India Could Be the Next Target for Angry Americans

I don't think people are demonizing hardworking Indians that are being used as a low cost outsource. The people who are demons are those who are betraying our national interests by off-shoring jobs. The cascading effect of moving our service and tech economy overseas is evident in the emptying malls and small towns across America. The same school of brilliant CEOs who gave us casino capitalism have been the engine of outsourcing. Their bottom line is to reduce cost of operations to shoot more money to the top of the pyramid where they are perched.

Yup, thats true. I think US should be after China not India. CHina is the one that has amassed 2 trillion dollar. India is a democratic and highly skilled nation which we need in order to promote democracy. DOnt you realize you are promoting COMMUNIST AND DICTATORSHIP by buying CHinese products.

Good Article need more clarity what steve really saying. if west follow protectionism there is no loss to east its a kind of advantage no Brain drain helps innovation at eastern front which will have new markets open with in east.
where as in west growth nose dives alredy clear evidence is there. all you need is a balance. identify and acheive the balance..cherios

"since the Indians hired McKinsey to do the study, the conclusions aren’t as credible as they would be if the study was independent". I would go a little farther and say that they were completely useless and biased.
The H1B Visa program is a joke. No one believes the corporate lapdogs like the author of this article anymore since they are bought and paid for by the tech industry that wants an endless supply of cheap foreign labor.
I love how Hamm calls Lou Dobbs an "inciter" yet doesn't bother to challenge any of the facts he puts forth on his show. I can't wait until "jounalists" like Hamm have to compete with the cheapest labor in the world, a day that is rapidly approaching with the daily news of the demise of major American newspapers.

America definitely needs the best and the brightest, whether they be foreign nationals like Indians, Chinese, or just good ole fashion Americans. In economic booms importing of talent can be justified. In economic busts, like now, when imported talent are migrating back to their homelands, those that stay must be considered first. That is whether they are Indian, Chinese, or, or American citizens. Take care of the people that are here first. If and only if talent can not be found here, then look else where, expedite it, and get it here. Companies should actually look here for the talent. Let me tell you a secret, IT talent can be found here. Heh they are even looking for a job. When the boom comes back and companies really can't find workers, then and only then open the door (not the floodgates) to importing talent. It is not racist or protectionist to get your people working first.

Having been in a position where I outsourced some QA work to a firm in India, I would have agreed that some outsourcing does stimulate US employment. In my case, if we were not able to get the low cost QA done in India, I would not have been able to hire the 4 programmers, 2 product managers and one lead QA person here in the states.

Just because my experience supports the argument made in the article, it does not mean that this is true in most, or even many, cases. It could be, but as the article points out, there are not reliable statistics to go by.

A rising tide of prosperity in countries around the world is good for everyone. The issue is that it needs to be done in a controlled way. Having the government go into a protectionist mode does not help. This is something that should be left to the people to decide.

The problem is that it is almost impossible for a consumer to tell where their money goes when they buy a product. If I buy a Ford Fusion, which is made in Mexico, how much of the cost stays in the US? Does Ford do the engineering in the US? If I buy insurance from New York Life, how much of the premium is sent to India to support the IT work done there?

As a consumer I want to know how much of my money leaves the US when I buy something. That way I can make an educated decision in my buying. I recently spent a couple of cents more on a hammer that is made in the US then one made in China.

It is a more likely assumption as to where the money goes for a low tech item like a hammer, but the same is not true for services and high tech goods.

I did find a website www.proudlymadeinAmerica.com which is starting to tackle this issue. I know I will use the information there to help in my next car purchase.

In the end, the market should not be controlled by government. We the people should be making the better choices.

The H-1B visa needs to be abolished, period. It facilitates the modern day slave trade.

The typical H[indu]-1B is undereducated, lacks social skills, can’t communicate in a professional manner, and will say and do anything to stay in America. In short, they cannot be trusted to do the work an American can and should be doing. The best and the brightest came here a long time. We are now left with the greedy and desperate.

Americans should no longer be forced to deal with inept, surly developers in the workplace, and marble-mouthed call-center operators offshore. We need to reject the pervasive decline of a once proud profession just because corporate America and India Inc tells us to.

And stop shilling, Steve Hamm. You could be next. One day your boss will come up to you and say this:

"This is Kumar, your replacement. Train him and then pack your stuff and get out. And don't gripe, or you won't get your severance and you will be blacklisted."

This is how it works in I.T.

Now go do some reading, you India, Inc. shill.

Steve,

The only flaw in your arguement is that we have seen recently that we can not trust any business, foreign or domestic, to "do the righ tthing" when it comes to outsourcing, much less anything else. If your think I am painting all of business' with the same broadbrush, you would be correct. Business's are in the business to make profits, expand their market hold, and grow the company. Fair Enough. The only problem with that is the now underlying and unstated ending to my sentence which is to do the above "AT ANY COST". Let secrets slip out from the military, push jobs overseas, fudge the books, etc. I live in Houston and when Enron hit, all of my MBA buddies said that kind on management was an aboration, not indictive of how business' were run. Now we know better. US companies are now AGAINST the citizens they need to sell their products to. It amkes no sense. This is not a Lou Dobbs protectionest statement. It is just a mere litany of what is currently happening. Plain and simple. Even Indian companies have been infected. We teach people so well here......

Creation of Indian IT industry is a mistake of our own policies. India stands for and means nothing but a hedge against rise of communist China.

The notion that India is some kind of economic power is an illusion. Again a propoganda to counter the real mighty of communist China.

One reason it is useless to offshore to India is because their standards and work quality remains third-grade but their rates have gone up.

It is time that we need to get over with India and look for alternatives. Train Africa to become our IT backyard. Or draw resources from our neighbours i.e. Canada, Mexico, Brazil etc.

Two key things that you fail to comprehend:
a. There are many, many US IT workers who lost their high paying, high skilled jobs due to off-shoring or outsourcing to India. SO whoever is giving you this information that off-shoring is increasing employment is telling a blatant lie. Talk to any 'former' IT worker in any part of the country and they will tell a different story
b.Indians discriminate against all non-Indians..they come to these US companies, gain management positions, and then bit by bit transform their IT departments into all Indian IT departments..once again, do not take my word, do your own independent research, except, rather than talking to Indians, talk to displaced americans. It has reached the point where Americans do not even waste their time pursuing careers in IT
So, if India receives rage and anger from Americans, it is very well deserved.

Not sure I buy any thing in this article. Off shoring has not created jobs in the US. Thats always been the claim, but only by providing statistics that have been mangled can they prove it. And we can easily prove that it has hurt us. The easiest way is to point to wages. they are back where they were 8-9 years ago. thats not a sign of employment growth. and there has been proven examples of companies gaming the system to get cheap labor. Its not the Indians at fault here. its business. which is foolish. they need willing customers able to buy their products and services. and they have been eliminating as many of those customers as fast as they can. it was made up for a while with credit. thats history. now they are stuck with fewer customers and no way to get more

So with 12 million American workers out of work including at least 1.5m in IT, why are we still allowing companies to bring in workers from India? I think the majority of the ire with H1-B and L1 is the abuse and fraud. Many underqualified Indian workers came in under the guise of H1-B to work at gas stations, fast food restaurants etc. The Indian agencies that brought them in faked their credentials and extort a high fee from each. In addition, Indian firms like Infosys and Tata are bringing in H1-Bs and L1s to work on IT projects contracted out from US firms. The low wages they paid their workers allow them to undercut US competition. Both problems can be quickly eliminated if we simply stop allowing companies to bring in workers directly from abroad. Contrary to popular believe, most H1-Bs and L1s are not highly qualified, and certainly no more qualified than US workers. They are average at best. They are used by US companies to fill worker shortage, not for hiring the best. Now that there's no longer a shortage, but instead a worker surplus, we should send our "guest" workers home, not just the Indian IT workers but the millions of illegals from Mexico.

Its very true that H1'B are misused by most of Indian companies to send jobs overseas but most of Indian Companies for the past 4-5 years have used another alternative L1 VISA. These visa’s are claimed to be employees of an international company with offices in both a home country and the United States. Companies like TCS, Infosys, Wipro misuse L1B visa and bring cheap indian labor force to US and send jobs to India. The ratios are like this, they bring 1 or 2 guys in L1B get the project and send 8-10 jobs to India, laying off 4-8 jobs at US. These companies maintain 80% offshore ratio's. TCS has about 14,000 employees in the US and 80-90% of them hold L1 visa. Fact is L1 misuse is more compared to H1 and it’s a Myth that democrats is still clinging to about H1B. Regulating L1 visa’s will only reduce jobs sending abroad…

The far-left Marxist crew that is now resident in the White House would like nothing better than to further impoverish the middle-class. Offshoring more and more decent paying jobs overseas will be a another step towards achieving that goal.
The more people who are dependent on government handouts, whether they are extended unemployment benefits, food stamps, mortgage bailouts, or healthcare subsidies, the more people who will return Obama and his comrades to office, over and over again.

Totally agree...we are proving ourselves to be extremely short-sighted by promoting protectionism. Let's not forget - the rest of the world will have a long memory - that's mainly for people like Dobbs.

I don't think people of any country should be scapegoat.Either they are Indians or Americans , they are honest hardworking professionals but one has to understand who is the culprit here, either H1Bs exploited by big corporations, looking for two digit growth or harworking Americans ripped off by wall street.
In the end you will find similar trend that is here for centuries, "BIG CORPORATIONS RIPPING OF COMMON MAN"

I am an Indian but totally love watching Lou Dobbs's gimmicks...the other day, he feigned indignation because there were 4 million people unemployed Americans but health care companies were actively recruiting nurses on H1B. I understand Lou can be stupid, but this stupid? If there was none among the 4 million that was qualified to be a nurse, how does he expect the hospitals to hire them as nurses – just because they are unemployed, does it make them qualified? Doesn’t he realize that training takes time and the current recruitment is to fill current vacancies? How stupid one gets…but that doesn’t prevent me watching his prime time comic show…it’s indeed a humorous diversion in today’s gloom filled world. Steve, you are right in calling him an ‘inciter’.

As B.L. Toastman states above, it is our demon nationals within our borders who are truly the cause of our current problems--not China or India. The fact of the matter is that neither China nor India put a gun to the heads of our corporate decision makers forcing them to outsource; it is our demon nationals within our borders who initiated, implemented, and followed through with the outsourcing of our jobs.

The H1B quota is 65K for all the countries and the layoffs have been
of the order of 650k since November.

Do the Math.
H1B has nothing to do with unemployment.

The promises of free trade have proven to be as fraudulent as a Berrnie Madoff account statement! Why are the majority of Americans no longer embracing the blessings of free trade that Steve Hamm is defending? Because free trade is the newly exposed fraud. Free trade, not protection, has got us into the current mess. Free traders have a large list of bad things that are supposed to happen to tariff protected economies but that list to is a fraud. Funny thing, the United States was once a tariff protected economy and none of those bad things happened. In fact from 1828 until after World War II U.S. tariffs seldom went below 30 percent and were as high as 62 percent. Tariffs from the end of the Civil War to the end of the century were higher than they were in the 1920s and 1930s. The Smoot-Hawley boogieman did not get the American economy during the more than a hundred years of tariff protection before it was passed so why think it did after it was passed? We need to PROTECT with tariffs Americans. Worried about a trade war? Do not sweat the small stuff. We are a trade deficit nation. Trade deficit economies do well in trade wars.

B.L. Toastman has hit the nail on the head. Outsourcing does nothing for regular people other than give them cheaper products (I mean that in both price and quality terms) which allows corporations to sell more. The 'studies' saying it creates more jobs are just rubbish. It's not even about skill, even if Indians in India had slighter lesser skills, corporations would still go over there because they cost 1/3 as much. The only thing outsourcing does is create more wealth for the people who sit at top of corporations. I think the recent financial crisis has proved that low and behold, if you let the top gorge in more money, they don't let it trickle down...wow, what a big surprise! I think we are seeing that no system of govt. in it's purest form is good. Dictatorships are bad for obvious equality reasons, communism was supposed to be equality, but of course the controllers abused it and turned it into quasi-dictatorships so the rank and file got screwed, and now we have our beloved capitalism, which has shown that if left to it's own devices, does the same thing as the other two, which is create an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots that eventually leads to greed like the banking crisis. I think the best way is always a hybrid of different theories. All those systems in purity have critical flaws that can be abused. And if it's one thing humans have proven in their own history, is that if you can abuse something to get more money/power, you WILL.

Working for a firm that is in the middle of an outsourcing "initiative", I am observing hundreds of highly-skilled employees being layed off in favor of hundreds of (not so) highly skilled employees who are being paid far less. This is simply a matter of corporate greed.

Reader's comments are referring only the Indian companies. We should not forget these temporary workforce facility is extremely utilized by companies like oracle and Microsoft as well. I'm an immigrant myself and one of the person impacted by this massive outsourcing wave going on. Based on my limited historical knowledge, i see that US is all along outsourcing the development/manufacturing activities to other countries while retaining the innovation and technology advancements. As a matter of fact Steel industry has literally vanished. and so the apparels and other tiny manufacturers which are currently imported. I'm neither supporting nor opposing current trend. None of us were in this scenario before and we hope what we do is right and move forward. That includes our present and former President. When US was looking for more workforce, the Immigration services temporarily increased the no. of visa to be issued. Likewise, for time being why not we reduce the no. of visas to half from current 65000 limit? How would companies like Microsoft respond to such measures? this could be a better option than protectionism. When all these are going we should also not forget that many of the large corporations that are responsible for hundreds of thousands of job opportunities in this country was founded by the immigrants. Its a delicate situation for any one to handle.

In the last couple of months, India has imposed a few protectionist measures - eg.
ban toys from China for six months, increase tariffs on imports.
Before India can cry foul on the US, it needs to come clean.

In my opinion all of this has to do with supply and demand. US has shortage of IT resouces period. US can be protectionist but ultimately US will be at the losing end. If labor costs are still high companies will move jobs to low cost areas in order to increase "shareholder wealth". According to capitalist theory the objective of the Managers is to increase share-holder wealth. I think in the long-run it will become like the car industry. When a country becomes more protectionist then other players will dominate the market.

