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Victor G. Sommers writes "Daniel Soong, who lost his programming job to Indian offshore companies, is willing to relocate to India. 'It would be really interesting to work in Bangalore,' he says. 'But I was told, "Daniel, it is against the law for you to work here. You can come here on vacation, but you can't work here."' Indian officials have told him they don't hire Americans." An article in ComputerWorld talks about the possibility of getting more than you bargained for in outsourced code.
Well, duh... As a dutchman it's also not possible for me to relocate to the USA. Unless I prove that there's no way my skills can be found in the States.
With the exception of places like the EU, it is not unusual for foreigners to just pack up and grab a job someplace else. I doubt people will be surprised by this, considering that what happened three years ago today reminded people to tighten Visa restrictions. Who knows, it may have been much easier five years ago, but today that's just the way it is. Here in Ireland there are immigrants who are qualified doctors, but because they aren't allowed to work here as anything other than a fast food counter-person, their skills are totally wasted. It's not discrimination, it's just the way the world works.
Yup...
Hidden malware in offshore products raises concerns
Story by Mark Willoughby
SEPTEMBER 11, 2003 ( COMPUTERWORLD ) - "You've go to be a little paranoid to survive in this business." -- Andrew S. Grove, chairman and founder, Intel Corp., ca. 1980
The extreme difficulty in discovering a back door hidden deep within a complex application, buried among numerous modules developed offshore in a global software marketplace, is forcing those assigned to protect sensitive national security information to take defensive actions.
The threat of hidden Trojan horses and back doors surfaced this summer when the governments of the U.S. and China announced plans to strengthen national security policies covering information processed by applications written in the global software marketplace. The private sector joined the fray with the August announcement of the File Signature Database, which will use hash values to protect software integrity from malicious additions (see story).
The National Security Agency's information assurance director, Daniel Wolf, in testimony before the House Select Committee on Homeland Security's cybersecurity subcommittee in July, called for a federal lab that would "find malicious software routines that are designed to morph and burrow into critical applications." Separately, the State Council of the People's Republic of China in August directed all government ministries to buy only Chinese software in the next upgrade cycle in an effort to encourage the development of local software companies but also to protect sensitive government data.
Mark Willoughby, CISSP, is a 20-year IT industry veteran and journalist with degrees in computer science and journalism. For the past seven years, he has tracked security and risk management start-ups and is a managing consultant at MessagingGroup, a Denver-based content development specialist.
Steps taken so far
The simmering global paranoia is rooted in the realization that no simple solution exists today, experts say. It is virtually impossible to find unauthorized malware hidden deep within a sophisticated multitiered application with data normalization, messaging middleware and other modules originating from labs in a half-dozen countries.
Robert Lentz, the U.S. Defense Department's director of information assurance, said in a written statement, "The DoD currently is studying several aspects of software assurance. The DoD has a current software acquisition policy. The group studying software assurance is looking to supplement that policy with strengthened mechanisms to increase our confidence in the security of both foreign and domestic software products."
Input, a Chantilly, Va.- based technology research firm, says federal government spending on IT products and services will grow 8.5% yearly from 2003 to 2008, from $45.4 billion to $68.2 billion. Approximately half of that spending will be in areas in which the government would like to see stronger information assurance.
Incidents of back doors compromising sensitive national security information may never be known. That's not so in the private sector.
"There have been a number of cases where software was found with intentionally planted back doors," said Shawn Hernan, team leader for vulnerability handling at the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University. "Most of these were for providing support, although no such support option was given to commercial customers. It's happened in both proprietary and open-sourced software."
Hernan said discovering hidden malware is one of the most difficult tasks facing an assurance investigator. CERT doesn't track vulnerabilities by country of origin, he added.
Software engineering processes are only now beginning to focus on providing traceability in security code. Traceability, which would allow a given line of code or a software module to be tracked back to the developer, is viewed as the Holy Grail in combating hidden malware. Traceability is also an effectiv
Get used to it. US workers cannot get jobs in Canada, Europe, Australia, etc. without first applying, and getting necessary work visas. To get a work visa, you must have an employer who has applied to get you in, and has demonstrated that there isn't local talent who could do the job you're being hired for.
