Are any of our current elected officials really \u201cfocusing like a laser\u201d on helping local entrepreneurs \u201ccreate new jobs\u201d in Las Vegas? <\/p>\n
Ask Raj Patel. <\/p>\n
Raj Patel owns the City Center motel downtown, near the El Cortez. He\u2019d like to create more jobs with an Indian restaurant, there. He\u2019s also developed a two-story strip mall at Craig Road and Tenaya, out in the northwest suburbs, not far from the Santa Fe Station. <\/p>\n
Raj Patel has invested more than $4 million in Las Vegas. But if your image of a \u201cmillionaire businessman\u201d is some fat guy puffing a cigar, you\u2019d be shocked to walk into the Saffron Restaurant at Craig and Tenaya and ask the bartender for Mr. Patel. Because the young guy tending bar and managing the restaurant IS Raj Patel. The dentist with the offices upstairs? That\u2019s his wife. <\/p>\n
While vacationing in the Bahamas a few years back, Raj ate some Indian food at The Clay Oven, the restaurant at a local motel. He was wowed by the quality, and arranged to meet the chef, Tilak Raj, no relation. <\/p>\n
Raj Patel tells a story about a diner getting off a transcontinental flight with \u201cgo\u201d container from New York containing a dish he wished someone could make for him, a kind of chutney. He says Tilak Raj tasted the dish, went out into the kitchen, and matched it. No recipe, no list of ingredients. Just by taste. The traveler said Tilak\u2019s was better. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy dream was to do this restaurant with Tilak,\u201d Raj says. <\/p>\n
Tilak Raj had a U.S. visitor visa, good through 2018. He visited the Patels here, advising them on their menu and helping devise their recipes for the restaurant that was to become \u201cSaffron Flavors of India,\u201d though on his visitor\u2019s visa the chef couldn\u2019t actually cook in this country. <\/p>\n
Now, if you know anything about ethnic restaurants in America today, you know that many, many of them have chefs and other kitchen workers to whom immigration lawyers politely refer as \u201cout of status.\u201d It\u2019s a nice way of saying they may have entered the country on one kind of visa or another, but they didn\u2019t go home when they were supposed to. <\/p>\n
Raj Patel could probably have arranged for Tilak Raj to stay here illegally. He says he\u2019s met Indian chefs in California who have been here for decades, illegally, raising children with \u201cbirthright\u201d U.S. citizenship. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re all just waiting for the next big amnesty,\u201d Raj says. But \u201cI didn\u2019t want to do it that way. We wanted to be on the up-and-up, we wanted to do everything legally. My sister works for the U.S. government. You can imagine the kind of security check we went through when she got that job — I mean the whole family. I wouldn\u2019t want to do anything that would jeopardize her career, her chances for advancement.\u201d <\/p>\n
So there was no question of having Tilak overstay his U.S. visitor visa. The chef went home to India about a year ago. Raj hired a local immigration attorney — Andrew Driggs — and started the time consuming process of getting a pair of one-year work visas approved for his master chef, Tilak Raj, and a second Indian chef, Anand Singh Rana. <\/p>\n
Raj Patel\u2019s long-term goal? In the course of a year, he figured the two men could get his restaurant up and running, lunch and dinner, training young chefs who could stay on permanently. Raj talked his brother-in-law, an engineering student, into dropping out of school and serving as temporary chef, using Tilak\u2019s recipes, till the real chef could come to work legally. <\/p>\n
Saffron is open for dinner only, now, six days a week. Even with its chefs still 12,000 miles away, it\u2019s set a new standard, locally, for fine Indian cuisine made with quality ingredients and fresh spices. Once his two Indian chefs arrive, Raj Patel hopes to open a Thai restaurant next door to Saffron (the cuisines are related), and the subsidiary branch downtown, creating 16 to 20 new jobs for Las Vegans. <\/p>\n
To accomplish that, first he had to get the U.S. Department of Labor to certify that no one in this country was available to do the job, at a salary they set. (The federal government instructed Raj he will pay $4,100 per month for these jobs, which they determined to be \u201cthe prevailing wage.\u201d) <\/p>\n
H-1B visas — the kind Microsoft gets for computer engineers — were out of the question, since the two men don\u2019t have official \u201cCulinary degrees\u201d and thus supposedly \u201caren\u2019t professionals.\u201d Raj had to shoot for H-2s, which are more like those issued for seasonal farm laborers. <\/p>\n
At first, Labor Department staffers \u201cacted as though I could hire someone off the street,\u201d Mr. Patel explains. \u201cI had to explain to them this isn\u2019t like hiring a trainee chef at McDonald\u2019s, or even the Olive Garden, where some master chef at corporate level hands them the recipes all written out and they just learn them by rote. This is an art.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Labor Department required Raj to advertise nationally. He traveled to Yuba City, California, to interview some Indian chefs. <\/p>\n