India's disproportionate representation in the H-1B and L-1 programs (not to mention the programs themselves) are deeply inimical to the U.S. national interest. Where's the proof, you ask? Let's look at some examples that have all surfaced in the last six months:

H-1B Employee Copies Malware Time-Bomb to Fannie Mae Servers
http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/01/29/fannie-mae-employee-accused-planting-malware-timebomb/
****
Former Intel H-1B Charged with Attempted Theft of $1 Billion in Intellectual Property
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9114592
*****
... and most worrisome of all...
Obama CIO Pick and Colleagues Implicated In Bribery, Misrepresentration in Washington D.C. Contracts (Kundra was not an H-1B, but Sunshil is in the U.S. on an H-1B visa)
http://cbs5.com/national/vivek.kundra.chief.2.957543.html
*****

Earlier there was a rhetorical question - "How can 65,000 H-1B visas possibly create the job losses we've been seeing?" The first dirty secret is it's not 65,000 visas - it's a "limit" of 85,000 visas annually that has never been adhered to, on a visa that is supposed to last for six years (but really lasts for seven and up with a recently implemented extension) and has numerous limit exemptions. New H-1B visas issued: 2001 - 201,079; 2002 - 103,584; 2003 - 105,314; 2004 - 130,497; 2005 - 116,927 (USCIS stats). That's already 657,401 and we're only through 2005! Tack on a reasonable estimate of 117,000/year more for 2006-2008 (made necessary because USCIS to the best of my knowledge hasn't provided actual numbers) and the sum goes over 1,000,000. Then factor in Dirty Secret #2: 8 out of the top 10 companies receiving H-1B visas are Indian offshore outsourcing companies - a large number of these visas are being used to facilitate offshore outsourcing of other business functions, which leads to higher unemployment in the U.S. Then we have Dirty Secret #3 - the H-1B visa is not the only visa used to bring in foreign labor and facilitate offshore outsourcing - the L-1 is becoming increasingly popular for this. There is comparatively little oversight or political pressure applied on the L-1 - USCIS doesn't even provide statistics except to periodically issue warnings about widespread misuse of L-1 visas! An old estimate for L-1 indicates 315,000 people are here on L-1. And finally we have Dirty Secret #4 - the U.S. government in collusion with U.S. business and political interests is increasing the foreign labor supply through other avenues - most notably the recent extension of the "practical training" F-1 visa from 12 to 29 months WITHOUT A REFERENDUM OR VOTE.
Conclusion: the H-1B and related foreign labor visa programs (particularly the L-1 and F-1 as presently constituted) are major causative factors in U.S. unemployment, with roughly 1.4 MILLION jobs having directly gone to H-1B and L-1 alone, independent of any losses due to related offshore outsourcing. Princeton economist Alan Blinder has gone on record as estimating that up to 40 MILLION jobs in the U.S. could ultimately prove "offshorable." India is far and away the primary beneficiary of EACH of these programs (H-1B, L-1, F-1).

If the U.S wants to stop the H1-B visa so be it. At the same time the U.S govt should also stop taking in foeign students. Since U.S will not give the foriegn students a job, its natural that in the first place you dont take any foriegn into the country. 25% of students in US universities are foriegn students who pay most of the fees by transfering money from their home countries. See what happens then?
Tution fees for US students will shoot up very fast.
Many universities will go bankrupt!

Does the U.S govt has the guts to do both?

When US companies like Microsoft are laying off workers by the thousands, why is the number of H1-B allocation holding steady at 65,000? Shouldn't the number decrease as well since demand has gone down?

There is no such thing as a free lunch. All the people who sing the praises of illegal immigrants and H1-Bs who provide us with cheap labor need to understand, while employers may be able to save a few dollars paying these people slave wages, the hidden cost is in our social services. Illegals especially don't even pay taxes while they crowd out our schools with their children who do not speak English, and bring down the standards of entire school districts, not to mention costing schools all the funding to hire extra teachers to teach them English. They also increase hospital costs for all patients because hospitals have to cover the cost of uninsured illegals coming to the emergency room to get any and all treatment. In the end they end up costing us a lot more than what we gain. Anyone who thinks mass immigration is good for the country just need to look at California.

Outsourcing IT jobs coupled with hiring in H1-Bs from India resulted in loss of environmentally friendly, high paying white collar jobs to Americans. Without jobs, we can't continue to pay for all the things corporate america want us to consume. This crisis occurred because we kept consuming anyway, because banks were willing to lend us the money. Eventually the house of cards have to come down. We are now all paying the price for years of poor immigration control. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

The curtain is about to rise on the final act. American companies, like GM, will fail and the overpaid CEO's will find themselves on the unemployment line. Nobody will hire them because they want too much money. Meanwhile, Chineese and Indian employees, having learned the business from us, will open competing shops. Not only will the labor be cheaper, but the management will be too.

It seems from all the posts that there is a lot of support for and calling for the stopping of all outsourcing of IT work and abolishing H1B and L1 visas.

Does this mean there is equal support for stopping the importation of all manufactured and agricultural products from a foreign country? A lot many more good jobs have been lost to the movement of jobs from these industries than those lost in the Tech industry. Think about it what is made here in the US anymore? Most things you find in any retail store are imported, even the ipod / iphone is manufactured in a foreign country.

If there is no support to stop that, then why should we stop the outsourcing of IT jobs? Are the people who lost thier jobs in manufacturing, etc... not as worthy to have jobs as someone who lost an IT or services job?

i guess the tone and content of much of the replies just validates the title of this article!

Nothing wrong with demonizing Indians.

India is something which America needs more and more in the coming years.
Its the country which has built the Silicon Valley in the US and is the biggest supplier of human capital to the US.
The fact that India produces more human capital than it can chew has been the US advantage but there is a shift in Indians' thinking and many are taking the home route.
How US and the world emerges out of this recession remains to be seen but America does best in Hi-tech industry with human capital from outside America, protectionism will enadanger that model and if that industry moves outside US it will be US loss.

Some of the authors like you don't do their due diligence and see the effects of free trade (not fair trade) and guest worker visas. Millions of Americans that are highly skilled have been replaced by cheap foreign labor that are just average.
Wake up America help your own. Have you been in an IT department where the manager is Indian? You will learn fast that Indians only hire Indians.

cutting h1b is cutting brain poweran and gating censer in u.s

LOL Xmen your an idiot. We should get of these India people and bring them back to there country has most of them are not even citizens in U.S.

Without China U.S. will down without there products. Thanks to them they are helping U.S.

Tell them to watch Slum Dog Millionaire LOL... hahaha

H1B visa is a joke. Look at the reviews of thosands of India owned body shoppers posting about their employer.

I really pity (to a limited extent) those H1B visa holders.

America needs to dump this fraud program (and L1 too) immidiately and sort out the mess created for those already on H1/L1.

Randomly pick up any company, and see most of them are involved in immigration fraud!!

http://www.desicrunch.com/Companies.aspx

http://goolti.com/browse.php

There are tons from Pakistan and neighboring countries who are in IT,gas station workers and Janitors and everything else that's mentioned here. When they are at work place they disguise themselves as Indians to get the respect to avoid terrorist stigma associated with their religion. While posting on discussion boards, they come in with American Names. Most of the hatred comes from those counterparts. I am sorry, you cant go back to war torn country but Indians can definitely can...

No,no,no.American think they can have right to jobs but not the trained replacements.Stupid.

Endgame is this -- US has got the whole world in this current mess. I-banking has died. Lehman, Bear Stearns, Wachovia, FNMA, AIG etc are all thoroughbred US institutions FYI.

Am sure most of the laid off are hi-grade MBAs who made & sold crazy securities. Or consumption freaks who partied on low interest rates, China's lows cost goods, India's low cost services, obscene mortgages etc which left them with everlasting indebtedness. The stink from your own burps due to gorging on this mad buffet (maddof, eh) is all your creation. Own it!

US' debt to GDP is nearing 400% !!! Please dont pass of this wild orgy and antics of consumerism to rest of the world and try bringing sanity to your lives instead. Its required for whole the world to heal.

If still shocked by this crisis, and barely hanging to your jobs, goodluck & god-bless.

One failure that is overlooked is that American leadership has failed to provide the funding and vision for innovation, which is heart of American technology. As technology ages it becomes a commodity and loses protection, it makes sense that it should move off shore. We simply have lost the engine that provides a constant source of cutting edge.

@Norman - Yes, nothing wrong with demonizing Indians. After all, they are the ones that tried to corner the global I.T. industry (through fraud and deception, ie. Satyam, World Bank, H-1B, etc.), and are failing.

We are living with the legacy of ten years of Indian outsourcing -- bad software, horrific call centers, sweatshops, and indentured servants.

And if you support that world in the name of globalism or eat-our-young capitalism, you are nothing more than a modern day slave trader.

Seems like all the who loved to buy their cheap stuff from wal-mart are now suddenly crying hoarse about some IT jobs moving outside the US.
have you also looked at some stats of 'American' companies that have set up development centres in India and other such locations! Greed is universal - its not just management thats greedy its also the consumers who are greedy

An Indian IT executive was asked about outsourcing and he pointed out that his computer, printers and routers were American brands, that his staff mostly wore American brands of jeans, ate at Dominoes and drank Coke/Pepsi. In other words, globalization cannot be a one way street.

Funnily enough, IBM is the company that has gained the most from Indian firms outsourcing their IT operations. Bharti, which owns Airtel, the largest telecom brand in India has outsourced its entire IT to IBM for more than ten years in a $1bn+ deal. IBM has very successfully replicated the same model with other telecom companies in India.

As an interesting aside, both IBM and Coca-Cola were thrown out of India in 1977, when socialism was at its peak in our country.

America should fix their house first and then blame others. For all this hue and cry about recession people of America are culprits. Why loans were issued to any tom, dick and harry. This financial meltdown is result of greed of Americans. Think how many of you save money for rainy days, most americans get fooled by flashy ads and spend on things they don't require. Your economy is sinking and its taking along other economies too. What do you think , India is gaining money at cost of US employees. All new brands Levi's, GAP, CK, MacD etc selling us something that we do not need and taking all money back to US. What they did to America, they are spreading same disease here in India. They need double didgit growth. You want to know what outsourcing has done to India. Indian youth who were happy with $1 local fast food now spends $12 in Pizzahut. Real Estate prices make houses as expensive as In US. We just earn 25% of what you people are earning or would have earned. So STOP waging a war against indian workers. STOP SPENDING, this will force your companies to think that Americans need money to spend and then you will be given jobs. You made way for Big Brands. When a shirt can cost $20 in India, same shirt is sold at $75 in US by just labeling it as Arrow. I have seen that on my short trip to US. Americans needs to wake up and start realizing they are no longer a driving force now. If outsourcing is stopped, American companies will die their own death.

Before you read this let me tell you that I am an Indian living in India. I think free trade was an irreversible process. Either people should not have done that or doing it now will create lot of confusion.
Trade is not only of capital or labor it also happens for goods. Imagine US banning flow of people from India, China, Mexico, Brazil, Phillipines, Hungary and offcourse the offshoring/outsourcing and these countries do vice versa for goods of US (we have the right to reciprocate - don't we). And then see number of jobs that US economy can create from its 250 million consuming population. I guess noone can imagine the disaster it can create for US economy.
I think blaming anyone will not help. What needs to be done is figuring out how can it be managed. How many of arguing people have thought of coming to India or China and work? how many of you are really ready to go and buy same article for USD 10 that you were picking up for USD 1 and probably made in China, Thailand or Indonesia.
The world has gone to a stage where many of these things if done will have severe repurcussions for the world econoomy.
We need to think long term as this recession is short lived and hopefully once over will again provide jobs and prosperity to everybody.

We all shout at Indians as if they have taken the jobs why not China (may be because it is too big to shout at and it will shout back if we do it with China right?)
Just visualise a situation where US companies are banned in

Labor mobility devalues the benefit of citizenship. Is the government going to draft Indian visa holders into the military in time of war? No, they are foreigners. But in good times they can parachute in and get all the benefits and reduce the benefit to US citizens through over supply.

I think steve has to take some restraint with the comments posted here ..There are references made to religion, like H[indu]-1B been made ..It should not be like adding fuel to the fire..Even Indians back home are feeling the heat and losing jobs..Even product based company like Interwoven fired 35 empolyees on a sunny day...Its a sitution everybody is facing...So religion has nothing to do with it ..After all everbody works to earn their bread ...So why that hatred US, India ,China ..After all we can never live forever ..

Endgame is this -- US has got the whole world in this current mess. I-banking has died. Lehman, Bear Stearns, Wachovia, FNMA, AIG etc are all thoroughbred US institutions FYI.

Am sure most of the laid off are hi-grade MBAs who made & sold crazy securities. Or consumption freaks who partied on low interest rates, China's lows cost goods, India's low cost services, obscene mortgages etc which left them with everlasting indebtedness. The stink from your own burps due to gorging on this mad buffet (maddof, eh) is all your creation. Own it!

US' debt to GDP is nearing 400% !!! Please dont pass of this wild orgy and antics of consumerism to rest of the world and try bringing sanity to your lives instead. Its required for the whole world to heal.

If still shocked by this crisis, and barely hanging to your jobs, goodluck & god-bless.

Firstly, Americans must be bold enough to accept it was very much the greed of a few "American" bankers and that let to the current economic crisis faced by then, else no one would have been complaining about some 50K educated, skilled Indians migrating in a big country of 300 Million people.

Isn't "free flow of labor" an aspect of globalization??? guess who gave the world the concept of globalization??? And now in bad times - look who is crying foul...!!!!

Be candid & just look around in your shops & malls - how much of "Made in India" do you come across?? - not even a small fraction compared to "Made in China" products. US economy & people do loose a lot to China, compared to India. Even we loose a lot to there rampant flooding of foreign markets with cheap, low-quality products. But no ones complaining about China ???

The current hatred against foreign workers of Indian origin is mainly because they take up jobs from the services (IT & other high tech) sector which happens to be major employer of the middle class. Also, there has been a quality depreciation in terms of migrants (e.g. from intelligent IIT grads to desperate, less-qualified Andhraites eager to get to the US - by hook or crook...).

