India outsourcers angered by US job visa hike

[ChromeFoundry]

Source: The Economic Times of India

14 Aug 2010, 1804 hrs IST,AGENCIES

NEW DELHI: India's flagship outsourcing industry reacted angrily on Saturday to a new US law tightening security at the Mexico border with measures paid for by steep hikes in American work visa fees.

The $600 million legislation, signed into law Friday by US President Barack Obama, will nearly double visa fees for some Indian information technology workers entering the United States.

"The US is giving a very strong signal foreigners are not welcome," said Som Mittal, president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), which represents India's leading software exporters.

"The law is discrimination," Mittal said.

The row comes as India readies to host Obama later this year and as anti-outsourcing anger in the United States has been stoked by high unemployment.


Read more: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/ites/India-outsourcers-angered-by-US-job-visa-hike/articleshow/6311472.cms

[ibegurpard]

1. they should shut their fucking mouths

If I get my way, it won't be happening AT ALL at any cost to them.

[bherrera]

7. Immigration is a good idea, should be done to benefit people

not corporations. I suspect these indians who travel to the usa using work visas are simiilar to indentured servants, and the indian corporations profit tremendously while exploiting these professionals. The better system is to have an immigration system where the individual can move to a more developed country, and work as a free man. This is a serious abuse, and i think this business should be stopped, because it leads to worker abuse.

[NJGeek]

27. i second that

eom

[msongs]

2. make your own crummy jobs at home Mr. Mittal and quit taking ours nt

[JHB]

3. So a trade group spokesman complains when legislation doesn't go their way...

How thoroughly unexpected.
:boring:

[OhioChick]

4. India firing foreign workers to give jobs to locals...

India firing foreign workers to give jobs to locals

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/News_By_Industry/Jobs/Expatriate_executives_making_way_for_local_hires/articleshow/4039529.cms


It's time for all countries to take care of their own, first.

As for Som Mittal... :nopity:

[Hello_Kitty]

6. Oh but see, other countries are allowed to do that.

When we do it it's ZOMG PROTECTIONIZM!!1!

[Odin2005]

34. You noticed that hypocrisy, too?

It's VERY annoying.

[sailor65]

5. You're right, you aren't welcome

not welcome at all when good American engineers are sitting on layoff because H1's will work for peanuts.

[OhioChick]

8. U.S.: H-1B workers outnumber unemployed techies

U.S.: H-1B workers outnumber unemployed techies

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9133529/U.S._H_1B_workers_outnumber_unemployed_techies

[boppers]

30. Wow. Thanks for posting that.

Pretty bizarre.

[LibDemAlways]

9. The H1B program should be revoked all together. In this

economy with many thousands of American engineers out of work, it's a crime that foreigners are still allowed to come here - at any cost - to steal jobs.

When my husband was laid off he attended a job fair in San Jose that attracted literally hundreds of H1B via holders looking for their next gig. And employers were anxious to talk to them.

There are American law firms that conduct seminars with the express purpose of helping American employers hire H1Bs. Check out this video. It's outrageous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

[davidwparker]

18. Right. I've seen that before. These people are traitors, but

there are always bottom feeders like this in a society.

[ORDagnabbit]

10. wah wah! one of these days this country will wake the fuck up and go back to taking care of its

own citizens first.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

15. I'll hold the bets on that one.

'Cause it simply ain't gonna happen. :cry:

[Frisbee]

20. Only the top 1 or 2 % if the repukes get their way.

[InkAddict]

11. Discrimination? What a hoot!

Get over it, Mittal - It's just political good business...get it...we're finally making a BUSINESS decision about our own country's economies and human resources...now go and do likewise. Seems there's lots of work to do in India and around the world that would raise the standards of living for thousands through IT, etc... While America discriminates on a business level, I'm sure the globalist corporations, unbounded by silly little documents, would just love more Indian brain power for nothing...hahahaha...where there's a will there's a way, they always say. Bootstraps, Mr. Mittal, buy some boots...

I hear there is a country just across your border that may need some major help with waterway engineering and technological infrastructure-go take your bailers there and do some good for a change.

[otohara]

12. Hopefully NBC's "Outsourcing" Will Cheer Them Up

:sarcasm:

[scentopine]

13. We should also stop our foreign aid to India. -nt

[The Green Manalishi]

16. Not one cent of foreign aid, ANYWHERE as long as one U.S. Citizens wants

for food, shelter, education or healthcare.

Charity begins at home.

To paraphrase Otto Von Bismarck:
The entirety of the mideast is not worth the bones or blood of one U.S. Private.

[Frisbee]

21. Phase out foreign aid over the next 5-10 years,

including for Isreal, excepting for natural disasters (floods, earthquacks, etc). Tell the Pentagon that their budget gets cut 5% per year for the next decade, live with it and learn to live within your means. And find a way to penalize corporations who outsouce jobs and use offshore tax shelters so that it is no longer worth it to them to do so. See how fast the coffers would fill.

