Local entrepreneur gets a little help

My May 13 essay described the frustrations of Las Vegas entrepreneur Raj Patel in trying to "do it by the book" and bring two Indian chefs here to help him expand his restaurant enterprises in Las Vegas.

Although the Labor Department agreed the work visas would help create American jobs, and the Immigration Service OK'd them, the two men were turned down after brief, 10-minute interviews at our embassy in New Delhi.

India is considered a "high-fraud" station; it appears as many as 95 percent of such applicants are routinely rejected.

A nationally noted immigration attorney told me the two men were essentially "doomed when they walked in the door" in New Delhi; nothing but political influence would be likely to reverse the outcome.

I'm happy to report that U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., on May 15 wrote an official letter to our ambassador to India, Nancy J. Powell, stating in part: "During this time of economic stress, Mr. Patel's restaurant would create jobs and contribute to our community. I trust that when Mr. Raj and Mr. Rana come before the embassy for further interviews, you will give full consideration to their applications and documentation."

Republican Barbara Cegavske of Las Vegas, who is Raj Patel's state senator and is also running to become the first congresscritter from Nevada's new 4th Congressional District, also wrote to Ambassador Powell on May 18: "Mr. Patel assures me that the two (chefs Tilak Raj and Anand Singh Rana) will fly back home and not overstay their visas. He states his willingness to sign any forms, documents, or other paperwork, taking responsibility for their actions in this regard. ... Thank you for considering this important matter."

Mr. Patel says Judy Fleischman at Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley's office reports a similar letter from Mr. Patel's congresswoman is also in the works.

As this column goes to press, the two chefs had been scheduled for follow-up interviews at the New Delhi embassy on May 25. Sen. Heller's office tells Mr. Patel that Ambassador Powell has responded to Sen. Heller, assuring him that a supervisor will conduct those interviews and that, in their efforts to overcome the presumption that they mean to overstay their work visas, the two men will be allowed to present all their documentation as to their homes and family ties in India.

Gratified by the political attention, Raj Patel expresses "cautious optimism" that his expansion plans may soon move ahead. If it works out that way, that's good news for one Las Vegas businessman.

Of course, thousands of other American small business owners have not been able to mobilize that kind of political help. A system that gives this much trouble to those who try to play by the rules - while doing little or nothing to grab those who simply flout our immigration laws - is still in need of massive reform. But we continue to nudge the behemoth, a little at a time.

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Thousands of years ago, fertility and wealth were one. More sons to farm the land or give your tribe more warriors, more daughters to be sold off for dowries.

For whatever reason, half the world then discovered capitalism, and the cultures have been diverging for 700 years. Europeans and Americans tend to have fewer children.

The Culture of Fertility is less likely to practice birth control. Women who bear and raise children full-time are less likely to be educated or work outside the home. Family wealth and education are lower.

There are pockets of the Culture of Fertility in this nation, make no mistake, encouraged and facilitated by the redistributionist welfare state. They tend to be marked by fatherless families, welfare dependency and an absence of complex literacy curiously immune to the efforts of the government schools.

Skin colors or national origin are only temporary markers. A century and a half ago, Americans would have identified the troublesome members of the Culture of Fertility among them as the Irish. No more. Today, as well, many Asian cultures are entrepreneurial, stressing education and investment. They're firmly aboard the Culture of Wealth.

These two cultures can share the world in relative peace, providing the nations of wealth admit peoples from the Third World only at a rate at which the newcomers can be assimilated.

But now, a perfect storm is brewing. Three factors put the Culture of Wealth in danger:

First: Third Worlders jealous of our success - but loathe to mimic the culture that fosters it - have given up trying to win traditional set-piece battles. Instead, they infiltrate Europe and America with massive illegal and quasi-legal "guest worker" immigration.

Second: The Culture of Wealth has been vastly undercut by the notion that the wealthy never pay their fair share and that it's somehow unfair for those who sacrifice to be allowed to focus their greater retained earnings on a smaller number of children in order to enhance the chances of long-term success for their families.

The third nail in the coffin is "one person, one vote."

If the nations which adhere to the Culture of Wealth allow the beggar classes to multiply within their borders, and still cling to the notion that everything can be determined by majority vote, it's inevitable that the mendicant majority will eventually elect and empower an armed state to seize and redistribute from those who have invested to develop our technological society all their "excess wealth," meaning everything but the shirt on their back.

So one of three things must now happen:

The Culture of Wealth will sink beneath the flood - the world will come to more closely resemble the teeming hellholes of Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. The ululating mobs will realize too late there are no longer any wealthy technological nations from which to acquire cellphones.

Or, illegal immigration will again be sharply controlled, the welfare state rolled back, the income tax and the property and capital gains and death taxes eliminated. The accrual and investment of wealth over multiple generations - in short, the pre-1913 economic system that made America the greatest and wealthiest nation in the world - will be restored.

Or, finally, war.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the daily Las Vegas Review-Journal and author of the novel "The Black Arrow" and "Send in the Waco Killers." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com.