Economically, the more the US becomes protectionist (read "socialist:anti-capitalist"), the more its dollar would loose its position as a world currency - eventually giving way to the Euro.

Here in India, getting a H1B & happily hopping on the first plane going to the West Coast went out of fashion about 2-3 years ago. Lesser people are excited with such prospects.

Most of my friends & acquaintances in IT industry have no intentions of going to a foreign country to work. I have personally denied encouragement from friends in the US to apply for H1B, though i happen to be a s/w developer - and regularly get mails from body shoppers from New Jersey.
Money is not everything !!!

Finally, singling out & making a scapegoat of a particular group or community - is it sheer frustration because or "racism" ???

Bottom line, companies have a moral responsibility towards a nation, whether they are India, China or USA companies.

What these companies doing are blatant fraud, in the name of talent shortage, which to start with, itself was untrue.

What kind of country we are building, if everthing needs to imported to sustain this country? When Japan's population started slowing down, those politicians did not say, "ok, let us import kids from India or China, because they have surplus and available in unlimited quantity".

Look at the cost to the government, when a worker loses medical insurance as a result of a job loss, files bankcruptcy due to foreclosure, when jobs gets outsourced because of greed, etc. All these costs are eventually borne by you and me. We as a country are becoming more vulnerable and getting weak due to these greedy companies. They are not making the country strong.

Companies, cannot privitize profit and socialize loss, when it is convinient to them

BTW, I am an Indian.

Once the companies are forced to use and train local talent, then automatically all these fraud H1, L1 visa programs will come to an end.

Here is an example, how an industry was forces to use local legal immigrants, when the illegals were raided. Ofcourse H1/L1s are legal, but the same forced solution works in technology industry too. Just remove the option of hiring cheap labour.

http://www.numbersusa.com/content/news/august-18-2008/companies-seek-us-workers-through-recrui.html

Most H1/L1 are being brain washed by their India companies thay they are here on some "Save USA" mission. Some of them are downright pathetic in their basics. I am from India, was on H1b once. Yes, there are some good ones, but they are less than 15%.

The companies want cheap source and they are misusing these cheap folks. It is always cheaper to hire a temporary worker, if even the immigration forces the employer to pay 150% of salary they pay for employees, as the company always considers other benifits to employees.

Companies have stopped training employees on newer technologies, as cheap source is available.

I see lot of the posters here are racists. Added to this they are misinformed by their ill-informed senators that India is the root cause for job losses in USA. Such incitement by the politicians will end up making legal immigrants from India and Indian origin people targets for trigger happy guys in USA. Several Indian students and H1B workers were shot dead recently and no one was convicted. More hate killings may take place with law makers pointing at Indian workers and India as the cause for American job losses.

They might, they should. But don't just stop at India, don't forget corporate Scroodge that did everything to make an extra buck. Including sinking their own country.

Geez, let blame China and India for Americans greed, irresponsible actions, corrupted CEOs, and Dirty politicians.
Always acting like a child who thinks the entire world is yours.

If China is so bad, stop borrowing money to fulfill America's fat, lazy, self-centered lifestyle. If India is so bad, stop sending jobs over there. Blame it on the AMERICAN CEOs who made these kinds of decisions! Stop using other countries as scapegoat.

Angry Americans?
There is nothing for you Americans to be angry, leave the rest of us alone, you are a child, grow up, it's not always about you.

And dont forget the Indians scientists working in NASA. NASA has more than 30% India scientists

Just FYI.
About 30% of scientists in NASA are Indians

The world's largest capitalist questions Capitalism? C'mon guys, why hate the messenger. The cherished American Capitalistic/globalisation ideals created today's mess. Every one of us have blood on our hands. All these so-called global firms reduces cost by getting cheap labor from who knows where, increases their profits and then pays out dividends and helps us make money on the stock markets..So we didn't have a problem creating the monster. So now when things started going south, the MONSTER is very Visible for retaliation. Eliminate this monster, we will create a new one in due course!

I am an Indian. I did my MS here and got a job and can definitely say the H1B visa is abused like crazy. Not the program is abused but the Indian ppl are too. Percentage of ppl on H1B in any company must be of a conscionable level. Outsourcing has only inflated the market in India and added to the miseries of middle class and poor Indians by inflating real estate prices by 500 to 1000% and inflating food prices from 300 to 1000%

I want companies like Intel, Microsoft, Google, Apple to hire foreign workers on H1B if they find talent in them and the need to hire them. I don't want consulting companies to source ppl who've passed civil engineering to jobs in wall street and pocket 30 to 50% commission for just being a bod shoppers. These body shoppers and IT companies like Infosys, Wipro, TCS and Satyam are not only blodd suckers affecting Americans but all the brightest of talents who do their MS and PhD here and can't find a job because of H1B.

Tom, What makes you say that? Almost all muslims I know, respect and love God, and love their family and their country (for most of them it is USA). One way to identify a Muslim of Indian origin is by the relatively darker skin on the foreahead. This overcoloration is due to the prayer that a Muslim says 5 times a day by kneeling and touching the ground with the forehead. Please don't generalize. Again, all Muslims I know love their country, family and God. And again, for a lot these Muslims, USA is their country. There are also a significant number of Muslims, who look very caucasian. And, there are Black Muslims and there are Asian Muslims. Thanks for your understanding.

Read this comment if you feel the need to know some missing things about H1-B programme that no one has talked in any of the previous posts. H1-B visa, even though was mainly created in 90's to hire tech workers, is also used to hire specialists to work for R&D's in a variety of sectors and also post-doctoral scholars in universities. Now, I bet that no one, absolutely no one, neither an American, an Indian or a Chinese, can replace these jobs than the people who are already working or capable of doing so. These are not just "highly skilled" but specialized jobs that may be less than 5 people in this world can actually perform.

Having said that, I agree with the frustration of several people who lost their jobs due to some cheap replacements. It happens, and it's a shame. I personally know a few people on both sides; who have suffered and the one responsible for that suffereing. A solution for this is a tight regulation of the programme, but not elimination.

-A post-doctoral fellow on H1B.

xmen
you said:"Yup, thats true. I think US should be after China not India. CHina is the one that has amassed 2 trillion dollar. India is a democratic and highly skilled nation which we need in order to promote democracy. DOnt you realize you are promoting COMMUNIST AND DICTATORSHIP by buying CHinese products."

why should u.s go after china not india? china is only taking job where u.s dont want. it is not high teach job they are after. IT is the real high-Teach job that u.s want to do.

USA has outsourced most jobs to China which is now a military competitor and poses a challenge to democratic ideals world wide. China has a 2 trillion dollar surplus is threatening to dethrone the dollar. Its high time we Americans realize that we are without friends in this world. Indian contribution to America cannot be negated. 60% of all Silicon Valley Startups are by Indians and without them there would be no Pentium or Hotmail and many other things which we recognize as IT elements today. All the Indians I have come across are more liberal minded and accepting of other cultures than many other ethnic groups especially the Chinese. If you want to know a group that does not know the meaning of diversity then look at the Chinese. The Sinification of US is at hand.

The title of this article says it all.

From the above postings we can see there is quite bit of xenophobia. This is understandable, US is facing its toughtest economic times, any job lost over out-sourcing will spark intense discussions.

In the long run, free trade between India and US is a good time as it will benefit both countries. Currently, things are not so rosy.

What is the right thing to do? Stop free trade between India and US? or find a way to have a fairer trade?

Why not US create a special Visa for out-sourcing companies, where they have to pay let say $5000 per visa and it is valid for one year. The money collected will go to retraining the retrenched workers. Win-win.

BTW the real bad guy is China and NOT India.

Now China is bold enuf to propose to scrap the US dollar as the global currency. What is next?

IBM just anounced it is going to lay off thousands of US global IT service employees and move the jobs to India. Will IBM apply for thousands L1 or H1 visa after that to bring the cheap labour into US ???

It has been mentioned in this blog that "... roughly 1.4 MILLION jobs having directly gone to H-1B and L-1 alone, independent of any losses due to related offshore outsourcing. Princeton economist Alan Blinder has gone on record as estimating that up to 40 MILLION jobs in the U.S. could ultimately prove "offshorable."

Unfortunately, this is true, remember that for every 1 of these H1-B visas, there are at least about 8-10 jobs being outsourced. That translates to at least 5.6 MILLION jobs lost in IT alone (1.4M visas x 10 outsource jobs x .4 jobs lost). Add the Business Process Outsourcing, which has a much higher ratio, it is easy to justify Alan's claim of 40Million offshorable jobs.

Most large IT shops across the US have laid off their own IT workers in favor of cheaper H1-B visa workers that are also supported with additional offshore workers. It is justifiable that for every 10 offshore IT jobs, there are approximately 4-5 jobs lost in the US soil. Unfortunately, this is becoming a common trend.

Just add up the number of offshore workers of Indian & US companies (IBM, Accenture, HP) and the government can see the middle class job losses in the US.

Current Obama's stimulus plan will address mostly the infrastructure / construction related jobs, but it will not address middle-class workers that are sorely loosing in this job lost battle. These problems are already trickling down the food chain contributing to the current economy crisis.

IBM TO LAYOFF MORE AMERICAN CITIZENS AND SEND JOBS TO INDIA ACCORDING TO WALL STREET JOURNAL. IBM HAS BECOME AN ANTI AMERICAN COMPANY, IBM NEEDS TO BE BANNED FROM OUTSOURCING AMERICAN JOBS. ALL AMERICAN CITIZENS PLEASE WAKEUP FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS, EMAIL OR CALL YOUR CONGRESSMEN TO STOP OUTSOURCING OF AMERICAN JOBS ASAP. BAN OUTSOURCING, OUTSOURCING IS ANTI AMERICAN. START A WAR AGAINST OUTSOURCING.

tunnel rat, stop whining and go to ur mama you racist sob

tunnel rat, stop whining and go to ur mama you racist sob

Editor, you say that you will make sure that the comments are not offensive, half of the comments are so racist oriented, so go take your hypocrite fat eating crap to a ethics class..

so sorry if this sounds harsh!!!!!!!!1

OK, people. The real scam/joke/outrage is the *L1* visa, NOT the H1. Sure, H1 abuse exists but it is NOTHING in comparison to the L1 abuse. H1-Bs are capped at 85,000 every year (including 20,000 reservations for people with advanced US degrees), but there is NO LIMIT on L1 visas.

Fly-by-night 'consultancies' set up by people who had already taken advantage of the lax immigration system and obtained GCs/citizenship for themselves 5-20 years ago, and based out of cities on the eastern seaboard (and San Diego/Francisco/Jose on the west) bring in SCORES of Indians from the state of Andra Pradesh on L1 visas. These people can barely speak English, let alone design/code worth a crap.

Blame *THESE* CRIMINALS, not us. People like me, we worked our butts off getting Masters and Doctorate degrees here in the US. I am not saying that we are *entitled* to something here, but these criminals have made life hard for us too by exploiting and raping America's awesome immigration system. Durbin/Grassley, why don't you two do something about this crap??

People should be angry at american companies that outsource and offshore manufacturing, IT, back office. They are barking at the wrong people! Indian and Chinese workers are exploited by these greedy american companies for profit.

While china is welcome to our low tech, environmentally polluting industies, our It. industies are best kept at home. India has becomme the biggest fraudulent call centre when it comes to credit card fraud, costs which you and I have to bear through increased costs.

I think this is high time for these indians to go back and help there country.

May be we americans will come and work there after all it is all about India/China these days due to there population size.

I totally support all the moves to send this folks back.

While china is welcome to our low tech, environmentally polluting industies, our It. industies are best kept at home. India has becomme the biggest fraudulent call centre when it comes to credit card fraud, costs which you and I have to bear through increased costs.

@ Resident Indian - Does opposing a (proven) fraud-ridden program that explicitly devalues on the basis of race make one a racist?
Are U.S. citizens "misinformed by their ill-informed senators" or are they disgusted by the obvious subversion of the U.S. political system, illustrated in actions like Hillary Clinton's "I represent Punjab" speech, the existence of secret proceedings in Congressional committees like the "U.S.-India Friendship Committee" or Obama's recent "secret" meeting with NASSCOM, their lack of representation in policy committees on immigration, or the appointment to "national CIO" of Kundra - a confessed petty thief connected to an H-1B who engaged in flagrant bribery to win Washington D.C. contracts?
Were the Indians you speak of singled out on the basis of ethnicity or simply targets of opportunity for criminals?
**********************************
@ PJ -
The financial meltdown had a lot to do with the unintended consequences of bad legislation rather than some kind of national character defect. A lot of the Washington politicians currently publicly excoriating Wall Street were complicit, including Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, and Obama - Dodd and Obama were two of the primary recipients of political donations from Fannie Mae and AIG!
50K Indians? You must be joking, there are more than 5 times that number of illegal Indian aliens alone (270,000), according to official estimates. Try more like 1.4 million arriving within the last 10 years on H-1B and L-1 alone. The "free flow of labor" is not in fact a desirable thing in the evolution of capitalism because it undermines national sovereignty and national self-determination - two very important aspects of free markets. Most economists recognize that goods and labor are two very separate things and are not to be confused.

Only a matter to time when one runs amock carrying the book by Lou Dobbs!

BTW, Lou's books are on sale at Barnes and Noble for $3.99

(The book says printed in USA but doesn't mention where the paper came from Brazil or China)

This is 500 percent true that "Offshoring of jobs to India results in value addition to American economy". Hire absolutely any consultant in the world and take into consideration all the aspects, he will reach this conclusion as well.

Also, why not talk about the ever burgeoning revenues of IBM and Cisco from the Indian market!

I just love the comments posted here. How the cause of all misery in the US are Indian H1B workers :)

So what did the Indian H1B workers do which resulted in such a sorry state of affairs?

1. Handed out loans to school bus drivers so that they can buy 800K+ houses which they "clearly" can't afford?? - No!

2. Did they bundled the projected profits out of the above handed out loans as security bonds and sold them to other banks?? - No!

3. Did they ask Americans to take the equity out of their own house for which they are already owe interest to the bank and build a patio and buy a super duper grill?? - No!

