers to write software for foreign clients. State and federal governments are aiding the effort by offering these companies generous tax incentives and choice pieces of real estate to build big campuses.

    Competition for employees is intense, because while India produces about 500,000 engineers every year, most colleges provide such poor education that the industry says that just a quarter of graduates are employable. But among those most qualified � typically graduates of elite places like the Indian Institutes of Technology and Birla Institute of Technology and Science � as many as 18 percent leave for other jobs every year. The outsourcing companies see lavish, environmentally friendly campuses as a way to help attract and retain the best and brightest workers.

    With their manicured lawns, power generators and lakes, the campuses are a noticeable improvement on most engineering colleges, which suffer from India�s standard infrastructure deficiencies � blackouts, water shortages and poor maintenance.

    �I prefer a big campus,� said Aditya Mathur, a software engineer, 23, who joined Wipro a year ago, and now works at a four-year-old office in Gurgaon, south of New Delhi, as a software tester. �The facilities are better in a big campus.�

    Tata Consultancy Services � or T.C.S., as the company is known � is spending $200 million on its Siruseri campus and has hired the Uruguayan-born Canadian architect Carlos A. Ott, who designed the opera house on the Place de la Bastille in Paris. The company is also building big campuses in Ahemdabad, Pune, Calcutta and Hyderabad.

    But some critics say that too many of the industry�s new complexes are intended to make a big splash without much thought of how they will function and fit into the local surroundings.

    �It is a haphazard reaching for something that will quickly make a statement about the place being world class,� said Himanshu Burte, an architecture critic who writes frequently for Indian newspapers.

    But Rahul Mehrotra, a prominent architect who has designed an office building for Hewlett-Packard in Bangalore, the city at the heart of India�s technology industry, argued that rather than being outr�, too many Indian tech campuses had a hackneyed feel, evoking the sprawling suburban campuses of Silicon Valley or American companies like Google and Apple.

    �The architecture in these cases symbolizes the fact that these are places of outsourcing, not cutting-edge research,� said Mr. Mehrotra, who lives in Mumbai and Boston.

    Mr. Pai of Infosys said he was unconcerned about such criticism. He said the people who mattered to the company � employees and customers � raved about its buildings, particularly those that resembled landmarks like the Coliseum at its new campus in the city of Mysore. �They like the fact that it�s so diverse,� he said.

    Infosys probably set the standard for ambitious corporate campuses in India more than a decade ago. Many other companies grew helter-skelter wherever they could find space. But Infosys started building large complexes, beginning with its first campus on the southern edge of Bangalore, its home city, in 1995, just a few years after India started to open its economy to the rest of the world.

    That first campus, which, after many expansions, can now accommodate 24,000 people, was considered cutting-edge for creating an ordered oasis of lawns and lakes in the midst of the urban chaos that envelops most commercial areas in India. The complex also established the company�s quirky style � with a glass pyramid for an auditorium and a building that resembles a washing machine � and helped set a benchmark for big campuses in the technology industry.

    Mr. Pai, who determined the overall layout of the campuses with the company�s chairman, N. R. Narayana Murthy, said Infosys was determined to make every new campus �better than our last campus.�

    Their rules include the tenet that no two buildings should look alike. Another audacious goal is that every campus should become a �carbon sink� in the next five years. In other words, trees, lakes and other natural features should absorb more carbon than is generated by the campus.

    Some other firms, like Wipro, tend to be more understated, opting for standard-looking office buildings. But even these companies have trademark causes. Wipro prides itself on minimizing the use of power and, especially, water. It recycles water and creates lakes to harvest the rain. At one of its campuses in Bangalore, a training center appears to float on one of these reservoirs.

    T.C.S., based in Mumbai, has long had significant operations in and around Chennai, the city formerly known as Madras, which is on the Bay of Bengal. But N. Chandrasekaran, chief executive of T.C.S., said the company previously had too many buildings arbitrarily sprinkled around that region.

    The new Siruseri campus, 18 miles south of Chennai, is meant to help consolidate some of those outposts and give employees a sense of place and pride of ownership. �We had multiple buildings and we felt that we should have a campus where employees will feel empowerment, will feel good about working,� he said �and at the same time we have a place to host clients.�

    For at least some employees, the plan seems to be succeeding.

    Deenathajalan Sugumar, who works in production support, recently moved to the new T.C.S. campus in Siruseri from a smaller building in Chennai. He gushed about the campus, even though he now commutes by a company bus for more than an hour every day, more than double his previous travel time.

