May 4 –– Rep. Dan Burton, one of the Congressmen most critical of India, who is Chairman of the Congressional Subcommittee on Human Rights and Wellness, has scheduled a hearing on Human Rights Status in Kashmir on May 12 at 10 a.m. in the House Rayburn Office Building in the Main Hearing Room 2154.

The witnesses include Michael Kozak, principal deputy assistant secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in the State Department; David Good, director, Office of India, Nepal and Sri Lanka Affairs at the State Department; T. Kumar, advocacy director-Asia at Amnesty International, U.S.A.; Bob Giuda, chairman, Americans for Resolution of Kashmir; Ghulam-Nabi Fai, executive director, Kashmiri American Council; Gurmit Singh Aulakh, president, Council of Khalistan; Attiya Inayatullah, Aid worker; Selig Harrison, director of the Asia Program, Center for International Policy in Washington.

‘Expressing Concern of Congress Over Iran’s Development of Nuclear Weapons’

May 5 –– House Concurrent Resolution 398 was introduced, ‘Expressing Concern of Congress Over Iran’s Development of Means to Produce Nuclear Weapons’. One of the provisions of HCR 398 “calls upon the governments of the countries whose nationals and corporations are implicated in assisting Iranian nuclear activities, especially Pakistan, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, and Germany, to fully investigate such assistance, to grant the IAEA full access to individuals, sites, and all information related to the investigations, and to immediately review and rectify their export control laws, regulations, and practices in order to prevent further assistance to countries seeking to develop nuclear programs that could support the development of nuclear weapons.”

Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN) asked for an additional five days for consideration of HCR 398 and for any changes that might be introduced to it.

Rep. Kanjorsky on outsourcing and its effect on the domestic labor market

May 6 –– Rep. Kanjorski (D-PA) addressed the issue of outsourcing and its effects on the domestic job markets on the House floor. Of the 2.6 million jobs lost since President Bush came to power, Rep. Kanjorski said, Pennsylvania has be “one of the hardest hit” losing 135,000 manufacturing jobs in the last three years.

“This destructive trend has also begun to expand into other sectors of our economy as companies seeking to cut costs have started shifting engineering, technology, and other service-related jobs to places such as China, India, and the Philippines,” Rep. Kanjorski said. He said

his constituents were increasingly troubled that American employers were importing foreign workers.

He complained that the failure to enforce immigration policies was one of the reasons millions of illegal immigrants were living in the country. “While I support keeping an appropriate level of legal immigration, we must put an immediate halt to our tacit approval of those who flaunt our laws and come here illegally,” he said.

“We must also ensure that a sufficient number of temporary work visas are available in selected areas, such as nursing, agriculture, and tourism, but only where an adequate supply of domestic workers is not available. Finally, we must ensure that current American workers are not losing their jobs or being forced to survive on depressed wages because we are voluntarily importing far more foreign workers than we need through legal and illegal immigration,” he said.

(Reported by Ela Dutt)