4. Did they ask the American corporations to hire illegal immigrants and work for low wages to drive down cost?? - No!

5. Did they arm twist the American corporations to set up shop in India?? - No!

6. Did they arm twist the American corporations to file H1B/L1 for them?? - No!

7. Did they run off with Bailout money and party in Vegas? - No!

8. Were they get paid multi million dollar bonuses when the company was sinking?? - No!

This is how I picture it:
All you people complaining above were sitting in a car which was being pushed by poor Indians and Mexicans, while you sat in it, munching on Mac D burgers and Fries, the driver for this car (Beloved corporations) threw a bad full of nails in front of them, which resulted in all four tires going flat. now you are blaming the Indians and Mexicans for the sorry state that you are in.......?!?!??!?!?

The saying which fits here is:
Those who live in castles made of glass should not throw stones on other peoples houses :)

I just love the comments posted here. How the cause of all misery in the US are Indian H1B workers :)

So what did the Indian H1B workers do which resulted in such a sorry state of affairs?

1. Handed out loans to school bus drivers so that they can buy 800K+ houses which they "clearly" can't afford?? - No!

2. Did they bundled the projected profits out of the above handed out loans as security bonds and sold them to other banks?? - No!

3. Did they ask Americans to take the equity out of their own house for which they are already owe interest to the bank and build a patio and buy a super duper grill?? - No!

4. Did they ask the American corporations to hire illegal immigrants and work for low wages to drive down cost?? - No!

5. Did they arm twist the American corporations to set up shop in India?? - No!

6. Did they arm twist the American corporations to file H1B/L1 for them?? - No!

7. Did they run off with Bailout money and party in Vegas? - No!

8. Were they get paid multi million dollar bonuses when the company was sinking?? - No!

This is how I picture it:
All you people complaining above were sitting in a car which was being pushed by poor Indians and Mexicans, while you sat in it, munching on Mac D burgers and Fries, the driver for this car (Beloved corporations) threw a bad full of nails in front of them, which resulted in all four tires going flat. now you are blaming the Indians and Mexicans for the sorry state that you are in.......?!?!??!?!?

The saying which fits here is:
Those who live in castles made of glass should not throw stones on other peoples houses :)

I had phone screens at Google and several tech companies recently by Indian engineers who accent I can not comprehend. Obviously it took most of the interview time to understand the questions and very little time to answer the questions. Even at some
instances I answered all questions correctly, I don't get a call back
for an onsite interview.
I am now sorry that my private American university degree didn't require me to take Indian accent training.

Well, I guess I made my headline come true. Should have anticipated that, given the tenor of the times. We're in another scoundrel time like in the 1950s. Hopefully brave people will stand up against the angry mob before it poisons the whole country.

For those of you commentators who wrote hateful things: Calm down and take a look at yourselves.

As for me, my bottom line is this: The Indians, Chinese, Mexicans, etc. They are my brothers and sisters.

From past experience:
**********************
Most H1B and other visas from India are hard-working and decent people.
Some US workers should learn from them.

However:
*********
The US do not owe Indian H1B visa workers anything. They have come to America mainly to make money.

There has been too much visa abuse and it is time to do some cleanup.
This has nothing to do with protectionism.
The first culprits are Indian IT firms.

American people are the least racist people in the world.
The still prevailing cast/tribe system of India is a shame to mankind.

It is true that a lot of jobs get outsourced to India or Indians come to the USA on a work visa. My job was outsourced to Indians at HP in 2003.

The point is these Indians are well qualified for the positions as well. What can the USA do to differentiate itself in this highly competitive global marketplace. If the US workers are always expected to do the most intricate and complex work and outsource everything else, the USA is going to wind up being a small, niche market.

Is there any point in being angry with Indians, Chinese or Mexicans? Where one is born is not in your control.
The world is moving away from centralized power to distributed opportunity... anytime, anyone can move your cheese.
But - if you are engaged, you won't be a frog in the well. Strive-and you shall achieve.
Nirvana.

I Worked on an H1-B in TEXAS. I WILL NEVER EVER EVER WORK FOR IT CONTRACT SLAVE SHOPS AGAIN.

I WILL CHOOSE DEATH INSTEAD OF ANOTHER H1-B

another dumb article by dumb busineesweek writer for dumb folks.

There is a limit or cap on new H1 issues (3 year term) every year which is less than 85K. Existing H1s can get extended which will make the number higher. But H1 employees are allowed to stay for only 6 years in the US. Whats the big deal?
Do you know how many illegal immigrants come to the US every year? Get that number, and then make a comparison between the economic impact of an H1/L1 versus an illegal immigrant. Look at the taxes a H1/L1 has to pay including social security, medical insurance, compare the economic impact of these two groups. Google, and you will get all numbers. Get educated on real issues facing us.

People who bash the H1 program including the senators are bunch of dumb idiots looking for attention or losers.

Another statistic - 1 out of 100 Americans behind bars.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/us/28cnd-prison.html

Forget the illegal Americans, the inmates, corrupt Politicians, greedy Corporate CEOs, hate mongering media folks, let attack these Indians for ruining our economy.

God bless this nation.

And for all those who raised the issue of Indians' english language skills, let me tell you that theirs is 1000 times better than that of the Germans, the Japanese, the French, the Chinese, the Spaniards etc.

An artcle in The Economic Times (India) today "Expat workers in Bangalore being sent home" OK fair enough, lets then send home Indian HB1 and L1. Fair is fair. Or when the USA unemployment rate is above 5% sorry no L1 or HB1. Or is Indian firms gets an HB1 / L1 for the USA, it has to hire an American to work in India for the exact same package, salary, housing, per diem, vehicle, insurance it pays the Indian as noted on the HB1 application

First of all think how a H1-B is issued then abt hiring then abt job loss...

H1B is issued by USCIS, after validating all the documents, education, work requirement. Its a rigorous process and has every right to reject the VISA without giving any valid detailed explanation.

Hiring is done exclusively by American companies, each job position has to be advertized in local newspapers, job portals and has to be filled by H1-b if its not filled by US citizen...

H1-b is an non-immigrant visa and the people who are employed thru H1-B are le
agal and pay all the taxes(including Social security being non-immigrant)...

Now tell me how H1-b can take away jobs...

Analyze the rules and regulation rather than blaming at indian IT guys...

Any strict regulations and restrictions to overcome abuse of VISAs for the benefit of the citizens are most welcome and should be appreciated all times...
But the blaming game is not acceptable...

From the article:

> Some of the jobs are being eliminated > because customers have ended > contracts or the company has automated > tasks. But employees say in many > cases, they have been training IBM > workers from India to do work that will > now be moved overseas.

Not sure, there is any future for this once great country ;-(

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123799610031239341.html

At a time when India is set to buy $ 150 billion worth of US nuclear reactors Ref: http://www.hindu.com/2009/03/26/stories/2009032661011300.htm

It would help if some Americans were not angry. Retaliation to Indian companies being forced out of business in the USA could also work the other way. In any case, business has to flow in two directions - hopefully some jingoistic whack jobs will not be able to damage this flow just because they are unemployed and have little to do other than make a noise.

We live in globalized World which has been controlled by America . While Indian purchases IT products from Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, IBM, HP and DELL in return America provides employment to Indian thru ITES. The trade flow should be bi-directional and if it hurt interest of others then both side would be looser.

Why does people do business ? to make profit?

If the goal is to make profit and increase shareholders values, business should run at low cost, increased margins and effective work delivery.

All these are met by outsourcing to India.

American companies need not pay the Indian worker as much you pay the American counterpart.

American companies get high margins by outsourcing work to India.

American companies ensure effective work delivery by outsourcing to India, because of the higly qualified workforce there in India, the time difference of 12 hours between the United States and India.

We need the best brains in the world to work for us with effieciency and at a cost effective structure, be it from India or any other country for that matter.

Neither China or India is to blame.

They are mere sources of cheap labor for companies that are trying to become more competitive. It is the consumerism that had enveloped us all that is diminishing our overall competitiveness. Couple that with addiction to easy credit. And the result is a borrower nation with no bargaining power.

The more we consume, the more cheap labor is allocated outside of our national borders.

I’d like to see some of these journalist jobs sent to India where someone writes articles for $2/hr. You think this might change the minds of these journalists who promote free trade?

1st year 90% indian don't like to stay in america.

2nd year 50% indian don't like to stay in america.

3rd year no one like to go back to india permanently. (Just because green money and pollution in india)

But now game is changing india is developing faster.

Indian will survive any where in the world.(that's our mind). if you stop h1b we will survive back in india also cheers!!! stop h1b completely don't care
don't mind

"Well, I guess I made my headline come true. Should have anticipated that, given the tenor of the times. We're in another scoundrel time like in the 1950s. Hopefully brave people will stand up against the angry mob before it poisons the whole country.

For those of you commentators who wrote hateful things: Calm down and take a look at yourselves.

As for me, my bottom line is this: The Indians, Chinese, Mexicans, etc. They are my brothers and sisters."

Kudos Steve...We are all programmed with the luxury with high earning salaries that we forget to think beyond these corporate jobs at all ...I would suggest we take the age old job across the world .Agriculture you grow and eat ...And if this hate is to end it would require combined effort of all

All this friction that is happening globally will only put the right wake-up call to us, Americans, to learn how to ease up on credit and perhaps limit our own heavy consumption ways. Doing so, will deflate the big companies effort in shoving their products on us that ultimately requires outsourced labor to create.

My Dad is a Vietnam Vet and he married my Mom who is Vietnamese. I was born in Vietnam just as the war was finishing up, in the early 70’s. As I was growing up my Mom always told me how wonderful the US is and how lucky I was to be an American. I remembered her studying really hard for months to gain her citizenship even though her husband and children were Americans. I grew up in a small town pretty much on a farm, and joined the military right out of High School. I am an Army vet and have been doing IT since.
So I understand when people from other countries come to America to find a better life, to partake in the American dream, and enjoy the freedoms we have here.
But, during my time working with folks who come to America on visa’s for IT jobs I can honestly say these people are nice people but they normally suggest that they want to work here for a few years and then go back to their homeland.
Usually. in IT, the people with visa’s are from India. So after 2 to 6 years they bulk up on skills and savings and take off to India, leaving America.
The problem is this::
1. Normally these visa candidates are taking jobs which companies admit are more entry level. This does not allow kids coming out of college or who are trying to start in IT a chance to start in an entry position and learn the skills needed to ever become senior level.
2. Like many other posts suggest that the many visa candidates are normally paired with the fact that the whole group function will be outsourced offshore. Again less opportunity.
3. Many companies will pull in resumes from Americans (qualified or not) and then report to the immigration board that they could not find American candidates that can do the job and as a result they must look for visa candidates. Thus the qualified American candidates are looked over because they are American.
4. Money is like water, it is recycled. So any All-might dollar received and saved by many visa candidates will be shipped or brought to the native country when the candidate had their fill with America. Also all the money being spent on offshore resources is never brought back to America to be recycled into the American economy. That is one of the reasons why many stores are showing less revenue – The money is not coming back in to the American economy. Americans can not purchase goods when they do not have income since their jobs do not exist.
5. Many companies have very loose rules for reporting visa and outsource resource numbers. So if a company says it has 10 resources off shore, most likely they conveniently forgot the other 6 sections which were outsourced and therefore the total should be 70. Look at the unemployment numbers for a reality check.

America has dug herself into a pit of economic and social mess, but now that we know what we did wrong, America will fix those issues and bounce back. What this means for countries that have benefitted from America’s greedy corporate machines through outsourcing should get ready to piggy back on some other countries because it will not happen to America again.

Reducing and monitoring visas will not stop good talented people from other countries from not wanting to come to America. Skilled and non-skilled people who are devoted to ‘The Dream’ will always have a place in America and will actively seek America. It is a known global fact that most people want to live in America. American’s seem to be shunned in some countries because of jealousy. It may not be spoken, because in some countries it maybe taboo, but it is a given that people want freedom and the ability to be as successful as they can be and only America can give that.

Stop cribbing, please. And, no blame games either. To all those who fuss over outsourcing, you don't know business. To all those racist pundits, you never knew anything about mankind, humanity. To all those Indians who segregate themselves from Andhraites, get yourself a face. You obviously know nothing about Andhra.
To Americans thinking Indians are taking their jobs, please realize that India is also facing one of the worst depression and there are scores of people losing jobs in India too.
Instead of pointing fingers (remember, for every hand that points a finger at others, there are three fingers are pointing to yourself), find yourself a job (if you are unemployed). You can either try to get a job OR use your American'ness and start your own firm to do the thing you can do the best and compete with your peer companies. This will keep you busy as well as teach you some business essentials. For those of you holding on to your job, please get off the Internet and work to save your ass from being fired.
As for me, I'm currently on a holiday, having resigned from my last company as I did not like the outsourced-work, taking time to recharge and hit back.
God bless everyone.

The hunt for foreign scrap goats is going to be intensify. India does most of our dirty work. China produce most of our cheap goods. Japanese and Koreans are driving our Auto out of business after our electronic sector has gone the way of the dinosaurs. Now we have no choice but to churn up our Arm sales round the world.

To all those folks who criticize L1 and H1. You have two options -

1. Let H1 and L1 continue. That way you get income taxes, free social security and medicare contributed by Indians but never ever used by them.

2. Let the job go to India.

Guess which option is better .. and yes ... there is no third option.

Grow up, open your eyes and accept the facts. That is the way capitalism works.
Just because you do not like it will not change the way corporations work.

And BTW, Indians do not need a calculator to add 2 and 2 !

I am an Indian living in Delhi & having visited US many times (on a tourist visa) think that Americans are the most tolerant people on earth. That's what makes your nation GREAT !

Stop this racist rant & believe the facts - we all live in a world where it's destiny is shaped together. The pain may be more with some people but we are all hurting ! And the only way out is to have faith in our systems & end the profligacy which led to the current mess.

Too much hatred floating around here. I am an avid B-Week reader and have never seen anything like this before. All of us know the advantages (& disadvantages) of work visa prolicies, all of us know the numbers and the the emotional reactions H-1Bs/L-1s are likely to elicit in these times. I wonder if B-Week publishes articles like this every week just to get 200-300 hate filled comments, ensuring readership. What new information or intellectual value are articles like these adding (to anyone)?

To Indians reading - objectivity amongst Americans is unlikely till their economy recovers... period! It's their country!

