Former supertanker captain David Cook and his partner Roger Green wave off critics who say their plan to put 600 software engineers on a ship just off the coast of Los Angeles is another anti-American move to steal jobs from U.S. workers.
And with the other hand, they wave off skeptics who say the whole thing is surely a hoax.
"This is absolutely real," Cook says.
The idea is to put software engineers on a fully staffed luxury liner that is flagged in a foreign country such as the Bahamas or the Marshall Islands in order to get around the H-1B visa requirements that have put a limit on the number of foreign workers that U.S. businesses can bring into the country. The company itself, called SeaCode, has its headquarters in San Diego and will pay U.S. taxes.
The idea has been called everything from bizarre to "a real threat." Some analysts question its feasibility, noting that start-up costs and overhead will be huge. SeaCode is working with a broker to find a suitable ship that will cost anywhere from $10 million to $300 million.
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