    �It�s my home,� Mr. Sugumar, 24, said. �It�s my company.�


    The Outsourcing Battle (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/12/28/business/global/20101228-sizzle-ss.html) New York Times





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  • fide_champ
    03-23 05:04 AM
    Immigration uncertainties should not be a reason for not buying a house in the US. In my opinion it�s always best to buy a house considering it as a long term investment � You will eventually build equity even though the present US housing market is in doldrums.

    I played the housing game differently to minimize the risks associated with my present immigration scenario (I am on 8th year H1B with I140 pending since Oct 2006)...
    1) I did not buy an expensive place even though I could easily qualify for $500K mortgage.
    2) I put only 3% down payment on my mortgage instead of conventional 20%. It was a difficult decision to make due to PMI but I feel more secure with cash liquidity.

    I am an optimistic person but here is my realistic backup strategy if anything falls apart due to immigration (Worse case scenario) -

    1) Sell the house and move out of the US (Housing market conditions could be a determining factor)
    2) Rent the house (I don't think this should be a problem... LOCATION is the key)
    3) Go into Foreclosure (Highly unlikely but you are destined to be screwed anyways)

    Does anyone have a better backup plan? Please share here :)

    That's interesting. You paid only 3% and how much loan you took and what's your monthly payment?

    You guys are providing me with lots of encouragement. I very much appreciate your suggestions or inputs.



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  • nojoke
    09-29 09:06 PM
    its ok, you misunderstood my point. I dont want to divert OP of this thread.

    Anyways the fact of the matter is that we are in a limbo, all indications point to Obama becoming the next president of US. if CIR 2008 was any indication , we as EB applicants are royally screwed if Sen Durbin dictates his immigration policy. What is the use of talking about wars and innocent people when chances are that the advocate of his immigration policy is opposed to my main issue of EB reform. high low Taxes, 401k's, houses, Medicare etc will matter if you get to stay here in the first place. A average 6-9 years of paying taxes, supporting medicare and Social Security and we now need to think about moving to different countries where skilled immigrants are welcome....think about it. Just look at the CIR 2008 discussion to understand what i am talking about. Read the senators transcripts.

    My point is if McCain is elected, there is no chance for GC debates. The economy will become so bad that there won't be any support from any law makers. Nobody will touch the immigration bill.





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  • dealsnet
    01-10 03:39 PM
    Palestine was never a country. Even historian knows that there was a kingdom of Israel & Kingdom of Judah. The kings and the timeslines when the kingdoms were destroyed are also known. Due to numerous invasions there was a great diaspora of Jews to the other parts of the world. Even Jerusalem belongs to the Jews. The Romans under Titus burned down the Jewsish temple and killed entire tribes of Jews during the Jewish revolt against Rome in AD. 70. The modern state of Israel was in fact simply returing the ancient land of Israel to the Jews. Kashmir belongs to India. Pakistan has occupied Kashmir.



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  • nogc_noproblem
    08-22 03:10 PM
    A man walks into a bar and he's really pissed.

    The bartender gives him a drink and asks what the problem is. All he says is, "All lawyers are idiots."

    A man sitting in the corner shouts, "I take offense to that!"

    The pissed-off guy asks him, "Why? Are you a lawyer?"

    He replies, "No, I'm an idiot."





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  • gk_2000
    07-29 05:51 PM
    100 thousand is not for a president to worry about. But 11-12 Million is a different story..



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  • singhsa3
    08-05 04:42 PM
    Don't worry guys, this is just a time pass while people are waiting for Nebraska to issue some green cards..;)





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  • Pineapple
    12-24 04:31 PM
    Dude, I have donated over $ 1000 to IV so far, and participated in every campaign, and made enough calls to give me blisters, all without seeking attention or green dots. Next please?

    I think you and many others like you didn't want to go in the first place. You are just inventing an excuse.
    There are other threads on this forum, this is not a good excuse. If you don't like this thread, don't bother reading it. Its really simple.



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  • unitednations
    03-24 04:04 PM
    No, they figured out that it is consulting companies that are exploiting loopholes. Tell me what proof you have that ALL consulting companies are complying with H-1B requriements.

    Is benching that happens in consulting legal? Is paying salary according to prevailing wages in Maine and sending the contractor to work in Manhattan legal? Please tell me how these practises by desi consulting firms are legal.

    And you're telling me I am ignorant! You're funny :D

    Every year; before tax deadline IRS issues a few press releases on arrrests/convictions for tax crimes.

    They time it just so they can get it out to taxpayers prior to completing their tax returns that they should think twice before they try anything funny.


    Now; I can tell you that most companies were not diligent in getting LCA's in different locations. It is not a big crime of not getting LCA's in different locations. However, if people are getting paid lower amount in a different location then what that LCA would have been then you have a problem.