Interesting debate raging here. Few comments (and yeah, I'm Indian) to reinforce one point:

1. Offshoring of services is far, far smaller than offshoring of manufacturing. Example - China's trade surplus to US is more than India's total trade and 5 times of India's IT and BPO industry.

2. Best companies in US across industries have been early adopters of offshoring. The ones who didn't are more at risk (with exception of BFSI). Example - US auto industry.

3. From US consumer's perspective, it is VERY important that basic principles of competitive advantages are observed. Else, you'll continue to buy inhalers at $75 which are available for $1 in rest of the world.

4. Trade is very important for America and protectionism in US would invariably spawn protectionism elsewhere. Impact could be larger than this financial crisis. Example - Boeing, GE, Mcdonalds, IBM Cisco - all earn more than 50% of their revenues outside of US.

Offshoring has been benefitial to everyone despite short term pains and criticizing it isn't going to help America or the world.

Would it take too much money to train people from the Appalachia of the USA to handle routine chores that US companies needs and has been outsourced to India? I believe this infrastructure build-up by Obama to reach the farthest nooks and crannies of the US is valuable.

My response to HereForJustice's suggestion that high-paid US journalists should lose their jobs to Indians who get paid $2 an hour. I've got news for you hundreds of high-paid American journalists are losing their jobs because of the shift to the Internet. Hey, maybe we should ban the Internet!

The key to success in capitalism is to find a way to add more value and then make sure the market knows about it (you).

To all the Indians posting here. First -- ,most Americans do not blame you for US companies offshoring our jobs to India, we blame the management of the companies who hire IBM and te others who are offshoring.
I do hope you all realize though, the ONLY reason anyone is hiring people in India is because they are cheap, if the IT workers in India cost anywhere near the same as they do here noone would think twice about hiring them.
Dont think because someone buys a yugo its because they think its a better car than a Chevy.
The best and the brightest are here, in the USA , which is why even now then rest of the world still wants to come to our institutions to learn.

A bunch of people have written in about H1B and L1 visas; pro, con, and in between. I'm inviting anybody who has first hand experience with such visas to send me detailed examples, in e-mail, of abuses they have seen, or, on the other hand, of examples that demonstrate that the visas are being used correctly. Please send directly to my BusinessWeek e-mail address, steve_hamm@businessweek.com. Also attach your cell phone number. I won't reveal your identity publicly. If I want to use something you have sent me in a story, I'll call you and talk it over.

Thanks,
Steve

If you observe the comments in this site, you will observer something interesting.

During day time (for USA), we see lots of comments against immigration. But at night, the comments suddenly turns in favor of immigration!!

Most likely, those comments in favor are those posted from India by those folks working for big companies that outsourced the job from here!!!

Have a nice day!!

I think this whole notion that the US government should somehow "rescue" financial and industrial clunker corporations is rubbish. Many economists disagree with that approach, as it's only keeping investors on the sidelines guessing who's going to be bailed out and who's is not. All I see is a gigantic transfer of wealth from taxpayers to well-connected insiders, business as usual. Let the corporate losers fail, ensure the ordinary people have access to the emergency relief they need, and trim down expenses that's all there is to do.

America, India or China , the people who suffer always are poor people . Poor Engineersfactory workers,bank tellers. Middle class people who spend their entire life trying to make it big , working day and night.And one day , they just get laid off.No answers given , no questions asked. They go home , kill themselves , kill their families and everyone blames each other country . But then no one looks like the rich business chaps who started all this termoil. They are still rich and enjoying their life while they see poor americans kill poor indians and chinese.

Everywhere in any country ,we the poor suffer. The rich just mock at us.

this is a foolish point of view. In my point. And I think USA should offshore the jobs to China.

I'm not against outsourcing if that can increase the overall productivity of America and if it's also done fairly. But so far I've not seen any outsourcing of the high-paid executive jobs done proportionally in the name of cutting cost. Why not outsource all those executive jobs at American Industries at Auto, IT and of course Banking to foreigners who could have done a better jobs at a much lesser pay.

Despite Lou Dobbs and the bunch of unhappy folks here, there is no question that post-recovery, jobs will continue to be outsourced by US companies who will look for competitive advantage in one area that is of the highest expense to corporations - LABOR. Many of the jobs lost now will come back, but not to the USA. Corporations are even more determined to outsource jobs to the lowest cost producers/laborers. On the other hand, there are 170,000 Federal jobs available now. Have any of you whiners thought about that?

@ Mike - you seem quite distant from reality - the only reason most places like google / nasa hire indians is NOT because they cheap, but because they are significantly smarter at things like math / science than the average american.

What used to be a 'Skilled Job' earlier, is already mastered by students in college these days. So, the H1 visa program that was supposed to allow companies to hire highly skilled workers is being used to bring in people with more or less the same skill sets that Americans have, for a lower pay thereby raising the companies' profits.

The problem isnt as much of Indians taking away jobs. The root of it all is that Americans do not save enough. They've had free lunches for way too long at the expense of the rest of the world (which, to be fair, was more than willing to give them the savings of their people to buy). Chickens are coming home to roost.

Capitalist,Communist,dictatorship,democracies what's the difference? They are just the same. Ask Indian Dalits or Indian Muslims if the democracy India is good for them. Just watch the Slumberdog millionaires movies and one can see the realities in India. Furthermore, without USA's consumers, Indians and Chinese are probably still living in cave. India and China should learn how to please and respect the hands that feed their people.

We are talking about those H1/L1 visa abused by indian outsourcing company, like TCS have 80% US employee on L1 visa, this is so evident abuse unless you are blind ! Plus since when US become a super power, is it since after Google or Microsoft hired these H1Bs ? give me a break, "smarter guy"

To All Americans,

Please hate/abuse as many Indians as possible..make them realise that they are not wanted there anymore...India needs its brains now more than ever..the earlier socialistic Indian society is no more..now its more of liberal/enterpruneral society...india cannot afford to lose any of them to US anymore. You wud be doing India a big favour if you manage to send most of the indians back to india.

Jai Hind

Bill Gates is a proud and patriotic American and he has testified on the importance of skilled immigration especially in the IT area. The real job losses have been in manufacturing which has been totally outsourced to China. Also its worthwhile remembering that most of American corporations earn their profits overseas. Foreign countries also outsource their technology and armament requirements to the U.S. China has been subsidizing American growth for a long time.

I'm of the opinion that outsourcing jobs DOES create more jobs here in the US... IF people want to adapt to the change.

MinkeNY put it simply: if the brawn is offshored, then more weightage can be put on hiring the brain.

The issue here is that the brawn that was displaced is NOT smart enough to realize that their skills need to be updated in a global economy. Those displaced without degrees (call center reps) can go to school and get a degree, and those with degrees (IT engineers) can improve their skillsets (move to networking intstead of writing programs) to get a better job. Do the math - why should someone without a college degree deserve a $50k salary??

I'm of the opinion that outsourcing jobs DOES create more jobs here in the US... IF people want to adapt to the change.

MinkeNY put it simply: if the brawn is offshored, then more weightage can be put on hiring the brain.

The issue here is that the brawn that was displaced is NOT smart enough to realize that their skills need to be updated in a global economy. Those displaced without degrees (call center reps) can go to school and get a degree, and those with degrees (IT engineers) can improve their skillsets (move to networking intstead of writing programs) to get a better job. Do the math - why should someone without a college degree deserve a $50k salary??

The US is a failed superpower because there's a number of idiots living in it, and a number of idiots running it.

And those numbers are increasing every day!!

When we talk about globalization etc ... where is the question of taking away the jobs coming into picture ... At the end of the day a person who is talented and efficient is the one who survives.

Steve Hamm has a hidden agenda, he wants to sell more of his pro-Indian book called "Bangalore Tiger". Hey Steve if you like it there in Bangalore why don't you migrate there. We don't want you here.

Well here is the truth from a former H1B IT worker. I have been released from IT work several times once I have provided direction/skills to cheap Indian H1B workers, because the American manager prefers as they are cheap.
Its time that these managers and their company's explain their actions.
look at IBM, who yesterday announced it will layoff 5000 US workers, and move more work to India. Obama needs to do something about this.

I am not a Chinese but I must say that as a human being I feel great that Chinese have lifted many millions out of poverty! In teh mean time, what did the rest of the world do for the poor of this world!

Trade is a two way street and humanity shouldn't be an option!

If America is really democratic as it claims to be, it should help in making China, yes China, India & other mexicans prosperous!

This might help to arrest the decline of American influence in the future!

I mean, come on! I would prefer millions of Africans who rely on cotton exports than fat American some thousand agriculture workers.. Same is true for Technology or whatever!

Human interests are to be prime if the world has to be saved! And America was (sdoubt if it still is) for the "Free" world it wanted to create! Well, here we are, millions free of poverty!! and counting.. !! Democratic this way!!

Do any of you fellas realise that Obama is turning USA into a Communist Russia ?

We saw the same kind of rhetoric 30 years back in West Bengal, then the wealthiest Indian state. Communists took over and within 30 years have converted Bengal into one of the poorest state & a pariah for business.

America was always meant for the Ambitious. We all grew up on USA's thousands of stories of rags to riches. Please do NOT rename AMBITION as GREED, and kill the core American culture.

It's clear from this article the author has no clue about this subject. Further, the author fails to see the critical distinction between free trade and fair trade.

If you want to gain a true understanding of these issues, vist here:

http://www.american-consensus.org/resources/resources.html

I agree with ABC123 and wanna add more.
Am an Indian H1B person and seeing some of the inflammatory statements regarding offshoring here, really makes me wonder if people in US have forgotten the basics
- BottomLine - People with skills to do the job at the BEST cost will get it. Indians are benefiting from it currently because of our demographic advantage and emphasis on education. No one is doing them a favour. Wasnt capitalism system supposed to work that way ?
As for the US workers losing out, as Obama has mentioned too ....US can keep its prosperity growing by being at the leading edge of innovation.i.e Green tech..etc.
At the end of the day people at the top of economic pyramid, have to be nimble enough to be always involved with the latest and greatest to justify the cost of being there. Indians have raised the game and caught up with IT revolution...its upto the Americans to raise the game and take it to a new level with Green tech.
It is this ability which has been core of all American prosperity.

And for all those who are writing that they have US Masters degrees and have some kind birth right on the H1B visa, let me tell you that while I agree that degrees from top US universities are certainly good and many of these people work hard, but there are even people who complete a 4 year degree in India in 5 or 6 years and able to get a US graduate degree as their parents have money to send them to America. Also, even in the US masters degree category of employees, only top 10% to 20% people are really good. More than 200 thousand students come to Amercia every year (more than 90,000 from India), even then Indian outsourcing companies are able to sign multi-million contracts which means that employees of these companies are really talented in many cases more than these graduates.

Corporate America should be fined and punished. If many or all jobs continue to get outsourced for next 10 to 20 years. Those outsourced companies will close down due to lack of sales. If people in America or Canada don't have jobs, therefore, they can't subscribe or purchase the services or goods that outsourced companies sell. This is what CEOs don't think about.

When the blacks were freed and sought employment in areas around Boston, they were actively intimidated and often lynched.It is no secret that the American populace,including myself, has red-hot blood.Ours is not a passive society. Give us a cause and we'll take an ax to it.The Indians are sought because they are remarkably more capable yet low maintenance.Jackpot.In India,the kind of emphasis that is given on science and math as opposed to the arts and sports, fuels a society capable of performing IT better than the rest,including us here in America.Its intelligence and hardwork on India's side and racism and protectionism on ours.

Face it you (Americans)! The way you came here and took over native american soil,the same way we would come back and take it away from you! What goes around,comes around.
Buckle up,all your american kids would be lining up outside Indian,Chinese embassies to get work permits to work there in the next 10 years!

I believe that we should open our borders to everyone and anyone who is talented. The earlier we realize that the world is flat, the faster we will rise. With the introduction of internet it’s very clear that the best will country will ultimately survive. It’s simple, shape up or loose out. There are always jobs at Wal-Mart or McDonald’s. We have always attracted the brightest and believed that that’s the only way we can remain on top. It’s a competitive world. It's time we accept this now that ever before or let’s keep whining in this blog.

You Indian BusinessBossos, H1B visa invasion is been going on for past 10 years, log before Obama took office. Stop changing the subject, you and your Micky Mouse IT, none talented copy-cats are taking our jobs. First getting into a manager position then hiring only Indian in US companies.

American's are very angry - the angriest I have ever witnessed in my lifeime. Yes they are also very angry at Indians. Many who have come to this country have not integrated and have shown preferential treatment towards other Indians in hiring and promotional practices. American workers are very aware of many of the distasteful comments made about them on the part of Indians working in this country.

Hundreds of thousands of educated bright American workers have lost their lively hoods to offshoring. Many are now living at the poverty level damaging our economy and infrastructure.

Offshoring was sold to this country with the promise of economic stimulation and growth, job creation and lower costs of goods and services.

Not one of these has turned out to be true.

And for the gentleman who referenced the McKinsey report - the point is that key Indian companys PAID McKinsey to produce that report.

It's a terrible challenging time not only for the us but also globally. Everyone is suffering right now. Offshoring has not benefited the global economy.

Firstly, Even if the H1-B program and L1 programs are stopped do people really think the US govt can stop companies from outsourcing. Most big corporations are multinational and by doing this you are just inviting these companies to set up shop somewhere else , where the cost of labor and quality of labor is better . This may or may not be India but it will not be the US. The H1-B program is used to hire all the students who come to study in the US colleges ,removing the H1-B and L1 programs will totally kill the US college system and further the lack of quality educated people in the US. I agree that the H1-B has been misused by several companies but you do not shut down a shop when someone steals from it , you find the thief and punish him and not the owner or its other customers. You do not stop misuse of the H1-B program by stopping the program .

Secondly, isn't it US which goes around the world talking about equality and rights of people then how can the same country discriminate between students of the same college and same course just because they are from different nationalities.

US was formed as a country via immigration but it leaves no options for people wanting to immigrate - the H1-B remains the only option for people from outside to come into the country . The Green card program is a sham - it takes 5-8 years to process a green card , totally ridiculous. What options does it leave people to work in the US ??

