DISCLAIMER: I found the following article in another newsgroup, but I have not yet verified its accuracy.
Subject: Outsourcing yet another job

US Congress Votes to Outsource Presidency July 19, 2006

Washington, DC (AP) — Congress today announced that the office of President of the United States of America will be outsourced to India as of August 1, 2006.  The move is being made in order to save the President's $500,000 yearly salary, and also a record $521 trillion in deficit expenditures and related overhead the office has incurred during the last 5 years.

"We believe this is a wise move financially.  The cost savings should be significant," stated Congressman Thomas Reynolds (R-WA). "We cannot expect to remain competitive on the world stage with the current level of cash outlay," Reynolds noted.

Mr. Bush was informed by e-mail this morning of his termination. Preparations for the job move have been underway for some time. Gurvinder Singh of Indus Teleservices, Mumbai, India will be assuming the office of President as of August 1, 2006.

Mr. Singh was born in the United States while his Indian parents were vacationing at Niagara Falls, thus making him eligible for the position.  He will receive a salary of $320 (USD) a month but with no health coverage or other benefits.  It is believed that Mr. Singh will be able to handle his job responsibilities without a support staff.  Due to the time difference between the US and India, he will be working primarily at night, when few offices of the US Government will be open.

"Working nights will allow me to keep my day job at the Dell Computer call center," stated Mr. Singh in an exclusive interview.  "I am excited about this position.  I always hoped I would be President."

A Congressional spokesperson noted that while Mr. Singh may not be fully aware of all the issues involved in the office of President, this should not be a problem as President Bush was not familiar with the issues either.  Mr. Singh will rely upon a script tree that will enable him to respond effectively to most topics of concern.  Using these canned responses, he can address common concerns without having to understand the underlying issues at all.  "We know these scripting tools work," stated the spokesperson.  "President Bush has used them successfully for years."

Bush will receive health coverage, expenses, and salary until his final day of employment.  Following a two week waiting period, he will be eligible for $140 a week unemployment for 13 weeks. Unfortunately he will not be eligible for Medicaid, as his unemployment benefits will exceed the allowed limit.

Mr. Bush has been provided the outplacement services of Manpower, Inc.  to help him write a resume and prepare for his upcoming job transition.  According to Manpower, Mr. Bush may have difficulties in securing a new position due to limited practical work experience.  A Greeter position at Wal-Mart was suggested due to Bush's extensive experience shaking hands, as well as his goofy smile.

Not to disagree with you in any way...  that time is now, however...

...  except that the engineering is being done by Chinese, Indians and Russians...  not in the US or subject to US costs of living, and taxes driven by US government bloat, waste, and insider fraud.

Those engineers and scientists remain gainfully employed...  for peanuts...  the fondest dreams of US capitalism realized...  for a few milliseconds...

...  until it is realized that a starved to death consumer base doesn't buy anything...  then correction will only occur after the entire mess decimates itself...  never before that.

The world is run by the strongest breed of utter and complete idiots at any time...

These can be counted on to screw it up every time...  out of need to fulfill their own short term interests, regardless the sacrifice of others...

These as with virtually any rich landlord type, will sacrifice the life and well being of any tenant family that cannot pay the rent for a month or two...  for money not even vital to their own interests...  for money they don't even need, will put the family onto the street...  and that can be justified.  It is just that the fact remains...  human life is sacrificed without a thought.

The solution is to arrange ones life on a side road, away from direct influence of these forces.

Free Market Economics Does not Work, and they know it.  The free marketeers and there allies in government are simply carnivores without souls.  They are libertarians steeped in the art of Orwellian/Machiavellian double speak.

Just wait till the hideous evil spreads to the new found asian countries that fall under the iron grip of the free market, and are forced into accepting free market agreements with there neighbors, and are forced into agreements that flood there countries with illegals who have been forced into deeper poverty so that the free market libertarians can harvest their labors for fat profit.  Then we will hear wails over this from the asian countries that are riding high right now.

Can you imagine millions of poor Pakistani's flooding India, or millions of Chinese flooding India, or both.  Here is your preview of what will happen.

If you are dumb enough, gullable enough, or naive enough to think this will not happen, you will deserve what you get.  Its on the drawing board as we speak.  It will not be unwrapped till the timing is right.

(Immigrant surge is tied to the failure of NAFTA, Octavio Ruiz, 04/22/2006)

"There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore.  We have to compete for jobs." — Carly Fiorina

Hey Carly, due to traitors like you, there are about 3 new I.T. job openings per month in the U.S.  Good luck competing with the millions of I.T. folk you help put out of work!

TV Evangelist:  "Send me all of your money...  then, magically, you will become rich!  Trust me!"

Globalist:  "Give away all of your factories, technologies, and jobs...  then, magically, your country will become an economic power-house!  Trust me!"

...  the election and the political rhetoric...  Obviously disappointed, but I am at peace.  The people have spoken.  They've gotten what they've wanted.  You can only do so much to save a country from itself.

I want to apologize for the statements I made about my Southern Ohio brethren. I know they didn't choose out of malice, but misinformation.  It's hard to see someone unintentionally hurting themselves, but the Republican political and propaganda machine is so strong, it's hard to overcome the brainwashing.

I feel very bad for those young kids who worked so hard to improve this country, only to see it go to naught...

I feel bad for those unemployed workers in Cuyahogo, Summit, Stark, and Mahoning Counties whose votes were cancelled out.  They will see a further hemorrhaging of their lives and opportunities during this administration.

I feel bad for those who are ill, since they will get no relief in this administration.

I feel bad for the educated folks that will get their jobs offshored soon as well.  They won't know what hit them.  This practice is encouraged by this administration, and huge layoffs are expected after the election.  Your American dream will become much harder to achieve.  Tell your kids to become electricians and plumbers instead of going to college.  Sounds wierd to say that, but true...

But you know, sometimes you just have to let people hit rock bottom before they come to their senses.  We've obviously not hit rock bottom yet, but I'm sure we will be there shortly.

God save America...  we need You more than ever!  All we can do now is pray!

In the past ten years, American jobs screamed out of the United States at an accelerating rate of speed.  While American workers stood in unemployment lines, major corporations insourced, outsourced and offshored jobs to Third World countries.  Why?  They could obtain labor for $1.00 an hour and sometimes less. Capitalism knows no loyalty to man, beast or country.

At the high end, Congress offered hundreds of thousands of H-1B and L-1 visas that displaced 890,000 American high tech workers out of jobs while importing cheap labor from overseas.

To add insult to injury while displacing American workers — meatpacking, chicken processing, paving, construction, hotel, roofing, landscaping and other trade jobs were insourced to millions of illegal alien workers.

America's manufacturing base and ability to sell products to the world diminished with the rising power of corporations to control taxes, tariffs and commodities markets.  These huge corporations, run by American CEO's, took advantage of their American roots and benefits enjoyed in a First World country — while giving millions of jobs to people in other countries.  For what? Obscene profits!  It's why you hear of their $125 million annual paychecks.  They are the Ken Lays of Enron crowd who don't get caught.  Why not?  Because what they do is legal, but then again, they paid enough money into Political Action Committees and other organizations to make sure they gained tax breaks and other benefits from Congress.

It's a hell of a rich man's club, but it's turning America's Middle Class into the Working Poor Class.

Who are these giants?  You'd be surprised.  They are some of our most time-honored companies who built their empires on the backs of America's working class heroes.

According to Arianna Online, "Bank of America shouldn't be allowed to have 'America' in the name of the company."  One of America's largest banks eliminated 5,000 jobs while outsourcing 1,250 jobs to India.  It announced it would cut another 12,000 jobs in the next two years.  Employees were given severance pay on condition they train their replacement.

Affiliated Computer Services offers business processing technology — outsourced 1,300 jobs to India in the past three years.  They multiplied their profits by paying half the wage rate in a Third World country of 1.1 billion eager workers.

According to Arianna, "The company chairman is known as Darwin "Survival of the Richest" Deason."

General Electric built its empire on American soil.  However, it is known as the father of outsourcing.  It outsourced 12,000 jobs to people in India who perform at phones answering credit card inquires and give IT technical assistance while handling network security.  The three leading executives of GE make untold millions in salaries while American citizens stand in unemployment lines.

Halliburton, formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney as its CEO, enjoys 45 subsidiaries in offshore tax havens.  Halliburton is helping reconstruct Iraq with $73 million in equipment and services.  The only caveat stems from working as a civilian employee with Halliburton in Iraq might find you with your head on a platter.  However, stockholders make millions.

The Bank of New York, run by Thomas "Pioneering the Loss of American Jobs" Reny, in March 2003, sent 250 computer software jobs to Mumbai where it already employed 670 workers.  It plans to open a software development center in the Philippines.

American Telephone and Telegraph, or what we used to call "Ma Bell" which is about as ALL-AMERICAN a company you could ever find-outsourced 500 customer service jobs to India in 2003 in addition to another 3,000 jobs outsourced before that date.

Dell Computers employs 3,000 Indians in Bangalore and Hyderabad, India.  Sprint cut 21,000 American jobs in 2001 through 2003 and sent those jobs to Third World countries.  American Flyer, the makers of the little red wagon we all pulled as kids, outsourced to China this year.  Maytag in Pennsylvania shut its plant while displacing 1,500 workers and set up shop in Mexico.

"Congress, the President and journalists sit around like outsourcing is some incurable disease and they cannot fix it," said Paul Streitz, an industry watchdog.  "It is not.  They say outsourcing is driven by the need for firms to stay "competitive."  But to stay competitive means lowering costs and raising profits for stockholders and key executives.  The additional savings are not passed on to customers.  No study has ever shown that those companies using outsourcing are charging lower prices.  A chief justification for this abomination."

If this trend is any indication, and it is, the best days of America's working class fade in the rearview mirror.  Americans compete with 1.3 billion Chinese and 1.1 billion Indians whose medium income teeters at $2,000.00 a year.  They will work for $5.00 a day whereas Americans must make at least $15.00 an hour to maintain a decent standard of living.

You have to ask who will have enough money to buy the goods and services those companies market when the American Middle Class slides down the tubes?  What's in store for Americans?

It means America's Middle Class races to the bottom of the 'standard of living' barrel as its jobs outsource, insource and offshore.  It means millions work from paycheck to paycheck with few benefits and no job security.  It means the American Dream drops from achievable for the vast majority in the past to a pipe dream for the new Working Poor Class.

Like millions of Americans who have lost their jobs, in early 2003 I suddenly found myself laid off.  My employer wasn't a giant, downsizing corporation but a small book publisher.  Two years earlier I'd had my photo in the business section of The New York Times, in a lead article lauding our company for exemplary "niche" publishing.  Even so, after more than a decade in various management positions, I was told, "You're a fixed cost that needs to be a variable cost."

I wasn't expecting it to be so difficult to find a new job, or to be such a jolt to my self-respect.  I missed seeing my name on a masthead and business card.  I missed seeing my colleagues, most of whom had also been fired.

I signed up for unemployment compensation, six months of weekly checks at a portion of my previous income, and came to feel an odd warmth for the synthesized voice on the automated claims line — a fatherly baritone that intoned seven questions about my work status which I'd answer by pressing 1 for yes or 9 for no.  Responding correctly would bring another check.

Meanwhile I scoured the job listings.  I threw myself wholeheartedly into applying for 19 jobs — 19 carefully worded cover letters and fine-tuned resumes with references from former employers and advisers.

Each time I sent out one of my neatly printed packets, I believed I'd be called for an interview, have a meeting of minds and be offered a great position.  The usual result was much different: I'd run as fast as I could and leap — into a cinder-block wall.

One evening at dinner, as my wife and daughter recounted the day's highlights, I realized that I had almost nothing to say.  I'd done the laundry, made soup, planted another garden bed...  but so what?  I was basically retired.  There was no way I was going to let myself be one of those laid-off men who squander hours watching TV.  Anyway, we don't have a TV.

What I could see all around me were part-time jobs.  On top of more than 8 million unemployed people in the United States, at least 4 million people are working part-time, unable to find full-time positions.  They are without benefits or a contract, paid hourly instead of a salary, but they are working.  I resolved to take as many part-time jobs as I could find.  I ended up juggling as many as 11 at a time.  The experience has been fantastic.

I've found employment by writing (reviews for a metropolitan newspaper and essays for feature magazines); teaching (book-discussion series in public libraries, poetry programs for high-school students and presentations for Elderhostel); performing (with a dance troupe, and on stilts with a brass band); editing (for a forestry magazine and market-research firm as well as a book about the history of bridges); painting houses; plowing snow; researching a family history; doing carpentry; house-sitting, and playing a patient for medical students practicing interviews.  Knowing that I was trying to see how many jobs I could manage, my sister called one day to suggest sperm donation as a possibility — not an option I've yet explored.

To have so many jobs you need to be in the right place at the right time with the right equipment and clothes.  A friend peered into my car one morning and exclaimed, "You've got more bags than a mailman!"  Some days I've had four different jobs in 12 hours.

As our 10-year-old daughter was listening with an impish expression to the radio news, she said, "Hey, Dad, no wonder there's high unemployment — you have all the jobs."

Admittedly, I was better prepared than most people for such a predicament.  As a college graduate who has made my living for 20 years in the arts, I've worked in editorial offices but also (to make ends meet) in restaurants, on construction crews, as a puppeteer.  My wife and I live "off the grid" in a solar-electric house we built ourselves-no mortgage and a big vegetable garden — with health insurance from her teaching job.  Through 13 years of marriage we've carefully avoided debt, clearing our one credit card every month, paying off our cars quickly and keeping them running beyond 170,000 miles.

This balance feels precarious, but with no savings and no offers, I was ready to take drastic action.  And though I wasn't looking for this lesson, in the past year I've discovered how valuable humility can be.  Humility turns out to be quite different from humiliation, and the difference is largely up to you.

Who knows?  Maybe I'll never take another full-time job.  As a regular employee, you're at the mercy of someone else's decisions, which might well be impetuous or idiotic.  As a multiple part-timer, you're free, responsible for your own choices.

In the meantime, my short-term plan has me busy and upbeat, with plenty to recount over the dinner table.

The simple fact is that this has nothing to do with competition.  These new global competitors are nothing of the sort.  This, in fact as well as deed, is nothing more than about making money.  In this case, it is immoral because it is money made at the expense of another.

People are not machines.  They cannot be turned on and off at the turn of a whim.

It is pointless to debate competition with countries with economies that would not exist except for the US and US leadership in the world.  This is not about competition.  It is about rape.

It is about something that men of good conscious would never permit.

Your warning to those others who would try to silence you through attacks bespeaks the level of ignorance of the situation out there.  And the acceptance of dogma.  Their time will come and then your words will be remembered.

In Canada, we haven't been unaffected by the Offshoring situation whatsoever.  In fact, within a year of graduation ten years ago, I was climbing quickly up the ladder through hard work, dedication and a sincere passion for my job.  I recieved a minimum of 3 calls a week from headhunters begging me to consider bigger opportunities, as did my husband.

