I cringed when I saw this interview. Vivek Wadhwa, CEO and entrepreneur, lashed out repeatedly at Ph.D. and widely recognized outsourcing expert Ron Hira. According to Wadhwa, Americans and green card holders should not have priority for the jobs over workers who are in the US on an H-1B visa. Instead of fairness, he calls this
mean-spirited xenophobia.
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/...
Other points of view are as follows:
Senator Fritz Hollings, in an article published in the Huffington Post
With stimulus, we bail as fast as we can to stop the leaks, but do nothing to plug the hole in the hull ripped by offshoring. Stimulation can be a total success and we'll still lose more jobs than are created.
Today the U. S. Chamber of Commerce opposes "Buy America" in the stimulus. The government's and Corporate America's policy remains getting rid of jobs.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, published in Barron's Online
Krugman: My big concern here is that the economy digs itself into a deflationary hole, which is what can all too easily happen if you have a large, sustained output gap. Once prices start falling, and people start to expect continuing deflation, the balance sheet problems will become much worse than they already are, and much harder to resolve. Watching that happen in Japan is what led me to write the original, 1999 version of The Return of Depression Economics, and now the same thing is all too possible here.
Then if the CEOs go for the lowest possible cost on labor, including their destructive practice of replacing US workers with new workers brought in on an H-1B, that would fall into the same category as this concern of Krugman's:
Once prices start falling, and people start to expect continuing deflation, the balance sheet problems will become much worse than they already are, and much harder to resolve.
Labor prices have fallen. How long will this continue?
For some additional input on the details of the H-1B vs US workers, from Wadhwa, let's reference an article he wrote that was published in Business Week
Statistics that say the U.S. is producing 70,000 engineers a year vs. 350,000 from India and 600,000 from China aren't valid, the Duke team says. We're actually graduating more engineers than India, and the Chinese numbers aren't quite what they seem. In short, America is far ahead by almost any measure, and we're a long way from losing our edge.
OK, Vivek, thank you for that clarification. We did need to know how much we have to fear in terms of education from other technically advanced nations. It's not about filling skills gaps. There is no dire need for technical skills in the US, in other words.
This is a great progressive blog about free trade and outsourcing
It was all created for American corporate, globalization, greed, and American wealth distribution to other nations at the expense of Americans in massive jobs and industries loses. Subsequently these WTO and NAFTA deals brought down import tariffs from foreign products being imported into the United States. It made their products cheaper and American products higher.
Thereby killing American industries and jobs, forcing them abroad mainly to China. Meanwhile foreign industries from China and Mexico are flourishing and so are their economies, while ours have been on a steady decline.
Here's what was said by Hilda Solis, Labor Secretary, during Senate confirmation hearings on January 10, 2009.
Senator Isakson:
How would you handle the fluctuating needs for "high-skilled" labor in the US? Legal immigrants that come to the US to work temporarily to work and then go home.
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis:
"I want to look at how certification occurs. I want to look at how the labor pool is identified. Whether it be in the surrounding area where that particular business may be looking and seeking for high tech individuals what extensive availability of information is there so we know, if before we go abroad, we are first prioritizing those workers who are in fact capable and ready to fill these positions.
...the priority in my mind would be fairness. First of all, looking at how we provide fairness for those individuals who are trained and who are here in this country. Put them first. If we are not able to get there, then look at the statistical information and look at what is there. And then come up with ... looking at other frames, designs. But at this point that is where I would begin in exploring that."
Vivek, you may be at odds with the new Labor Secretary on this one!