Thread: Illegal immigrants from India on the rise

Originally Posted by BetsyRoss

And it doesn't make employing Indians more attractive, it means that the Indian gets fewer rupees for his dollar, which affects the savings possibilities and overall wisdom of working in the west.

This is the matrix of possibilities. As you can see with a depreciating $, it becomes less attractive to offshore work, but the impact on the US payroll for H1B employment is unchanged or positive.

Dollar appreciates

Indian worker in India : Makes more Rs.
Indian worker in US : Makes more Rs.
US employer offshoring work : Saves $s
US employer with H1B : No impact on $ payroll

Dollar depreciates

Indian worker in India : Makes less Rs.
Indian worker in US : Makes less Rs.
US employer offshoring work : Spends more $s
US employer with H1B : No impact on $ payroll

Now you can definitely argue that it makes it less attractive for the Indian worker to seek employment in the US. But again, here the European example indicates that there won't be much of an impact. With a similar standard of living to the US, Europe sends twice as many workers per capita to the US than does India. What this means is that there will be people willing to migrate for jobs even if the economics doesn't look favorable.

Originally Posted by BetsyRoss

They don't seem at all ascetic to me any more.

This is off-topic and religious, but for a large number of Indians the pursuit of wealth and materialism one of four noble goals of life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artha

For those who want to live in America and become Americans, the lure is still strong. But a lot of them, it seems to me, wanted to make a fortune here and retire or at least leave rich. The air is coming out of that balloon fast, due to exchange rate changes and inflation at home. The impact on US payrolls won't be neutral if they have to pay Indians more. The bodyshops are already discussing the possibility of either raising rates outright or else inserting clauses to protect them in case of further exchange rate changes. The only way that can work out in the end is more dollars for fewer rupees. Something's got to give.

I run into so many of them who believe they were offered jobs in the west because they were better and if their pay has to go up, they will still keep their job. For a few who got in, learned, worked their tails off, and made friends with the boss, that might be true. But for those whose employment status is contingent, who do not matter to their bosses and customers, they are just another commodity and it will be no more problem for their employers to dump them than it will be for them to change bottled water delivery companies. That is what the bodyshops have reduced IT to.

I am not actually so threatened by this, as my IT job depends in large part on my personal presence rather than my skill set (beyond a certain level of competence). I'm lucky in that when I showed talent as a coder 15 years back, someone took me aside and advised me to pursue a different route precisely because of this issue, so I became a Novell CNE (you had to show up in person to do this work back then) and am now a manager. The threat to me from global labor arbitrage is more along the lines of lower salaries and truncated career prospects because I'm competing with so many displaced people who wanted to do something the foreigners are now doing, but are now trying for my job instead.

A lot of us are in the position of being prepared and competent at what we do, and being squeezed anyway. There are just too many fish in the IT pond, and more are being added all the time thanks to labor arbitrage. Other professions are being impacted too, but this is an internal discussion for America to have.

And if wealth is good, then why were we subjected to a barrage of abuse to the effect that we were greedy, materialistic Americans who wanted too much money and lived too high a lifestyle, and therefore deserve to lose our jobs? Oftentimes this conflict seems to me to be down to the level of a playground fight, where one kid is trying to bully another and take his lunch money. Why else all the verbal abuse that is so predictable?

Any mature rational person does not bring such a point to table to prove one-upmanship.

If I come across any such person I would stop discussion right then and there, as there is no point in discussing with a person holding such view.

For that matter , you come across such persons everywhere including Alipac .

Originally Posted by BetsyRoss

And if wealth is good, then why were we subjected to a barrage of abuse to the effect that we were greedy, materialistic Americans who wanted too much money and lived too high a lifestyle, and therefore deserve to lose our jobs? Oftentimes this conflict seems to me to be down to the level of a playground fight, where one kid is trying to bully another and take his lunch money. Why else all the verbal abuse that is so predictable?

On another board I had one guy tell me my English was poor and I didn't bathe. How he could possibly learn that last point across the Internet puzzled me.

Originally Posted by BetsyRoss

And if wealth is good, then why were we subjected to a barrage of abuse to the effect that we were greedy, materialistic Americans who wanted too much money and lived too high a lifestyle, and therefore deserve to lose our jobs? Oftentimes this conflict seems to me to be down to the level of a playground fight, where one kid is trying to bully another and take his lunch money. Why else all the verbal abuse that is so predictable?

I debated whether to respond to this as the explanation is complex, but here goes.

I suspect the abuse mainly comes from the left dominated media within India. The left is interested in keeping people poor as that is their power base, and churns out reams of garbage on why wealth and materialism is bad to perpetuate their regressive policies. Of course, some people buy into this nonsense given many decades of exposure to this bilge in the media.

