Off-shoring and visa worker nonsense

I saw a TV spot today from this organization claiming a big conspiracy against American workers by evil corporate America to off-shore jobs or importation of foreigners for those jobs. What a load of crap. (Watch the sad little spot on their site... How are they gonna make that house payment? Maybe by selling that $40,000 car!)

First off, the Department of Labor Statistics shows that unemployment has been on the decline for four years. For that matter, it's still much better than it has been for most of the last three decades.

This kind of noise is caused mostly by tech workers. The problem is that in the post-bubble era that everyone wants that dotcom paycheck, but they can't do the work. Programmers are the most guilty of this.

I realize that it varies from one market to the next, but at least here in Northeast Ohio (Cleveland and Akron), there is no shortage of work. I get calls from recruiters constantly, even though I tell them I'm engaged in a gig I intend to keep for the time being.

Being on the other side of it, I interviewed a great many people in my last contract gig, and was amazed at how inept nearly all of the candidates were. Maybe it's because of that consulting environment, where people don't have the long-term mentoring and training opportunities. I don't really know. But they want big dollars and can't code their way out of a cardboard box.

And this is where you enter the foreigners. The average Indian or Asian worker on a visa here is eager and willing to learn. Frankly you need these people because there aren't enough qualified Americans to fill those jobs.

When I look at that refuting evidence, it reminds me of the immigration "debate" and makes me feel that this is just people directing their hate toward non-Americans. That's about the last thing we need. It's not constructive. Welcome to the global economy. We're not the only kids in the sandbox. The sooner we learn that and start competing, instead of implementing this protectionist bullshit, the sooner we'll be in better shape.

13 Comments

  • I've worked with many people, and the Foreigners are just as lazy and moronic as the Americans. People are people, it doesn't matter where they come from. Americans are just as willing to learn as anybody else.

    The real problem right now in IT has more to do with the barrier to entry to get into the market. Colleges aren't teaching the right stuff, and there is no good understanding of the job possibilities. If people don't see the opportunities, they won't go in that direction.

    The advantage the Indians have right now, is that their infrastructure is preparing people to enter our job market. Global sourcing companies such as Tata are aiding their people in the training so that they can fall into place. But more importantly, they are out there looking at the market, so that they know where to direct people towards in their training to source them.

    We have nothing like this in our American school systems. If I had not fallen into the career I am in now through a series of random luck events, I would have never found it on my own. Our whole infrastructure and alignment of business, employees, schools and such, is out of whack.

    I am concerned with the outsourcing trend, rather than addressing some of our structural issues, because long term it weakens the United States as an economic power.

  • Totally agree with you there. Plus think of it this way - some other country has spent all their tax "dollars" educating that person and now they are coming to the USA to work.

    I'm a highly-skilled Brit and even I can't get in at the moment because the USA is on almost complete lock-down!

  • Your comments are idiotic and your arguments are weak. For instance, spend some time researching how unemployment rates are calculated in the U.S. You'll quickly see how worthless the numbers are.

    Any country that doesn't balance protectionism is going to be consumed. I'm not talking about purely economic protectionism in the generally used context which is about tariffs, subsidies, et al. I'm talking about realizing that the only one that is going to look out for the interests of the U.S. is the U.S. Large corporations are interested in one and only one thing -- making the rich richer.

    What I really think is a shame these days is that any yahoo with a blog can post idiotic comments like you have.

  • Now usually I find your posts rather, well, wrong, but this time you're spot on.

    Tony on the other hand, is totally wrong.

  • I think it's a shame that anyone with an Internet connection can post comments anonymously, but hey, that's just me.

    If I'm so "idiotic," why don't you tell me about how the labor stats are wrong. "Because I said so" is a weak argument.

    The best way to look out for ourselves is to start competing. Do we even remember how to do that?

  • The fundamental problem is human overpopulation. Just look to India, China, and Mexico. The local labor surpluses drive wages down. This is part of the overall 'race to the bottom' that spreads.

  • Welcome to the global economy. start competing.
    Sums up it all up :)

  • You are so gullible it's unbelievable.

    You have completely swallowed the horse crap from corporate spin masters.

    The simple fact is off-shore is cheaper. Wages in foreign countries are extremely low because they don't have the US tax laws and infrastructure to pay for that the US worker does.

    Unemployment is low because workers, whose benefits run out, are simply no longer counted. How convenient.

    US workers simply can't compete with off shore wages. It's NOT a level playing field.



  • Which part are you not hearing? In my field, we're hiring foreigners because there are no qualified Americans. It has nothing to do with wages.

  • I am a international graduate student here in US. My personal observation is that the american students who join the gradute schools are too good at what they do and I am all for learning from them. But for every single american gradute there are atleast 10 international graduates or even more. This is true in almost all universities I have come to know of since I came to the US.
    Hence I think claims by companies that there is a shortage of American born grads is absolutely true.
    What gets outsourced is merely a small subset of routine/maintainence/testing work which people hate doing here.

  • "In my field, we're hiring foreigners because there are no qualified Americans. It has nothing to do with wages."

    This comment highlights the logical flaw in your argument.

    I presume we all accept that Americans and "foreigners" are roughly equal in natural intellect.

    If so, the real difference between the two groups of people is knowledge.

    If we accepted the need to train young Americans, and ensured they learnt more, we wouldn't find such differences between the two groups.

    But of course, such training and mentoring - on courses and "in-house" - would be very expensive.

    So the benefits of importing people are clear - businesses can prosper with lower overheads. Indeed, as a team-leader my bonuses have been much higher because I have hired foreigners who can finish projects on-time and to-budget without spending any money on training. I have been very impressed with the "foreigners" that I have worked with.

    But we should also critically assess the cost of importing people for long periods. Here are two obvious costs - there is less opportunity for young people and our society will be less harmonious.

    We need a balance, just because we have naive individuals on the one-hand and racists on the other should not stop the sensible majority from debating and actually making changes to improve our society.

  • "But of course, such training and mentoring - on courses and "in-house" - would be very expensive."

    Nonsense. You can't make people be programmers. They either want to be or they don't. It appears to me that not very many Americans endeavor to learn. We can't decide for them. You're talking about opportunities for which there are no people to take advantage of.

  • I totally agree with you that you can't make everyone a programmer. I was talking about people with a propensity to programming.

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