2010 Model H-1B

     Read an interesting news snippet recently. It was a confirmation of one of those things you've seen but didn't make a big deal of. Because you kind of expected it on some level. Seems that people actually do judge books by their covers.
     The snippet? Fashion models are twice as likely to get their H-1B visas approved than computer programmers. And I don't mean visas like Visas and MasterCards. Although it certainly doesn't hurt their credit any.
     In 2010, U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services said yes to more than half of the visas applied for by fashion models and okayed only 28% of H-1Bs requested for computer-related occupations.
     H-1B visas allow foreign workers to work and make money in this country. They're the ones big tech companies like Apple and Google have been lobbying congress to increase. Nowadays a bright kid from another country can come over here on a student visa and learn all kinds of stuff, then he or she gets deported before we can make our money back off 'em.
     But apparently, if you're a fashion model, we'd love to keep you hanging around. And also apparently, looks are everything. Not that fashion doesn't pump a lot of dollars into our economy. More people wear shoes than own iPads. And it's a lot safer to wear shoes while driving than to goggle something on your smartphones.
     But still. Whatever happened to the paradigm shift we supposedly had with "Revenge of the Nerds?" Aren't techies supposed to be golden?
     By the way, H-1B Visas are only issued for jobs in a "specialty occupation." The regulations define a "specialty occupation" as "requiring theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge in a field of human endeavor."
     Like, you know, simultaneously walking and pouting.
     America, ya gotta love it.