    If companies stick with giving $60k in salaries then most laws in h-1b go away and even if you don't have LCA for other location; you would have been getting paid more.

    Now; I do know some candidates who worked for those iowa companies. They transferred h-1b on same day that news broke out. I looked at their w-2 and paystubs and they were working at a higher rate jurisdiction. However; they were getting paid considerable sums in per diems. On paper it showed they may have only been getting paid $45K but in reality they were getting paid a lot more. All the company has to do is make the per diem taxable and it would count as h-1b wage and that will get rid of most of the trouble they are currently in. It was a case of employer and employee greed but at high level it wouldn't have harmed anybody; just on paper it didn't look right.

    Hardly anyone at a staffing company will be making less then $60K unless they are trying to do things in a tax free way. If this was the only issue in the iowa compoanies then i am pretty sure this was an attempt to make a big splash which will slowly get settled in a quiet way.

    Sort of what happened with Arthur Anderson in Enron. AA got convicted for obstruction of justice; whole thing fell apart; they lost employees, clients, the firm; pensions, etc. After appeals they won and the governmnet impacted so many peoples lives for nothing.





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  • Macaca
    02-29 09:03 PM
    Oracle Unit Lobbied on Patents, Visas (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022803503.html) Associated Press, Feb 28

    WASHINGTON -- A unit of business software maker Oracle Corp. paid VAR II LLC $140,000 in 2007 to lobby the federal government .

    The firm lobbied Congress on a patent reform bill and immigration reform legislation related to visas for high-tech workers, according to the form posted online Feb. 13 by the Senate's public records office. Oracle USA Inc. paid the firm $140,000 in the second half of 2007 to lobby on those issues after hiring VAR II earlier last year.

    The House last year approved a patent-reform bill intended to reduce litigation, improve patent quality and establish a post-approval evaluation process. Technology and financial services firms support the legislation, but pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies said it would weaken patent protection by reducing infringement penalties. The Senate is considering similar legislation.

    Oracle is based in Redwood City, Calif.

    Lobbyists are required to disclose activities that could influence members of the executive and legislative branches, under a federal law enacted in 1995.



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  • Madhuri
    05-16 11:08 AM
    Very well said Sanju. You put everything in right perspective.





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  • mariner5555
    04-20 01:04 AM
    since nothing much is happening - I thought that I would post this - seems like a worst case scenario -but who knows ..some of his predictions have already come true ..this was interview on mar 24.
    ---------
    Q. Where are home prices going?

    A. Two years ago, I predicted home prices would fall cumulatively 20%, but now I believe it will be at least 30%.

    With a 20% fall in home prices, about 16 million households are under water. They have negative equity, which means the value of their homes is below the value of their mortgages. With a 30% drop in prices, you have 21 million households that are in negative equity. And since the mortgages are no-recourse loans, essentially they can walk away.

    Even if only half of the 16 million households were to walk away, that alone could lead to losses for the financial system of $1 trillion. Even a 20% drop in home values may imply losses of $1 trillion that are not priced into the market today. So that's the floor. Again, it could be higher — as much as $2 trillion — if prices fall 30% and more people walk.

    Q. You are predicting problems in commercial real estate, which we haven't seen yet. When do you expect the crisis to hit?

    A. The same kind of reckless lending practices that occurred in subprime also occurred in commercial real estate — things like really high loan-to-value ratios and inflated estimations of how much rent would increase. If you look at the CMBX index (which tracks bonds backed by real estate loans), the spreads imply a huge number of defaults on existing commercial real estate loans. More important, the market for new commercial real estate loans is totally frozen, like the one for subprime new originations.

    Q. But when will this happen?

    A. That shoe has not dropped yet. But I expect the severe recession in residential housing will lead to a severe recession in commercial real estate. The reason is simple: If you go west, you have entire ghost towns outside of Phoenix, Las Vegas and throughout California. Who is going to be building new shopping centers, shopping malls, offices and stores where you have ghost towns? Also, there has been a lot of commercial real estate activity in the last couple of years, including a huge increase in retail capacity at a time of consumer-led recession. So, I expect [a commercial real estate] collapse will occur in the next few quarters.

    Q. How bad will things get?

    A. I would argue this is the worst financial crisis the U.S. has had since the Great Depression. We haven't seen this type of real financial turmoil for the last 70 years. Of course, it's not going to be as bad as the Great Depression. But this isn't your typical run-of-the-mill recession that in the last two episodes lasted only eight months with a minor contraction in output. This is going to last at least 12 months and more likely 18 months, which is something we haven't seen in decades.

