A Passage to India Services to Follow Manufacturing Jobs Exodus

Comprehensive Marketing Service ^ | July 22, 2003 | Bob Djurdjevic

[LibertyAndJusticeForAll]

"Services (including software) account for nearly three-quarters of all American jobs.
Services were thought to be the future engine of job creation back home. Yet they are now also on "A Passage to India""

If America can potentially lose 75% of its jobs, what possible future options do Americans have?
At what point will this be addressed by our leaders in Congress, not just Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo?
If the RNC thinks it can just "wait and see" while the DNC claims this issue, then we will undoubtedly lose control in Congress and the White House.

[N3WBI3]

And Bush1 agreed, so does bush 2

[samuel_adams_us]

IEEE sight to let the pres know what your thinking!!

http://capwiz.com/ieeeusa/mail/oneclick_compose/?alertid=3008896

[samuel_adams_us]

IEEE sight to let the pres know what your thinking!!

http://capwiz.com/ieeeusa/mail/oneclick_compose/?alertid=3008896

[robowombat]

A Reader Mourns An American Programmer Who Lost His Job -And Took His Life
FROM: Gene Nelson him]

On May 13, The Contra Costa Times reported on an event that should trouble us all-the suicide of Kevin Flanagan, 41. ("Job losses sap morale of workers," by Ellen Lee - elee@cctimes.com) Kevin was not a drug addict, a convict, or a ne'er-do-well; he was a trained computer programmer with years of experience whose job was sent overseas. The Contra Costa Times story reports that "led by the information-technology industry, 3.3 million service jobs and $136 billion in wages will move from the United States to such countries as India and Russia over the next decade or so."

At the same time, the federal government is cooperating with hugely-profitable computer companies to relax H-1b visa restrictions, so thousands more programmers from India, Pakistan, and other impoverished countries can pour into the U.S.-to compete with American programmers like Kevin. In 2002, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman characterized H-1B visas as a "government subsidy program."

A month ago, Kevin Flanagan found out that he'd be losing his job at the Bank of America's Concord Technology Center. That same day, he took his life-in the parking lot of his former employer.

It wasn't that Flanagan was surprised to lose his job-he'd seen it coming for months, as his father told the paper. Flanagan had watched as veteran co-workers were forced to train newcomers from India-then fired and replaced by the immigrants. One former employee told the CC Times that employees at Concord feel like they're "on death row. Every day you think, 'Is this the day I'm gone?' he said."

Typically, the Contra Costa Times story did not draw the connection between the loss of high-tech jobs and immigration. But one of the story's sources did; Peter Bennett, a refugee from the technology consulting industry, who founded a group called NoMoreH1B.com. On its site, Bennett estimates that "approximately 800,000 highly-skilled U.S. workers are now unemployed as a direct result of Congress' H-1B visa legislation."

The story also gave the impression that the Bank of America was shifting jobs overseas and hiring immigrants to preserve its competitiveness. But the numbers tell a different story-that of a prosperous bank which has let greed trump any sense of patriotism or social responsibility.

The Bank of America (Chairman and CEO Kenneth D. Lewis) is a public company. According to its most recent report to Securities and Exchange Commission (10-Q), the company's first quarter revenues this year were $8.85 billion-up $0.3 billion from the same quarter last year. Data processing expenses consumed only 2.94 percent of revenue-hardly a drain on profits.

But that hasn't stopped Bank of America from using immigrants to undercut American workers. The U.S. Dept. of Labor H-1B website shows that in just two years, the company has imported about 200 technical professionals, mostly managers. Many received low pay for the work they perform-for instance, one "Securities Operations Analyst" who is paid only $38,100 annually.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, since most of the bank's newly imported employees are likely to be contractors who report to the imported managers.

How do I know this? I've read it in press releases from "outsourcing" firms, mostly based in India, with names like as Syntel, Cognizant, Tata (TCS), Exult, HCL Infosys, Wipro, and Satyam-all list Bank of America as a client. Between them, they employ thousands of Non Immigrant Visa (NIV) holders who don't appear in the above Federal tabulations.

In fact, many new Bank of America contractors fail to appear on California or Federal tax rolls at all, since they are paid by foreign firms with foreign currency via the L-1 program. (But they and their families use government services, so U.S. citizen taxpayers pay those bills.)

More than 17.2 million such visas have been granted since 1985. Nice work, if you can get it.

To learn more about the H1B program and how to fight it, see www.ZaZona.com and www.numbersusa.com.

[Gene Nelson is a U.S. citizen and a computer programmer, who has been seeking employment since 2001. His former employer still employs H1B immigrant. Nelson has testified before Congress on the H-1B program. His upcoming book is An American Scam - How Special Interests Undermine American Security with Endless "Techie" Gluts. E-mail him c0030180@airmail.net for a 22 - page special Congressional Summary.]

[Nowhere Man]

A Reader Mourns An American Programmer Who Lost His Job -And Took His Life

Maybe we can rip a page from our opponent's playbook (the Lefties) and bring lawsuits against the companies, politicians, and others who support or participate in the H1B and L1 visa programs for wrongful death and anything else we can think of. I hate to do this but if this is what it takes to wake them up, so be it.

[SauronOfMordor]

I interviewed with Bank of America last week. I'd hate to think they were wasting my time, making a pretense of looking at American candidates before tossing the job to an H1B because "no American worker is qualified for the job"

[dfwgator]

Fortunately for me my job is to focus on corporate technology strategies, vision, and thought leadership (I know, I know, you cant tell by my posts :-) ).

There are basically two types of jobs in this world: "Do" jobs, and "Think" jobs. While certainly programming and engineering jobs, and even some middle management positions involve a lot of thinking, upper management sees them as "do" jobs. It is the "do" jobs that are getting outsourced, the key to career survival is to have a "think" job. Of course, the 64 dollar question is, are there simply enough "think" jobs to go around?

[oceanview]

I'll think about it and get back to you.

OK, I did. The answer is NO.

and I will add, what makes you think someone cannot think in India or China?

[A. Pole]

and by the time they are making 35k a year...they can outsource the jobs back to us.

Why should they? Do you thing they are stupid?

[stylin19a]

we'll actually, now that i think about it..yep ! business will move to wherever the labor will be the cheapest. Of course, first, they'll have to exhaust over a billion Chinese..by that tinme, I'll be a long time dead.

[lelio]

Regardless of who's actually responsible, Bush will take the blame for this. Here in NC, IBM is talking elminating 100's of IT jobs and sending them overseas.

I just came back from a trip to Asheville and the local paper had multiple articles each day about Pillowtex pretty much closing up shop and sending all manufacturing work overseas. The only thing amusing about it was John Edwards trying to explain his being pro- NAFTA (or letting China get Most Favored Nation status) as he couldn't foresee this happening. Yeah, its hard to see what's going to happen when you open up a foreign market with thousands of people working for 1/100th of yours do. Gee, they don't have money to buy our products? What a surprise.

Maybe Asheville is a model for the future of the US. You can't really outsource service jobs at a hotel unless you bring in H1b workers. But people paying $250 a night probably would like to speak to an American that speaks English, so maybe that leaves all the face time jobs for US citizens.