The Associated Press published an article highlighting the major events in the Internet’s 40-year history, and one of them is worth mentioning in this blog:

1994: Andreessen and others on the Mosaic team form a company to develop the first commercial Web browser, Netscape, piquing the interest of Microsoft Corp. and other developers who would tap the Web’s commerce potential. Two immigration lawyers introduce the world to spam, advertising their green card lottery services.

Oops! Who would have thought that among all the drugs, x-rated contents and getting rich quickly schemes, immigration would be linked to the birth of SPAM!

But it is no coincidence that green card lottery took home the honor. Even today, there are numerous scammers trying to make a few quick bucks off people eager to immigrate to the United States, and the DV Program is just perfect for them:

First of all, it is a lottery, literally. Anyone with minimum qualifications has a chance to win a green card. If this isn’t attractive, what is? So no matter what the odds of winning are, there will always be a huge crowd willing to give it a shot. Shady businesses never have to worry about the lack of spam targets.

Secondly, many would-be immigrants interested in the GC lottery know nothing about U.S. immigration, making them ideal for spammers.

Thirdly, the U.S. government has limited options to crack down such companies, because some of them may be operating legally, although unethically.

Search engines, on the other hand, aren’t doing much either. A search for “green card lottery” turns up quite a few questionable websites ranked high on top pages. Some of them are clearly marked as scam by service providers such as McAfee’s SiteAdvisor. Hopefully search algorithms will get smarter in the future.

Spammers and scammers use ever-changing techniques to lure victims, but they usually have a few things in common:

1. Pretend to be U.S. government, or affiliated with government agencies;
2. Design a logo very similar to that of USCIS or DOS, but hide legal disclaimer in a hart-to-find place;
3. Charge  a fee to submit a diversity visa (green card lottery) entry;
4. Promise better chance of winning if you pay them.

If you receive an email with regard to green card lottery, or come across a website that does any of the above, you should simply ignore them or proceed with extreme caution. Note that there are legitimate businesses, especially community based organizations, that may charge a small fee for filling out DV entry forms on behalf of applicants. This is reasonable, and is helpful to people who don’t know English well enough to complete the task. But submitting a lottery entry is absolutely free. Also the State Department (www.state.gov), which operates the official green card lottery program, only notifies selected applicants by mail – never by email.

I downloaded the job search data and created a chart for the index. It is very interesting that several “trends” immediately jump out at you:

1. Job search volume started to increase in early 2008, and hiked further in 2009, reflecting the current economic downturn and the massive layoffs it brings.
2. Every year there is a dramatic drop in job searches in late December. Christmas is Christmas, everyone has to take a break!
3. Thanksgiving time correlates with a similar, albeit smaller dip for the same reason. It may also indicate that businesses are probably trying to figure out their bottom line for the year, and becoming more cautious with their staffing plan during the holiday season.
4. Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day Holidays are all clearly reflected in the chart, as more people take vacations resulting in fewer online searches for employment. This is very impressive and I think it partially validates the accuracy of the data.

Google’s own visualization uses the same data, and is plotted using the 7-day moving average.

Privacy advocates often criticize Google for collecting too much information, but I doubt anyone would argue that in this case, big G indeed put the data in good use. And honestly, I think Google so far has treated user information with great care and respect. Hopefully predicting economic trend is just a start, and search data will be analyzed and processed in much more details to benefit everyone.

USCIS is getting ready to launch its immigration tracker, maybe as soon as late September!

Aneesh Chopra, the first U.S. chief technology officer, mentioned it during a speech in Silicon Valley today:

‘Customer-friendly may not be at the top of your list of words to express how this agency [USCIS] operates,’ Mr. Chopra said. Still, he argued that the immigrant workers were ‘hungry’ to do better and should soon have tools to help them provide people with better information like how far along they are in the green-card process.

We discussed the tool in an April 27th post. And we are glad that USCIS is actually pulling it together already (vs. two years from now).

Regardless of what USCIS would name it, the “tracker” supposedly will provide real status information about I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status. According to Mr. Aytes, USCIS Acting Deputy Director, it will be much better than the existing status checking system which mostly display one status: “your case is still pending.” Instead, the much anticipated web-based tool is capable of showing “how many people are waiting in line with pending adjustment applications or how long it may be before USCIS can process and approve his application.”

And according to President Obama, immigrants will not only get to check their case status online, but through email and text messaging as well.

Well over 500,000 people are now waiting for their green cards, and even more are waiting to get in line. They can certainly use a status tracker once in a while. Although it doesn’t fix visa retrogression, which is the reason why the line is so long, it hopefully can provide at least an insider’s view on when their ordeal may be over.

Now we just have to wait for the tracker, and see if it actually works.

Here is a sneak peak of the new “vastly improved” USCIS website, to be launched September 22, 2009:

Redesigned USCIS Website

After logging into your gmail account, go to Settings, General, under Browser connection, check “Always use https,” and finally click Save Changes. That is it.

Why? When you access your webmail through a public wireless or non-encrypted network, a hacker may intercept the signals being transferred between your computer and the network. With some determination and software, the hacker may be able to collect “authentication cookies” used by your webmail service, and gain full access to your account, including the capability to change your password.

Since you have no control of a public network, other than not using it at all, you can encrypt the data instead – making them unreadable even if someone steals them. Turning on Gmail’s “Always use https” feature will do just that, by applying SSL protection to all information being transferred through the internet. SSL is commonly used by banks and ecommerce websites to protect their customer’s personal data, and is now available to Gmail users for free. So why not take advantage of it?

