Originally posted by: ahurtt
Originally posted by: dchakrab
And it's *still* almost impossible for a young computer science engineer type from India to come to the US, look for a job, and make a meaningful contribution while being successful. It just doesn't happen anymore. When my father immigrated, it was fairly normal.
Haven't you been following the news? All those jobs are back in India now. You see, businesses in America these days no longer value their workers. Human capital is now just another commodity to be exploited. Work goes to the ones willing to do the most work for the smallest amount of pay and benefits. Doesn't matter if it gets done well and properly or not, just that it gets done and sorta works ok.
Agreed. So then why are those jobs in India? Why aren't Indians immigrating to the US to work for a fraction more than they'd make in India, still undercutting what an American software developer would work for?
American businesses value nothing but profits...like all businesses. We know this. So they'll go wherever the money is. And right now, there's money in outsourcing, because you make huge savings.
I think this compounds the problem. The foreign investment that results from outsourcing means that there are some incredible facilities in India now in the IT sector. This makes it that much more likely that serious students and serious IT professionals are staying to train and work in India. There are even immigrants who have flown *back* to India to take jobs there, because they make a little less money in direct conversion (which is a *lot* more real income in India) and they have the advantage of living in a nation that doesn't discriminate against them at all...instead, they're held up as the ideal examples of successful society.
If the United States continues in this direction, how are we hoping to compete in the international markets in anything...least of all in our standards of living? We let the corporations shortchange us on broadband deployment, and now we're the 16th nation in internet reach...when we used to be the first. Japan has 40Mb/s down *and* up connections for $40 a month. Compared with that, where are we?
The United States has been invulnerable for years because we were an economic powerhouse. Now, we've dropped so far behind that we no longer even have the tools to develop a competitive workforce. If you think this doesn't have long-term implications for the economy, you're shortsighted.
Immigrants made this country great. Stop airing your prejudices and insecurities by talking about the immigrants who mow your lawn. Indians in the US are immigrants, too...and we're currently the highest earning minority (averaging $60k, white people average $40k). Indians as an ethnicity have political clout, economic power, and an incredible pool of highly skilled workers, many of whom were trained here in the US. Going further back, the Irish, Swedish, Polish, Spanish...these were some of the populations that really built this country, just as Indians and Chinese immigrants built a significant part of the tech industry that was a mainstay of the US economy in recent years. The University of Chicago has one of the best business schools in the world (perhaps the best) and a *huge* percentage of their students are Indian or Chinese. They're not mowing your lawn or running the taco joint, guys. They're buying and selling you, your jobs, and your economy every day, and their average starting salaries would make most of our heads spin.
Those are the real implications of what's at stake here. Not the Brazilian steakhouse being closed.
Dave.