Not long after 9-11, my husband lost his job.  I had several very strong freelance clients who I had worked hard to establish loyal relations with, but this was seasonal in that there would be hot and dry periods when I would pick up a contract.  I could always count on a contract from a headhunter when the season was over.

I did this for 10 years, but after 9-11 everything changed.  Our phone stopped ringing.  My connections were dried out.  The headhunters weren't calling anymore. My husband started looking for work in bars and restaurants, and we were both taking any odd job we could find.

I was so thankful for my freelance contacts.  They seemed to come in right when we needed it the most, but in a two year period my husband both went from earning six figures a year working in Management IT positions to just below the poverty level.

We left Toronto and moved to a smaller city an hour away.  Our thinking was that our experience would be an edge out here...  but in a solid year we've found nothing.  One company hired me for an elaborate cover for a maternity leave, but nothing solid.  He now brews beer and wine at a local brew-your-own for minimum wage, and I have become involved in a family business in rubber goods manufacturing.

In the past year, my freelance contacts that I felt had strong bonds of loyalty were cut.  My last client confessed last week that he had found sourcing in India for $2.00 an hour...  quite a bit less than even the lowest number I could provide...  and I was already giving him work at a 50% discount.  Often times I didn't even make minimum wage completing his projects, but I did it to rough through the weather...  chalked it up to a learning experience.

With all the electoral debates in the U.S.A., I feel that most of us have been in the dark.  I had no idea this outsourcing issue had grown as big as it had.  I chalked it up to coincidence that most of my collegues had been out of work for almost 2 years, many of whom have done crazy things like start up tattoo shops. Most of us are in our mid-30's now, some in our 40's.  Going back to school with a family and financial obligations that we worked to achieve is just NOT an option.

We were in the dark, because we were never told where our jobs were going, or why.  Some of us thought we were dried up, became depressed.  It has been a horrible torture, particularly for people who spend tens of thousands on educations, and years gaining experience in a job they wanted to do until the age of retirement.

We were in the dark because for almost 2 years, nobody spoke about it.  It is a faux pas to speak of such things.  It is despicable practice to fire loyal workers, or not provide work for your fellow citizens because your trying to save a buck going for something less than legal minimum wage outside the laws of your own country.

Thank god it is coming to light.  I expect there will be an outcry of rage when most unemployed workers get over the shock we have been experiencing these past few months that this trite has been exposed.

The World Economy is far from perfect.  The fact that the American Dollar is like a treasure chest to some countries doesn't entitle them to thievery.  American sweat built that dollar, and now Americans are giving it away to greedy countries all too happy to take it?  It just doesn't make sense.  If countries like India are so smart, why not use their talent and build the next Microsoft?

Americans, and Canadians, and Britons, and every other country who's labor force is suffering this tragedy are the victims in this new kind of desparage.  I dare say anyone defending Offshoring in this forum is either a) someone in a 3rd World country protecting their new-found wealth, or b) some greedy conglomerate businessman trying to shave a few dollars off of their labor budget.

It spells out disaster for everyone involved.  The short-term gains may seem worth it, but within a decade I guarantee the jobs in India will be snatched away and given to the next lowest common denominator.  Indians would be smart to take a note from what has happened to the employment scene in the USA, Canada, Britain, etc...  and remember the old addage that, "you can never trust a cheater."  Economies will skyrocket in India.  People who are not part of the outsourcing market will be put to the streets.  When the jobs are gone those shiny new buildings will become ghost-towns, and a decade of young people's lives will be wasted and they too will be left jobless.

What is the solution?

Trade Embargos on Service Labour.  We aren't talking about a product here, we are talking about something that cannot be traced with a metal detector at border crossings.  We are talking about the very thing that allows countries to thrive...  ensuring that unemployment levels are low, and that people within your countries borders can contribute to the countries' growth, by building it, and buying into it.  You don't give money away to someone when your own home needs food you cannot provide, after all.

Companies caught cheating the Embargos should have massive fines placed upon them.  After all, if the point is to save money, why risk losing money?

Lately we are hearing many people call opposition to outsourcing as "protectionism" and defend outsourcing quoting from economic theories about the benefits of "comparative advantage."  All this is very sophisticated demagogy and let me explain why.

First of all "jobs" is not the same product category as "goods."  In world history exporting goods have a long history, but exporting jobs is a very recent event.  Nobody will argue that preventing spreading of trade secrets, sensitive military technology is "protectionism."  Nobody will argue that a country that prevents importing of dangerous environment threatening chemicals is a "protectionist country."  A country that prevents foreign nationals from working legally is also not a "protectionist" country.  And how about free trade of human organs, where the highest bidder has a right to buy any organ from any country?

So why is opposing exporting sensitive technology not "protectionism," why is opposing importing environment dangerous chemicals not "protectionism" but why is opposing of replacing American workers by cheap foreigners "protectionism?"

Outsourcing means forcing the local workforce to train their replacements in order to allow corporations to fire the more expensive domestic workers.  If foreign countries call opposition to outsourcing "protectionism," let's force them to sign an agreement that will make it legal in their country to force local workers to train foreign replacements.

"Comparative advantage" means that some countries/societies can produce better and/or cheaper products than others.  Supporters of outsourcing say: "History has confirmed that Adam Smith's theory of comparative advantage was remarkably prophetic.  Not only have scores and scores of countries thrived as they initially encountered global trade, but many others have crashed dramatically upon raising barriers to the same."

So what is "comparative advantage" of China and India and what is "comparative advantage" of the US?  What product can those countries produce better or cheaper than the US?  Answer — almost none, unless American corporations force American workers to teach Chinese and Indians how to make those products.  After American workers will teach them, then other countries have significant "comparative advantage."  "Comparative advantage" of China is that people of China are slaves of the communist dictatorship and are forced to work for any compensation that communists decide which serves the interests of the communist elite.  A free man cannot compete against a slave — a slave will always be cheaper and will always work harder.  Conclusion — American workers have no "comparative advantage" against Chinese workers.  What is "comparative advantage" of India?  Prices of basic food, rents are cheaper in India than in the US, so an Indian worker can survive on $200/month.  In many US cities just renting a studio costs $500/month. Conclusion — American workers have no "comparative advantage" against India.

Using cheap labor does not always mean that the product will become cheaper or better.  Look for example on Microsoft products: Microsoft virtually has no competition in the OS market — MS is outsourcing thousands of jobs to China and India, but Windows is not getting cheaper or better.  Each new version is more expensive and each version is an open book to hackers.

People all over the world have basically the same intelligence.  It does not matter if an engineer was born black, white or yellow — if he graduated from a decent school, he can perform his duty in the US, India or China.  The only difference is that in China he is forced to work for a salary dictated by the communist government, in India the cost of living is much cheaper than in the US.

Conclusion — American workers are too expensive and gradually will be replaced by foreign cheaper workers.  If work needs to be done in the US — foreigners will be brought into this country in order to replace expensive Americans.

So what are American workers good for?  The only "comparative advantage" of American workers is that they will vote for politicians that support replacing American workers by cheaper foreigners.  About 80% of them will vote for Bush or Kerry — both of them support replacing American workers by cheap foreigners.  I doubt Indian or Chinese will vote for politicians that support replacing the domestic workforce by cheaper foreigners.  So don't despair — Americans have "comparative advantage" after all.

If you've listened to Conservative Radio or Fox News lately then you already know the good news.  Jobs are aplenty!  In fact, according to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and President Bush, we are in the midst of a huge boom!  According to the spin, more than 650,000 American workers found employment in the last two months.  Mighty spectacular, wouldn't you say?

The problem with the numbers, however, is what's wrong with nearly every pronouncement from this administration.  It's clothed in a semblance of truth, but it disguises the real facts.  The truth is we have more educated, specialized, articulate, unemployed workers than ever in our history.  It doesn't consider The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 80,000 to 90,000 unemployed become ineligible for unemployment benefits every week and therefore, are no longer counted among the unemployed.

We're not told that we have lost over three-million industrial jobs since George Bush took office, nor are we told that since our "recovery" we have lost over a million manufacturing jobs or three-million private sector jobs.  The fact that the job "boom" was in low salaried temporary and retail positions were left out of the explanations for the "good news," or that none of the jobs were in high-paying trades and services.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor, "employment rose substantially in several service-providing industries, construction continued to add jobs, and there was a noteworthy job gain in durable goods manufacturing."  The truth is there are more than 11-million unemployed citizens looking for work.

Excess trash is exactly how our corporate entities view our workforce.  Worse than trash is how our government has protected them.  So, here we are being told that we're in a boom economy when the opposite surrounds us.  What are we to do?

Another expert advises that the IT specialist keep changing jobs and learning new modalities.  I suggest, however, that this option is a misnomer, at best. Chances are once the employee leaves their job finding another will be an act in futility, particularly if they happen to be thirty-five or older.  Statistics prove that the older the programmer or engineer, the harder it will be to find employment.  According to the American University, it will take three more weeks for a laid-off programmer or engineer to find a job for each year of his/her age.

And if the manager doing the hiring is younger than the applicant is, well, statistics indicate the chance of getting that job is close to nil.  Here's another statistic not bantered around: only 19% of computer science grads are still employed as computer programmers twenty years later.  Furthermore, if you are forty and an unemployed programmer lucky enough to find a job in your field, you can count on taking a cut in pay.

The statistics also don't reflect the multitude of workers who have given up finding employment in their trained profession.  Underemployment is a very real and serious condition in the United States.  So, too, is our minimum wage.  Back in 1967, a family of three could survive above poverty level on the minimum wage.  Not so today.  Currently, a full-time minimum wage earner can only sustain his or her family 84% of the poverty line for a family of three.  These are not teenagers, folks, these are the people in the grocery lines with you.  That is, if they can afford groceries.

So, what are we to do?  For one, we need to begin by replacing our legislators, representatives, and our country's leaders with truly concerned and compassionate representatives.  We need to demonstrate by our vote that we the people are in charge.  We need to send a loud and resounding message to anyone seeking political office or holding office that they work for us, the people.  We need to shun the deceptive political commercials and the spin weavers and use our own very perceptive minds.

It is time, my fellow American's that we make our voices heard, for if we don't, we could liken it to Pastor Martin Niemoeller's famous warning about the Nazi's. First, they came for the Manufacturer's, but I was not a Manufacturer so I did not speak out.  Then they came for the Service Jobs and the Tradesmen's, but I was neither, so I did not speak out.  Then they came for the IT Technicians, but I was not an IT Specialist so I did not speak out.  And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.  It is time, my fellow American's, or we, too, will be lamenting the jobs we lost and didn't speak out.

The U.S. has become a de facto oligarchy, per the second definition:

Merriam-Webster OnLine
1 : government by the few
2 : a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes;
     also : a group exercising such control
3 : an organization under oligarchic control

Money.

They now think that they have enough power to win their war on the middle class, and they may be right.

There's nothing safe about outsourcing, which allows terrorists in other countries to access confidental information on American customers.  Terrorists can commit identity theft of Americans, increasing the chances they get away with terrorist acts.  When you call HP support and someone from India takes the call, he/she will ask for your personal information.  What's to stop him/her from using that info to commit terrorist acts?

Programmers in India are more likely to write malicious code (or they can be incompetent and write buggy code) that shuts down vital systems in the USA. Worse, the code can kill Americans, for example the outsourced hospital software that makes it more likely for doctors and nurses to kill American patients (once again, I'll point out that over 100,000 Americans die each year from avoidable medical "mistakes," making 9/11 look like a drop in the ocean).

The safest software development is here in the USA, where we can monitor the workers and apply regulations that don't exist in India.

Outsourcing does NOT help the overall population in the outsourced countries. It actually makes the upper caste richer and increases suffering by the lower classes.  Most jobs in India are given to upper caste Hindus who don't need the money.  A few "middle class" people in India get jobs, but even they were already in the richest 10% of the country.

Because of her decisions, she'll soon be living in a COUNTRY where over 50% of the population has no opportunity to work: the USA!

The article Robotic Freedom states that robots and automation will turbocharge the concentration of wealth.  This article from the NY Times provides more evidence that this is exactly what is happening: We're More Productive.  Who Gets the Money?.

It states: "American workers have been remarkably productive in recent years, but they are getting fewer and fewer of the benefits of this increased productivity.  While the economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, has been strong for some time now, ordinary workers have gotten little more than the back of the hand from employers who have pocketed an unprecedented share of the cash from this burst of economic growth."

"What is happening is nothing short of historic.  The American workers' share of the increase in national income since November 2001, the end of the last recession, is the lowest on record.  Employers took the money and ran.  This is extraordinary, but very few people are talking about it, which tells you something about the hold that corporate interests have on the national conversation."

The problem with this process, if it continues, is that wealth concentrates more and more until America starts to look like a Third World plutocracy.  See Robotic Freedom for details and a solution.

For numerous examples of this unprecedented concentration of wealth at work, click here.

Well today it is not Hurricane NAFTA but Hurricane FREE TRADE that is sucking the knowledge based jobs out of the United States to such exotic locals as China and India.  If history repeats itself and I believe it does, we will see the same thing that happened to manufacturing jobs happen to professional jobs. Jobs will continue to go overseas because CEOs, Economist and Politicians have discovered that the winds of Free Trade are inevitable and no economic or social structure can withstand the category 5 devastation that such a storm encompasses.

The US-India Political Action Committee (USINPAC) describes itself as a bipartisan political action committee promoting the interests of the Indian American community.  The Indian Express in a November 19, 2002 article describing USINPAC, Indian toehold in US political whirlpool, declared, "The American political process at one level is transparent and simple — you pay money, you get results...  A strong, well-organized lobby of Indian Americans can push for a clearer convergence of goals between the two countries, more than the jaded bureaucrats are prone to do."

According to Sanjay Puri, the Executive Director of USINPAC, "It is estimated that the Indian American community contributed more than $7 million in the 2000 Presidential Election...  With an Indian American community of nearly 2 million, we must make sure that we support candidates that best represent our interests and we also must make sure that each candidate knows that we expect to be well represented in an Administration that we will help elect." Puri said.

As an American citizen my question to Mr. Puri and USINPAC is what are these important issues and how much will they cost the American taxpayer?  Taking a look at the USINPAC website some of the issues USINPAC is promoting are to:

• Ask U.S. Congressmen to, "Oppose HR 2688, a bill introduced on July 9, 2003 by Representative Thomas Tancredo (R-CO).  This bill seeks to eliminate the H1-B visa program."
• Prevent any protectionist legislation on IT outsourcing at the Federal level.
  .    .    .    .    .
• Support for trade and the outsourcing of jobs.
  .    .    .    .    .