Gmail may become a little slower after turning on “always use https,” but I personally haven’t noticed any difference. Also a few applications may not yet be compatible with this feature. If it becomes troublesome, and you fully trust the security of the network you are using, you can turn this feature off.

Gmail https setting

Another security feature for Gmail, which is relatively new, is to monitor who accessed your email account and from where.

Near the bottom of your gmail page, find the “Last account activity” line. Click on “Details” will open up a window that lists the last few activities on your account. Information provided include Access Type (browser, Google toolbar, mobile, etc.), IP Addresses, and Date/Time. If any activity looks suspicious (not from you), you should investigate further and change your password. Note that if you use the “forward mail” feature, Google’s IP address may show up there.

If you forgot to log out of your gmail account from a computer you used before, there is a convenient buttion “Sign out all other sessions” that allows you to end all open sessions.

We like Gmail, so much so that we use it to communicate with site visitors who send us questions. If you contact us, don’t be surprised if you receive a reply from a Gmail account. One thing for sure, however, is that if you receive anything that asks for donations, or any kind of personal information, it is not from immigrationroad.com.

Given the economic downturn, we are filing substantially fewer H-1B applications than we filed last year …

A recent study by the National Center for Education Statistics found that 39% of all Masters degrees in computer science from U.S. universities – and a startling 61% of PhDs – were earned by temporary residents.

While the number of visa holders is very small compared to the U.S. workforce, their contribution is huge.  For example, last year 35 percent of Microsoft’s patent applications in the U.S. came from new inventions by visa and green card holders … And a recent study found that for every H-1B position requested, U.S. technology companies increase their employment by 5 new jobs.

… many very valuable employees may not be selected for H-1Bs this year.  For many, this means that they will have to leave – taking their skills, innovation, inspiration, and valuable economic contributions with them, at a time when America needs them the most.

Very well said.

Google Voice is a service that not only gives you a real phone number for all your phones, but also provides voicemail, SMS, call forwarding,  phone routing, teleconferencing, call blocking, call screening, and many other advanced features. For example, you can use your Google number to make calls, or receive calls and automatically forward them to your other phones (cell, home, work, etc.). You may also read your voice mail online, because the service offers transcripts for your messages.

You can make international calls with Google Voice too, although this feature is not free. However, the rate will be quite low, even compared with low-cost phone cards. For example, $0.02/min for calls to China is pretty reasonable. If voice quality is decent, I’m sure many of our visitors will find it attractive. I’ll certainly give it a try when it comes out!

I have been a fan of many of Google’s programs: Earth, Picasa, Gmail, Analytics, and the list goes on and on. So as soon as Google Voice is released I’ll give it a shot; maybe just link one phone to it at first and see how it works. However, if you have privacy concerns, you are certainly not alone. The service does link your phone calls, your emails and your voicemail altogether and store them in a database. Although much of this information is already available somewhere in the cyber space, Google Voice makes them more accessible.

But the desktop with Vista Basic quickly started to annoy me: whenever I put it in sleep mode, it appeared to be fully awake the next time I saw it. I tried to play with the power settings but the stubborn machine always waked up from standby, and randomly. The Microsoft website didn’t offer much help, so I turned to Google. Well, apparently I’m not the only one looking for an answer.

Wake-On-LAN (WOL)

Apparently Vista is configured to enable a feature called “Wake-on-LAN.” It automatically wakes up to check network status or when there is network traffic. To disable WOL, follow these steps:

1. Go to Start, then Control Panel;



2. Click on Device Manager



3. Click on the “+” sign next to the Network adapters, you should see a list of installed adapters;
4. Right click one of them, and select Properties



5. On the popup window, select the Power Management tab
6. Uncheck the box next to the option “Allow this device to wake the computer”



7. Click OK and repeat the above steps for other adapters, if any;
8. You are done. Your computer will now have a good night’s sleep.

Note that if you prefer to use this feature, for remote access, for example, you may have to experiment with your Bios settings and jumper configuration to allow WOL and in the mean time, fix the random waking up problem.

But wait, your other devices may awake your computer at inconvenient times as well.

USB Devices

A slight move of your mouse, a tap on the keyboard, or detection of a wireless mouse’s presence could all wake up a sleeping Vista. Fortunately the fix is easy:

1. Go to Start, Control Panel, Device Manager;
2. Click on Keyboards or Mice and Other Pointing Devices;
3. Right click on your device and go to Properties;
4. Go to the Power Managerment tab;
5. Remove the check mark next to “Allow this device to wake the computer.”

Some people may prefer to use the keyboard to wake up a PC, which is convenient too. I opt to use only the power button for standby and waking up, and instead use the soft “shut down” in the Windows start menu to turn the computer off. Works well for me.

While reading up on the internet, I found more features which may wake a computer from standby, before I noticed them:

Internet Time Synchronization

If your computer wakes up at the exact same time, check your time setting:

1. Start, Control Panel, Date and Time;
2. Internet Time;
3. Change Settings;
4. Uncheck “Synchronize with an Internet time server.”

Personally I think this can be a very useful feature, especially if correct time is important in whatever you’re doing. But for most people it probably doesn’t matter.

Disk Defragmentation Schedule

Scheduled disk defragmentation can wake up a computer in sleep mode as well. To turn it off, or change the schedule:

1. Start;
2. All Programs;
3. Accessories;
4. System Tools;
5. Disk Defragmenter;
6. Uncheck “Run on a schedule (recommended);”
7. You can also leave the feature on but change it to once a month at a more convenient time.

That is about it!