CNN iReport

I had a great picture of a Doctor from India giving a Caucasian American a prostate exam.

Link: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://exiledonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/prostateexam1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://exiledonline.com/%3Fs%3DMark%2520Ames&usg=__OB5UxrEBsTlp4lsQfKA1GXc5rHk=&h=450&w=600&sz=23&hl=en&start=34&um=1&tbnid=feCLSvQrhy2ErM:&tbnh=101&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpictures%2Bof%2Bindian%2Bworkers%2Bin%2Bamerica%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26start%3D20%26um%3D1

The "Ireporter Nazi editors of Truth" killed it so I'm posting again with a different picture.

For those of you who still think off shoring of call center and manufacturing jobs is and has been the biggest killer of American jobs, let me tell you from the front lines...

the loss of high paying Information Technology and Computer Science jobs, primarily to India has cost America by far more money than the loss of jobs in any other sector of the economy.

Part of the problem is just how ignorant Americans are in general, and in particular how ignorant Americans are about what IT is and how labor intensive computer science and programming are.

A woman I met on a day cruise to California's Channel Islands 3 weeks ago actually said to me that she didn't understand the big deal with programming.

She said, "it's just a bunch of ones and zeros, how hard can it be ?".  If that’s the understanding of anyone reading this or of the American public’s knowledge in general about the IT industry, then I'm probably wasting my time.

I work for one of the Big 3 private health insurers in America.  During an all IT staff meeting this past week the ratio of on-shore (H1-B & L-1) vs. off-shore IT workers from India was discussed.

The most startling statement to me was that out of a total of 4,200 IT professionals working in country for our company, 3,000 of them are from India.

To reiterate for emphasis...Over 70% of the computer programming staff for this Top 3 American Health Insurance company are visa imports from India.

Most of those jobs were previously held by American citizens.  Regardless of the excuses American corporations use to justify the import of Indian H1-B an L-1 visa workers, the bottom line is the bottom line.

Making money is the only reason corporations are in business. Corporations pay less for the H1-B and much less for the L-1 visa workers.

Beyond the initial wage savings, there are savings in bypassing Affirmative Action laws.

There are even more savings in bypassing the disastrous array of workplace protection laws that are habitually abused by American workers and predatory lawyers to the tune of billions of dollars in lost productivity and damages paid by American corporations annually.

Some facts about Indian IT workers as presented in a Washington Post article from April 2009.  Link: http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/border/H-1B.htm

"This H-1B program is a sweetheart deal for employers, in many instances, to be able to gain cheap labor from abroad.

Of wages paid annually to Indian H1-B workers, an estimated $30 billion is repatriated to India.  It accounts for over 3% of the annual Indian GNP.

During the past several months, the largest banks in the United States have announced over 100,000 job cuts, Sanders said.

Those same banks, which are receiving $150 billion in a taxpayer-funded bailout package, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers.

As the economy worsened last year and employees were laid off, the number of visas sought by the dozen banks in the AP analysis increased by nearly a third from fiscal 2008."

At least one positive benefit of a Federal government run Health Insurance program would be that they would have to hire American IT workers.  Only American citizens can work on Federal government contracts.