A similar story in the India Times stated that: "The Caucus, launched by Republican Senator John Cornyn and Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton, includes Senate Majority Leader Republican Bill First and Senate Minority Leader Democrat Tom Daschle who vowed to do their best to bring the two democratic nations even closer.  Senator Cornyn said the Caucus had 32 members and added more are expected to join it soon - an impressive achievement in a chamber of 100 members.  A similar Caucus is already there in the much larger House of Representatives, which began with nine members and has grown to 185."

You know it's sort of funny, before I got into politics, I always thought that the U.S. Senate and House were supposed to represent the U.S. of A. not India. It sure seems like politics is all about special interest, money and influence instead of what is the right thing to do for the United States and the American citizen.

Maybe this election the American voters need to remind some Senators and Representatives that we might want to outsource their jobs to India and pay someone in New Delhi or Banglore $5,000 dollars apiece to legislate for the United States.  Calculating the savings comes out to about $15,200,000 and $66,880,000 for the Senate and House respectively.  Combining these we get an annualized savings of $82,080,000.

On second thought though I bet we could save even more by outsourcing Congress to China?  If all we care about is the bottom line and saving money why not?

Someone has to take the jobs that, as President Bush (news — web sites) and others say, "Americans don't want."  There appear to be a large number of these jobs.  In fact, it seems that our fastest-growing business segment is the creation of more and more jobs that Americans don't want.  Often, American companies will lay people off, only to train newcomers to replace them.

Here is how the real scam works.  You are a programmer at one of the big IT or computer companies.  You're 55 and nearing a retirement plateau; in fact, you're a liability.  You're making, say, $80,000 as a program designer.  You have various responsibilities.  The company eliminates your position in the process of downsizing.

To be fair to you, it creates a new position, Associate Program Designer, that pays $35,000 a year.  Its responsibilities coincidentally match those of your old job.  You can take this job, doing what you did before but at a huge cut in pay, or look elsewhere.  If the latter, it's apparent that this new job is one that "Americans don't want."  The company can then hire a "body shop" to drop in a foreign H-1B or L1 visa holder, who will not be quite as good but will work for a lot less.

This is a bait-and-switch scheme that is designed to screw older and more experienced workers out of their retirement benefits, plain and simple.  This sort of thing, unfortunately, is nothing new to corporate America: Every time I write about it, I get hundreds of e-mails from people who have been abused by such practices.

More horrendous still is the sudden emergence of offshoring, whereby we send the money as well as the jobs overseas, mostly to India, where labor is even cheaper.  The proponents of offshoring have a rumored $100 million PR budget; anyone who speaks out against this trend is bombarded by hate mail.  Just mentioning the problem here will result in numerous requests to my editors that I be fired.  Few of the senders will be traceable.

The sinister nature of offshoring jobs has corrupted the highest levels of our nation.  Hillary Rodham Clinton (news - web sites), for example, is directly involved with one of the big body shops, Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services.  Bush is actively promoting the replacement of American workers.  Colin Powell (news — web sites) recently promised India that the administration would continue to promote offshoring.  Which country does he represent, anyway?

In an economic argument that is floating around, people cook numbers to show that every job lost to offshoring is a ridiculously large net benefit to the U.S. economy; we are making money on the deal.  One math genius claimed that although we export around $10 billion in outsourcing fees, the economy somehow recovers over $300 billion in savings.  It's a bonanza.  Taking this logic to an extreme, if we offshored all American jobs and nobody here worked, we'd be filthy rich.  Let's just do that!  Where do I get my check?

I hear all the time that coders in India are cheaper and better.  What makes them better?  Have there been some blockbuster Indian software programs that I somehow missed?  Maybe they are good at patching spaghetti code or doing well-defined C++ modules, but who knows?  You'd think that some killer apps would have come out of India by now, as they have from Europe, the U.S., Japan, and even Russia.

Even more irksome than this notion of "better" is the fact that companies are trying to hide their offshoring operations, a deceptive practice at best.  Help desks, bill collectors, and telemarketers are in India.  All the AT&T staffers I have talked to seem to be in India, but ask them where they are and they won't say.  They are trained to fake American accents.  They say their name is Bill or Dave or Patty; it is clearly not.  They never tell you where they are, because Americans don't like having their American Express records (yes, AmEx uses India) in Bangalore, where our privacy laws aren't in force.

One company told my wife that its reps don't say where they are from because of terrorism.  Terrorism?  My wife is going to fly to Bangalore?  We are lied to by the companies we do business with; plain dishonesty is at work here.

Although I appreciate some aspects of globalization, I can't excuse the cavalier attitude toward fellow Americans that we see among large corporations who benefit from the free-enterprise system and American infrastructure.  It will come back to haunt them all.

A starting point is to realize there are solutions to the outsourcing problem that America now faces.  The passivity being shown by the President and Congress is of their own making, not for the lack of ways to deal with the problem. Consider these.

1.  Require companies that off-source any personal data of U.S. citizens to get their signed consent.  This would include shifting abroad any medical or insurance data, tax preparation, investment or stock information, educational records, etc.  In all cases, companies would be required to get the consumer's written consent.

2.  Require that all publicly held companies inform the public through their quarterly filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission:

• The portion of the corporate assets investment in each nation where the company operates.
• The type of work performed in each of those facilities.
• The number of employees in each foreign nation and their general characteristic, such as manufacturing worker, executive, research and development.
• Future plans to shift operations to other nations and the specific nature of what will be shifted.
• Identify what part of the work shifted outside the United States is financed by U.S. government.
• Identify what part of the work shifted outside the United States is to satisfy local of domestic U.S. markets.

3.  Impose an equalizing tariff on outsourced service work.  If the average wage for a graduate level software engineer in the United States is $40 dollar per hour and that of a comparable worker in India is $10, then impose a $30 dollar equalizing tariff on the Indian's work brought into the United States.  As India's wages rise, the U.S. tariff can be correspondingly lowered. One of our stated trade goals is to raise living standards elsewhere.  This will do it.

4.  Require that any work shifted overseas be done by people meeting the professional qualifications required in the United States and be so certified.  A radiologist working in India thereby would be expected to meet the U.S. standards and hold U.S. certification.  So would an accountant or any other of the regulated professions.  This requirement would assure that U.S. consumers get top quality work and no scams.

5.  Prohibit outsourcing contracts going to those nations that deny the U.S. and other nations the right to operate in the same manner in their home market.  India, for example, refuses to admit skilled foreign workers or outsourcing.  If our role is to provide leadership and non-discrimination on trade matters, this step is essential.

6.  Require the U.S. Department of Labor to report monthly on the number of jobs or job equivalent outsourced, the average U.S. wages paid in that particular labor classification, and to where the jobs are going.

7.  Outsource the work of the Council of Economic Advisors to some firm that can provide the accurate numbers needed by U.S. policy makers.

Other suggestions

8.  Increase enforcement of tax laws on foreign companies operating in the United States.  Today, foreign affiliates pay far less than U.S. companies in the identical lines of business operating here.  They are cheating, but for foreign policy reasons the IRS is held back.

9.  Strongly enforce U.S. antitrust legislation on foreign firms operating in the United States.  Cartels have an unfair, illegal advantage.  When in America, do as the Americans do.

10.  Enforce existing U.S. trade agreements.  This Administration has filed only seven unfair trade claims at the World Trade Organization.  Of these, five deal with ag products.  Not one single intellectual property case has been filed, though American inventors, writers, artists and companies are being stolen blind in places such as India, China and Russia.  Nor has the Administration filed a single unfair trade practice against China at the WTO.

11.  Use the 421 provision of the U.S.-China WTO Accession agreement that allows the United States to unilaterally impose quotas on those goods Chinese imports that have surged in an annual period.  Surging is usually defined at growth over 7.5 percent.  So far, the International Trade Commission has recommended imposition of 421 surge controls on three different products whose imports from China have surged.  In all three cases, President Bush as vetoed the ITC's recommendations.  Surges of Chinese imports such be banned as per the contract the United States has with China.

12.  Re-impose the pay-as-you-go rules the Congress abandoned in 2002. Any tax decrease must have a corresponding cut in expenditures.  Any increase in expenditures must have a corresponding increase in revenues or cut in other programs.

13.  Set a date certain by which the overall U.S. trade deficit will be balanced.  Take steps either to increase U.S. exports or decrease foreign imports to meet those annual goals.  Increase or decrease tariffs and quotas accordingly annually.

14.  Devise a U.S./Canada/Mexico compact by which the economy of Mexico is sufficiently developed to stop the need for its people to immigrate illegally into the United States.  Give Mexico a preferential treatment over China, Europe and other nations, so that work and investment can go there. Establish tight border enforcement so that the illegal immigration is impossible under this new pact.

15.  Create an incentive based program for existing illegal immigrants to return to their native country, including adequate personal documentation to ensure they can be identified if they do return illegally.

No inflation???

Here's how much more (or less) we're paying for some selected items.

Info primarily from the BLS:

5-Year Price Increase, Average Annual Change, in that order:

Now,if we take the 'L' from BLS, we then have BS, which is really what we are being told with the government released COL info.  The COL figures are generally the more trustworthy numbers from the bureau of liars.

Spamless, you're entitled to your opinion.  It's a valid counterpoint.  I just think you're wrong, statistically speaking.  I hold that the quantity of effective and ethical headhunters is so low that they are a horrible bet (time wasting, manipulative, and distracting) for most candidates with more than 7-10 years of experience.

I personally think that most technology recruiters are unethical and incompetent.

Also, you're making a mistake by ASSuming that I or others have no experience upon which to base a judgement of recruiters.  I do have a very long history of using recruiters, going back 22 years.  As well as over 10 years of consulting experience.

To buttress the anti-recruiter vents: that most experienced IT people don't have a high regard for recruiters, so the preponderance of bad experiences tends to indicate that as a group recruiters don't serve candidate's needs adequately. Where there's smoke, in this instance, there is some fire.

I recall as a green (<3 years out of school) engineer that I thought recruiters were the "answer" to my job search issues and that I was best off working through them.  As I made new job searches in later years, I found that they seemed less and less interested in helping and more and more interested in playing games and doing stupid sh*t like misrepresenting jobs and misrepresenting their own intentions.  At age 40+ and 20+ years of experience I have found that recruiters acted like they were doing me a favor talking to me, even when they had nothing going.  I have simultaneously found that I am much better off batting for myself with companies.

But this makes sense in the following context.  Recruiters prefer younger candidates who are naive, can be controlled, and who lack negotiating skills. It's easy to railroad a naive kid into a position that isn't in his best interests to make a quick buck.  As you become older and more exerienced, your desirability in the eyes of recruiters diminishes.

Lastly: making sales is fast becoming a core competency for most professionals. IE: sell yourself or "die."  When you use a recruiter, you are "outsourcing" a core competency that you should be developing, to an outsider who is generally untrustworthy.

So, using a middleman who NEVER has your interests at heart is the kiss of death.

But, manage your career as you see fit.  I believe that advice to consider using recruiters is counterproductive to most professional's interests.

Tony, I don't necessarily agree that broker/middleman == crook.  I can see a valid role in the ecosystem for someone that helps sellers find buyers.  That's what Ebay does.

Functionally: a recruiter or agency is similar to an always-on collection point for resumes and candidate information, like a SMTP server on the internet that sits there all the time receiving inbound email.  Periodically, a client company "polls" the agency for certain requirements that the agency has buffered — just like you check your email with Outlook once in a while, but you're not interested in staying personally connected to the internet 24x7.  It's just specialization of functions.

However, what has happened, especially in IT, is that experienced, degreed professionals with substantial track records are demeaned to the level of temp janitorial help, while the agencies smirk about their power over the marketplace and generally misrepresent their stated intentions (bullshit like trolling for your references without any intention to place you).

I don't have any use for agencies in the IT business because most agencies lie. The IT agency business badly needs a cleanup because IT agencies have a much lower moral stature than real estate brokers, while RE agencies are much more numerous than IT agencies.

IE: if realtors were as dishonest as a group as information technology recruiters, everyone would sell their house on their own.  Which is not the case.

The biggest yard sale in American history is taking place.  Unfortunately, it's America and everything American is being sold at rock bottom prices.  Everyone wants in on the action; corporations, our government, political representatives of both houses, the elite and anyone who thinks they can make a fast buck gambling with our children's' future.

Politicians motivated by the pursuit of votes and a constant supply of cheap labor are tripping over themselves in a nauseating display to give illegal aliens driver's licenses, free K-12 education, in-state college tuition and free health care.  They are willing to give privileges to foreign nationals who are here illegally while our own citizens go begging.  Try 18 million unemployed Americans!

American corporations bleed jobs to India, China, Mexico and Bangladesh faster than a meat packing plant renders beef cows on the slaughter line, and just as callously.  American companies showing no loyalty to this nation will outsource or off-shore jobs or services they know can be made or done cheaper in foreign countries, where billions struggle for a living.  Lou Dobbs lists on his web site 350 American companies that are "either sending American jobs overseas or choosing to employ cheap overseas labor instead of American workers."

The bizarre is becoming the norm.  American software engineers are laid off to make way for cheaper H-1B and L-1 visa holders from India and elsewhere.  Adding insult to injury, Americans must train their replacements with the threat of losing their severance pay if they decline.

If that's not enough to make you weep, unscrupulous American companies that are hooked on cheap illegal alien labor like crack addicts are squeezing the American middle class even harder.  The law of supply and demand, or one of the simple concepts we learned in kindergarten, goes something like this: Lots of illegal aliens ready to work for nothing drive down the wages of Americans trying to earn a living wage.  Here's the material point: Why pay someone $15 an hour when you can get it done for $6 or $3 or $.50 an hour.  The mantra of the open borders lobby is, "Illegals are doing the jobs Americans won't do."  No, they are doing the jobs Americans won't do for slave wages.  Pay any American a decent wage and you will find willing workers.  How did anything get done in this country before it was invaded?  Have Americans sat idly by for the last 400 or so odd years and built the greatest nation the world has ever seen by being lazy? To find the answer, one must look at mercenary company policies that maximize profits by outsourcing American jobs and utilizing cheap illegal alien labor here at home.  The elites and big business are getting rich by balancing their books on the backs of everyday Americans.  Who pays for the social services for the millions of illegals?  Who suffers the costs of high crime rates and the influx of infectious disease due to our wide open and unscreened borders that our government refuses to close?  You do!  Not the elites who live in gated communities and send their children to exclusive private schools.  Middle Americans can't insulate themselves from the reality of their own destruction.

The latest insult to our intelligence is the President's guest worker amnesty scheme that will "match any willing worker to any willing employer."  America can now become a "giant low wage employment agency" to the world.  Envision billions of the world's poor competing for and further undercutting American wages. Clearly the middle class is under attack by our smiling politicians, both Republicans and Democrats alike.