This is a link and an excerpt for reference to the state of the media within India.
http://www.india-forum.com/articles/...MEDIA-IN-INDIA

Sociologists from JNU and other left establishment, leftist political parties over the decades have established links with foreign universities in UK/USA on social changes and social studies. The discussion on social changes using left/Marxist ideology has dominated the intellectual space. Marxist principles on social changes and social studies have dominated these subjects for many decades. Foreign sociologists, indologists and political experts have dangerous influence on the discourse of these Indian political and social organizations. The media, at least a major section of them, have over the years internalised the logic to such an extent that it has become the instrument of its reproduction.

Added later:
JNU = Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi

Originally Posted by BetsyRoss

For those who want to live in America and become Americans, the lure is still strong. But a lot of them, it seems to me, wanted to make a fortune here and retire or at least leave rich. The air is coming out of that balloon fast, due to exchange rate changes and inflation at home. The impact on US payrolls won't be neutral if they have to pay Indians more. The bodyshops are already discussing the possibility of either raising rates outright or else inserting clauses to protect them in case of further exchange rate changes. The only way that can work out in the end is more dollars for fewer rupees. Something's got to give.

Yes, the lure of coming to America is strong in many places. It is propagated by popular culture such as books and Hollywood and will not diminish unless a US decline is observed.

On topic of exchange rate changes, these types of changes are a problem only when they are sudden. Something like 200-300,000 newcomers join the IT industry every year, so any gradual changes are accomodated simply by paying the newcomers lower wages, thereby establishing a lower base for future wage increases. And of course even experienced folks working locally in India will have to be content with lower wage increases as the H1B cap prevents them from coming to America for higher wages.

I already see that some of the Indian companies are recruiting 'freshers' and non-technology majors to try and keep costs down. But, this will bite them in the butt if service levels decline. There are already serious questions about service levels in some cases, and some contracts have been lost because they were, quite frankly, biffed. I know several people who make their living on a contract basis cleaning up outsourcing blunders. The companies avoid talking about it, but the issue is real. A sort of 'black budget' line item. And, you have seen the eyewitness H-1B 'horror stories' posted on another site?

Don't know about the H1B horror stories, but software development is an imprecise art. Projects fail all the time whether they are implemented by H1B, offshore or local worker in America. Unless the failure rate for one kind of worker exceeds the failure rate for the other type of worker, its just par for the course.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000588.html

The 10th edition of the annual CHAOS report from The Standish Group, which researches the reasons for IT project failure in the United States, indicates that project success rates have increased to 34 percent of all projects. That’s more than a 100-percent improvement from the success rate found in the first study in 1994.

I don't believe changes in the exchange rate will have more than a minor impact because the exchange rate was not the prime reason for the rise of outsourcing to India. If that was the case, we would have seen outsourcing crop up to other countries with lower exchange rates like Bangladesh, Japan or South Korea.

Rather, the rise of widespread quality private education starting in the early 1980s was responsible for the rise of outsourcing to India. Up until the first private colleges were started, access to good engineering education was very limited. The private colleges have made a large amount of trained manpower available that was willing to work for whatever jobs were available. The US media has only recently become aware of this phenomenon, but I found a few links that reference it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...010200566.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11571960/site/newsweek/

Of course, anything good that reduces poverty is opposed by the left. No less than Nobel winner Amartya Sen spouts nonsense in face of history and reality.

This upsets the Indian left, which wants to shut down these "mushrooming private schools."

and:

Amartya Sen complains that "no developed" country educates itself using private schools.

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/ma...e_schooli.html
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/ma...e_educati.html

It is a great mistake to say that India got the jobs because they geared up their education and became good. Lots of people in the world are good, especially in America which was a world leader for decades before India ramped up (still is). The question is, why would companies abandon the very same Americans whose work brought them to greatness, and replace them (either onsite or via offshoring) with so many Indians?

The exchange rate is what made it economically feasible to overlook distance, culture, and custom. Cheaper countries usually have more of a language barrier, in India it was less because of the British heritage. India is also more politically stable than many of the alternatives. It's not just one factor.

There is a lot of managerial overhead to global operations that needs to be factored in. When the gains to Indian companies start to fall, they will look for greener pastures, as they are starting to do. When the gains to Indian workers start to fall, many will go elsewhere or stay home, which is starting to happen.

As India continues to develop internally, this will provide more and more attractive opportunites for their best and brightest, as it should. Again, this is already starting to happen. Levelling the playing field is not just about bringing us down, it can have surprising consequences, such as the homeshoring and farmshoring movements.

The reason for the decline of American manufacturing and for the rise of outsourcing is that it became cheaper to buy and hire foreign than domestic. Not that we lacked brains, education, or workers. I'm waiting for it to become feasible again. Even now, there are lots of startups still forming here.

Originally Posted by BetsyRoss

It's not just one factor.

The primary reasons are cost and availability. The cost factor has existed for a long time in fact since the modern Indian state was formed. What changed was availability due to the large numbers of trained people coming out of colleges starting in the 1980s. Modern communications made it possible for all of these people to compete in the same labor market.