Funny enough, that's pretty much the situation here (except for the illegal immigrants that is.) If you really want to work overseas, start applying for foreign citizenship/work permits.
More than that - when my wife moved here she was offered an opportunity for a fastrack work permit while she waited for her green card. Yes, up and up, through the INS.
That means she could have been working within a matter of months instead of the years it took to become a permanent resident, with no special specifications about the job needing to be met.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Have you ever heard of the H-1B Visa program? H-1B workers continue to flood a terrible job market. During 2001 and 2002, 799,100 H-1B visas were issued and renewed despite a 6 percent national unemployment. Read some speech excerpt by U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo.
It's time to terminate the the H-1B visa program.
Zoid.com
You can get a working visa for India. I have a friend that works there. It's just like anywhere else in the world in that respect.
I expect this guy just got a tourist visa and turned up in India expecting to get employed, and the person told him he couldn't legally employ him, which would be true because he had the wrong type of visa.
Is there anywhere in the world where you can just turn up without a working visa and legally work? Not that I know.
I wish the Slashdot editors would just spend five minutes googling to check the validity of this type of thing before posting.
Disclaimers: I was born in India. However, my family moved to USA since I was 14. I consider myself American.
Fact #1: Americans (and others) can work in India
Fact #2: Lots of Americans (and others) do work in India
Fact #3: A Visitors visa is different from a Work visa (just like USA)
Fact #4: If you travel on visitors visa, you cannot change it to work visa unless you leave the country first. Basically you cannot transfer visas without changing your port of entry (guess what? just like the good ol' USA)
Fact #5: This guy traveled to India on a work visa and applied for a job
Fact #6: Following fact #4, he got denied a visa.
BTW, all these facts are responses to USA's visa policies. India has a repuation for treating citizen of outher countries the same way other countries treats it's citizens. For example, USA charges a fee for each applicant of a visa (may it be student, work or travel) to people from India. Guess what India does? They charge a fee to Americans who want a visa to India too. Nepal doesn't charge a fee for Indian citizens. So, India doesn't charge a fee to Nepalese citizens. So, that is it guys: tit-for-tat.
However, moving tech jobs offshore is bad, and so are H1B visas in todays economy. They were good during the boom days when we couldn't hire enough people.
now supporting:
cmdrTaco for president '04
michael for oval office intern summer '05
H1-B visa? Anyone?
India working visa, anyone? Contact your local Indian embassy for details.
This story is bunk.
Having been in the Bangalore area in the past year, I think I can safely say I could live comfortably there on less than $1000 US per year. $200 a month is a great salary in India; I was there building houses with Habitat for Humanity and the average day laborer's pay was less than $1.
nuke the moon
Uhh...US EOE laws forbid discrimination on the basis of national origin. So it would be illegal discrimination here.
I also work with people from Tata, and they do employ American citizens, to fill much the same sort of job responsibilities that my firm does.
[
My fiance' is presently working in the U.S. on an H1-B Visa. A quick refresher:
i ng .jobs.market.in.the.US.
H1-B visas are only granted to persons with the equivalent of a 4-year Bachellor's degree. Part of the application process involves going through a degree equivalency comparison by an accredited lawyer. My fiance' has a Masters' in Computer Science.
H1-B visa holders have a minimum salary stipulation. I believe the last time I checked it was $35,000 US. My fiance is being paid the same salary as the person that held her position before her, which is substantially higher than minimum.
The position she was hired for was unfilled for some time as the company could not find someone with her required database/programming/java skills locally (we reside in a small midwestern community of ~150,000 population including neighboring villages and suburbs.)
The real culprit here is twofold:
1. The L-1 Visa. The L-1 has *substantially* lower pay requirements. These are the job-stealing visas.
2. Corporate greed and government inaction. CEO's just see their programming expense as a budget line item to be reduced, like finding a cheaper widget supplier. Government inaction is self-explanitory. They are closing the door too slowly.