Our country is being stolen from us bit by bit, piece by piece, every minute of every day.  We are returning to feudalism, controlled by the Lords of Industry, who will rule over the Global nation with an iron fist.  Thom Hartmann, best selling author states, "Only a return to liberal economic policies — a return to 'We The People' again setting and enforcing the rules of the game of business — will reverse this dangerous trend.  We've done it before, with tariffs, anti-trust legislation, and worker protections ranging from enforcing the rights of organized labor (RICO) to restricting American companies' access to cheap foreign labor through visas and tariffs.  The result was the production of something never before seen in history: a strong and vibrant middle class."

Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Merchants have no country.  The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gain."

I don't mind the fact that technology is increasing productivity.  The big problem is the fact that governments aren't able to or don't want to create an economic system which provides for full employment.

How can you create full employment?  If government could take away the power from the banks to print money and then print it themselves, this would make the economy grow much faster.  The current fiat money system guarantees that almost everyone will always be in perpetual debt.

Free trade with third world countries is basically economic suicide.  A free trade system between the US, Canada, Western Europe and Australia works fine because these countries have similar social structures (labor and environmental protection laws, advanced infrastructure).

I would propose that all first world nations refuse to trade with third world countries unless they adopt a minimum wage policy.  If Indian companies won't pay their programmers salaries that are similar to the ones in the US, then they don't get to sell their goods or services to the US market.  Simple as that.  This type of system created a lot of economic prosperity during the post-WW2 years. In order for the US automakers to be able to have access to the Canadian market, they were required to open manufacturing plants in Ontario (this is called the Auto Pact).  Yes, it goes completely against the concept of globalization and pure free trade, but it created a lot of jobs for Canada.

I lurk this newsgroup, and I notice that some of you are saying, "I'm a Republican voter, and I don't believe in socialism, but..."  There's no need to provide apologetics, here.  The Republican voters in the US have been betrayed with the GOP's endorsement of offshoring and now the proposed amnesty guest worker bill.  Your political party has been hijacked by the globalization mentality; basically, the Republican propagandists want to make you feel that you're an "evil socialist" if you don't support unrestricted free trade.  I can search the internet and come up with quotes from conservatives that are against globalization as well.  You Republican voters probably can't stomach voting for a Democrat, and I suppose that the Ds are a little more pro-labor than the Rs but they are traitors too.  John Kerry is only giving lip service to the anti-offshoring sentiment that is brewing right now.  He will betray US workers just like Bush when he's elected.

We've often heard our economy described as a Consumer Economy.  Americans have heard it so often we think of ourselves — not as citizens, but as consumers. Corporations and our government sell us the biggest crock since Hitler's Big Lie.  We buy into it by setting aside our common sense.

How do we abide by this charade?  Don't think about the future for your children and believe everything you hear on television that fits the paradigm of your political leanings.

A majority of Americans haven't yet figured it out.  It's not surprising since we are bombarded daily with propaganda promoting various aspects of The Big Lie. The invisible hand of capitalism is no longer invisible.  It is slapping us around like rag dolls.

If you are a Republican, you think the Democrats are doing the slapping.  If you are a Democrat, you think it's the Republicans.

Politicians — Democrats and Republicans are the puppets.  The puppet masters are the corporations acting in concert through trade associations and lobbyists.  For the next few minutes, take off your political party hats and examine some facets of The Big Lie.

Lie #1. Loss of manufacturing jobs is a good thing.  We've exported manufacturing to the point that we have no manufacturing left.  The last remnants of manufacturing — the tool shops are closing their doors.  China has become the center of world manufacturing.  China was supposed to open their markets to our products but they didn't.  What if China decided to nationalize the production facilities or if corporations decide to use the leverage of production against us?  Who is more dependent — them or us?

Lie #2. Sending high-tech jobs to India is good for our economy and our country. High-tech jobs sustained our economy as manufacturing was exported.  The 'experts' tell us that exporting these jobs is a normal economic shift.  However, economic shifts of the past were in a closed system within our borders.  Our leaders knew where we were headed.  When we shifted from an Agrarian to an Industrial economy, our leaders led us into manufacturing.  When we shifted from an Industrial to an Information economy, our leaders moved toward computers and knowledge.  Today as we are shifting from an Information economy to a Global economy, our leaders are silent.  They have led us to the economic precipice and they are telling us, JUMP!  When we ask, "Where will we land?"  They say, "We don't know but it's going to be good for you so, JUMP!"

Lie #3. High-tech jobs being sent to India are unimportant.  Our economy is dependent on computer systems.  Everything you eat, wear, watch, and use is brought to you by the supply chain of large corporations.  Even the small local businesses are dependent on large suppliers and computers.  Computer systems run this country.  Cut the power to the computer systems and our country stops. Control of these systems is being exported to India.  What if India decides to cut the power?  What if corporations decide to use the leverage against us?  With the control in India, who is more dependent — them or us?

Lie #4. Deficit spending and the trade deficit don't matter.  Every job that leaves this country takes its tax base with it.  We are losing our ability to pay for our infrastructure.  The borrowing that our government is doing is masking the economic losses from the export of our economy.  The states are in budget crisis because of declining tax revenues.  We think we are the richest country in the world.  If we were, we wouldn't have to borrow money.  We suffer a $7 trillion national debt.  Consumer debt tops $2 trillion.  The average credit card is $8,000.00 in debt.  Annual trade deficit exceeds $120 billion.  If you don't make anything, you have nothing to sell.  If you don't have a job, you don't make any money.  You can't pay your bills.

Lie #5. Immigration is good for our economy and good for our country.  In the past, this was true, but no longer.  Our 292 million population is self-sustaining.  Illegal immigration is discussed as immigration to confuse the issue.  On the left, people are sold the message: "The poor hard working Mexicans need a job."  On the right, people are sold the message that, "It will be an economic catastrophe if we don't have uneducated migrants working the tomato fields, wash dishes and clean bathrooms."  Mexicans are exploited and they are taking jobs that Americans want and need.  They overburden our schools, hospitals and other social safety net systems.  The invaders are taxpayer-subsidized cheap labor for corporations.  Worse, illegal and legal immigrants send $56 billion out of our country annually — thus draining us of hard currency.

Lie #6. Trade in Services is like Trade in Products.  Trade in Services defines people as commodities.  A person who is a commodity, is a defacto slave.  Guest worker programs are slave programs.  Guest Workers are indentured servants to an employer.  Complain about unsafe conditions, refuse meager wages, act up and you will be deported.  The chains of bondage are strongest when the slaves are from a Third World country.  American Workers are expected to compete with indentured servants for economic survival.

Let's recap.  We make nothing.  We import everything.  Corporations are exporting their businesses to cheap labor countries.  We borrow money from our competitors to maintain our lifestyle.  Our government is engaged in slave trade under the guise of Trade-in-Services.  Foreign nationals invade our country, breaking down our social structure and cause lawlessness on an unprecedented scale in our government and private sectors.

All this is being done in the name of Globalization.  Globalization is The Big Lie.  Free Trade is the method of implementation.  America is being bankrupted and dismantled for the fire sale.  Globalization has been taught in our military colleges.  The strategy is 'mutually assured dependence'.  It is a brilliant corporate marketing strategy.  Sell a nation an idea that purports to have a goal of world peace through interdependence of our economies.  Sell the American people the idea that they are consumers and that cheap goods from Wal-Mart are more important that anything else on earth.  Engineer foreign trade so there is no reciprocation.  When America is bankrupt from the unfair trade, the corporations will be able to loot and plunder our beloved country and the U.S. military will ensure that nobody gets in the way.

The goal of Globalization is to breakup America as a nation, as a culture and as a people.  The American Dream is being stolen from us — not the consumer model, but the dream of America itself.  America as an independent nation of independent people with rights and a Constitution to protect us from the excesses of government is being stolen right out from under us.  Globalization seeks to turn American Citizens into pawns to be used and then replaced with cheaper foreign imports at the will of corporate despots.  We are being invaded, divided and are close to being conquered.  As one American to another, look at The Big Lie for what it is and what it is doing to our nation.  In the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln, "A House Divided Can Not Stand."  We must unite in our efforts to save our country from those who seek to steal our American Dream.

From the Lou Dobbs Tonight show...

Students are already reacting...  they know the score...  The jobs and career opportunities must exist before students will train for them...  They need to know if the ROI for additional education is positive or negative BEFORE they choose!

I'll rephrase the first sentence.  In the globalist mindset, unemployed US workers must retrain for non-tradable service.  Otherwise the same factors which offshored the initial job loss, will also offshore the replacement job.

US workers and citizens are the constituency for protectionism.  They have made thousands of choices in the past to regulate capitalism in order to prevent abuses.  EPA, DOL, OSHA, SEC, courts, law enforcement, education for all, Social security, Unemployment insurance, workmans comp, etc..

US citizens must NOW make the choice to preserve our society!!!

It's unprecedented because the claims of recovery are all on paper...

The so-called recovery is claimed by using a bogus measurement (GDP) and then expounding it as truth.  Subtract out the recent increases in governmental spending and borrowing and you'll find that the GDP story turns ugly.  Adjust them using proper inflation numbers and it get's even worse.  I.e., the US government is justifying the claim of recovery by using your public debt credit card to inflate the numbers!

I found this insightful reader feedback the other day,

I suspect Greenspan and the rest of globalist buddies are smoking something.  I suspect their recommend course list would include, "Basket weaving 101," "Pan Handling 102," etc...

This November US citizens will have a choice.  I recommend putting him and the his globalist Bush buddies on the unemployment line.

1.  Outsourcing helps keep other jobs in America.

This is the most logically flawed argument.  If firms are profit maximizing and using outsourcing as a mechanism to lower cost, then why don't they outsource all jobs that can be possibly outsourced, if they want to maximize profit?  But if they are not profit maximizing, then why outsource at all? Thus a contradiction.

2.  Most of the outsourcing is done by US companies.

This is a partly true statement.  Yes, outsourcing maybe done by US based companies like EDS, IBM, HP, etc., but these are global companies and they ship off the work to places like India and China. So the bottom line is that the work is not done in the US.

3.  In the long run, outsourcing helps the US economy.

Let suppose that is a true statement.  Then the question should be: But who benefits?  Reason being is that the people who are laid off are not the direct consumers of the products that are going to be newly imported from the country where the work is being outsourced. For example, a lot of the IT services that are outsourced are benefiting American corporations, since those outsourced services are used to support corporations' business processes and any cost saving will go straight to the bottom line as opposed to consumers (see point 1 about profit maximization).  In addition, there is a strong correlation between the US trade deficit and the increase concentration of wealth/income.

4.  In a free market, firms have the right to purchase labor at the international wages.

It is true that firms have the right to go into the international market for labor needs, HOWEVER, what free marketers/globalist tend to ignore is the fact that one of their own economists, Ronald Coase, states that in order for this to be optimal, property rights have to be fair where there are no opportunities for arbitrage.  This is exactly what is happen, corporations are exploiting opportunities for arbitrage in the labor market due to the fact that it is country governments that establish property rights for workers and any differentials do create opportunities for arbitrage and in this case lower wages.  This also has another result; such practices end up subsidizing a country's reproductive choices.  That is the more a country produces people, the more workers there are going to be at all educational levels, thus putting artificial and subsidized downward pressure on wages.

5.  We need to decrease taxes for corporations so that they do not export American jobs.

Again, this is related to point one, if firms are maximize profits, won't they take the tax benefits and still export jobs because the practice lowers cost and increasing profits.  So why do corporations want to redistribute the tax benefits to retains jobs when they do not have to?  Which questions enforceability and measurements that are needed to see if they are actually retaining jobs in America.

6.  Trade barriers will limit innovation.

I do not see how, innovations will be deterred because of geographical location.  There is no evidence that shifting labor overseas increases innovation.  So one question I would ask, "Exactly how does shifting jobs overseas will enhance innovation?  Won't innovation find itself in the international market anyways through other markets?"

Lastly, there is this notion of citizenship, why should politician bow down to the will of INTERNATIONAL corporations at the expense of US citizen.  Doing so compromises national sovereignty in an economic context.

"Why, for example, is it important that consumers know if their call is being answered in Bangalore or Austin?"  asks the recent editorial.

So they can factor the deep U.S. trade deficit into their purchasing choices, perhaps.

The March 4 editorial "All Jobs Count" argued that "offshoring" is a small part of the U.S. unemployment problem.  Churn is normal in the job market.

As an electrical engineer I've held four jobs that were destroyed.  As long as I could find another decent job in a reasonable time, it wasn't a big problem.  The difference with a job that is sent abroad is that not only that job but any equivalent position is probably gone for good.

What about better education?  I have a master's degree.  Maybe a doctorate would be better?  General Electric, for example, employs about 500 PhDs in India.  How about the "next big thing," like biotechnology or nanotechnology?  With our research and development moving offshore, what reason is there to believe that the next big thing will happen here?

Further, to say "Capitalism eliminates jobs constantly, but except during recessions it creates new ones even more quickly" is odd when the opposite is true now.  We've been out of a recession for more than two years and still have lost several million jobs.  The new jobs that are being created pay substantially less than those that were lost — especially for jobs lost to offshoring.  For good measure, we're also running a half-trillion-dollar trade deficit and a roughly equal budget deficit.

In short, we're living on the world's biggest credit card and destroying our jobs in the process.

Greetings computer consultants!  I was tipped off to this newsgroup by someone in the labor movement, and I'm damned happy to be here.

I am an activist in the Film & Television Action Committee (FTAC) — a national group headquartered in Hollywood and formed five years ago to fight the outsourcing (we use the term "runaway films") of American film and television jobs for the past five years.

We might be the canary in the mine as we were among the first high tech workers to have their jobs exported.  No doubt you're aware of "Cold Mountain" (Romania), "Rudy" (the Guiliani-9/11 story), "Miracles," "The Reagans," and literally hundreds of other fake made-in-USA movies with American story lines, American stars, and American money shot in Canada.

Some of the reasons our jobs are being exported are for entirely different reasons than for the export of IT jobs.  Five years ago Canada figured out they could raid US film jobs by offering hefty subsidies to the studios.  These kickbacks paid by Canadian taxpayers, run as high as 44% of a runaway productions wages paid to Canadian citizens.  Ironically, the Canadian film industry is even more unionized than ours.  Though their wages are somewhat lower, their working conditions are vastly better than ours.

The Canadian subsidies soon kicked off a world-wide bidding war as each nation sought to bid for Hollywood jobs with ever higher kickbacks.  The EU for instance paid Miramax $10,000,000 to shoot "Cold Mountain" in Romania.  Despite five years of pleas for our government to enforce those parts of our international trade agreements that would prohibit such subsidies, government continues to turn a deaf ear to the destruction of our domestic industry.

We contend these subsidies are illegal under international trade agreements and we are seeking to bring our case before the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism, but the determination of the studios to hang on to their global kickbacks, coupled with their enormous power to bribe, influence, threaten, and blacklist their opponents has made this a long uphill job.