    Q. So you expect the economy to start turning around in mid-2009?

    A. The real economic activity, yes. But some parts of the system are going to be in a severe contraction for much longer; home prices are going to keep falling for another three years, in my view. And the financial mess is going to take years to clean up.
    -----------------------------



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  • sc3
    07-14 04:21 PM
    People in Eb3 visa are not our enemies most of these people are our friends. We all have friends in both categories suffering. The issue exploded because of the contents of letter drafted by pani_6. It was pitting eb2 vs eb3. We all agreed all along that entire immigration system needs to be changed but here we have a letter that says dont give visa's to eb2 because we are not getting any. That I feel is unfair because all these days these spill visa's were going to ROW and people like pani_6 were perfectly happy but once their friends from eb2 (Ind) started to get them he was crying fowl.


    I think we all agreed that the letter contents were somewhat pre-baked. The letter campaign was a idea in the right direction.

    And mind you, we are now very active not because EB2 is moving, but because we now have concrete proof that the system was changed this year. I had my doubts, and had been asking about it for a while now, but all of the people said, "no you are wrong, the spill-over is working as it should, and as it always has". We have just recently realized that we were being misled, and there indeed has been a change. That is the reason we are being active.


    Yes, you agreed that the immigration system needs to be overhauled, but the only relief in sight is for EB2 folks.. There is no legislation that will help EB3 backlogs. Recapture will again help Eb2 folks, and given the new "pecking order" that has been wrongly put by USICS, Eb3 will never truly benefit from any of these bills.

    IV has its goals, as any organization should, and we fully realize that it can't keep everyone happy. However, some of you are stopping voices of others from being heard -- which is fine too. IV is a private organization that can choose to censor or restrict some kind of activities. But when you do that, you can't hope that everyone will support the organization, and believe everything that is being told to them.





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  • aadimanav
    07-13 09:35 PM
    Version 2 of the "Petition to Recapture Lost Visas" is added here:

    http://immigrationvoice.org/forum/showthread.php?p=262392#post262392

    Please share your views.

    Thanks,



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  • gcgonewild
    07-28 03:28 PM
    Yeah Right,

    If I'm the PM, I would be ignoring them for years to come.. May be If I ignore 'em, I would say it. Not keep doing lip service for 2 years. Not be held hostage by CHC.


    Frankly he has a lot more serious problems to worry about than our issues. from the backlog, we are around 0.25 million and you have 300 million people in this country and 10% of them unemployed. So yeah, blame him all you want but any sane politician in his position would do the same.

    Let's consider this for example. Imagine you were in India and you had a few 100,000 decently skilled immigrants from some other country, who were waiting for their green card. Now you are the PM and you have to choose your focus between fighting terrorism, fighting inflation, high budget deficits with healthcare costs, high unemployment rate or giving green cards to these 100,000 people. I would think there would be a lot of pissed off countrymen in India who would scream at you when you are ignoring real issues and focussing instead on giving green cards to foreigners especially when you already have a sky high unemployment rate. Wouldn't be a great political strategy, would it? But maybe you would still do it, perhaps if you have a vested interest in getting it done.

    Still, next year you can bet that he'll do something on immigration since the states have started legislating on their own now and they can't afford this to continue.





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  • sledge_hammer
    06-25 08:04 AM
    I agree with you 100%. These guys here are all getting worked up as if the world will come to an end in 2 years and it is unreasonable to think beyong 2011. A regular investor like us, someone w/ a job, one who saves in the bank, and/or dollar cost averages in a 401(K), should never think short term.

    Let's see 10 years from now who will be in a better position - the guy who owned a home or a guy that is renting.

    Of course, some guys will start complaining about GC, but then other posts here are claiming that regardless of GC, buying a house now is dissasterous.

    Why are be debating 3 - 4 years rent vs own? As the subject indicates "long" term prospects of buying a home..we of all the ppl should know the meaning of the word "long" based on our "long" wait for PD (which I think should be renamed to retrogress date because I see nothing priority about it)..the point being lets debate 10 years rent vs own..as against 3-4...I think over a 10 year timeline the buyers would come out ahead of the renters..maybe not in CA but in other states that's quite likely..





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  • thakurrajiv
    04-06 09:35 AM
    I think you missed my point. I was not trying to connect the ARM reset schedule with write-offs at wall street firms. Instead, I was trying to point out that there will be increased number of foreclosures as those ARMs reset over the next 36 months.