It is really wrong to call legislations restricting H1b and L1 as anger.American immigration laws are the most abused and it is important to make people obey the law. The reality today is that quite a few companies are sponsoring H1b for people without offering a job. Is busting such people and asking questions about it wrong?? Why should US have a visa at all?. Let it be free for all to enter as they like.

Well to some anti immigrants/racists out here, i feel sorry for your ignorance. You think its because of indians and h1bs that economy went down? I think it will be nice to see what happens when H1b is aboliseh, then I want to see who pays taxes like us come legally in US and work legally. You have no probelms with mexicans who come illegaly and do janitor jobs and u ignore that becoz u cannot do those jobs. And sitting back and crying about h1b is not going to help you. Your main problem is outsourcing when will u understand 65000 h1bs fro all over the world if u abolish u think u will create 4 million jobs that are unemployed? Ther eis a misconception between h1b and outsourcing. Yes outsourcd jobs that go to india fro example are cheap due to currency and amount of labor differencde but h1b ther is a madatoryu requirement where companies ahve to proove prevailing wage and h1b has to be paid same like a citizen. Anyway, anti immigrants will never understand this but then u should ahve probably realized taking over this country from native american indians. Idiots.

We cannot roll back globalization, the reality is some jobs will be outsourced and some new jobs would open up. It is definitely tough for people affected by layoffs to understand this big picture, being unemployed is a very stressful thing as I have experienced it in my life. I feel that the highly skilled Americans like those that have MS or PhD in engineering, computer science etc have a much better chance in landing jobs when compared to blue collar workers in manufacturing,construction etc so these guys should not complain. These high skilled people could easily find jobs if they broaden their job search, are open to relocation etc etc. People in low end manufacturing, construction etc are the guys that need assistance.

A Protectionist approach could have implicaions eg. Pfizer, SmithKline...etc not selling their medicines in India & China. Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds being asked to move out and missing out on a couple of billion people. Dell computers not being sold, HP PCs and printers lying at the port...where would all these get sold ? I do think the Indians and Chinese could get back to using trains instead of the planes from Boeing. And of course, the IITians etc staying back to further build the backbone of the country...Otherwise put, BOTH NEED each other. Surely Protection cannot be the answer.

Wow I'm surprised to read so much of mis-directed anger. Well actually am not. Its become a habit to 'blame' someone else for your troubles. Remember blaming Saddam for 9/11 ? Agreed, he was a ruthless evil dictator, but the justification (WMD) for war, was not 'proven' right, most sane people agree to that !

I think Nick, Josh, PJ and many others are so right --
a) The current situation in the US is because of greedy American investment bankers & the 'laughable' credit policies in the US. As an earlier resident in the US, I was amazed at how everyone lived beyond their means, everything was on 'credit'. And hence they afforded 'good' lifestyles at the expense of ... their creditors.
b)and dear Angry Folks - Outsourcing and H1 visa are two separate issues. People working on H1 visas are LEGAL immigrants, they have worked hard to even make it to the US and get a good degree, spend their (or their parents' ) hard earned money on getting that higher education( those dollars going to the university surely don't do bad to the US economy!). As most other hardworking, legal immigrants to that country of immigrants - they pay their taxes, and contribute in their own way to that nation - look around u at the doctors, scientists and so on. Even the gas station and motel owners, compete with their legal businesses in a healthy way (they employ people who are not necassarily from their country of origin). They become a part of the society's fabric. Getting a H1 visa is a pain in the butt, particularly if you are not a tech person. Heck, getting a student visa is also such a big deal. (Make a visit to an American embassy in Mumbai or elsewhere!) . Its really unfair to blame all these troubles on H1 visa holders, I agree they compromise on lesser pay at times and lesser attractive jobs( the latter should be good for the citizens right!) but unless they choose to say no and go back to their homeland (like I did) they don't have an option. Isn't life about survival?
c) As for outsourcing, I hear India will no longer be the favored destination, as its too costly for the American outsourcers now. So you can spare India your outsourcing angst.
d) And to the person who brought up religion - India is a secular country - while majority are Hindus, it has (for a long time unlike the US) had minority leaders (Muslim President, Sikh Prime Minister) and female leaders as well. I wonder if a non-Christian person can ever be allowed to lead Americans.

I'm sorry about people who lose their jobs, but everyone around the world is in that position, thanks to the trouble that started in the US. Is there any point, in thus blaming the Americans for the world situation ? No!

Its ok to be angry, but don't let that anger turn into hate. Have faith, things will get better. Eventually.

Well as the author said it, business is a 2 way street, if no flow of business to foreign countries including India, then countries like India may decide not to allow American companies to operate in their soil. No more Pepsi, coke selling their sugar water or no more Ford or GM selling there cars. Or no more Hollywood movies getting released in India.
How does it sound outrageous isn’t it. Exactly!. I rest my case.

Frankly the Indians have to stop depending on the crapped jobs that come from outside and try to create their own jobs. All this talk of benefits by the American companies as a result of outsourcing are just rubbish. It's the Indians that have benefitted the most(look at their software exports) just like the Chinese benefitted from their exports to America. America is no more the great economic power it once was. Don't call it anger but call it frustration!!!!

H1B visas are ONLY to physically bring over people to the US. They have nothing to do with off shoring. Microsoft, IBM, Dell, SAP, etc. all have huge development centers in Bangalore. Note that SAP is not an "American" company but German. Right now, many European IT companies have a huge number of workers as local employees in India. However, the total number of such IT jobs in India is 0.5 Million, with an expectation of 1.5 Million jobs to be created in 2008 alone. I am sure this is a huge overestimation and the actual will be much lower.

It is true that IT people from India are perceived as "surly", "inefficient", etc. by US residents. Note that for most of the Indians, English is not their first language. They have all been educated in English for their undergraduate and graduate degrees, but most of their education up to the High School level is in their regional language (there are about 25 distinct regional languages in India, with different scripts, grammar, etc).

The US has been a major preacher of "open economies" that preaches the benefits of free trade worldwide, and has been actively pursuing marketing opportunities in India, China, Indonesia, Philippines etc. etc. Very often it has caused local jobs to go away because imports into India are at extremely competitive rates that the local Industry cannot match due to economies of scale, raw material price advantages, etc.

Further, many of the IT people who are currently jobless are those who haven't kept up with technology. Many of these are from the mainframe era. Others are Project Managers because it's more efficient for companies to have Project Managers locally in India, so that there can be "face-to-face" interaction between the PM and the employees.

But the most important part is that everyone from the West, not just America, outsources its jobs to India, Mexico, Philippines, etc. To remain competitive with the rest of the World, the US is forced to export jobs. This is not only to reduce costs to increase profitability, but to be able to compete in the World market.

To Mr. Anonymous who wrote the following
"

If you observe the comments in this site, you will observer something interesting.

During day time (for USA), we see lots of comments against immigration. But at night, the comments suddenly turns in favor of immigration!!

Most likely, those comments in favor are those posted from India by those folks working for big companies that outsourced the job from here!!!

Have a nice day!!"

I guess you really didn't realize that the people working in these 'outsourced' jobs are working on the same time that you are. i.e. if its day time in the U.S. of A, its night time in INDIA, the person working in that outsourced job is also working at night.

So you're little 'investigation' about why the comments change and who's writing them, in which part of the world, is again a bit silly.

I think now we know why jobs are being outsourced to India and why the H1B Visas are so desperately required.

The IT outsourcing is a very small part of what happened to the U.S.
How many manufacturing facilities have been inaugurated in the U.S. in the last 5 years?
How many cars are actually manufactured in the U.S.?
Every major car supplier in the Southern parts of the U.S. has a manufacturing plant in Mexico and the Northern parts have manufacturing plants in Canada
Products are all made in China
What use are cheaper products to you if you don't have the money to purchase them?
I firmly believe that only IT or Finance will not help in the recovery, manufacturing job will also have to be created. Every U.S. citizen can not be expected to re-skill, they won't be able to sustain themselves for the period required to re-skill.

Watch out India! Every day here in America more and more people, some in powerful positions, are beginning to acknowledge the BIG LIE behind outsourcing and the H-1B program. A recent InformationWeek survey of American companies indicates that 40% plan to reduce their use of Indian outsourcing. Why? 75% say miscommunications. 52% say Indians are under qualified. Almost half cite significant re-work of delivered product.

Cheap. Cheap. Cheap. This philosophy of getting less for less but calling it more for less is significantly responsible for the dire economic straits we now find ourselves attempting to navigate.

The vast majority (more than 53,000) of H1Bs are being scoped up by Indians. Who are these people? Even a small amount of research would show that the overwhelming majority are unexceptional. How could it be otherwise? These are not the best and the brightest. Believe me, I have worked with and, unfortunately, been in charge of many H1Bs. Almost without exception they perform far worse in their roles than comparable American workers. Why are they here? I will give you a two part answer:

1. THEY ARE CHEAP
2. AMERICAN BUSINESSES HAVE BEEN SHORTSIGHTED.

I am an Indian from top most university in India and came to US and did my masters in Computer Engg and built VOIP solutions and run millions of dollors of projects and manage all type of people. when it comes to work or life I treat every one same. People look two types to me either qualified or unqualified. I am believer of Ayn Rand philosophy.

Most of the people that are commenting about India instead of root problem of H1-B are definitely racist and they wont go this far if the same H1-B people are from easter europe. Same people that dislike a black man to be in white house and hate to see all blackmen except the cheerleaders in sports. Get over with it. World is changed. Treat people fairly and get used to change of power and balance and follow all the good things we learn in church about being fair and stop making hate comments.

Coming back to H1-B, I would recommend India,china and rest of the asia not to allow their smartest brains to be used by west and stop buying any western products and let west progress with its smartest brains coming outta schools these days and aged population.

May be US should ask all indians and chinese to go back to their home countries and tell them this is only for white people.

I dont understand why all these smart indians and chinese come here and do reserach and create jobs for america and still get blamed by insecure,ignorant few americans here. Most of the americans are great people and this is great country that respects individual freedom and hardwork.

I am sure all these guys havent done anything for their own country and still act like they are entitled for some thing.

I help the local church every week and I taught 2 black kids in colleges days caculus for free for 2 semesters and made sure they passed the course. How many of you did any thing worth for your own country men ? think about it.

Stop blaming indians or any other foregigners that doesnt fit your colored heart inside. God Bless the whole world from this type of morons with empty brain.

@Dexter:
The IT outsourcing is a very small part of what happened to the U.S.

Really? A small part? Have you ever met folks who lost their jobs due to outsourcing after working for companies for 20 years, with great dedication?

It is always funny. Whenever we talk about IT outsourcing, folks divert attention to Manufacturing. When you talk about cheap labor, they talk about "Globalization", when you talk about H1B/L1 visa fraud, they complain about lack of skilled work force...

This fraud excuse never ends!!!

Any more...?

Inidans are the best trainded job stealers in the world !!! holding a lab top, travel around the world and steal others jobs ??? whith help of greedy coroporartions like Microsoft and Oracle

Inidans are the best trainded job stealers in the world !!! holding a lab top, travel around the world and steal others jobs ??? whith help of greedy coroporartions like Microsoft and Oracle

Agree with some comments that ask why is IT being treated differently? How come you are buying japanese cars and chinese products but when it comes to the IT product it has to stay american? How much compassion how you shown to your fellow american factory workers who have lost their jobs to japan or china? You were too busy enjoying the cheap price? But now your job is at stake and this is somehow wrong?

Yes, let's also throw out coke, pepsi, macdonalds, dell, and all US brands of products and services from india and do business only with other countries where the citizens are not so racist. That will surely help americans create more jobs.

"IBM lay off 5,000 workers in its service area in the United States, and outsource the majority of them to India, the US business daily Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, March 26" citing an insider. IBM Had bring Indians and we have to train so they take our jobs" "that in a year that IBM is getting federal tax bemefifts and bring more Indians and not hire Americanas to work in USA"
I just see day that IBM will be like DEll phone in a call center in India you could IBM will copy Dell's support subscription, dubbed
“Your Tech Team service” costs $12.95 a month or $99 a year, which gives you the option to speak only to American customer support reps on the phone" that shows all my love for Indian's outsource
H1Bs and one more studens visas for Indians Stops ALL

IBM has hired 90,000 IT workers overseas since 2001 as it has cut American workers. In the past 3 years Americans have fallen from 36 to 29 per cent of IBM's global workforce. And now IBM is pushing for a share of tax payer funded stimulus money.

That's the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The reason we have salary cuts right now (at media companies, microsoft, hp, more) is a consequence of outsourcing, driving wages down around the world. Outsourcing and globalization have undermined the American middle class. There is no reason to believe the hocus pocus from economists about this topic. They were wrong about everything else!

While the attention on immigration is inevitable in this economic situation, identification of immigration as the root cause is over simplistic. Even if no more visa's are handed out it will not fix the job situation significantly. Fix the financial, mortgage mess and jobs will come back (oh, btw cut the outrageous bonus and paychecks of the company executives too to save some jobs ).As someone who worked for immigrant started companies we have to understand that immigrants do create jobs too and in significant numbers.
I see over reliance on IT alone as a panacea for disaster. Let's face it, not everybody can be at white collar level. We need manufacturing blue collar jobs too to reduce unemployment.

Indians are NOT the best and the brightest, neither are the Chinese, the worker's of both countries are capable only of taking the work of westerners and trying to claim it as their own. All of the H1B's I have experience of are less educated, less skilled, their "training" is limited at best, and certainly not on par with the American citizen workers they've displaced. They are incompetent and more likely to exploit the information in the systems they are allowed to tinker with. The criminal enterprises of H1B's and Indian firms have lead to serious harm to citizens, municipal, state and federal governments, and private industry.

For those who are against outsourcing and think other countires and their people are responsible for this financial crsis, one small suggestive question.
Think and try to understand the real cause of this crisis. Introspection may help.
My understanding: Too much of optimism and risk taking nature was the cause.

Basic Math says

"The H1B quota is 65K for all the countries and the layoffs have been
of the order of 650k since November.

