National Guard-Which Border?

[SuperChuck]

If you think simply being smarter than the Indian job shops is going to save you from outsourcing, no offense bruddah, but you have not been paying attention. I have had years of experience with everything from my ISP to game support, to software companies who have outsourced to India. I can tell you now, a clump if dirt is smarter than those clowns and it doesn't matter to corporate America. It's all about big paychecks for upper management and board members and huge golden parachutes. Consumers and employees can go rot.

If outsourcing to India was a golden bullet, the software industry would crash tomorrow. Just as you've pointed out, most of the Indian job shops do an awful job. I've heard of several companies that have actually been moving jobs back to the US because the quality of work is so bad.

The equilibrium point will probably fall where design and technical work is done mostly in the US and mundane keyboard pounding is mostly done abroad. I work hard to be dynamic and keep my skills up, but many of the people I have worked with do just one thing (C on AIX, for example) and usually don't do it well.

And now we are losing manual labor to illegals. Not everybody can be a doctor or lawyer. Not everybody wants to be a doctor or lawyer. They should still be able to raise a family and have a home and pay their bills. I know many hard working people in the contruction and landscaping industry who have lost their jobs and their buinesses because they can't compete with companies that hire nothing but illegals and pay them $3 or $4 an hour off the books. That's not arrogance or laziness.

Would it be any different if these were legal immigrants?

The reason we abolished slavery in the north was mainly due to the huge influx of immigrants who would do awful work for next to nothing. It was cheaper to hire a bunch of expendible Irish to work in hellish factory conditions than it was to maintain slaves.

If someone is willing to work for 3 bucks an hour, they're going to get work, whether they're legal or not. We need to start taking advantage of all that American citizenship offers us and stop aspiring to dig ditches.

My family came over with a couple sheep and started farming. My grandfather had an 8th grade education, worked as a cobbler, and managed to put all 3 of his kids through college. His 3 grandkids all have college educations and have careers (well, not my sister, but she's an artist). We dig our own ditches (we still think we're greenhorns), but we don't dig anyone else's...

[Shagaroo]

Would it be any different if these were legal immigrants?

Yes. Citizens, whether born here or not, are not as willing to work for nothing, be taken advantage of, and hide from any government official on their own accord allowing employers to treat them like garbage. I am eyeball deep in illegals, and legal hispanics, I deal with it daily. You don't find people who made the effort to get here legally living in a house with 20 other people and working for $3 an hour off the record and letting themselves be used as slave labor.