Until recently, our post-production sector has remained secure from outsourcing, but apparently that's up for export to India too due to its high reliance on computer technology.  This area includes our highest tech work, most of which was developed in the USA and includes motion control, CGI, animation, sound and picture editing, etc., etc.

We support all efforts to defend American jobs, whether in our industry or other industries, and regardless of wage or skill levels.  For more info about runaway films and our efforts to combat them, see our web site www.ftac.org

Usually this is true, but I think many IT people, especially programmers, are a different lot.  Their primary strength is being a "think tank" and sitting in an office writing code.  Sure, they can adapt to technical changes like the move from mainframe to PC, and from client-server to web apps.  But we're talking about having to totally reinvent yourself to work in a different type of profession.  Going from being a craftsman and techie, to being a delegator and manager is a big change many won't survive.  Society will always be made up of introverts and extroverts and each has God given strengths and talents.  The problem is any job that requires the talents of an introvert type of person can be shipped overseas.  It's easy to change your skillsets related to the type of profession you've chosen, but hard to change one's personality to adapt to an entirely new type of profession.  If you're sitting in an office right now doing a job that doesn't require constant interpersonal contact, then your job might as well be done by a person 20,000 miles away at 1/10th your cost.

Here's part of what the founding fathers came up with:

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

.    .    .    .    .

Section 8.  The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes...  to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; [and] to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states..."

[emphasis added]

There is absolutely NOTHING "un-American" about policy which promotes the interests of the citizens of this United States; that's what the Congress is is there for...

Very concerned...

Actually, it sounds like you want to hear something comforting; you can take your choice: read only about why outsourcing SHOULDN'T happen or read some cold facts about how and why it IS happening; personally, I believe it's always wise to understand what your nemesis is up to...  fully and completely.

Even assuming your self-appraisal is correct, it's largely irrelevant.

Points understood and appreciated...  but I think what you want to know cannot be found in anybody's book...  the only "comfort" I can offer here is in the old saw that ALL decisions are made on the basis of inadequate information...  the big difference between now and 1999 is that a bad decision tends to be more costly these days...  and, a good decision is less likely to be quite as rewarding.

My best advice of all is to work hard to make sure George Bush is not re-elected in 243 days...

Mr. Friedman is wrong.  I have been in human resources for more than 20 years, and I know that the types of positions we are exporting to India are not "low-wage, low-prestige" jobs.

I have interviewed hundreds of local candidates with college degrees who simply cannot find positions in information technology.  Anyone of them would be very happy to have a job like the ones we are exporting to India.

We once told workers displaced from manufacturing jobs that re-training for the technology industries would be their salvation.  What field should I tell unemployed Americans to train for now?

Can you believe this guy?

After leading the pack of the outsourcing hyenas, creating several development centers in India and China he also wants to "encourage" American students to pay $30-50K/Yr for the college education with the prospects of making $30-35K/Yr (if they are very lucky) in the IT field...

Consider that having modest roof over your head in US for one day costs as much as Indian programmer makes in a week...  Compete with THAT...

Add a couple of years...  hell they have already added 5 years.  When I started working the early retirement was 62 and full benefits at 65, now its early at 67 and full at 70+.  The bastards have already tacked on 5 years and now they want more.  There is no way now that I can live long enough to get back half of what I paid in.

People claim the New York Times is totally liberal, but the following pro-Bush propaganda shows that isn't true:

Perhaps Mr. Safire would feel differently if he was replaced by someone on an L-1 visa being paid less than the U.S. minimum wage, plus living expenses.

Now what in the heck would you expect.  The economy is bouncing like a ping-pong ball, yes there is some growth, but mostly stock market inflating, and its not steady.  Companies are making a lot of plans, and making noise about what they would like to do, but when it comes to actually spending money, they're not. They may hire a few in the low pay end, but in R&D, engineering, and supervision, they are looking, screening, interviewing, but not hiring...

I don't see my neighbors going to work, nor does the postman...  He says cars are still in the drive, and the unemployment checks have stopped coming.  You want a barometer of who's working, and who's not, and who's unemployment has run out, talk to your rural postman.

If consumer confidence is geared to the people working, having a pay check, and spending money, then somebody has been cooking the books...  In our neighborhood, on our street there are at least 15 families where the male is unemployed, or working from home.  I see them outworking on the yard, or the house during normal work hours on a daily basis.  This does not instill consumer confidence, nor does the county doubling property taxes, nor does the price of fuel going up, and up, and up, and then the Saudis make noise about their oil fields starting to decline, and now fuel will go higher...  You don't think an oil company, a bushy buddy is going to put the American people ahead of the profits for one instant, And were supposed to have confidence...  in the economy.

And then you have one of the clown White House advisors making noise about how more jobs should be sent overseas as it's good for the economy...  Who's economy? Not ours, that's for damn sure...

Hey stupid, yea YOU up there in that big White House behind the big fence on Pennsylvania Ave...  This is YOUR country too...  How about a new game, its called PUT AMERICAN CITIZENS FIRST...  AMERICA FIRST...  BE PROUD OF YOUR COUNTRY, AND BE NATIONALISTIC, PUT AMERICA FIRST...

As a veteran of H1-B visa I can say one thing — this dude has no idea what he is talking about.  My visa and most H1-B visas I saw in the IT departaments were pure fraud.  A consulting company applied for my H1-B visa before I got any assignment — they had no idea who my client will be or what kind of skills I will need for my job.  My real skills were COBOL, batch and CICS and there were plenty of Americans with those skills.  So how I got my H1-B visa?  The immigration lawyer was very creative — the company claimed that they need a programmer with degree in math, psychology, knowlege of electronics and 4 languages — one and only me.

The only way to stop visas fraud is to make a penalty of $20,000 per case, while a wistle blower will get 50% of the amount.  All H1-B visas application should be available on the Internet, so co-workers can verify if the H1-B visa holder is doing a work accordingly to his visa specification.

Fashion is being outsourced.  Accounting positions are being outsourced (heck, three large US firms have outsourced to Indian accountants: personal and corporate audits and tax-preparations).  All technology has been provably outsourced for cheaper to India and China (programming, network admin and systems analysis), lots of superfluous banking and securities duties are outsourced.  Graphic artists are nowadays often outsourced (in Manhattan at least).

So, wake up and see the reality.  It is too late.  There is nothing you can learn that will save you from having to HOPE to take a lower paying job in something like teaching, plumbing or mechanics.

Ahh, so you want us to train for jobs that don't exist.  That's the panacea! LOL.  What positions do you think Americans could learn that can't be learned by people in India who will work for 1/10th of the American salary?

Like Mr. Tucker I believe that free exchange of products and services is a good thing.  But there are practical matters I would like to see you address.  That is the structural disparity in the outsourcing game.  Mr. Tucker are you aware:

(1)  That a student arriving from India, taking a part time job, is not required to pay any federal income tax ever?  See IRS Circular E, pg 14.  That is a 17% advantage to the Indian against a native-born student.  Or more succinctly, the employer can pay the Indian 17% less and still be at parity with paying the American as far as a net wage to the employee.  (Think about that as you buy your cup of coffee at the 7-Eleven.)

(2)  That an H-1B holder has two classifications of income?  Wage earned and Living Expenses Abroad.  The H-1B holder pays the usual tax and FICA on the wage. But they pay no tax or FICA on the Living Expenses.  So, the game is, structure the entire employment package with a low wage level and a high Living Expense level.  If I had that opportunity I would jump at it, as would most Americans. The net effect is that H-1B here is paying minimal tax, and depending on income level is getting a 17-30% subsidy from the U.S. taxpayer.

(3)  That an L-1 visa holder pays no federal income tax?  L1's are classed as contract labor and are intended to be paid at the rate from their home country. So far so good.  He pays no tax here.  But the L-1 holder is here, using our services, infrastructure, and support systems and yet contributes nothing to their upkeep.  To that extent he is subsidized by the taxpayer again.

I could provide more examples but these are sufficient.

The problem is structural and needs to be changed.  The rules should be simple — Work Here, Pay Here.  Americans will compete, we've done it throughout our history.  But we expected that when the teams took the field you advanced the ball from the 20 yard line.  The way it is right now, the visiting team is spotted at the 50.

Yes, the cost of goods do reduce when they are manufactured abroad, witness the massive decline in the cost of computer technology.  However, if Mr. Tucker thinks the cost of his insurance is going to go down because someone in India is reading his X-rays he has another thing coming.  When you go into business providing a service, you can bet someone else is providing that service.  When all the costs are pared so far down that all the X-rays are being read in India there are usually no more costs to pare other than either the CEO takes a pay cut (excuse me while I pick myself up off the floor from laughing) or else you cut the price of your policies.  And if that ever happens, I will happily eat my words.

Yes, public education would be improved.  However, these are some positive pointers that might persuade Mr. Tucker that it's better to keep jobs in America.  Firstly, unlike China, America is not a Communist country whose wealth is held in the hands of a favored favorite sons of the Party.  Unlike India, America does not sit next door to a country whose national hero is the guy who built their bomb which he subsequently sold to anyone willing to show him a dime.  And America, unlike Russia, is not a kleptocracy where the Head Man is gathering more power to himself in a deliberate assault on a fragile democracy.

That was a "controlled" replacement.  It was not controlled because the economists knew what they were doing, but rather because the numbers of people being "replaced" was actually quite small, and the technology took so long to go from conception to acceptance.  This gave people years to go from the idea of losing their jobs to another industry formed by the technology that eliminated their jobs.

In the current situation there is no control factor.  Every job that fundamentally contributes to the American standard of living is obsolete.  Do you write for a magazine, or do graphic-arts functions for a studio, or write computer programs?  Then you are replaceable with someone that will work for 1/10th your salary, with no benefits.

Are you an accountant, a network administrator, a museum restoration specialist, then you have no use in this economy.

Think I'm being drastic, then consider that there are firms today in the US that outsource all those positions.

The only positions that are left are menial, lower-end items which will be more than saturated when less than 1/10% of the employable population has discovered them.

You might say that new positions will take their place.  The problem is, those new positions will be just as easily learned by people in India or China, so they won't go to Americans.  Even if the Americans had a few month head start, then it would take the people time to learn them, only to have the jobs handed off to cheaper off-shore labor.

Sounds dire.  But where is the flaw in the logic.  Just because it hasn't happened before is like saying "Gee, we never thought that would happen, the Space Shuttle hadn't exploded in the years since 25AD through 1980 AD."

I want a list of replacement jobs that will not be off-shore-able that will be able to handle the numbers of displaced and that will maintain the current standard of living.

The real question comes down to this : for each $100,000 job lost, do you think that person could find another $100,000 to replace it (even with maybe 12 months training)?  Or are you asking for sacrifices that will relegate each subsequent generation of this country to perpetual servitude.

It's a very simple logical problem.  The response should be just as logical. Don't say "well, this happened in the past" because it actually never has.  If you are saying "other jobs will replace it" then what are those other jobs.  What firms will need their services that don't need them now?  Faith is a good thing, and I'll believe after it's proven.

I am a retired ex-computer consultant that had 28 years in the computer industry.  I have been lurking here for quite awhile and have found all the articles posted by individuals to be very interesting.  You guys/gals are in a tough situation and I feel for you as I have been there.  During the end of my career I worked with those from India and am so glad I do not have to anymore. There were days I did not want to go to work but I did as I considered myself a professional.  I am not going to go on with all my experiences with the Indian consultants as it will be mundane as you are going through it now.

All this crap started with Section 1706 of the Tax Reform Bill of 1986.  Get the independents out of the way so we can import cheaper labor, although this is not stated in Section 1706.  I was there, I went from an Independent consultant to a quasi-employee whatever the hell that is as we did not know where we stood but we knew we got screwed.  In 1988 the H1 visa came out and guess what?  We slowly started getting replaced by Indian consultants.

Senator Daniel Moynihan was the key individual behind 1706 but Senators Packwood, Bradley, Lautenberg were also involved.  At the time we got enough congressmen signed on to get Section 1706 repealed for a period of two years so it could be studied but Congressman Rostenkowski refused to put it to the floor of Congress for debate.  Alas, screwed again.

For those of you not familiar with Section 1706 do a search on '1706 1986' (without the quotes) and you can make your own conclusions on how we got screwed back then and you are getting screwed now.

Yes and also you have Japanese auto makers with plants in the US, but I believe the difference here is those auto plants make autos for americans. They aren't made here and then shipped back to Japan and Germany. As for american companies in Asia, it is understandable that they would want to use cheap asian labor to make products affordable for those people in those nations.  However, there are a lot of companies operating in those countries and then shipping products back to the US.  This creates a race for the bottom.  Company A in the US can no longer compete with Company B that has outsourced its labor, so Company A does the same followed by others as the competition increases.

Free markets are fine if countries have similar labor, environmental and other standards.  The problem here is that the competition between a country with standards and one without is the standards begin to fall in the more developed nation in order for those remaining to compete. The correct way to have implemented trade would be to tie tariffs to standards.  By making less developed countries upgrade their labor and environmental standards the world could improve for all people.  Instead we are going backwards.

This is true, you see this especially in electronics and tech but it still results in a net exodus of money, and there is a future cost not yet realized in the loss of future scientists and developers and eventually national security.

The deficits are two fold.  One cause is during the late 90's governments saw they could take a ride on the income produced by producers in our growing economy so they pushed for larger funding for programs. Second because of the loss of commerce fewer taxes can be generated resulting in less money for government. A cascading dollar no longer has as many positive effects as it once did because imported items not produced in the US become expensive adding to inflation.  The problem is many items can't be produced here anymore or would take too long to develop.  The cascading dollar though was a result of government action in the face of lower commerce which as we know is partly due to the exit of american business and jobs.

There is nothing to explain.  All high payed jobs in America that can be exported to a cheaper country will be exported.  That means number of American engineers, programmers, accountants, lawyers, architects and other tech job will shrink. For the remaining salaries will go down.  The owners of busnesses will save a lot of money by outsourcing jobs — rich will became richer and percent of Americans earning a minimum salary will increase.

About 2 years ago I read investement advice from some investemet guru — he adviced to invest in companies that serve very rich and very poor, because in his opinion the American middle class will disapear.

Did anyone see the piece on the Lou Dobbs show where he was interviewing the Atul Vashistha from NeoIT? Man, that was a hoot! Lou literally shredded the guy's argument for "offshore outsourcing." During the show, he stated that engineering and software development were in fact a "high value add" fields, and that moving them offshore was nothing more than exporting wealth.  When Mr. Vashista countered with the tired old "companies will not be competitive if they do not move jobs offshore," Lou fired back with something along the lines of "you mean that if companies do not move jobs offshore they will be non-competitive with companies that do? Does this not sound like a race to the bottom?" What I found truly amazing was that, when Mr. Vashistha threw out the tired old "move up the value chain and innovate" argument, Lou's succinct reply was basically "What exactly does an engineer or computer scientist who has spent years, in school as well as on the job, developing a "high value" skill set do when his/her job is exported? What you are saying is that it is okay to ask these people to give up their jobs for lower paying position elsewhere in the economy." Lou basically called the guy an opportunist.

