Well, it just seems that the more I look at this stimulus package the more I find to dislike. But I am looking at the way it may affect my particular industry. I just discovered today a nice hunk of smelly protectionism, that will serve to benefit the American IT industry just fine - well, depending on how you look at it.
The bottom line is that a big splash of cold water is going to be thrown on H1-B visas. What you have here is a political compromise that changes the rules of the game with some politically correct exceptions for cover.
One thing we know in IT and especially in IT consulting is that labor markets move very quickly and talent is at a worldwide premium. That's why we have so many folks from all over the world employed in this business. Any old Joe won't do. I could get into the particulars about my segment of the industry and my opinions about outsourcing and staff augmentation. Suffice it to say that it's very easy to stereotype a lot of Indian workers. But the fact is that Indians who make up a visible bulk of guest workers are all over the map in terms of talent. That doesn't matter as we throw the baby out with the bathwater here.
This is just another zero-sum, wealth transferring, centrally planned wrecking ball headed at the economy. Unintended consequences? Yeah right.
Many people in all over US are loosing jobs to companys like Infosys who come in masses for very low rates.
L-1 visas unlike h1b visas are not capped so they are unlimited and India outsourcing company’s usually abuse the L1 visas. Infosys does not hire people locally they usually get people from Indian on L1 visa pay them very less salaries. The company I work for strongly supports Infosys as a preferred vendor and lobbies aggressively for H1/L1 visas.
If outsourcing is inevitable at least put good rules to force them to hire locally and pay prevailing wages.
Ban Infosys if they don’t hire locally and get stats on their visa/worker details
Like UK, we should put restrictions so that locals/local company’s are given preference and tax outsourcing companies very high by states.
Also in many cases foreign temp workers really don’t contribute anything to local economy.
Posted by: mm | February 24, 2009 at 06:44 AM