Do the Math.
H1B has nothing to do with unemployment."

yeah, well I checked your math

you left off 20,000 H-1b for so called 'Masters degree or above'

you left out last year's TN-status (visa) change, which means that anyone from Canada or Mexico can use the TN visa instead of an H-1b, freeing up all those visas for India

you left out the F1-OPT training visa change from 1 year to 29 months, which applies to about 23,000 people who can now use F1 instead of h-1b

and, you left out L1 visas which are anywhere from 65,000 to a heavy multiple

and, you left out the fact that education, 'non-profit', and 'research' are exempt from the cap, even if deplyed from a for profit body shop

so the true number isnt 65,000, it's waaaaay over 200,000

"Trade is the willing exchange of goods, services, or both." says Wiki

Its ironic when you hear such anti outsourcing views coming from Americans, who ordered one of their most prominent symbols of Independence from London.The Liberty Bell.

And if this is the national sentiment....I think you guys should return the statue of Liberty back to France.... Because that lady is said to have welcomed arriving immigrants, who could see the statue as they arrived in the United States.

United States one of the youngest countries, but also a world power. Do you think it would have become what it is if it would have closed doors to "outsiders" (who knows mebbe your forefather)????

For years you have worn clothes made in China, India , Sri Lanka...driven cars made in Japan....Eaten food god knows grown where all....Why this hostility towards the Service Sector outsourcing?

This is pure and simple economics....a competent product or service is not produced if it can be bought cheaper.

Typical lies from a paid hack for the traitorous CEOs. Nobody is angry at the Indians, they are angry at filthy shills like you spewing your propagandistic lies on behalf of the billionaire parasite elites who are driving this country into the ground.

Software Body-Shopping in New Jersey

I'm looking for examples from people who have worked for these outfits in the past, work there now, or have leads for me to others who have. Please e-mail me at steve_hamm@businessweek.com. All replies will be kept confidential.

Jenny
March 28, 2009 06:58 PM

Indians are NOT the best and the brightest, neither are the Chinese, the worker's of both countries are capable only of taking the work of westerners and trying to claim it as their own. All of the H1B's I have experience of are less educated, less skilled, their "training" is limited at best, and certainly not on par with the American citizen workers they've displaced. They are incompetent and more likely to exploit the information in the systems they are allowed to tinker with. The criminal enterprises of H1B's and Indian firms have lead to serious harm to citizens, municipal, state and federal governments, and private industry.

Jenny its funny whatever you are taking about ...you are living in some fairyland If u think indians and the chinese are incompetent what is the reason for all the major innovation Giants of the US like Apple Microsoft Google coming to India ..Maybe Pink slips being handed in the US ,but it doesnt mean anybody is superior. Education and Knowledge is over color ,religion, nationality.So stop being a Sissy.If want the jobs to be there in the US take cut in ur hefty $salaries and don't talk about competency...And about data tinkering there is no need to be in the IT industry to get secure data ..Even a Guy sitting in Hawaii or Alaska cud hack into any data if he is gud enough and btw he cud be chinese japanese indian african arab or some kid from the US :)

Why India is culprit? Because it is the high paying white collar technology job they are taking away. Americans are fine if they do the blue colar work in the sweat shop because no one is interested in that job. In the new globalization world after the end of USSR (India was corony of USSR) the plan was to make US a tech and design center and not India. Also US has no love affair of India and the B.S of democracy is a stupid mantra, it is just to make India against China as a hedge. In 80s there was no US corporation in India no Coke no Pepsi etc. India was a socialist country an enemy of US and puppet of USSR. We should all be mad at Indians because it is our living the have taken us. After studying and working for years I find no job in tech sector just because it is offshore to India. So don't give me the crap that India is brainy and world is flat. We need legislation to stop outsourcing. I also don't find any reason against protectionism we did it after depression to grow ourselves out of it so why it is treated as a bad thing we eventually came out of it so it was a success story. In 80s we were protectionist think about any operation in India when it was a buddy of Moscow or any other Soviet block country. We had taxtile quota and banned on Japanese cars in Reagan era and we had no crisis like this today.
We also need to stop Indian talking head influence in the media they are all promoting one idea more outsourcing for their 1 Billions.

I am sorry to read some racist comments about Indians here. If you think Indians aren't skilled or worthy enough for the position, why don't you complain to your bosses and tell them to stop hiring Indians? Give them ultimatum, either "unskilled/unworthy" Indians go or you go. See what happens...After he makes his decision, ask him why he chose that option...You will find out that Indians are not to blame for getting job in IT (like this is the only field that is affecting the economy in the country) but your bosses who like to make their wallet even more heavy...

These big companies (who are some of the best companies in the world) probably did some research before hiring people from India. If what you think (Indians are unskilled/unworthy) is correct, these companies would have failed by now and would have been bankrupted.

Send these companies a message by not supporting their products. Posting racist comments about them on such a reputable website is not wise.

p.s. Please don't be racist. Educate your self. Open up your mind and see the possibilities. It is the only way you will ever feel truly happy.

Adam if u have studied computer science(as u say) and if you are good enough try getting a tech job else take a blue collar job and sweat it out.Racist is the only word that comes to my mind first it was your fellow black Americans ,now its Indians Chinese and others.You guys are just pathetic.Just hate filled in your hearts.You have bullied people over the years now its payback time.So just lay back and Enjoy...

Agree with all the White Americans. Immigrants are taking our jobs, and destroying us. So let us start a program to slowly get all the immigrants back to their countries.

Let us start with those who came here first. Evacuate all the Caucasians. Send them back to Europe, where they came from. Criminals trying to escape from the law in their country,greedy thieves and robbers and bandits, who came to loot us and destroy us, because their greed was so overwhelming, they forgot all humanity. Remember, when the natives protested their encroachment, they killed them off. Genocide, is what they did.
Funny, now that you think about it, they were invading a land that they thought was India, they were killing of a people they thought were Indians. Hmmm.... now they are raving about Indians coming here and taking their jobs! Go back to your country, White man, and let us Natives decide how we live with those who remain. We are a spiritual people who know how to live in peace with the earth, and we will find the people who remain, a pleasure to do business with.

@tunnel rat... I understand your point when you say H1 Indians are socially impotent, don't have proper manners, etc. " Manner" , " Polished-Unpolished" are subjective terms . They have nothing to do with what's in your Heart. The poorest people on Earth are the simplest, purest, untouched by greed, complexities of Modern life... they have no manners, they are unpolished... But are they bad people?? NO.
Believe me, It's shyness (eg. Indian women can't look in the eyes of male counterparts for a long time even when conducting Professional conversation, when Indians don't talk as openly & freely don't mistake it as rudeness.. it's shyness.
I've lived in this Country for nearly over 6 Years & i adore living here ... I believe Americans are friendly & good people. I was born & raised in India but i guess i love both countries equally. But comments like these break my heart.
India too was invaded by British not too long ago , but people got over it. Help erode grudge, negative ill-feeling & embrace every human being.

Nothing is more arrogant than Indian tech people. At a job fair in Chicago I had one Indian tell me that "C++" was too hard to learn. At the 540 W. Madison building in Chicago, shared between RBS and BoA, there were H-1B LCAs posted for 8 "Technical Analysts" in the $60-80K+ range by Infosys. They could have gotten ANY number of CS, physics, EE, chemistry and math people from local Universities like Roosevelt, DePaul, IIT, Loyala and Circle campus. Instead, the Indian job thieves deliberately hire only their own instead of US citizens. And then I saw another LCA H-1B application posted, this time for an IT MANAGER. Americans don't know how to manage?

Get rid of the H-1Bs and L-1s NOW so Americans can get jobs.

Oh, and even more hilariously, while BHO was screaming about AIG spending money on bonuses, Bank of America was busy shipping out check data entry jobs over to India while at the SAME time accepting money from the US government!

Large numbers of Black girls lost their jobs at 540 W. Madison so that Indians could get their jobs in the last few weeks.

@KP,True Native

You guys are ruthless ,just to earn u will send families who have lived and built your country.It would be gud in that case u send all immigrant population home US would be surely turn into a developing country.NASA space shuttles would turn into bombs and land on US land when launched.All your major innovation centers would be turned into nothing but huge sheds or parking lots ...Education institutes like the MIT will vanish without immigrant professors ..Then all the money and position hungry White Americans can sit down and wonder what struck them ...Imagine u guys migrating to India China and Mexico or even Iraq:)..No jobs no infrastructure you would be running around like Zombies.Hope world sees that day ..After all whatever goes up comes down and comes down hard...So u dumb guys know what gravity is right :).

Increased prosperity is good for everyone and trade is best in the long run!

IPhone outsources everything except the design & marketing! They still can make handsome profits & Americans pay relatively high wages to it's employees!

True,Indians are different.Each and everyone is different.There are different states and in each state there are different kinds of people.There are 1600 different languages and 29 languages spoken by large poplulation.LIKEWISE,their traditions differ.They behaviours and the way they do here are reflected of what their parents taught.
Donot balme all of them.
DO YOU THINK ALL AMERICANS ARE ALIKE.yOU GUYS TOO CAME HERE LESS THAN A GENERATION BEFORE. I fully agree,you americans are more honest and more independent,atleast most of them.
THIS IS ONE SINGLE THING THAT DRIVES US INDIANS TO COME HERE. None of us want to leave our parents whom we are supposed to take care in their old age,would leave them and sit here.
Good bless you guys and your country's future.

Great Notwitzi.....

Sears used to have a major software development facility in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. It's gone. Why? Because all the foreign students hired by Sears sent the work overseas. I especially remember a Costa Rican Sears representative telling a group of assembled DePaul University CS students about how they "COST TOO MUCH" and about how they were shipping work to COSTA RICO. The truth is, all these foreign students are competitors to US citizens because they refuse to go back to their own countries and become an anti-American employment FIFTH COLUMN working against the American worker.

Only American businesses want the H-1B/L-1 in order to detroy the American tech worker.

Those that believe the nonsense being propagated here should remember that the H-1Bs are engaging in what they call "Brain Circulation," that which Americans called "Industrial Espionage" in the 1960s.

Those Americans that want to keep up with the enormous Wurlitzer of propaganda being put out by the H-1B proponents like the ITAA I would strongly encourage to get the FREE "Job Destruction" news letter put out by Zazona.com:

http://zazona.com/shameh1b/JobDestructionNews.htm

A lot of interesting comments here - some really make good sense. One of the things I would like to point out is:

1. America is a nation built on immigrants. In a way, it's unfair to demonize Indians or Chinese, when your own ol' great-great grampa sailed over on the Mayflower.

2. The world is now a global economy. The US cannot afford to remain isolated and the average American cannot afford to keep living beyond his means - buying that Escalade, Watching the big game on the big-screen plasma - all bought on credit. The American student needs to put in hard work if she wants to match the students across the globe - as acknowledged by President Obama recently. However, does the American worker want to become global - of course not. He's too comfortable in his 8-hrs a day, weekend vacation routine. It's time for America to wake up and compete globally instead of whining.

3. I'm told that India had a great drink called Thums Up. Guess who killed it? Coke and Pepsi. No one seems to remember the demise of the locally made Indian car - where thousands of workers lost THEIR jobs - and all this so that the stockholders of Ford could watch their stock prices jump up a few % points. Well, maybe India and China should throw American companies out - they did it once in the 70s and they can do it again.

4. Stopping the H1B will only accelerate outsourcing. However, there is a great need for H1B reform to ensure that the visa is used the way it was meant - to lure the brightest and the best across the world to this country and make them stay here. The political stunts by a few politicians won't make jobs come back - they'll just make the so-called "American" companies migrate elsewhere.

5. There seems to be a totally incorrect perception that "Indians only hire Indians", "Indian managers cannot manage", "Indian workers are not as competent as the Americans they displaced". This is totally incorrect. I have some Indian and Chinese colleagues who are just as good as my other American colleagues. These guys did not displace anybody. They applied for job openings and were hired - the only difference being that they were on a H1B visa. You need to also keep in mind that my employer is American and that the employer has to pay additional visa fees (and there's a bunch of other pains to deal with as well) for these people, yet they chose them - because they were capable.

Hey, where are we heading to?
Stop the blame game and adapt the CHANGE.
Someone has rightly said - The CHANGE is CONSTANT!!

It's funny (and sad) to see how colored the perceptions of people are towards immigrants. Let me address a few things:
- loss of manufacturing jobs to China is in the range of millions compared to thousands of jobs lost to IT outsourcing.
- there is only one way for the US to get out of this mess and that is innovation. Unless the US innovates and remains the leader in technology, there is NO way that it can pay off its national debt. And the national debt is increasing faster than I can type, thanks to the stimulus and the greed of Wall Street. Innovation leads to patents, products which can then be sold to other countries to generate profit and taxes for the government (think Microsoft, Google, HP, Intel, Dell, TI etc. )
- Lets not forget that a large percentage of PhDs and Masters students are foreign nationals; Indians and Chinese. Unfortuantely, the newer generation of American kids are not interested in Math and Science. Now, before you blaim the cheap labor for it, consider that when a truck driver can buy a 800K home, someone working at McDonald's can buy LCD TVs, what is the incentive to study and be highly skilled?
- Collapse in global trade during the 1930s bit the US really hard in its ass. If global trade collapses, we are all doomed and there might be another World War (this time with nukes!)
- I'm all for cleaning up the H1B system to avoid the abuse. Don't allow Indian companies to indiscriminately bring in cheap labor and then treat their employees bad. However, not granting H1-B visas to graduates of American universities with PhDs and Masters (in Math and Science) is a sure-fire way for US to shoot itself in the foot. These graduates are a minefield of innovation and sending them back with be a huge mistake. There is a difference between US-educated students and cheap labor outsourced elsewhere. Google, Intel, Hotmail, Sun Microsystem (JAVA) are just some of the companies started my immigrants.
The choice is ours.

Nice points picked up in the article Steve.
I would like to read more from you.
http://amlistening.wordpress.com

amlistening
Nice points picked up in the article Steve.
I would like to read more from you.
http://amlistening.wordpress.com

Steve its good that people appreciate your work even i do and been a regular reading u r post and commenting from couple of years ..But people should not use this forum to promote their own blogs..just by saying some gud words and promoting their own space or blog through ur s..Else this forum will lose its charm and significance gained over the years ..so the person above didn t have any view just appreciated u work thts fine ..but i think he is promoting his own blog ..Grow up kid ..Else go to Mama.

