Hard to celebrate all these lost jobs

[OhioChick]

Published: 4/2/2008 12:14 AM

The article in the March 23 business section, "Business without borders," was stunning in its poor timing and insensitivity. I felt the article like a slap in the face.

Newscasts have been filled with stories of people being terribly hurt financially in these horrible economic times.

Tens of thousands of people losing their homes and jobs. I then open the paper to read this celebration of outsourcing.

The article seemed to suggest that we should congratulate Affinity Express, an Elgin business that has grown to over 800 employees. I hesitate to even call it an Elgin business since only 15 (2 percent) of its 800 employees work locally.

Only 100 are in the United States. The rest are in India. The company plans to add another 250 employees this year, in the Philippines.

Thanks to outsourcing, the India economy is booming. Partly because of companies like this one, we are losing jobs at an alarming rate. They benefit from tax breaks that encourage the outsourcing of jobs we desperately need right here at home.

It's ironic that the ads this company produces will try and sell us products we can no longer afford to buy..

I lost my job last year when it was outsourced to, you guessed it, India.

My industry? We used to produce elementary school text books. That's right. A huge number of the textbooks your children will be reading are produced in India.

NAFTA has been a colossal mistake. When it began, I was hopeful that we would be able to have free and fair trade with the rest of the world.

Everyone seems to benefit except the American employee, if you're lucky enough to actually be employed.

I have developed my own way of handling the companies who contact me from overseas.

I tell them politely, but firmly, that I will not accept their phone calls until they call me from the United States.

Most of the time they can't understand what I've said since it's not on their cheat sheet of American phrases.

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=164331&src=

[LiberalEsto]

1. Any American company

that receives property tax breaks, government grants or contracts, or any other form of government subsidy that its paid for with our tax dollars,

and outsources jobs to other countries,

should lose all such subsidies and contracts immediately, and in some cases be required to repay the government -- including back property taxes to local governments.


I want this to become law.

[Virginian]

2. Not only outsourcing, but also importing employees

The major problem I have with Hillary is her position on increasing the number of H-1(b) work visas issued each year. This brings in foreign workers to take the jobs here that Americans do want. Many of these are IT professionals taking well paying jobs.
This influx of foreign born IT professionals seems to have started with the Y2K myth and has exploded since then.

Way back when Bush said we have created x,000 new jobs, how many were filled by these foreign employees? Last month, there was a report that the country had lost 63,000 jobs. With the agressive marketing by the H-1(b) staffing companies, their employees are the last to go.

Many of our government contract jobs are staffed with work-visa employees. Last week when the news came out that contract employees had been fired for looking into the candidates' confidential pasport information I was wondering if they were H-1(b) workers or Americans. Was it just curiosity or was it espionage? It wouldn't be too difficult for spies to infiltrate through this guest worker program and some information, as we saw with this pasport data, is accessable without a security clearance.