It is readily apparent that there is no shortage of American tech workers when the Americans are being let go in order to hire the cheaper Indians, either via offshore outsourcing or immigration:
At A.B.’s company, about 220 IT jobs have been lost to offshore outsourcing over the last year. A.B. is telling the story because, initially, there was little knowledge among fellow employees about H-1B visa holders and how they are used. They didn’t know that offshore outsourcing firms are the largest users of H-1B visas, or exactly how this visa facilitates IT job losses in the U.S.
“I think once we learned about it, we became angrier toward the U.S. government than we were with the people that were over here from India,” A.B. said, “because the government is allowing this.”
The IT workers at this firm first learned of the offshore outsourcing threat through rumors. Later, the IT staff was called into an auditorium and heard directly from the CIO about the plan to replace them. It would take months for the transition to be completed, in part because of some new system installations.
Many younger IT workers found jobs and left. Mainframe workers were apparently in demand and also able to find new jobs. But older workers with skills in open systems, storage and SAN faced a harder time. About half the IT staffers, mostly the older ones, would stay to the end.
Training the replacement workers involved holding morning-long WebEx meetings several times a week with offshore outsourcing staff based in India. The sessions were recorded as details about the environment, including diagrams and scripts, were shared.
The entire foundation of free trade is a lie. There are multiple flaws in David Ricardo’s comparative advantage argument that I have previously pointed out – do a search or go through the Free Trade tag if you’re interested. So it should be totally unsurprising that the justifications for the H1B visas are lies as well.