Word: visas
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...medical bill for $106,373 from Miami Children's Hospital. Then there are the credit-card debts. The $10,310 they owe Bank One. The $5,537 they owe Chase Manhattan Bank. The $8,222 they owe MBNA America. The $4,925 they owe on their Citibank Preferred Visa card. The $6,838 they owe on their Discover card. The $6,458 they owe on their MasterCard. "People don't understand, unless they have a medically needy child, these kinds of circumstances," says Charles Trapp, 42, a mail carrier...
...industry bankrolled studies to back its claims. In February 1998 the WEFA Group, a Philadelphia-based economics consulting firm, released a report contending that personal bankruptcies cost each American household an average of $400 a year. Paid for by MasterCard International and Visa USA, the WEFA study put the overall cost to the economy at $44 billion in 1997. Said Mark Lauritano, a WEFA senior vice president: "Clearly, the American consumer is facing a significant burden as the result of bankruptcy, both through higher prices and increased interest rates." The dollar-cost claims--which were disingenuous at best--would become...
...Other Visa- and MasterCard-financed studies asserted that many whose debts are discharged in bankruptcy could actually pay some of their bills but don't. The Credit Research Center at Georgetown University estimated that 25% of the debtors who file in Chapter 7 could repay more than 30% of their nonhousing debt over five years. The study warned that the continuing rise in bankruptcy filings would increase the cost of credit. It concluded: "Our results imply that the bankruptcy system itself is contributing to these rising costs by offering the opportunity to wipe out debt with a single signature...
IMMIGRANTS Silicon Valley and other high-tech employers are bringing into the U.S. 115,000 computer programmers, engineers, scientists and the like each year under H1-B visas (these allow people with special skills that the economy needs to enter the U.S. outside regular immigration quotas). But employers insist they need more, and bills are moving through Congress to raise the limit to as many as 195,000. Among others, roughly half of all recent alumni of the six-campus Indian Institute of Technology are said to be working in the U.S., including Harmanjit Singh and about 24 others from...
...lies between tenuous to non-existent. Those who flee fear political retaliation, not just hunger and poverty. Yet the rule for Haitian refugees who reach the United States is repatriation. Cubans who reach U.S. soil, however, are often granted parole status, which allows them to apply for a work visa immediately and to petition for permanent residency after only a year. Haitians on Florida's beaches are almost guaranteed being sent home, Cubans will almost certainly be allowed to stay. Some have denounced the policy as racist. While the reason for the difference in restrictions is not exclusively linked...