H1-B's are typically attracting highly educated Western Europeans to the U.S. for a number of reasons. Salaries that are 1.5 to 2x higher than back home (not 5-8x as compared to India), A significant other in the states (grin) or a sense of adventure and desire to try the U.S. for a while. I find it baffling that in the wake of the articles regarding Teller's passing that we're questioning the H1-B situation. Post WWII, alot of our brainpower came from Western Europe. Highly skilled, highly educated persons who desire to become U.S. citizens and melt into the pot are what strengthens the U.S.
It.is.the.L-1.visa.that.is.killing.the.programm
PERIOD.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
Please listen to an Honest Indians defence I cannot believe that C I O could publish such a stupid article !!!! IT IS NOT ILLEGAL FOR EXPATS TO WORK IN INDIA ! How do I know this , Well we set up a company makin watches in collaboration with a jap company. The jap company being the majority shareholder sends two japanese managers. All the japanese company had to do was get a WORK PERMIT, Which believe me is a piece of cake compared to the shit we go through to get a h1b or even a student visa. All major US companies and mnc's who set up base in India have a number of managers who are actually expats. In fact the CEO odf Coke India etc. etc are US citizens. In fact articles in indian business magazines have pointed out that there is a recent trend even among Indian companies to hire expat managers. And if u think that they hire only coats, That also is not true. Many Indian software comanies also hire techies although they have to be *highly specialized* However if some of u nice unemployed people want to shift to India, Think of what you are going 2 put urself through. A TechWorker in India with all the qualifications of Daniel Soong may have to work for as low as 200-300$. Believe me thats what my friends here earn! All of u who think that bannin the h1b is the answer may be sadly mistaken. Outsourcing may be a more serious problem than H1B and also realize that artificially creating hurdles rarely solves problems. The companies who are outsorcin 2 India are the ones that are doing this out of desperation alias economic recession. Note that america could not really prevent a lot of manfacturing activities 2 be shifted to bases like China, Malaysia. Banning the h1b also will not prevent the long term ousourcing phenomena.
In order to work in India, you need a work permit. Not knowing exactly the procedure for obtaining a work permit in India, I can only speculate that one will normally be issued only for jobs/diciplines for which there is no qualified native applicants.
That's the same way it works in the USA. In order for foreigners to get a work permit (a H1-B visa), the prospective employer must:
The H1-B visa is temporary (expires after 3 years, can be renewed for a grand total of 6 years). This is kind of unique - not many other countries have this restriction.
Finally, a H1-B visa is tied to a particular employer (which some other countries do, but not all), so the holder cannot change jobs without going through this process again.
Given these restrictions, only a small percentage of American companies (usually mid-size companies that otherwise have troubles finding qualified personel) are willing to sponsor H1-B visas for foreign workers.
In a country of ~250 million people, an influx of 150-200 thousand legal (H1-B) immigrant workers per year is nothing - indeed, a much lower percentage than other western countries (including my native Norway).
Of course, illegal immigration is much larger, and a different problem alltogether. Too bad some of the less intelligent elements of this society is unable to distinguish the (modest) number of legal immigrants from the (huge) number of illegal immigrants.
The process of getting a permanent residency ("green card") -- remember, the H1-B is only temporary -- is even harder, and many more steps are involved (including INS, the department of labor, and a handful of other agencies -- all of which are understaffed and overwhelmed).
I was personally on a H1-B visa for nearly the allowed 6 years -- it took me that long to apply for (and receive) a green card. I am in a field where there is still a lot of demand for labor, and I am from a country for which parts of the application/qualification process goes quicker than for most. (Yes, the processing time of one of the agencies involved in the serialized green card application process depends on where you are from).
Re: Outsourcing to India in general, I can only say: Tough. The USA is getting what it asked for - a more globalized economy. If the US gets easier access to foreign markets, then foreign countries get easier access to the US market as well. Indian-produced goods and services (whether managed by US companies or not) can enter the US market more freely, just like US goods and services have already entered other markets more freely.
The bad news for industrialized countries is that this will level the global playing field w.r.t. salaries, standards of living, etc. The good news for the developing word is the same. All the same, it means further concentration of power an money in the hands of large, multinational corporations, whether they be incorporated in the USA or elsewhere.