I'd also like to see the US government require that all government purchases be of domestically made products whenever possible.

[Chicago dyke]

24. sigh. turn off the TV, please.

"foreign aid" is a tiny percentage of the federal budget. hardly worth noticing, compared to say, what we spend on planes and bombs the DoD doesn't even really want or need.

it's so much more complicated than "keep all our money here." first off, that's impossible. the global economy is permanently mixed, and "our" money will go to other lands no matter how much "foreign aid" we spend.

secondly, some aid really does help. you! as an american, even. do you think that (extremely cheap and easy to deliver) birth control for women around the world helps you, my fellow American? because the fact is, it does! when women in other countries are able to control their own bodies and the number of children they have, it becomes that much less competition for jobs that you, as an American, have to worry about. how about saving the environment, and spending (again, tiny amounts is all we do right now) helping people return to sustainable farming practices, to prevent them from slashing the rain forests that keep us ALL alive and breathing? or funding hospitals and clinics in war torn areas of the world where future terrorists are born, terrorists who only hate us because we bombed their entire villages and then left saying, "oh well. you take care of your son now that he has no arms. we can't afford it?"

we pretty much could've written a check to everybody in Afghanistan, and had better results than we've had with our war/occupation. and it would've been cheaper, too. by a lot.

i won't argue that western aid agencies do a good job, all the time, in every program. a lot of aid programs are fucked up and ineffectual. however, we could change that.

pennies on the dollar make a HUGE difference, when applied correctly. also: in a moral sense, America has a great debt to the rest of the world. the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the woods and plastics you enjoy... all these came at the expense of poor people someplace else. the US and the west raped and pillaged the natural resources of the rest of the world for 000s of years. tossing a few pennies their way today, to help them rebuild and develop their societies isn't just only "fair," it is our duty, if we're truly a moral people.

[scentopine]

31. Sigh - so tired of reading snarks, They translate to "I can't communicate...."

If you feel you have the upper hand in an argument, you don't need to resort to patently worn out, stupid snarks. You lost the moment you posted that title. No amount of well reasoned discussion after that matters. You opened with a personal insult. That is something the centrists do on this board. It is the signature of a woodchuck.

There is ZERO logic to foreign aid to India and China. Any country with and advanced nuclear program and manned space program does not need help from the USA. We have educated their people with advanced technology - from nuclear technology, avionics, space flight, micro-processor design, metallurgy, semi conductor fabrication on and on. Every bit of this technology is delivered from US based fortune 500 companies to low skill, low wage and unregulated labor markets in Asia. From there, the recipient has a choice - they can take the profits from their enterprise and invest it in their country, or they can pocket the cash. The vast majority of this wealth goes into the pockets of a small minority. Just like here.

A few hundred million dollars spent on displaced workers, small farmers, R&D, health care here in USA is money well spent. Sending it to India and China is just wrong.

As for investment elsewhere, of course there are exceptions, however dumping money on brutal despot dictators has proven to be no more effective than dumping money on upper rich wall street bankers. Neither technique is yielding dividends.

[Odin2005]

35. Most "Foreign Aid" is simply subsidies used for propping up US-friendly dictators.

[mike r]

14. Fuck 'em. Charity begins at home.

[truthrocks]

17. "The US is giving a very strong signal foreigners are not welcome," said Som Mittal,

Duh!
:dunce:

[L0oniX]

19. I enjoy their anger.

[cornermouse]

22. Dear Mr. MIttal

I don't care.

sincerely
cornermouse

[Hulk]

23. Geeee...that's too bad.

This is probably NOT the place to start...but it's about time we consider tariffs in this country again....and a close look at our "off shore tax havens" for corporations. The Indians coming over and taking the nice white collar jobs from our college grads is just another issue of how f*cked up this country has gotten..thanks to Ronnie Alzheimer and everyone who has followed him in the WH.

Time to put the clamps down and protect what little we have left.

[mackerel]

26. "The US is giving a very strong signal foreigners are not welcome," said Som Mittal,

Where has Mittal been? Under a rock? We don't even want people from North America here.

[laylah]

25. ...

:nopity: Maybe, just MAYBE, we will start taking care of our own!

[47of74]

28. Dear Mr. Mittal;

Sincerely,
47of74

[Skittles]

29. GOOD

now go fuck yourselves too

[totodeinhere]

32. The way things are going, soon it will be us who will be providing the cheap outsourced labor.

As real wages for Americans continue to stagnate, how long will it be until companies from places like China and India start outsourcing jobs to America because of our cheap labor? And pretty soon the way things are going they will have to be sending us foreign aid.

[Odin2005]

33. Fuck Them! They need to develop their own country, not fuck over ours.

This is Neo-Liberal Ideology at it's finest. Protecting one's own industries is "Bigotry" and "Xenophobia"; it's a message designed to appeal to Upper-Middle Class Latte Liberals.