But he didn\u2019t like them, or their cooking. And they didn\u2019t want to move here, anyway. \u201cFrankly, they\u2019re out-of-status, and they\u2019ve got a good thing in California,\u201d where there\u2019s essentially no immigration enforcement, Raj says. \u201cThey didn\u2019t want to take the chance of moving here.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u2018REJECTED\u2019 <\/strong><\/p>\n Finally, the Labor Department signed off, agreeing the restaurant plan couldn\u2019t function without the two Indian chefs. Next, Raj and his attorney managed to get the H-2 visas approved by the appropriate branch of Homeland Security — that being the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service. <\/p>\n That brings us up to last month — April, 2012. Raj\u2019s brother-in-law the engineering student has by now been pulling down kitchen duties at Saffron on a \u201ctemporary\u201d basis for six months. Despite the Great recession, Raj Patel is now ready to start hiring, opening two new restaurants. He\u2019s already spent $10,000 just arranging for the two work visas. All the two Indian chefs have to do is visit the U.S. embassy in New Delhi and get the State Department to OK their visas — the final step. <\/p>\n On April 19, the men visited the embassy for their separate 10-minute interviews. They weren\u2019t allowed to bring any legal counsel. The interviews are in English, though the men would doubtless have been more comfortable speaking Hindi. <\/p>\n And they were both summarily rejected, Anand Singh Rana because the embassy clerks said he had not shown \u201cstrong enough economic and social ties\u201d to India to guarantee he would come back when his visa ran out; Tilak Raj because the clerk said his current photo doesn\u2019t look enough like his 1992 photo on an earlier passport (when he wore a thin mustache), and because one of his identity documents had been issued years ago with his name misspelled \u201cTikal\u201d — though the following page has a correction of that error stamped with an official Indian government seal. <\/p>\n That\u2019s it. No appeal. The two men can\u2019t come here because of decisions made by low-level embassy clerks in New Delhi. Raj Patel\u2019s plans to invest millions creating dozens of new jobs in Las Vegas are dead in the water. <\/p>\n And how have our local politicians reacted? <\/p>\n The lady Raj Patel went to see in Sen. Harry Reid\u2019s office, Christina Martinez, has never gotten back to him. <\/p>\n Congressman Joe Heck\u2019s office won\u2019t help because Raj Patel already contacted Sen. Dean Heller. <\/p>\n In Sen. Dean Heller\u2019s office, a local staffer named Mike Mendenhall has been following developments and keeping Raj updated. But Raj\u2019s pleas for a meeting with the senator, or to have Sen. Heller actually pick up the phone and call someone at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, have brought no response. <\/p>\n I tried to reach Mike Mendenhall; the receptionist at Sen. Heller\u2019s Las Vegas office wouldn\u2019t even put my call through. I was allowed to speak only to Sen. Heller\u2019s press guy in Washington, Stewart Bybee, who declined to discuss any details due to \u201cconfidentiality\u201d but kept repeating the whole process is \u201cvery complicated, very convoluted.\u201d <\/p>\n The Patels are now trying Congresswoman Shelley Berkley. <\/p>\n I called immigration lawyer Allen E. Kaye in New York, the guy who literally wrote the book on getting visas from India — lead author of the Indian chapter of an immigration lawyer\u2019s manual called \u201cThe Visa Processing Guide and Consular Posts Handbook.\u201d <\/p>\n He said the two chefs were essentially doomed when they walked in the door. <\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re literally presumed guilty till proven innocent,\u201d Kaye explains. \u201cThere\u2019s a presumption that you intend to immigrate, that you\u2019re committing fraud and you don\u2019t intend to go home. The burden of proof is on the applicant to overcome that presumption. They can always reapply, but there\u2019s no sense doing that unless something changes, unless they can present some compelling evidence that they\u2019ll go home, or unless someone exerts some political muscle.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know how much more of a social tie to India they can show,\u201d says Raj Patel. \u201cThey both have homes there, wives, houses, children.\u201d <\/p>\n And the last option? <\/p>\n \u201cReceiving inquiries from staff members won\u2019t do it,\u201d says attorney Kaye. \u201cIf the embassy personnel pick up the phone and the congressman or the senator is actually ion the phone, expressing an interest in the matter, that will get some attention.\u201d <\/p>\n I told Stewart Bybee I\u2019d love to write up a \u201cstory with a happy ending,\u201d if Sen. Heller could see his way clear to pick up the phone and ask why these men who have tried to do everything legally, everything by the book, aren\u2019t allowed to come here. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so disappointing, after they jump through all the hoops with immigration, only to have them rejected by the State Department,\u201d says Raj Patel\u2019s immigration attorney, Andrew Driggs. <\/p>\n Was he surprised? <\/p>\n \u201cYes. I\u2019ve done H-2 visas that were turned down before, but this was two people well established in their careers. Here are two people who have been here and returned to India. That shows ties to the home country. … And then Tilak had a visitor visa which was valid through 2018 and they canceled that as well, just to stick the knife in a little more. It\u2019s so arbitrary.\u201d <\/p>\n Why weren\u2019t the two men better prepared? <\/p>\n The embassy personnel in New Delhi \u201csay we don\u2019t have time to look at everybody\u2019s documents,\u201d attorney Driggs adds. \u201cSo they did have documents there relating to their families, to their homes, and to their work outside of India.\u201d The embassy clerks \u201calmost never look at their documents. … It\u2019s so disconcerting to try to deal with consulates. There is no appeal right. You can reapply, but unless we can bring some pressure to bear the decision is not going to be any different.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cA WAR ON LEGAL IMMIGRATION\u2019 <\/strong><\/p>\n So it\u2019s really just \u201cwho you know\u201d? The only thing that can help is if some congressman or senator calls — something they\u2019re only likely to do for some big campaign donor? <\/p>\n \u201cYeah. We\u2019ve been trying to get that help for some time,\u201d says Driggs the attorney. \u201cThere\u2019s a fellow from Heller\u2019s office. They have just been getting us information rather than providing us help, which it\u2019s really not.\u201d <\/p>\n And the current administration is doing nothing to help a legitimate businessmen bring in a catalyst like these two chefs, the personnel the Patels need to help create more jobs right here in America? <\/p>\n \u201cOh no,\u201d says attorney Driggs. \u201cThey\u2019re doing everything they can to either slow it down or frustrate it. … The California service center has been really horrible on all sorts of business-related immigration, it\u2019s almost like they\u2019re waging a war on LEGAL immigration. They\u2019re issuing very lengthy, what they call \u2018Requests for Evidence\u2019 out of the California service center, it\u2019s very frustrating. I\u2019ve done a number of H-1B visas in the past year and it\u2019s been so difficult, the only one that sailed through without a \u2018request for evidence\u2019 was for an economist for the Public Utilities Commission. … <\/p>\n \u201cSo at this point you have Microsoft building a big campus in Canada because they couldn\u2019t get in engineers (who) they pay $80,000 a year, they\u2019ve got to keep them in Canada, doing the work there.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cFocusing like a laser\u201d on creating jobs here in America? It doesn\u2019t look that way to Raj Patel, who\u2019d like to open a couple more restaurants here, at Ground Zero of the Great Recession, hiring 16 or 20 more out-of-work Americans, right now. <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think any of these politicians really cares,\u201d says Raj Patel. \u201cThey talk a good game about wanting to create jobs when they\u2019re in front of the cameras, but I haven\u2019t seen that sense of urgency from any of them. I have asked and asked for a personal meeting with the senators, but I\u2019m just not big enough. If I was a franchise operation with 10 restaurants, maybe, But I ask for help and I just end up back in the same place in the sand trap.\u201d <\/p>\n It\u2019s an election year. They all say they feel for the little guy and they\u2019re trying to help the private sector create jobs. But Raj Patel can\u2019t even get one of our politicians to pick up the phone and make a phone call. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Are any of our current elected officials really \u201cfocusing like a laser\u201d on helping local entrepreneurs \u201ccreate new jobs\u201d in Las Vegas? Ask Raj Patel. Raj Patel owns the City Center motel downtown, near the El Cortez. He\u2019d like to create more jobs with an Indian restaurant, there. He\u2019s also developed a two-story strip mall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[42,36,15,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2012-election","category-about-town","category-immigration","category-nevada"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-gg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1008"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1011,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1008\/revisions\/1011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}