Shipping jobs offshore is shortsighted.

I had two recent experiences that point out the potential problems with shipping some jobs offshore.

1.  I called AT&T to find information on a long-distance service.  I was asked to press "1" if I wished to continue the conversation in English.  I did so, not knowing that I would be the only one actually continuing the conversation in English.  The representative understood the minimum basics of taking an order in English but was unable to answer any other questions about the service.  I called back hoping to find another person who could help me and found another representative with the same skill level.  I gave up and went to a competitor.

2.  I purchased a cordless phone.  The phone did not work properly.  The company's tech support said I probably had a bad phone and to try another one.  I returned it for another of the same model.  Same problems.

I called the company's tech support and once again reached a "technician" in India.  This representative spoke perfect English but was absolutely clueless about the technical aspects of the product.  He was only able to look at the manual and ask me questions, such as to whether or not I had the phone plugged in.  Once again I returned the phone.  And once again I purchased a competitor's product.

If this is what passes for good business judgment on how to cut costs, we are in for some hard times.

This is in addition to the fact that if enough jobs are shipped offshore, there will be few people left with the income to purchase these "economically" produced goods and services.

Well let's see.  A worker from India could easily be had for about $30 per day for this type of job.  You need to compete globally according to Carly, so that would put you into the range of about $27-$29 per day, or $7,540 per year.

You might want to think about a good bullet proof vest also.  Some good ones are available for about $3,995.00.  That would leave you a net of about $3,545 per year.  Of course that's before taxes!  Add in another 50% for taxes.  That puts you in the $1,772.50 bracket, unless you are a 1099 contractor.  Subtract another 7.5% for that.

Of course, you will need to recover your travel expenses.  India subsidizes air travel for workers at about $125 per round trip.  Since travel from the US is a little more expensive, so ask for $150 in travel expenses.  A round trip ticked to Baghdad will run you approximately $1,650.00.  Subtract that from your net, and that leave you with a cool $122.50 for your labor.

Oh wait, you will have to eat while you are there, won't you?

Welcome to the new world order.

Regarding the article, "Tech firms defend shifting of jobs to low-paying overseas posts" (Jan.  8), concerning corporations such as "IBM and "Hewlett-Packard "shipping" thousands of technology jobs to low-wage companies in countries like India: "HP's CEO, Carly Fiorina, is quoted as saying, "There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore."

That may be true, Carly, but neither are tax breaks, the support of a secure, stable and comfortable infrastructure, and other benefits of doing business as a United States corporation "God-given" rights for big companies like HP.  She suggests American high-tech workers and other job-disenfranchised U.S.  citizens get used to competing on a global scale.  So if Raoul in India makes $4,000 a year, well, Joe, take a big pay cut, or we're sending your job overseas.

As a 24-year high-tech veteran and U.S.  citizen, I would say to HP and the other "America-be-damned-for-our-bottom-line" companies (built by the drive, initiative and innovation of U.S. citizen workers, by the way), don't be surprised if you're asked to pay for selling us and your country down the river.

Yeah, I hear you squealing about the evils of "protectionism," but consider that every job you "outsource" is taking away from the U.S. tax base — the same U.S. tax base that pays for the secure, comfortable and stable environment your company enjoys doing business in.  So, is it unfair to ask that you make up for the adverse economic effects to our nation that your "job outsourcing" causes?

I would suggest the draining of our high-tech jobs and the inevitable disruption to our economy, not to mention degrading our position as a technological leader, more than justifies our asking the companies involved to compensate us.

Finally, I think it would benefit all of us in the long term to embrace policies and implement strategies that raise the standards of living of other nations to that of the U.S. and not lower the U.S. standard of living to that of impoverished nations...  many of which take advantage of their own overall impoverishment to sell cheap labor to the U.S. for the benefit of a very few and to the detriment of many.

The reason that's often cited for outsourcing tech jobs is that in a global economy, businesses need to be competitive with rest of their industry or their products and services would be priced out.

But what would be the price differentiation if all these companies go to the same sources to design and develop their products and services?

Ultimately, it's factors such as product quality, reliability and customer service that help make a purchase.  Price is important, but it is not the sole differentiating factor in making the sale.  U.S corporations that are rushing to outsource are losing sight of this point.

The rush to outsource is also motivated by a relentless drive to increase corporate profits to satiate Wall Street.  But all this is at what cost?  We can pay a few cents more for the products we buy so that we can all afford a decent education for our children and health care for our families.

Some people say the jobs that are being outsourced will eventually be replaced by high-paying jobs.  But these might provide employment to only a fraction of the people losing their jobs right now.

Congress should also help stop this exodus of jobs by providing tax incentives to companies designing and developing their products here and creating jobs in the United States.

The loss of high-tech support and software jobs to India repeats a pattern we have endured for more than 30 years.

As hundreds of thousands of garment-worker, auto and consumer-electronics manufacturing jobs went overseas, executives and cooperating political leaders reassured us that although transition pain was likely, all Americans would benefit from upgraded work opportunities.

The same pain and reassurances were repeated when the upgraded jobs in computer and disk-drive manufacturing found their way to Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan. Now the same is true for support and software jobs.

Two facts can be observed from this activity:

1. The American middle class is being gradually destroyed.  On one end we will have the obscenely wealthy.  On the other, we'll have the barely working class, with two or three jobs a family, wondering when their life's work, health insurance and children's educational opportunities will be plundered for the sake of the bottom line.

2. The only jobs never at risk appear to be top executive jobs.  Why is it American companies can find a cheaper alternative for every middle-class job, but never find a cheaper chief executive in Asia or Europe?

Thanks for the article ("Free trade: True test for the faithful," Oct.  12), including the tepid tentative doubts expressed that the lobbyists have all our best interests at heart.

Although in many respects I am a card-carrying "liberal" and PBS listener, I am coming to appreciate the scorn the working class holds for the Globe and PBS, bastions of people who make money studying other people's life-and-death issues. And "free trade" is a life-and-death issue for me at age 53, as I spent my life savings in my 30s going to college a second four years to enter engineering, now kicked out of it through no fault of my own.

And I know dozens in this situation in the Boston area, hundreds online, and via statistics, tens of thousands in Massachusetts and hundreds of thousands nationally.

My last employer laid me off 2.5 years ago, hired a replacement in India, and now has an explicit internal policy letting US citizens go wherever possible by attrition and replacing them in India.  The rosy glow about "new jobs?"  Forget it.

"The Information Technology Association of America, an industry trade group, estimates that some 840,000 information technology (IT) jobs in the US will go unfilled this year.  Those jobs, for a first-year graduate, start out with typical salaries of $45,000 to $50,000 and rapidly escalate.  The offshore software outsourcing industry will no doubt continue its hyper-expansion in the next few years as Western firms look for cheap offshore talent to fill that gap, and to lower costs."

The reality — first-year graduates work at McDonalds and 25 year veterans work at $25-30K, if they are lucky, if not, their function is to ask "Do you want fries with that?"

I was a Senior Technical Officer in the Solutions Delivery division of ITM in Tampa for two years.  Despite exemplary performance and praise from my superiors I was replaced by cheap offshore labor in India this past summer.

I got the news three weeks after the birth of my second daughter.

I am lucky.  Although I lost many thousands of dollars because of having to quickly sell a house that I could no longer afford and although I spent savings that I was hoping was a start of a college fund for my children I was eventually able to find work.  I had to move 625 miles away and be separated from my family for months, but we are together now and I am moving on.

Many of my friends are not so lucky.  I have seen them devastated by the depression and stress that being thoughtlessly tossed aside brings crashing down.  It saddens me deeply.  I still have friends at the bank.  Some of them know that their departments are being replaced by offshore companies.  They live each day in anguish and dread.

I loved working for Chase.  I was ready to spend the rest of my working life devoted to the bank.  I felt a sense of family in ITM that seems to be missing in so many offices these days.  There was a camaraderie that helped us perform in even the most adverse situations.  Morale was high.  When the catastrophic events of September 11, 2001 took place, I was very proud of the way my employer responded to those in need and those who had lost so much.  My resolve to be the best officer I could be was strengthened and I began to brag about Chase to friends outside the bank.  Then, just when my opinion of the firm was at its zenith, I realized that advertisement and public relations take many forms.

The very firm that waved the banner of the United States of America for all the world to see — a firm that appeared to be leading the charge as America mounted her recovery from a vicious blow — a firm that seemed so in touch with everyday America — failed me.  Chase also failed America.  The bank, faced with sagging stock prices and uneasy investors, turned its back on the American worker — the very source of its largess.  Those of us in Tampa were humiliated by being forced to train Indian replacements or lose our meager severance pay.

You cannot begin to understand the conflict a father feels when he must actually assist in the removal of food from his children's mouths.  Many times during the 60 days that I worked out my notice period at Chase, I returned home to my family ashamed that I had cooperated with the Indians as they endeavored to eliminate the source of my family's income.  Many times I choked back tears when my 3-year-old met me each day as always with hugs as I came in the door.  I lay awake most of those nights wondering how I was going to continue to support my family in a market where IT jobs were vanishing as corporate avarice sent more and more jobs overseas or into the hands of non-citizens working in this country.

I understand the firm's need to appease stockholders.  I understand that the economy has been soft.  I also understand that corporate executives continue to collect bonuses for eliminating jobs and fattening the bottom line.  I hope that Chase understands that this sort of solution is short lived.  Executives who profit in this way have a habit of moving on once the blood is drained and start the process again somewhere else.  What is left is a company that is in worse shape than before that no longer has experienced personnel nor the loyalty of the remnant of employees left behind.  The other, most valuable thing that is lost is integrity.  Chase and other companies who have stabbed the American worker in the back can no longer boast of being one of the "Best Places to Work".  They now must wear the badge of shame that comes with a record of letting greed outweigh morality.  Finding the cream of the crop among potential employees in the future will be difficult.  A trust has been violated.  A precedence has been set.

I credit God with preserving my family and I during this trying time.  There were times when I know that my mortal abilities were no match for the adversity that was set before me.  Looking back, I know that He could see around corners where I could not.  He has something better for me.  I am thankful to God now that Chase is in my past.  In some ways I am glad that I am no longer affiliated with the bank.  (Knowing that credit card process programming is happening in India will forever prevent me from holding a Chase credit card.)  I pray daily for my friends who remain with Chase.  I will also pray for you and the other executives who may see short term profit from these moves.

We are all led to believe that Alan Greespan as head of the Federal Reserve is our top economist because he and his associates have some direct control over our (US) economy.  He has an army of economists to advise him; they run econometric models all the time and try to figure out what the economy will do. (By the way this is an indirect reply to all of those globalists that say WE the non-globalists are not sophisticated enough in economics to understand that losing our jobs and houses and regular food and medical care is actually GOOD for us.  One doesn't have to be an economist to understand that if someone is robbing the grain store you ain't gonna eat this winter.)

Anyway, the quote comes from an article by Craig Torres from the Bloomberg News:

That is my emphasis, but it is like in the field of dreams: Give them corporate welfare and they will hire.  Greespan says just trust my pals (at ENRON?)  and they will hire people to do something (EVENTUALLY?).

One would have a hard time making this crap up.  When Greenspan knows there is a tremendous market here and there are goods to produce and services to provide, but his pals — the people he really looks out for — only want to sell here and live here.  They don't want to hire Americans to produce the goods or services. So he gives us this pie in the sky by and by routine.  All he has to do is smooth over any ruffled feathers in the congress and the public with this mumbo jumbo. The congressmen can then go over to the Indian Caucus meeting and collect their ichecks and feel good about themselves.

This is not about good workers or bad workers, this is not about jingoism.  This is about math.  Our system sanctions and supports US corporations.  Corporations are taxed under the premise that they are US corporations, using US resources, protected by US laws and the US military.  The US also subsidizes the education of its citizens.  You may not like it, but we have a fair of amount of resources invested in socialist programs.

Given the cost of education, it's impossible, mathematically impossible for American tech workers to compete with cheap foreign labor.

So all these arguments about who's better or smarter have nothing to do with the problem.  I can spend $50k to advance myself from a BA to MA, but as long as an Indian with a PhD will work for $6k that additional money spent is a waste of resources and time.  The tax money I spent to educate your kid, is also wasted (if you want to look at it that way).

Just as important, we spend hundreds of billions (again like it or not it's a reality) to keep our kids sober, hoping they will go to school and be productive.  That's the main excuse for the drug war.

Who, in their right mind is going to send their kid to school and go into debt, knowing they have to compete with someone who pays pennies on the dollar for their education? I hope you like rap music, there'll be more of it.

This is about an economic system.  Not a hypothetical, idealistic system, but a real system.

So, without bringing jingoism and bigotry into the mix, without name calling and casting aspersions, please tell me the solution to this problem:

We have highly educated "techies" willing and able to work, who can't find jobs.  They are not undereducated, so more education won't help.  In fact, they are educated and inspired by the very people who invented much of the technology used around the world.  Programmers, educated in the states, who have PhD's are considered "over qualified" by most HR departments.  That's also a fact.  So, how do we make ourselves so employable that a company will drop a $6k per year worker with a PhD in favor of a $30k-$100 per year worker with a MA?

Yes, but that's the problem: the US is not a laissez-faire market.  I could probably make a "good buck" selling heroin to your kids, or teaching your daughter how to glean tips in return for exotic dance — but our pesky government is in the way.  A less offensive and more apt example:  Again, our tax money subsidizes our education system based on the premise that if we educate ourselves we will get an "opportunity" to work and make money.  It doesn't matter whether you like our current pseudo-socialist system, or not.  "Big daddy government" does many things that we both probably vehemently disagree with.  However, it is what it is, and the end result of the government's latest "brilliant move", is to destroy jobs before our kids could even finish engineering school.

So, you don't like the government telling you who to hire? My guess is you don't like paying for welfare either.  So what do we do? Realistically?

Consider:  Slavery ended because a war forced businesses to give up their free labor.  If you don't want capitalism to become a euphemism for "greed" you need to consider the whole system, and be reasonable.  Making a profit is great, getting filthy rich while your neighbor sits idle and your cities and states lose tax revenues is stupid.  Stupid because you know damn well where the next big welfare check will go.  Maybe you don't.  It won't go to the US techies, it'll go to the people with powerful lobbyists who are being hurt by techie unemployment.  So, we're looking at subsidies for schools at the very least; which is again stupid because like I said, American engineers are not under-educated, nor is there a shortage of American techies.  Never-the-less, we'll all get free tech PhD's — except for management, the one component that never seems to get replaced.

We've devalued almost an entire class of trained, upper working class workers in less than 4 years.  Do you really believe that our system can handle that?