    The next phase of the logic is: increased foreclosures will lead to increased inventory, which leads to lower prices, which leads to still more foreclosures and "walk aways" (people -citizens- who just dont want to pay the high mortgages any more since it is way cheaper to rent). This leads to still lower prices. Prices will likely stabilize when it is cheaper to buy vs. rent. Right now that calculus is inverted. In many bubble areas (both coasts, at a minimum) you would pay significantly more to buy than to rent (2X or more per month with a conventional mortgage in some good areas).

    On the whole, I will debate only on financial and rational points. I am not going to question someone's emotional position on "homeownership." It is too complicated to extract someone out of their strongly held beliefs about how it is better to pay your own mortgage than someone elses, etc. All that is hubris that is ingrained from 5+ years of abnormally strong rising prices.

    Let us say that you have two kids, age 2 and 5. The 5 year old is entering kindergarten next fall. You decide to buy in a good school district this year. Since your main decision was based on school choice, let us say that your investment horizon is 16 years (the year your 2 year old will finish high school at age 18).

    Let us further assume that you will buy a house at the price of $600,000 in Bergen County, with 20% down ($120,000) this summer. The terms of the loan are 30 year fixed, 5.75% APR. This loan payment alone is $2800 per month. On top of that you will be paying at least 1.5% of value in property taxes, around $9,000 per year, or around $750 per month. Insurance will cost you around $1500 - $2000 per year, or another $150 or so per month. So your total committed payments will be around $3,700 per month.

    You will pay for yard work (unless you are a do-it-yourself-er), and maintenance, and through the nose for utilities because a big house costs big to heat and cool. (Summers are OK, but desis want their houses warm enough in the winter for a lungi or veshti:))

    Let us assume further that in Bergen county, you can rent something bigger and more comfortable than your 1200 sq ft apartment from a private party for around $2000. So your rental cost to house payment ratio is around 1.8X (3700/2000).

    Let us say further that the market drops 30% conservatively (will likely be more), from today through bottom in 4 years. Your $600k house will be worth 30% less, i.e. $420,000. Your loan will still be worth around $450k. If you needed to sell at this point in time, with 6% selling cost, you will need to bring cash to closing as a seller i.e., you are screwed. At escrow, you will need to pay off the loan of $450k, and pay 6% closing costs, which means you need to bring $450k+$25k-$420k = $55,000 to closing.

    So you stand to lose:

    1. Your down payment of $120k
    2. Your cash at closing if you sell in 4 years: $55k
    3. Rental differential: 48 months X (3700 - 2000) = $81k

    Total potential loss: $250,000!!!

    This is not a "nightmare scenario" but a very real one. It is happenning right now in many parts of the country, and is just now hitting the more populated areas of the two coasts. There is still more to come.

    My 2 cents for you guys, desi bhais, please do what you need to do, but keep your eyes open. This time the downturn is very different from the business-investment related downturn that followed the dot com bust earlier t his decade.
    Jung.lee very good second post from you. People still think it is very easy to keep on holding onto your home for long time till turn around happens.
    But life events can cause you to sell like
    1. Job loss and not able to find job in the same area till back up money runs out.
    2. Kids grow up and you need to pay for college and you have little saving as you are holding to see turn around
    3. Hope not but some medical emergency.

    There can be many more situations. Do you know what people are currently doing in these situation ?
    Get money from Home equity ATM machine !!

    Personally I will be scared to buy now as my payment will be more than 50% of my salary and any of above situations will cause me to sell.
    The prices have to become saner ....
    This is very different from anything we have seen. Wall street will change, money will be harder to come by.
    I think time to say " Welcome savings again ". Long term very good for US as country.





    supreet
    06-07 04:52 PM
    I think it really is a matter of personal choice. A house is much more than a mere investment. For people like us it adds another layer of complications
    due to our status (or rather...lack of status).

    We are in Bay Area (San Jose Metro area) and were paying around $2000 in rent. We just bought a condo where our payments (mortgage + Taxes + HoA) are going
    to be around 2300. Hopefully we will be getting back around 400-500 in taxes and this makes it a good deal. However only 15 days after moving into our
    new house, I was laid off and now our biggest concern is if I am not able to get a job in next few weeks and if we have to go back we will be almost
    80k down the hole.





    satishku_2000
    05-16 05:24 PM
    That's called pandering. To unions like IEEE and hispanic vote base. These ppl don't have any interest in America's competitiveness or interests of people at large rather work in the interests of their party and their re-election.

    But I am suprised at the attitudes of some forums members who want to screw the ppl behind us.
    Anyway I agree, we should be worried about delays to i-485 processing if 11 million ppl are added to USCIS queue.


    Hope you got me right when I asked these rhetorical questions. I dont want to screw any one behind me ... I am all for expanding american dream for as many people as possible ..