By Rob Kall
The outsourcing of Tech Jobs to India and China is one of the biggest threats to the US job economy. India is complaining about violating the spirit of free trade. But I see this massive assault on US jobs as either a failure or intentional choice of the Bush administration not to respond to a technological development that allows "wetback" workers to go digital, smuggling prime value American jobs without having to sneak across the border.
It used to be, if you wanted to hire a foreign worker, you had to apply to the immigration department to get a temporary work visa for this potential employee. Digital outsourcing has become a way that big business routine evades the process, so they can smuggle foreign labor (not laborers) into the US.
Eleven years ago, I discovered a a doctoral level biomedical engineer/programmer in Siberia who'd developed published articles about unique software for biofeedback, unlike anything developed in the US. He wanted to work for my company, to develop a new kind of software unavailable anywhere in the world. I had to go through a major process, proving to the immigration department that I could not source a programmer in the US to do what he was doing. I had to provide the specifications for the job and then they immigration department put it out to see if they could find someone who could do the work. They found a few potential candidates who weren't even close. Only after that exercise was I able to arrange a temporary work visa for this unique programmer.
But now, with the internet and satellite aided phone connections, it's possible to circumvent the immigration department and smuggle work to foreign workers, even though there are millions of Americans who can do the job.
We talk about the problems with illegal immigration. But over the last few years, technology has enabled corporations to hire foreign workers without having to deal with the immigration department. This is either a failure of the administration to respond to a new development in technology or a conscious choice by the administration to allow transnational and megacorporations to cut their costs by using labor from other countries.
The way I see it, using phone or internet lines to enable a worker in China or India to answer a phone call from a US location is virtually, digitally crossing a border, using a worker who doesn't have a green card, ie., breaking the law, just like hiring a maid without working papers might be considered illegal.
It should not be allowed to stand as is. If it is not a blatant violation of the immigration laws, then it is the use of a loophole that ought to be closed and closed fast.
Last year, it was predicted that the outsourcing business would grow five fold in the next few years, from about $11 billion a year up past $50 billion. Keep in mind that that $50 billion in pay to third world workers represents a loss of US jobs worth $44 billion now and $200 billion soon. Those are American jobs racing to India, China and the Caribbean. Interestingly, I learned about the growth of outsourcing accidentally, while researching a major electronic voting firm that had branched out. That voting firm had been involved in several shady elections where the democratic candidate predicted to win by the polls had been surprisingly beaten by Republican candidates. Perhaps that partially explains why this breach in the walls of immigration policy has "slipped past" the recognition of the Bush administration.
This issue and this problem will not go away. The Indian government has attacked the US plan to ban outsourcing according to the Financial Times, "arguing it is a protectionist measure contrary to the spirit of free trade."
This is in response to the passage by the US senate of a bill that bans the outsourcing of federal work. The senate bill is a good beginning, but it does not go far enough. It should either ban or charge large tariffs (as Thom Hartmann suggested in a conversation) on outsourcing using phone or internet or other electronic means altogether, or, rather, change the immigration laws-- take them into the digital era-- so this kind of electronic outsourcing is labeled as a violation of immigration laws. And Hartmann points out that even if we did pass legislation that banned outsourcing, companies could circumvent the laws by creating offshore corporations that would "sell" finished "products" to companies in the US.
Another problem is that tariffs are verboten in the world of WTO and NAFTA. There's no doubt that India will apply to the WTO for billions in damages if the senate bill is passed forbidding outsourcing of federal jobs. And the likelihood of a successful pursuit of damages would be even greater if a tariff were established. We need to pull out of the WTO and NAFTA or demand that they exclude outsourced labor.
On top of that, the Indian government plans to tax these transnational corporations, like GE and Morgan Stanley. That will be ironic. These "traitor" companies register "chimera" corporations in the Bahamas (60 minutes just covered this, using Haliburton as an example) that avoid US taxes. And now, the taxes may end up being collected by India for work done in response to phone calls dialed to US phone numbers, processing data generated in the US.
William Rivers Pitt, in an article published in truthout.org , reporting on the Iowa caucus campaign, described and recapped a stump speech by Dennis Kucinich:
