Morals, Rules & Norms - An Introduction. . .

Morals, Rules & Norms

 

An Introduction. . .

 

This tale begins for our purposes on my ride to my brothers for Thanksgiving. Me and my spouse, who I been married to now for thirty plus years, on a two-hour ride down 287 from White Plains NY. Across what use to be the Tappan Zee Bridge down into NJ. Basically, heading west on the NY Thruway from the bridge until intercepting NJ, and then heading south on 287. Down into central NJ approaching Somerville. We bail before hitting Somerville and head west onto 78 to Phillipsburg. It is out there. 

The conversation during this two-hour drive ranges from my 87-year-old mom-who we are picking up before swinging over to my brother’s. We talk of how she is doing. We are in the midst of pondering assisted care places as her being by herself is probably just not the best idea today. And from there we move onto the usual speculations regarding my brother’s Thanksgiving meal and what he and his family are up to. 

 

This is not our first time over to my brother’s for Thanksgiving, but we do try to avoid it. Just better to just stay local, typically with our son, who comes over from Astoria, in NYC. Perhaps, accompanied by his girlfriend (Girlfriend? Really not the right term at this point – they have been dating for years now).  It is simpler, quieter, with just the three or four of us at home. 

 

As is often the case my wife and I end up talking about work. Try as we might, it happens. My wife does immigration law and currently I am recruiting for a large industrial construction project in Wyoming. A headhunter and an attorney-there is always something to brew over. And in the course of the drive, my wife is talking about something she read on the web-boards involving a visa-holder who had put himself in a pickle. Apparently, he, this visa holder, had exceeded the income limits of the visa he held. Anyone entering the US needs a visa and apparently, visa holders brought here by an employer are allowed to only make so much. We do not want them now to make too much while over here. 

 

Apparently, in the post or article she had read, the visa holder, I assume an IT professional, had decided to recruit and bring over other IT professionals and in the process was doing quite well. I guess there are worse things. And the consequent is that he will simply have to pay another fee as he exceeded the income range of his visa. 

She shared the tale as it was just interesting that there were such limits, but apparently there was more. Now this guy had apparently created an LLC and then through that LLC was hiring and even sponsoring candidates. She shared all of this as I exited 287 onto route 78 now-basically in the center of NJ. We were getting closer-more than halfway. In fact, we were now approaching Whitehouse NJ. So, we had another 20 miles or so. She finished her tale, and it was quiet for a moment. 

And then I asked, “So a visa holder can open an LLC?”

“Apparently, yes. I guess if you have a Tax ID and you can cover the fees and all, I guess you can.” She responded. 

“But he is an immigrant? He holds a visa. Isn’t that kind of . . . weird? He opens up an LLC, then through this LLC he brings in other visa holders to support his venture.”

“I guess he can. What’s the problem?” She responds. 

“The problem is that a visa holder is bringing in additional visa holders. Folks complain about chain migration, which is family related. I can deal with that, but this is kind of pushing it.”

I see a sign for Clinton now, I know this road so well, I barely pay attention. It is more than a road. One of the many highways that make up NJ, and the one I grew up going back and forth on. Gone up and down it too many times. 

 

Joanna, who was just sharing something she read, does not know. but I won’t let it go. 

“So, a guy comes over on a visa. His visa is in fact applied for by his employer. Yet once here he creates this entity, an LLC, and begins hiring and applying for visas for his own employees. Is he allowed to work for other employers, too, while here?”

I keep driving and am now ascending this big hill as we approach Clinton. At least it has always felt that way-a big hill. I step on the accelerator, as it is steep enough “It is a company owned by a visa holder. But the intent of the visa this guy holds is to help an American employer who is not able to find talent in the existing labor pool.” 

She starts to laugh at me as I am making a mountain out of a mole hill. Perhaps. But I persist. “It just seems that his visa allows him to work for that employer. Not only has he exceeded his income range, which is kind of weird-that we have a limit, but he is through this LLC bringing in additional visa holders. His LLC is now competing with American firms for a limited number of visas. . . Granted he is making money, contributing to the economy, paying taxes on the business. But what he is doing, was simply not the intent of his original visa, I suspect.”

She nods, probably by this point regretting she even brought it up. Oh well, what else would we have talked about. Neither of us are football fans. We are now going past Clinton, which is only blocks away from the highway, but cannot be seen. All we have are signs referencing Clinton. 

 

I drive by one of my old exits. As I got older we moved up the Highway. An old house, right next to the highway, is still there. In the past, when I was a kid, we would get of the highway, and just see this house, right next to the underpass and the highway. I always imagined the noise and the gusts off the big rigs being felt in the second-floor bedrooms. It was and is that close. 

 

We are quiet, just the sound of wheels on the road, the engine again being pushed to start climbing an actual mountain of sorts. Bloomsbury mountain? I think that is what they call it. At least I did, I do. As I step on the accelerator, I still ponder this visa holder and his LLC. I am still not done. I now say to her,” This is another example of norms not being rules.”

Now I have ventured off the beaten path of our standard chit chat. I have no departed work and entered in a no-man’s land. Typically, my “philosophical ponderings”-whatever I am reading or thinking about now, are a no-go. Such are just not her thing, but a week or two before there was another exception. I had at that time said something about norms and rules being related. She responded in the midst of that that norms are rules. Aren’t they? And that hit me. Obviously, norms are rules, but they aren’t, are they? 