An Open Letter Regarding the Offshoring of Jobs to other countries, such as India and China:

I am a short-term contractor with a U.S. software company based in Alameda, CA. I don't know if I will have a contract after October 2003.  I may be offered a job, but there's no assurance of that.

I am a Systems Administrator whose job has not yet been shipped to India or another country.  Many jobs in the IT department of this company, however, have been shipped to India.  They include database administrators and developers of all kinds.  There are new layoffs every week, of both technical and non-technical employees.

Why should I work for a company who ships jobs offshore, while laying off long-term, loyal employees who have families to support?

Do I stay because of my mortgage payments?  Do I stay because of my personal desire to succeed in my field?  Do I support the company in the hopes that the jobs will return?

Do I leave out of protest, based on the principle that if we do not support these companies (do not give them our time or money) they will get the message and change their behavior?  Do I put my efforts instead into fighting against the offshoring, not to mention federal H1B visa policy, while accepting a lower paying position outside of my field?

Gee, I really like paying my bills but my heart tells me that U.S. Companies (with the tacit approval of the federal government) are gutting our economy only to please their shortsighted shareholders and top paid executives.

If the shareholders are individuals who lose their jobs, who's to say that they won't cease to be shareholders?

Who will pay taxes to keep our infrastructure up-to-date and running relatively smoothly?

Who will provide jobs to non-technical workers if we cannot afford to buy their food, products or services?

Who will buy the cars and houses?  Last time I checked these two big-ticket items were not getting any cheaper.  Non-technical workers cannot afford expensive cars and homes — they barely make enough to buy a used car and rent an apartment.

Construction contractors and sub-contractors will not be working as much, because technical workers will no longer be able to afford upgrades to their homes.

Appliance and hardware stores will sell less, not to mention their wholesale suppliers.  Revenues of such companies will decline, not to mention consumer confidence.

And if the states cannot keep themselves afloat (as is the case now), how will public schools survive?

Will only the overpaid CEOs and CIOs be able to afford decent schooling and new clothing or shoes for their children?

And what about textbooks and computer labs?

Oh yeah, I forgot — we won't need those tools because our children won't be competing for technical jobs.  Our children will grow up to serve food and ring up cheap imported goods for those who protected themselves and their corporations while shipping our jobs overseas.

There are many other issues not covered here.  My goal is not to enumerate statistics, publications and studies that present their own biases.  I am simply presenting my own ruminations on the subject of offshoring.

P.S.  If you plan to respond to this, please resist the urge to use foul language and disparaging remarks.  This type of behavior is unnecessary and counter-productive.  This posting is meant only to encourage a discussion on the issue of personal ethics and social responsibility, not to provoke name-calling.

(1)  Greedy American CEOs move jobs overseas for cheaper foreign labor, netting themselves fatter bonuses and raises.

(2)  American workers are downsized as soon as they teach their replacements their jobs.

(3)  Foreign workers eventually learn how to make all the products once made in America.

(4)  Foreign workers realize they have no use for American CEOs and investors taking all of their profits, so they start their own companies.

(5)  American CEOs and investors go broke, due to no sales, on top of the fat CEO salaries and bonuses.

(6)  What's left of America's wealth moves to the safer, booming foreign countries, along with the billions taken by retiring CEOs.

(7)  With most of American's wealth and industry exported, it becomes another third-world country, and serves as another example of greedy, corrupt leaders bringing down a country from within.

In case you do get fired, and I sincerely hope you don't, you should pre-emptively get your financial house in order.  A lot of guys who were living check-to-check went down the drain REAL fast when they got cut, fired, laid off, surplused, whatever.

RIGHT NOW, while you are still working, you should where applicable: cut out all unnecessary expenses; dump all your luxury items; pay off your revolving debt.; if you have multiple cars, sell the more expensive one; if you rent, get a cheaper apt; if you own your home, dump it and get a cheaper place or apartment: The housing market has just about peaked in most places and Sept.  is a good month to sell...  if you are forced to panic sell in January or February you are in big trouble.  If you have significant credit card debt, talk to a credit counsellor NOW about getting the interest rates reduced so you can reduce the payments and/or pay down the principal.  Even if you get another job right away, realize there's been a bit of "salary depreciation" the past couple of years and you'll probably be making less money: unless you are currently living way under your means, you will need to "downsize."

If you do get laid off, apply for unemployment IMMEDIATELY.  You are going to need every nickel.  I wish I had, and everyone else I know who put it off as I did says the same thing.  Even if you are only out of work for a few weeks, you should get benefits and you don't know how long you are going to be out in any case.  If you have to notify UI the day after applying for benefits that you got a job, good!

Also, don't let your S.O., kids, friends, parents or anyone else with an interest in the "status quo" talk you out of doing the right thing(s): Trading down your house and car is preferrable to losing them both to the bank.  Enough said!

I wish I'd done all of this a year ago, when my work started to run out.  While I've found a bit of work since then, it wasn't nearly enough to cover the bills. I burned through my savings, my credit, sold the nicer of my 2 vehicles, and now the house is on the market.  Fortunately, I have enough equity to pay everything off and start over someplace else.

I never thought this would happen to me, either.  I was the top rated employee everywhere I went.  I had consulting clients pay me more than I billed, since they liked my work so much.

Yes, but I would not bet on it happening real soon.

Best wishes and lots of good luck!

I'm fortunate enough that I actually own my company so I don't have to deal with the political sewage that frequently seeps down in many companies.  The entire situation in this country dealing with the outsourcing of our high-tech industry boils my blood.  I am a true believer that the legislation currently being proposed to lower the H-1B and L-1B visa quotas will not go far enough.  I think these visas should be abolished until all of the unemployed and laid-off IT workers and engineers who are US citizens are back on a payroll.  The fact that a US company thinks that hiring a barely-English-speaking worker in India or the Philippines is going to solve their competitive problems is just absurd.  This is such a shortsighted solution that it makes me sick to think that the people in these corporations actually think that they are making sound business decisions. When the high-tech people being displaced by these policies don't have the income to purchase the products being made off-shore, who exactly, Mr. and Ms. CxO, do you think is going to buy your stuff?  You think the worker in India is going to run out and buy it?  I doubt it.  I'm not speaking as a disgruntled engineer who has been laid off; I've avoided that fate which makes me, unfortunately, unusual among my friends.  I'm speaking from experience, both as consumer and as a developer dealing with offshore companies.

As a developer, I've worked for a company that thought it was just the greatest idea to hire half of our development team from an Indian outsourcing company. The PR on the Indian developers was that they were fully qualified and were less than half the price of some of the members of our engineering team.  Sure sounded like a plan.  Well in reality it was, and continues to be, a terrible idea.  The "fully qualified" engineering team was not even close to qualified.  They not only completely screwed up the code base, but they cost us more work in the end to fix their mess.  Then there was the 2-day turn around per incident because of the time differences between them and us.  Every little thing was an email, wait a day, another email, and wait a day.  Things that should have taken minutes to resolve took days.  It was a complete fiasco.  When the emails just ended being a waste of time, we had to schedule conference calls at all hours of the night, again to take the time differences in the locations into account.

Are all outsourcing companies a total waste?  I doubt it, I'm sure there are some stellar engineers working at some of these companies.  Just as there are stellar engineers all over the world.  Do I want, or need, to work with them from my office in the US to successfully complete a project?  I don't think so.  Will using an offshore development team save money?  I can tell you from my experience, it was exactly the opposite.

From a consumer's point of view, I recently needed support from Symantec Corporation because of a serious problem I was having on my machine caused by one of their products.  I bought and downloaded a virus checker, which completely roached my machine.  First I got the email support, which was clearly a form letter, of things to try from Manjunath C, Symantec Authorized Technical Support.  I can only assume that my complaint was handled through an offshore call center.  Ok, I can deal with that, but what annoyed me no end was that I had initially emailed very detailed symptoms and a description of the problem.  I am, after all, an engineer.

This same sort of difficulty in dealing with customer support happened to me too in dealing with HP recently where a conversation that should have taken less than 5 minutes took more than 20 because of the heavy accent on the part of the offshore worker handling the Accounts Payable for HP.  I was able to tell where he was located due to the hp.india.com return address of his email...  Why should I be forced to lose money (my time is money also) while other companies think they have a right to save it?  And by the way to HP: having an AP rep on the phone for 20 minutes from India to Colorado is not, perhaps, the cost savings you folks intended.

I want to be very clear: I have no problem working with anyone of any nationality.  In fact, most of my career has been spent working with teams located around the globe.  What I do have a problem with is working with people who are being hired as "cheap" labor who clearly aren't qualified or and can be very hard to understand to handle the business situation or transaction required.  While many of us in the industry feel like we are being dragged through the wringer and have no choice when dealing with the whole offshore situation.  I'd like to suggest that we, as an industry, have a number of choices.  Here are a few:

• When you are asked to train the foreign worker to do your job or to support your product line because in 6-8 months they will be doing your job (or the job of a co-worker), simply refuse.  And if you must, quit the job.  No two weeks notice, just flat out quit.  While this might seem like a drastic measure, you're going to lose your job anyway so does it really matter?  At least you'll leave on your own terms and not be labeled as a disposable worker, not to mention leaving with some dignity.  Let companies understand the value that we bring to the success of business in this country.

• When you are about to buy a product, call the company and ask them if they outsource their IT and their customer support before you make the purchase.  If they do, then simply don't buy the product.  But make sure you write an email or letter to the CEO or President and let them know flat out why you didn't buy the product.  American companies will listen when their wallets are being squeezed.  Maybe we should start industry-wide and consumer aware boycotts of these companies and publicly supporting those companies that support the American high-tech worker.  If enough people stop buying the products that are built and/or supported by offshore companies, then I think that American companies will start to listen.

• Last but not least, write your congress-people, your Rep and your Senators. I'm sending a copy of this blog to mine right now.  Let them know that the issuing of foreign worker visas in the high-tech industry has to stop.  Either that, or make it financially unattractive for companies to do so by hitting them with a `we're screwing the high-tech American worker and we know it' tax.  At least we'll have it all out in the open for what it is.

Its not hard call at all.

1.  Do nothing and let the elites run the US into the ground.

or

2.  Get control back of government and start imposing some morals on societies amoral creations (corporations).

      a.  Ban export of financial/medical info on US citizens.  (Criminal/civil penalties must be severe, coupled with lucrative whistle blower clauses.)
      b.  Require all financial bookkeeping for US corps to remain within jurisdiction of US courts/police.  Again with criminal/civil/whistle blower clauses.
      c.  Require all government contracts for services to remain in US.
      d.  Eliminate all H-1B, H-1B1, L-1 visas.
      e.  Curtail B-1 visas so that no labor related billables may be rendered by a holder of such a visa while in the US.
      f.  Eliminate extension of US court adjudication for offshore contracts.
      g.  Get rid of of morons running our patent office.
      h.  More as I can think of it...

I would say the time frame for a decision is less than two years.  After that it will be too late.

The big argument for the tax cut just signed by President Bush is that it will create much-needed jobs.  But one big question remains: will those jobs be created for Americans, or will corporations simply hire more job-seekers from India and China?  It's time for Congress to call a halt to the scandal of the way big corporations hire foreigners at the same time they are laying off their American employees.  The hiring of hundreds of thousands of foreigners is why this year's college graduates face the worst job market in recent memory.

Follow the money.  The big corporations hire aliens from India and China at half or a third the wages, work them long hours without overtime pay, and treat them like indentured servants unable to quit for a better job.  What makes this racket possible is the partnership between corporations and government.  The corporations make political contributions to assure the passage of legislation that legalizes the importation of foreign cheap labor by the devices called H-1B visas, L-1 visas, and outsourcing.

The Scam of H-1B Visas

Despite hundreds of thousands of unemployed American engineers and computer specialists, corporations continue to import foreigners at the same time that they lay off U.S. citizens.  This system is the direct result of legislation voted by Congress, whose members enjoy political contributions and favors from the corporations that profit.

Federal agencies don't determine if there really is a shortage of U.S. skilled workers, or check for violations of H-1B prevailing-wage or equal-pay regulations.

This is not free-market economics.  It is collusion between corporations that pour big money into politics and Congress that passes legislation enabling the corporations to replace American workers with foreign substitutes, thereby keeping all wages artificially low to enhance corporate profits.  This is not a "natives vs. immigrants" issue because it impacts negatively on naturalized Americans and legal permanent residents as well as on native-born citizens.

Republican Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rep.  Tom Davis (R-VA) candidly commented, "This is not a popular bill with the public...  This is a very important issue for the high-tech executives who give the money."  Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) admitted, "There were, in fact, a whole lot of folks against it, but because they are tapping the high-tech community for campaign contributions, they don't want to admit that in public."

The congressional-corporate attack on engineers and computer specialists started when Section 1706 was slipped into the Tax Reform Act of 1986.  This uniquely discriminatory section required anyone who is an "engineer, designer, computer programmer, systems analyst or other similarly skilled worker" to be classified by Internal Revenue as an employee rather than as an independent contractor, which hundreds of thousands were at that time.

This change in the law, plus aggressive enforcement by the Internal Revenue Service, resulted in the creation of large consulting or contracting firms that hire such persons as their own employees and then contract to sell computer services to big corporations.  These "gatekeeper" firms expanded rapidly because they took over the management of personnel for corporations and then found how easy it is to exploit H-1B and L-1 visas to hire foreigners to replace American engineers and programmers.

The Scam of L-1 Visas

L-1 visas were created to allow intracompany transfers of key managers, executives or persons with "specialized knowledge" from a foreign office to a U.S. office of the same company.  There are no numerical limits and no safeguards against abuse.  After the "gatekeeper" consulting firms became widespread, they made L-1 visas a gold mine of profits.  L-1 visas also enable foreign workers to bring in their spouses and children on L-2 visas.

The Scam of Outsourcing

The "Boston Globe" revealed the reason why tens of thousands of Information Technology (IT) jobs have been outsourced overseas in the last couple of years, and why major American banks, brokerage houses, and insurance companies plan to shift 500,000 more IT jobs overseas in the next five years.  MBA graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology can be hired for $12,000, compared to the average starting salary of Harvard Business School graduates of $102,338.  A researcher with a few years' experience might have to be paid $250,000 on Wall Street compared with $20,000 in India.

So, it's not just the steelworkers and the blue-collar manufacturing workers who are getting shafted by the global economy; it's smart college graduates, too.  As one executive, who has no shame about replacing Americans with foreigners, said, "If it can be done by sitting at a desk in front of a computer, then it can be done abroad."

The future is now.  U.S. companies are already using Indian employees to do research and development, prepare tax returns, evaluate health insurance claims, transcribe doctor's medical notes, analyze financial data, dun for overdue bills, read CAT scans, process student loans, create presentations for investment banks, and more.