Though I am an Indian, I can understand the anger felt by Americans. To all Indians who don't understand American rage - imagine a huge cry it would create in India if Infosys were to close down one of their large facility in Hyderabad and move to Malaysia thereby laying off 2,000+ Indian employed by Infosys in Hyderabad (just a hypothetical example).

Americans also need to understand that once they preach free and global world with free movement of product, services and capital - it is hard for Americans to insist on restrictions on labor movements.

The current economic problem in America is due to poorly managed finances at personal level as well as in US banks / government. Stop consuming so much and lot of problems will go away.

We are currently in the process of equilibrium shift of prosperity from West to East. I think the world is going to be better place once China & India fully develops.

I think xmen has made a very relevant remark "India is a democratic and highly skilled nation which we need in order to promote democracy. DOnt you realize you are promoting COMMUNIST AND DICTATORSHIP by buying CHinese products." Hope, this message spreads !

Rds

Abhijit Kar
http://www.abhijitkar.com

I propose this solution: Each one of the persons supporting banning outsourcing should start their own IT company and hire only Americans. See what happens.

America outsources: Few jobs will go
America bans outsourcing: All jobs will go.
Which one will you prefer?

BTW, if Americans stop consuming the fuel at the rate they are consuming, the rest of the world will be spending 10% of what they spend in a month. We all are paying high due to costly oil as a result of your spending on oil.

Some comments on this blog are funny and racist.
We have enjoyed cheap products from China (and noone complained. US govt is afraid of taking shots at the red state)
Few thousand Indian guys took US jobs, and all the "Free Trade, Freedom and Faireness, Open Minds etc went out of window..

We need to think clearly and then take a position. If no foreign workers, then do not use foreign products as well. Probably you will not find even a made in USA toilet paper!!
(Just imagine all Americans not wiping off :)

AdamRily
April 15, 2009 12:32 AM

Some comments on this blog are funny and racist.
We have enjoyed cheap products from China (and noone complained. US govt is afraid of taking shots at the red state)
Few thousand Indian guys took US jobs, and all the "Free Trade, Freedom and Faireness, Open Minds etc went out of window..

We need to think clearly and then take a position. If no foreign workers, then do not use foreign products as well. Probably you will not find even a made in USA toilet paper!!
(Just imagine all Americans not wiping off :)

Fair point Adam .Think they would need to turn to nature for the toilet papers :)

A few matters -
"A few thousand Indian guys took US jobs" - the numbers aren't even CLOSE to this once H-1B, L-1, F-1, other visa, visa overstay, and outsourcing numbers are tallied up. Indian visa overstays alone are officially estimated at 270,000 - some sources estimate Indian visa overstays at 400,000 - so already the "few thousand" - I can't even dignify it with the word "GUESS" - is already off a hundred times over, and we haven't even gotten to the main contributors (H-1B, L-1, offshore outsourcing).
"...all the 'Free Trade, Freedom and Faireness (sic), Open Minds etc went out the window" - this is complete BS over a single TARP requirement that was put in place AFTER an H-1B threatened Freddie Mac's financial records. Fact is, the U.S. still takes "free trade" more seriously than just about any nation on earth - including INDIA and CHINA and EVERY COUNTRY IN EUROPE - to its detriment.
Third, labor does not equal products. These are considered separately by most economists as far back as Adam Smith with good reason. Trade agreements that seek some kind of equivalency are driven entirely by a few countries' desire to export people and import $$$.
Fourth, America's IT sector did very well for many years without offshore outsourcing - and it was only when offshore outsourcing ramped up (several years following the institution of the H-1B program in 1990) that the American IT sector started to run into significant competitiveness issues.
Fifth, America's producing large numbers of American nationals that major in STEM subjects. They're just not interested in going to grad school in engineering. I can't blame them - between the incomprehensible patois spoken by faculty who never took ESL, the outright anti-Americanism practiced by engineering departments, the widespread cheating and plagiarism, the high tuition $$$ required, and the rampant age-ism in engineering, who would want to? Meanwhile we've got PhDs who have worked on complex satellite systems working in coffee shops, and Nobel Prize researchers driving shuttle vans.
Sixth, on this forum over the last few messages I mostly read a lot of finger-pointing about Americans' perceived shortcomings. Fair enough. Your other options are to embrace political dictatorship (China), the caste system (India), violent theocracy (through Islam), statist kleptocracies (Russia and several ex-USSR states), drug-gang dictatorships, or tribal/familial kleptocracies. Take your pick, and good luck.

Another interesting point of view

America must learn that illegal immigration, H1B, and outsourcing are not ways to live and fight deflation forever

http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/15565.asp

Another interesting point of view

America must learn that illegal immigration, H1B, and outsourcing are not ways to live and fight deflation forever

http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/15565.asp

NEW DELHI -- India's airlines, in a slump, are sending the following message to the cockpit: Foreign pilots, GO HOME.

Part of the solution: Firing expensive, though often more experienced, foreign pilots. India's government has effectively endorsed the purge. In March, it ordered airlines to get rid of all foreign pilots by July 2010.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124182155998502089.html

Where is WadhwaFraud when you need him.

Howard sure has it wrong. A lot of confused "conservatives" keep conflating pro business pro capitalist policies with "Marxism" and "ultra left" politics. It is because two uncomfortable things are going on right now: (1) Most "conservatives" are coming to see that they don't belong to the group that benefits from most "pro capitalist" policies (you have to make $1 million a year to benefit), and (2) Obama isn't any Marxist - his handouts and bailouts have been to the wealthiest billionaire banks and bondholders in the world just like Bush's.

It's super uncomfortable to think you're part of a team and root for it and wear their T-shirt, only to find out that the team won't actually let you into its party. It's downright depressing.

The truth is that Democrats and Republicans alike have one purpose only and that is to hand money and favorable laws to the wealthiest Americans and the wealthiest people in the world. Bush was closer to the King of Saudi Arabia and listened to his needs more carefully than any American. Obama is no different. If you don't make a million dollars a year and you support any of this, you support a club that you're not a member of - perhaps, like most Americans, hoping that someday you'll win the lottery and be a member.

What a sad way to run the politics of a country.

I can speak as an Analyst pushed out of a company who has slowly changed its composition to predominantly insourced hires from India. No one in the company was considered for promotion.

The new IT manager is Indian, in the recent past worked for an Outsourcing IT firm and has gone from business to business, pollinating it with his own Indian workers. Now he is doing it where I worked. I was naive because I did not believe that's really how it was.

Systematically, the work of the Systems Analyst team were re-routed and outsourced and then the developers were both insourced and outsourced simultaneously.

New positions advertised, nearly all ended up being filled by H1B or Indian employees.
Opportunistic and discriminatory in any other light, but no one stands up against it because they will look 'racist'. Just ask the pro-in/outsourcing crowd and read THEIR posts here.
Its 'racist' apparently to question why in America its not good enough to be well educated or smart or ambitious. You are a cost to be eliminated or reduced. If I was a student, I would be very discouraged from going into IT at all. You only have to be cheap, not good.

As a new IT worker in a Green Energy sector, I smile everytime I think of all the Indian and Chinese jobs and products we AMERICAN workers will enjoy installing someday soon to clean up the polluted mess you have created in pursuit of the almighty rupee and Yen (and dollar to be fair).
The US is quickly gearing up the Green revolution with technology that will be exported to you. The future of India and China economies depend on oil.

While India and China race to deplete the planet's resources, the US is learning... conserving, finding, developing, funding, manufacturing, teaching and soon profiting from Green Energy and technologies.
SO go ahead and develop the next stale and poor quality 'killer' app.
And feel free to 'innovate and cost-cut' until the whole IT enterprise is cheapened to the point of being the next entry level position for someone with a high school diploma
America will lead the future in the Green economy.
Maybe we insource to you instead. (I always wanted a condo in Mumbai)

I would like to point out that it is not entirely true that employers hire indians, because they are cheap labor. You will now find that in many companies these indians are hired into highly payed six figure jobs and once employed they work at very leisurley pace and often respond to business users' request to perform project work by saying that they won't do it, becase they "don't have enough resources".

In the last few years many of the indians got into positions of hiring managers and now they are hiring their compatriots regardless of skill level. I have seen some outrageous cases when an indian programmer is occupying a job but he has no idea how to do it, so he goes around asking other co-workers to help him. And yet when layoffs come this guy is kept on the job, while non-indians with many years of experience are let go.

So long as there are a handful of people that can do the job, the rest can just sit around and do nothing while senior management thinks that their operations are running well and keep staffing their IT and now many non-IT departments with Indians, even in this difficult economy.

Many indians are good at memorizing interview answers and concepts, but when it comes to getting the job done they have no original ideas. They overwhelm with vast numbers while having full support of the globalist senior executives at the American companies.

I think Steve Hamm should get credit for being insightful in predicting this mood or backlash by some displaced IT professionals. One doesn't have to look further it is very evident from many of the comments posted here on this board. When times are tough, it is normal to vent out your anger at anything that would remotely suggest or point to the cause of it -- its human nature.
This issue of human migration or trade (that’s what it boils down to) is not a new phenomenon – it has been going on for centuries. Look back in history and you will find that people have always migrated to places that offer the greatest of opportunities. In recent history the trends of Asian migration and European migration to the Americas are just a few examples. In economic terms it could be described as demand and supply. Businesses will always seek best and cheapest alternatives to land, labor, capital, organization. It is not going to be easy to reverse the global trend in free(er) trade and global interdependence. The wise thing would be to sharpen your own skills and make yourself more marketable instead of following the mob – a little venting from time to time is however, good for your soul.
In that spirit of venting I too must do the same for my soul -- I can’t resist but comment on the response of “American” posted March 24, 2009 11:00 AM. Mr. “American” aka “Chinese”, you really need to get a lesson on geo-politics. Of all the people how can you talk about “propaganda” and “quality”. Look at your country of origin and you will find the answer.

I think Steve Hamm should get credit for being insightful in predicting this mood or backlash by some displaced IT professionals. One doesn't have to look further it is very evident from many of the comments posted here on this board. When times are tough, it is normal to vent out your anger at anything that would remotely suggest or point to the cause of it -- its human nature.
This issue of human migration or trade (that’s what it boils down to) is not a new phenomenon – it has been going on for centuries. Look back in history and you will find that people have always migrated to places that offer the greatest of opportunities. In recent history the trends of Asian migration and European migration to the Americas are just a few examples. In economic terms it could be described as demand and supply. Businesses will always seek best and cheapest alternatives to land, labor, capital, organization. It is not going to be easy to reverse the global trend in free(er) trade and global interdependence. The wise thing would be to sharpen your own skills and make yourself more marketable instead of following the mob – a little venting from time to time is however, good for your soul.
In that spirit of venting I too must do the same for my soul -- I can’t resist but comment on the response of “American” posted March 24, 2009 11:00 AM. Mr. “American” aka “Chinese”, you really need to get a lesson on geo-politics. Of all the people how can you talk about “propaganda” and “quality”. Look at your country of origin and you will find the answer.

there are many american companies in india like

1. coca cola
2. pepsi co.
3. microsoft
4. IBM
5. pizza hut
6. many more to come

all this companies send billions of rupees from india to there country, its like they are eating our country from inside ? no, this money sent back to US revolves in the economy & most of it is sent to iraq or pakistan, very little amount of it is given as wages to H1B people.

I know most american don`t have any idea of business or outsourcing they are only good for work in some texas farm, so leave all IT & medical job to asians.

Put all the Indian body shop owners from Andhra Pradesh in Jail. 90% of the frauds will be eradicated. These are the guys who are misusing the freedom given to them. I know of a Guy from Andhra Pradesh who has many body shops. He hires fresh graduates, fake their resume with 8-10 years of experience, bribe the managers(Indian and Chinese predominantly) and get them the job for which they are not qualified at all. This big ISP in middletown, NJ is the company which hires most of his employees. They have 2 years contract for each employee and then one cannot be hired for next 6 months. To workaround this, this guy changes his employee's name(trust me this is true) after 2 years and get him a job in the same ISP company but in a different team with a different name.

These are the guys who bring in bad names to every Indian. Please if there is a safe way to report to the federal, let me know.

Chekc this -->
http://news.in.msn.com/national/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3260831

L1 Visa Misuse by indian copanies are getting noticed and Indian Corprates are crying

NASSCOM chief sees US visa limits as 'business killer'

Washington, Oct 1 (IANS) The head of an Indian trade group fears proposals in US Congress to limit visas for foreign high-tech workers would be a "business killer" for India's burgeoning information technology industry and would not reduce US unemployment.

Som Mittal, president of India's National Association of Software and Service Cos. (NASSCOM), told the Washington Times Thursday he was concerned that pending legislation would sharply restrict the hiring of foreign workers by domestic and overseas companies operating in the US, harming rather than helping the US economy.

Two senators, Democrat Richard J. Durbin and Republican Charles E. Grassley have proposed legislation that would prevent any large company from hiring more foreign high-tech workers if more than half its work force already consists of visa-holding foreigners.

"It's a business killer for us," Mittal said, adding that such a move could harm US competitiveness and was not needed anyway because there are not enough Americans to fill the high-tech jobs.

The Grassley-Durbin visa reform bill was first introduced in 2007. Congress is preoccupied with health care and climate change legislation, but Mittal said he fears that elements of the visa bill could be incorporated in immigration legislation that Congress is expected to take up next year.

US technology giants argue that they need more, not fewer, foreign workers to tackle highly technical jobs.

"Sixty percent of all technology PhDs are foreign nationals," Mittal said. "[The visa requirement] could be detrimental to the US economy. You do want to retain the best and brightest."

The industry also needs the ability to make rapid changes to its work force in response to demand or new product development, he said.

Launching a new product in the United States requires the temporary infusion of technicians from the country where the product was developed, he said.

It's no different, he said, when a company such as General Electric is building power systems in India - the company will need to temporarily assign a substantial number of US technicians to India.

The Indian information technology sector - with export revenues of $47 billion - includes the software, design and back-office outsourcing industries. It is critical to US technology and financial services companies, Mittal said.

The backlash is the best thing that could happen to the Indian economy. Our domestic markets are definitely developed enough and the cultural effects of increased interactions with Americans have been profoundly negative to be mild.