Things we lost in the fire
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Racist fire apparently hits only desi homes, news at 11 |
Southern California is burning. 250,000 people are on the move. A desi techie loses his apartment in a wildfire, and what’s the first thing he saves?The only thing I managed to save was my H-1 visa
…
His H-1B visa! Let his family photos burn, but damn if he’s gonna lose his work authorization.
“I saw a live video of our apartment complex burning,” said Raj Panandian, a 26-year-old software engineer. He and several of his neighbors left the complex at 4 a.m. after receiving a telephone call from San Diego County Fire Department officials. “I had just settled down there six months ago,” said Mr. Panandian, an Indian citizen. “I had bought furniture, and everything. The only thing I managed to save was my passport and my H-1 work visa. I think everything else is gone.” [Link]
on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007, 12:46 pm in Humor, News › 
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Do you blame him? He could have been shipped off to Guantanamo or worse to New Orleans!
I can see the irony here, Manish, but not the humor.
And what’s with this:
??
Original caption from NYT:
Peer (this, not this) closer at the photo :)
The issues here as I see it: If browns were in fact disproportionately impacted - and even in the picture, not everybody is brown - was it because they lived in apt buildings too close to areas known to be vulnerable to forest fires? Was that because they were on H-1B visas, where their employer signed the lease, while they just lived there? Is their (non) immigrant status and/or race/ethnicity impacting the quality of relief they are getting from the city/county/state? Were their belongings insured? Will they be eligible for any cash relief from federal/state despite their non-immigrant status? Where are local South Asian organizations on this?
Personally I want to know about the fire’s childhood and whether it had abusive parents.
Hey ,
I think our brown brother showed terrific presence of mind by grabbing his passport and H1 Visa.He undoubtedly saved himself a lot of grief from relleif authorities not to mention DHS etc etc
My husband and I have a deal : if our house is on fire, he grabs my son and I grab the accordion folder containing our Green cards, SSNs and insurance papers and then we escape !
Why does this fire hate America?!
@6
Runa,
Why don’t you keep that accordian file with GC, SSN passport etc in a fire/flood proof safety box in a bank? keep multiple copies as backup on HDD and USB drives. That way all you have to worry is your boy! :-)
Actually,as I think about it (and look back) the H-1B visa is on the passport itself. So grab the passport, but even that’s no biggie. Duplicate passports can be created - it’s not nearly as big a deal, especially if a documented ‘Act of God’ occurs.
The work authorization document - the employer has the original or duplicate - and it is (or was) not a huge deal to get a duplicate when necessary.
So - can’t believe I’m actually saying this now - but it was just paranoia on the guy’s part, and comedy for us. Then again, having just moved there six months ago - he might not actually have had much to save - furniture, clothes, appliances, even books - no big deal - can be replaced. Photos - he probably has uploaded them somewhere already.
This fire can be less threatening if it could be divided into small-small semi-autonomous fires
AFAIK - GC/Passports/SSN (some or all) of these are docos that an immigrant (non US citizen) should carry with him at all times. Even when he/she drives to work.
A couple of years ago a homeless guy set his lean-to on fire next to my Brooklyn loft. It was a semi-urgent fire alarm (my building was largely concrete), but it still took me a good ten minutes to unscrew, pad and leave with what really mattered to me: the hard drives with my livelihood, writing, letters and photos.
I need to get hot-swappable drives and slide-out drive trays. (I don’t use laptops for various reasons having to do with building software.)
chachaji,
We thought about that - but the better half travels all the time to Canada on work - sometimes unplanned hence needs handy access to the PP+ GC!
Maybe its psychological too - wanting to have proof of one’s existence handy in case the authorities want to see ‘em - paranoid I know !
oops sorry :-( i meant “Cliff” not “chachaji”
These techies are not stupid. They usually upload all their digital photographs on Picasa, Flickr, Yahoo etc and keep a backup :)
I don’t have any family photos with me. Didn’t bring any cos I knew I’d never open the album. Do people actually go back and look at the pictures they take? Am I strange?
> Why don’t you keep that accordian file with GC, SSN passport etc in a fire/flood proof safety box in a bank? keep multiple
> copies as backup on HDD and USB drives. That way all you have to worry is your boy! :-)
Maybe you can make multiple copies of the boy too and keep some at the bank. That way you have no worries.
;=)
did you hear what glen beck on cnn said about the fire and the victims?
wrote a long ghastly letter to cnn..
what a tool.
Some family friends were affected by this. They had to be evacuated. They loaded their cars and promptly drove over to be with family upstate. It’s an indefinite trip. immigrants without such connections in driving distance, and without the means to stay away indefinitely, staying put nearby is the best option. I’m sure the threat of looters is on everyone’s mind although I have a feeling desis will bond together very well in this situation and come out better for it.
950K+ evacuated - probably many more browns - does that make this funnier?
maybe you could be more useful by posting something sympathetic about this tragedy - and let Apu be Apu!
This is much more serious than I imagined.
I haven’t gone through all of the comments but your claim that these were “RACIST FIRES” are totally baseless. You are making a statement from one image which shows a handful of people in a situation that affected over a million others. I am an Indian myself and care about these issues just as much as any other Indian. But I wouldn’t start making such statements based on imcomplete information. I have been there myself and have seen the people who have been afffected.
From your post I can interpret just one thing; Racism exists, but within yourself.
Come now, SM. I think we both know this mass displacement, this loss of a thousand homes, this so-called act of God was suckled on Dyer and raised on Macaulay.
Also, try some of this.
Manish I can’t agree more to SM’s comment. I don’t know how you can say its racist fire? and your reply to him is totally confusing I don’t know how can you compare those with this fire? Its like comparing horses and mango ( different like them )
Don’t understand your logic.
Calm down guys. Do you really need “humor” tag for pointing out the obvious ?
Oh..and infact Manish has already tagged it under humor. There you go.
Isn’t that the problem though?
Until reading some of the comments above, I never understood why some non-desi friends allege that….desis lack a sense of humor and iorny.
Erm, from the Wiki article:
“However, it should be noted that the clergy of the Golden Temple at Amritsar, led by Arur Singh, honoured Dyer by declaring him an honorary Sikh, on condition that he renounce one cigarette a year.”
WTF?
Black humor
It’s on the Internet, so it must be true! :)
A couple of years ago, two of my friends were involved in a very bad crash. Somehow they figured that their Jeep was going to catch on fire and started to run. A few seconds later, one of them stopped, ran back to get his “paperwork” out of the car.
When we heard the story we burst out laughing, but that was one of the smartest thing he did. If you lose your paperwork, in between the Indian Embassy and the USCIS, your life will become hell and I mean it.
Raj’s furniture and house, although a great loss are easier to replace considering the red tape he would have had to navigate to prove his status and get the relevant documents.