Some U.S. companies such as American Express are using Indians to service American customers by telephone.  A call-center employee earns $20,000 a year in the United States, but only $2,500 in India.  The Indians adopt American names (Sanjeep becomes Sam, Radhika turns into Ruth), learn how to avoid British colloquialisms, take speech therapy to sound American, and hang American flags to decorate a pseudo-American workplace.

New Jersey residents were shocked to learn that state officials had hired contractors who in turn arranged for operators working in Bombay, India, to handle calls from the state's welfare recipients.  New Mexico residents were shocked when KOAT-TV reported that the state had hired aliens as computer programmers in the Taxation and Revenue Department, and then paid private attorneys to process their green cards.  The large amount of taxpayer-paid computer work performed by non-citizens for at least 12 state governments and 9 federal agencies is a scandal crying out for investigation.

One of the devious ways that corporations try to perpetuate their supply of cheap foreign labor is by financially supporting immigrants' rights groups. Open-borders policies allow an unlimited supply of cheap labor to keep coming into the United States.

Not only is the corporations' claim that we suffer a shortage of computer programmers and engineers a fraud, but so is their claim that the aliens they import have specialized knowledge that is needed to retain the industry's technological edge.  Most H-1Bers and L-1ers are very ordinary workers making very ordinary salaries, and often they do not even have the qualifications claimed by their employer sponsors.  The vast majority of computer-related H-1Bers are paid less than $58,000.

Until recent years, America had a commitment to a middle-class society, the economic system that built American greatness and prosperity.  Employees used to be viewed as an investment, but more and more they are looked upon as replaceable commodities.  The movement toward an increasing percentage of underclass cheap laborers is a formula to make us like Latin America and other countries from which immigrants are trying to escape.  Cheap labor ends up being subsidized by the taxpayers, who pay the health, welfare and crime costs that employers are able to escape.

What to do?

Congress should:

1. Reject all attempts to extend the current high number of H-1B visas and allow the limit to revert to 65,000;
2. Require that corporate applications for H-1B visas first demonstrate good-faith efforts to hire or retain American citizens;
3. Require employers to lay off non-citizens before laying off American citizens;
4. Restrict L-1 visas to a company's own employees earning at least $100,000 a year;
5. Forbid all government agencies from hiring non-citizens or from contracting with outside firms that hire non-citizens; and
6. Repeal the 1986 law that prevents computer engineers from working as independent contractors.

Tell your Congressman that importing alien workers to replace American citizens is economically absurd, morally indefensible, and politically foolish.

I hate to be a drag, but even if you get these hot things on your resume, it probably will not help.  I've been doing Java development since 1996 with all of its attendant "groupie" technologies: J2EE, JDO, et al.  I'm also a C, Basic (any dialect), RPG (no, not the game type), COBOL, Pascal, ADA, Assembler, Forth, Rexx, Smalltalk, and some languages I'm embarrassed to mention programmer.  The fact that I know and have experience in these languages has done very little for me in the past year.

I did just land a six month contract, but it was specifically because I've had a lot of Documentum (content management) experience.  The fact that I was a kick ass programmer was a secondary consideration for this contract; even though they were looking for a programmer!  I was told, "Yeah, we have a few Documentum contractors in here now but they really don't know how to program."  I asked them if they realized their own requirements were contradictory and they didn't seem to notice.  This is what you're up against.

The "warm body" market is very niche oriented right now.  I've seen a lot of Mumps (yes, this is a programming language) and NetRexx lately.  Many programmers don't have experience with these languages but any competent programmer could pick them up in a weekend.

The other thing to keep in mind is that many local markets are dead.  There is nothing in the Chicagoland area right now, which is where I'm located.  The contract I just landed is out-of-state.  With the way the market is now, you must look nationally if not internationally if you wish to find work.

By the way: This isn't a knock on UNIX, because I'm an old UNIX geek; I install MKS Toolkit on my PC just so I can use Korn Shell.  However, it seems to me many of the programmers I know in the Chicagoland area that are unemployed are C/C++ UNIX programmers.  Many called Lucent home not that long ago.  I can tell you, based on many conversations over the past six months, that many companies are dropping UNIX as they see it as "too expensive" and the programmers "to difficult to work with."  Please, I do not intend to start a UNIX flame war.  I like UNIX.  This is simply what I hear from companies that are moderately large and have a lot of UNIX.  I think it's important to take knowledge like this and use it to your advantage.  You might not like Windows much, but you may have to learn to accept it if you want to find work.

Finally, there is a historical precedent in the IT field that most contracts are to be found in the first quarter of the year (January-March).  After this time period, while there may be work, it is usually more difficult to find.  What just happened to me this year and, looking back through our books, every year before, seems to bear this out.  The general rationalization behind this is that many companies have fresh budgets in the first quarter and are looking to get engaged at this time.  While it is always possible to land contracts at any time throughout the year, it is harder and in this market, probably not likely at all.

Don't make the mistake that many I know have made: waiting too long.  If you can't find IT work within eight weeks you need to start looking at other temporary employment options to keep the money flowing.  If you're getting UI, that's fine, but don't wait until the UI runs out before you start looking for an alternate income stream.  While I'd like to be upbeat, it isn't warranted. Many good programmers aren't finding work, regardless of the reasons. Statistically, many wait a year or more before landing something solid.  This is true in my case.  I had income and savings sufficient to tide me over, but it hasn't been fun.

I wish you luck.

P.S.  I still plan on leaving the IT field, but this extra money will go a long way to helping that effort.

I am somewhat saddened by so many of these responses.  Carol is just a seething xenophobe, and unless she is native american, she treads on hypocrisy.  Equally mystifying is the attitude of many foreign respondents that America should not protect the interests of American citizens.  How it does this is another question, but why it should do so should be obvious.

I am not against H1Bs, or even outsourcing, but most foreign workers I've met are just like most American IT workers: worthless.  Probably 1 in 20 knows what they are doing, no matter what their nationality, and this person is invariably worth more than the other 19 put together, especially in the realm of software development.

Some Asians write to say the American's turn to suffer, as if we deserve to for not making mistake after silly regulatory mistake with years of idiotic socialist policies of the kind espoused by PM Naru or Indira Ghandi.  Other, non-technical Americans reassure us that this is good for the economy for the whole by creating value.  Still other respondents advocate for socialist regulation of competitors, as if that has ever resulted in anything other than misery.  Clearly these people have never actually lived under a socialist regime.

I believe in capitalism, and can certainly admire what the founder of WiPro is doing.  I think globalization has been a force for good, but now that we have seen it in action for nearly two decades, it is not out of place to ask if many of the its most compelling arguments still make sense.  For Instance:

1) Does the argument that other countries will grow a middle class and produce new markets make sense when those newly "wealthy" workers will only have a fraction of the buying power of the payroll power they replaced?

2) How is the idea that globalization will bring up the living standard in other countries to be squared with WiPro's insight that it can always find a more cheaper pool of workers?  (i.e., the "race to the bottom").  Wouldn't the buying power of every new market be an even smaller fraction of the one it left behind? Don't the worst regimes get rewarded for keeping their people "more desperate than thou"?

3) Isn't rather circular reasoning to argue that things will get cheaper, and hence more efficient, if one requires a job to produce the revenue to buy these new products?

4) Wouldn't strong protections for property rights, both physical and intellectual, be a prerequisite for these markets to arise?  If so, then do these markets meet this standard?  If not, then what basis is there to believe that American products will find a new market?  Should the pharmaceutical companies expect that Asians who make a few dollars a day will be able to pay for the research which is now paid for by the health-benefit plans of American workers?

5) Wasn't the transformation to an educated, skilled information economy the basis of the American strategy for globalization?  If software design and development can be outsourced, than why not biotech, aerospace, or nanotechnology?

6) Is globalization preparing us for global competition, or are we really breeding it in parts of the world that would have otherwise taken years to come around?  Might not a slower evolution of these markets lessened the shock of competing with workers who can live on a few dollars a day?

7) If reducing costs is about increased value, then explain what value will be found when 2/3 of mid-to-large sized software projects fail miserably.  It's not like this problem goes away by hiring the right [insert big consulting house here].  How can an organizations which do not appear to know how to select and hire people who are capable of producing value possibly maximize value by choosing a new batch of workers who are cheaper, but equally incapable of producing value?

8) Will smaller, more agile companies who cannot afford to make such mistakes be able to grow and thrive fast enough to keep the entire American economy from plunging to the median standard-of-living between itself and the [insert economic basket case here].

9) In automotive manufacturing (the setpiece example of why we need lifelong education to avoid dead-end jobs), many foreign companies ended up building factories here, which re-created many jobs lost by the declining US auto industry.  It is often said that this was done because it is expensive to ship pre-assembled vehicles to distant markets, and America is where most of the market was.  But what property makes intellectual property difficult to ship around the world?  If not, then what hope is there that we will even be able to sustain any knowledge based industry in America?

10) How is America to maintain its technical edge when technical skills are not enough to make a living and no person in there right mind goes to school for it anymore?  Should we rely on Indian engineers to build our next air superiority fighter/drone, or are we going to apply the open source model to the defense industry and introduce volunteerism into the procurement process?  How is this "outsource everything" mentality different from the apocryphal dot.com business plan:

I am saddened by the responses of clearly intelligent people to this article. It's time to wake up now.  This isn't about America vs India.  This is how the global economy works (it does NOT work for people).  I read in one or two of the responses the term "muli-nationals" referring to corporations homed in several countries.  A more descriptive term might be "transnational," as these corporations appear to be "from" all countries in which they operate when it suites their purposes.  This to keep up what the threads here do so well, pit nations or peoples against each other, as well as curry favor as though local. This is one big smoke and mirrors act.  The global economy is bad for people period.  It's bad for people of all nations and terrible for the planet.  That some people in some countries improve their situation is not proof to the contrary.  The Indian software developers described in the article have surely improved their standard of living.  You must ask yourself why they are so inexpensive to begin with.  Take a look at the slums there, in Mexico, in (fill in your country of choice) countries all over the world.  These in large part are due to colonialism or imperialism.  The global economy has replaced that, and extended to the entire world a form of it... corporate colonialism or imperialism.

If there's to be any way of out of this "race to the bottom" (phrase from one of the two books I recommend you all read) we the people of planet earth must clearly understand what is occurring.  To the corporate entity an Indian software developer is only superior to the American because of cost.  The true cost of an American developer is more fully born by the corporation.  The term entity is purposeful, as we must stop anthropomorphizing corporations.  A corporation is a paper entity without emotion, regardless how successful the marketing department.  The cost of the Indian is in large part "externalized" by the corporation.  It's not so much that the Indian developer is cheaper, it's that the true costs in human and environmental terms are not born by the corporation. If an $8000 per year Indian is superior to a $75,000 per year American, isn't a $2000 Vietnamese better still?  If so, how about an $800...  wait, best would be to so automate the task of (again, fill in the blank) that you don't need a human from any country to perform it.  If you would like to more fully understand this (and I'm really hoping you would) please read one of the following:
"When Corporations Rule The World" by David C.  Korten,
"The Case Against The Global Economy." Each chapter is by a different author.  Many authors from many nations.

My hope is that if more people everywhere (especially on the big island of America, where there is still the tiniest shred of democracy left) understand what is really happening on our planet and to it's inhabitants perhaps some of the creative beauty that is (or can be) human will shine through.

Please stop all this xenophobia.  Do you really believe that a human born at one latitude/longitude, subject to the customs, history, society, etc., there is somehow superior, or inferior, to one born at another?

The place we are all heading is dark and very, very ugly.  Many people have been there a long time.  Intentionally, by the worst of humanity.  Unintentionally, by the ignorant or uninformed masses within which I must count myself a member.

Are you prepared to go head-to-head with the cheapest the world has to offer?

As someone who eats regularly and has a mortgage in any American city, of course not.  But neither will the world class engineers of Wipro once Mr. Premji finds an even more desperate economic basket-case and outsources his countrymen's livelyhoods to the next cheapest bidder.  Small comfort, don't you think, when you consider how much misery there is in the world to feed this process?

How do you keep a society based on consumerism going, when the only good jobs are soft [cough] skills like marketing, sales, and middle management, — and all the real thinking is done elsewhere?  How long will those skills be needed when the local consumer base begins to evaporate faster than India can grow a middle class which would even come close to replacing them?  Is there some magic economic multiplier that allows a worker who makes $10K a year to buy as many (non-pirated) electronics as one who makes many times that much?

Tell me, will all the ivy league, non-technical frat boys still have that "inside edge" selling to the future CIO's and housewives of [insert third world basket-case here] once multinationals realize what the Mr.  Premji obviously does, i.e: that the same principles apply even better to soft skills, and why do we even need an "americanized" sales force whose only skill is speaking to Americans when the American consumer class can't get anything better than a landscaping job for the few remaining middle managers.  — Until they too are outsourced to "world class" competition.

Americans had better hope that small, entrepreneurial businesses (who presumably lack the influence to buy indentured servitude programs at home or cheap government loans to move overseas) can take up the slack when the large corporations we created slip over the border into the sweatshops and prison-labor camps of the world.

This is the lie of globalism: Knowledge workers who keep up with technology are supposed to do well in this economy, but knowledge and quality doesn't mean squat because decision makers don't understand what they are buying.  The middle management of most large corporations oversee one breathtaking implementation boondoggle after another because they seem to believe that efficient work and the creativity that requires can be mass produced like socks, when in fact it cannot.  How else can one explain the disastrous ERP/CRM/Big 5 integration fad? But even the abysmal results of two-thirds of all large software projects doesn't matter when the decisions are made by people incapable of distinguishing good from bad.  The money simply flows to the next group of cheap, poorly selected idiots, and this is called "reducing costs".

We are not getting ready for competition, we are breeding it like dragon's teeth in the name of short term profits based on the elimination of "overhead."  That's not efficiency.  It's downsizing your target market's disposable income.

I suppose I could learn Hindi (to get that "inside edge"), move to India and take my chances with the non-potable water supply and any machete wielding religious fanatics, but the same socialist economic policies which made South India a pool of cheap labor would stop me and most other Americans at the border.  It is not enough that work and capital is mobile.  Workers must be mobile too.

This is an interesting "sound bite" web page.  I guess this is how lies become facts, if enough people repeat them.

I used to have some respect for the Cato Institute, but their white paper on programming employment is a sham.  So much for their "independence" of thought; they were bought and paid for like any whore out on the street.  Has anyone, in detail, refuted this white paper ?

"Cato Institute Study Shows H-1B Workers Benefit Economy Without Harming U.S. Workers or Wages

P.S.  I don't know when this page was last updated.

Thank God, fluent knowledge of Hindu or Mandarin is not required for this job.  H-m...  Maybe I could qualify for this lucrative position?

Let's see, $25-30K that's what average college costs a year in the US.  Prospect of making the same amount is sure to attract lots of talent for the future IT...

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.  But, in practice, there is." Jan L.A.  van de Snepscheut