Plan falls short of Indian techies’ hopes

President Barack Obama camapaigned to sell his immigration plan to shield up to five million people from deportation and retain high-skilled immigrants, largely from India and China, analysts called it a mixed bag. Obama’s plan, according to the White House, ‘focuses on cracking down on illegal immigration at the border; deporting felons, not families; and accountability through criminal background checks and taxes’. Nearly six million Mexicans make up over half of an estimated 11.2 unauthorised immigrants in the US. India is a distant fourth top source country with 450,000 living in the country without papers. While about 8.1 million unauthorised immigrants make up 5.1% of the US labour force, many of them engaged in low paying jobs that Americans don’t want to do, Indians cornered nearly two thirds of the total work permits for skilled workers in 2012. What he’s offering is a ‘common sense’ first step to fixing a ‘broken system,’ Obama on Friday told a rowdy crowd at Del Sol High School in Las Vegas, where two years ago he had outlined his post-election promise to finally reform immigration in his second term. Obama also asserting his plan was ‘not amnesty’ as alleged by his Republican critics.