Letters to the Editor

Jobs for home-grown workers

In regard to the article “High-tech firms importing cheap labor” (Nation, Sept. 5): We constantly have young people leaving school with new job skills who cannot find the work they were trained to do because the jobs have been outsourced.

Corporation executives increasingly claim that “you must meet cost challenges or you won’t survive … and you won’t provide shareholder returns.” Nothing is said about the survival or returns of the dismissed employees. The corporate execs will receive their generous compensations, plus their bonuses, without interruption — until the only corporate executive left on this side of the ocean is the company president. They fail to realize that when they dismiss America’s employees, they also are dismissing America’s customers.

While skilled and experienced Americans walk the streets, Congress is contemplating tripling the allowed number of H-1B and L-1 visas for (mostly Indian high-tech) temporary workers from 65,000 to 195,000 annually. Not improbably, these people will return to India to perform the outsourced jobs, while a few remain to supervise operations. If one is sitting next to one of the guest workers, one could well be sitting next to one’s replacement without knowing it.

Our Congress is like the house cat asleep in the kitchen while the mice carry out the refrigerator; one often wonders whom they think they represent — their constituents or strangers on the other side of the pond. Don’t think it’s only the high techs who have to worry, either; accountants, engineers and architects are already feeling the pinch. Many industrialists are willing to relegate America’s genius to a seat on the bench, and the U.S. government seems to be too willing to accommodate them. The president recently signed a Free Trade Agreement with Singapore to allow workers from Singapore to work in the United States without salary restrictions or limitations on the length of time they can remain here.

It seems that many corporate executives believe that for the sake of the bottom line, America must accept a downgraded status in the world. Don’t believe it. A Japanese writer once said that Americans are the most creative people in the world and that their uniqueness is that “they do things.”

It would be hard to think of any science or technology America hasn’t created or developed to its most sophisticated level — and generously shared with all mankind: transmitting sight and sound over distance, illuminating the dark, revealing the atom and universe, developing expeditious air and ground transportation, bringing about the miracles of modern medicine and sanitation. It is not over yet.

Corporations claim that they can’t do without the special skills of imported workers and that they worry about a potential shortage. What skills do these special workers have that they have not learned, directly or indirectly, from American universities? What about Americans with the same special skills who are sitting at home, sending out their resumes — and twiddling their thumbs?

This writer has been in the stock market for more than 40 years, but it has never been his desire to get rich at the expense of fellow Americans. When American workers prosper, the whole country prospers. Outsourcing is a dilemma that must be solved and cannot be allowed to continue. The obvious solution is to abolish capital gains taxes and give American workers a level playing field with the rest of the world. Then watch the outsourcers scramble to get back on this side of the ocean.

THOMAS J. MCLOUGHLIN

Chicago

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