One of those things that when looked at ‘philosophically’ might be interesting, maybe, but for most it is obvious. And that is how she said it, and how I heard it that night a few weeks back. A norm is a rule. She made me pause and revisit all I was going on about. But here it was again, in the matter of this visa holder, his LLC, and the business he built upon it. 

All of this as we now passed the Jutland / Perryville exit. So much history for me at this exit, but I just drove on by today. 

She does actually quickly respond to my comment about our tech guy and his LLC being illustrative of a norm not being a rule. “Oh, let’s not go there now” she says. “I don’t want to get into all that now.”

I quickly respond, “Well, I listened your tale. I should have a turn, my two cents. . .” Though I probably had said more than my two cents already. But I had gone this far. I might as well push on. 

“Alright, but quickly, we are getting closer to Phillipsburg. Right?” She hoped. But she was right. Once one hits the peak of Bloomsbury Mountain, which they have been blasting and broadening for the past two years now, you are practically there. Practically. 

Now with permission to proceed, I quickly made my point. “The visa process is one set of rules, and the LLC involves another set of rules. The one to assist US firms in finding talent, the other for one to conduct business and limit risk. If the rules for each were adequate in defining norms, there would not be any uncertainty regarding an immigrant using an LLC to bring in other immigrants. But for my money, that is not the case.”

We were already coming down the mountain now. The Bloomsbury Truckstop is a mile or two away. We start to see the rest stop right there in front of us.  I keep going. “It is only when you look at the practices of each and why people engage them that you see the problem. It is both the rules and practices of each that allow for this guy to both enter the country and open a business-or do they? ”

“My point is that the rules are not sufficient. Not enough. It is only when you look at the practices, the intents of the practices that you pause over and ask what he is doing. And yeah, these are proper laws and regulations, but again, they only make sense with the backdrop of a practice, an explanation or more specifically an intent of them. Without such a business practice, we would not know what do with them. I will stop there. I am done.” 

One mile till Phillipsburg. That is what the sign says. Well at least one mile till we get off 78, onto US route 22, approaching the city limits of Phillipsburg. Close enough. 

To be continued. . .

Streams, Rivers & Books

 

Watching "The Man in the High Castle". Amazon's take on the Phillip Dick's novel exploring the lives of handful of folks in a world where the Nazis had won the war. So, one of the Nazis in the story, Joe, or Josef, returns home, to Brooklyn (Yep, NYC and Brooklyn are still very much present in this story of the US and North America. Washington DC, however, is gone.) And what is the book Joe returns home with from the Neutral zone? (The Neutral zone being what separates the Nazi and Japanese zones-the Nazis in the east, and the Japanese on the West coast.) Again, what book does he pick up and bring home to his five-year-old boy?

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. That is the book he brings home from the illicit bookstore he finds in the Neutral Zone of this tale. 

This morning I am talking to my spouse, who is watching this flick with me, and she comments that she read Huckleberry Finn in her high school in Poland. That was in the 80s, in the midst of communism there. An interesting book for a group of high schoolers in the midst of communist Poland in 1981 or that period, roughly. 

She goes on to talk of philology. A term that to this day is not in my vocabulary. It is simply not commonly used in English. All I can say of it really is that Nietzsche was a philologist, a student of philology. My wife’s experience in Poland, however, is quite different. There, her class seems to have been intent to study American English, American culture, through a reading of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.  

In the nineties I pondered education as a career. It did not happen. I ended up studying with or more hanging out with the folks who were doing philosophy of education at the Grad School of Education (GSE). I found it refreshing to discover Pragmatism after doing several years of “Analytic” philosophy in the philosophy department proper down the street. This was all at Rutgers-New Brunswick. At that time, the Philosophy Department was in fact on a different campus, a mile or two away. They have since moved the Philosophy Department to College Ave, a block or two away from the Graduate School of Education. 

It was there at the Graduate School of Education that I read Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. What I recall of the text is the metaphor of the ‘river’. It was the river that allowed for the whole adventure to happen. Again and again, Huck would get back onto, into the river. That is what I recall Professor Giarelli pointing to. 

That class, in retrospect, was an exercise in philology. Giarelli was looking to the books of the day to give us a hint perhaps of where education was going, what was next. He had us reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Repair, Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being, Rousseau’s Emile, and Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. All with the intent of asking, considering the question of what is an education, as per these texts. Looking back, it was very much a philological project. 

It is interesting that today, with things like Black Lives Matter and structural racism, granted they point to the same thing, Americans struggle with such concepts. It goes back, perhaps, to the fact that Americans do not use the term ‘philology’.  We are lacking that idea that an author is working within the confines of a language that open up and close various worlds. In short, we do not consider that an author functions in a culture. Our literature classes focus upon the world the author creates. It is the author’s creation. We do not go beyond that to consider the language and the culture of which the author is a part. 

Going back to my spouse, or my wife, it was obvious to her. It was, it seems, explicitly stated in her class that to understand American English, to understand what America is about, one needed to read of Huck Finn’s adventures. Her class was an exercise in philology. The text was an act of imagination but also a product of culture. 

I suspect that the writers of "The Man in the High Tower" had the same intent. There perhaps it was almost like a club-they were practically clubbing us with that book in that context. In my class with Giarelli, it was different again. We were doing something quite different there. One did not at Rutgers read literature to do education, much less philosophy. Perhaps it was Giarelli’s intent, but I failed to grasp it. We just again and again fail to make that connection between the one and the other. 

Oh well, you know what I will be ordering on Amazon. To think they began as an online bookstore.