I mean we let people from all over come here and work. Ummmmm, except we don't.
u rJ ob.htm- 10-03.htm
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Um, YES we do!
The H-1 and L-1 Visa programs were invented specifically for this reason. In the US, we have no standard like those I've read about in Australia and elsewhere. Well, we have some regulations, but recently they've gone completely unenforced. If a company in this country can hire someone from overseas to do a job for which they're currently paying an American worker, and pay that worker half or less what the American makes, the company is under no pressure not to hire the foreign worker. It's happening for real. In the REAL world.
http://www.rescueamericanjobs.org/
http://www.local6.com/money/2381343/detail.html
http://www.thenetworkadministrator.com/LosingYo
http://www.house.gov/delauro/press/2003/L1_bill_7
Further, US jobs now are being sent TO other countries. By some estimates, 2 million plus jobs in the next few years. Than't a HUGE chunk of the IT sector.
http://www.cio.com/archive/090103/backlash.html (accoring to this article, the number is like 10% of IT jobs)
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/947478.asp?cp1=1
http://www.techsunite.org/news/techind/030722_ibm
http://comment.cio.com/comments/13404.html
The reason this is a story here, is because a good number of us work in the IT sector. This has HUGE implications for us.
Consider the fact that many colleges around the nation are scaling back IT programs (my stepmother teaches various IT classes at a local college) and thike about what that means for those of us who spent money on educations or who have been relying on our IT experience as means to acquire jobs.
The economy and job prospects have been bad enough just dealing with the economic slowdown without having to deal with the jobs that are still there going away from the US (I know, I was unemployed for the greater portion of 2002, and I'm only employed now because I new the guy who ran the IT department for the company I work for now).
In many countries in the EU and also in Australia, they cannot hire a non-citizen unless they CANNOT find a qualified candidate who IS a citizen. The US government needs to step up and implement some similar legislation. Even if you think about this from a lawmakers perspective, an American who makes $50,000 a year pays a whole lot more than an unemployed American and the foreigner who takes his job for $30,000. They'll see a WHOLE LOT less than that from the unemployed American and the job that's no longer in the US! Even the companies that do use outsourcing are killing their own market. How many computers or programs or Coke ayr you going to buy when you're unemployed, and can the foreigner who's making half of what you were making pick up the slack? I don't think so...
Anyway, I'm done...
Are you sure it's not because you're an incompetent hack?
Many people are sure - because their company hires a bunch of H1Bs, uses their higher-paid US workers to TRAIN them to do jobs equivalent to the US workers', then fires the US workers.
Happens all the time in Silicon Valley - both in big and small companies. Occasionally a large company (Sun was one) gets so blatant about it - dumping whole departments - that they get sued.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) a citizen of a NAFTA country may work in a professional occupation in another NAFTA country if the applicant meet certain requirements.
American professionals may easily work in Canada, for example, and vice versa.Anybody want a peanut?
1. Before you start beating up on Indians, remember that it's American managers that do the outsourcing, and the ones that benefit the most.
2. If the Tata company didn't hire him in US because he was American, he could (and should) take legal recourse.
3. You can work in India as an American. Thousands of other Americans do, even in high tech jobs. You need to :
a. Get a job in an Indian company. Like Intel
b. Apply for a 'business visa for employment at your local Indian embassy/consulate
And go.
The economy sucks, but that doesn't mean you put the blame on other people who like you are trying to work for a living.
I read constantly about stories like this, and the older thread about about how a secret memo shows that IBM are planning to move huge quantities of their best jobs out of the US and into India over the next few years.
The central issue for me that links these stories is not so much the relocation of manufacturing and productive jobs from the core of an empire to peripheral client states. This has happened before (Roman Empire, United Kingdom, and so on) and will happen again.
No, for me the real issue is one of freedom of movement for labour versus freedom of movement for capital. Because of their many advantages, corporations are "gaming" the international political system to produce labour arbitrage. They have lobbied hard for their right to move capital between countries at will. What we have now is globalization that serves corporations, not globalization that serves people.
This is the fundamental ideological underpinning of this discourse. Corporations and politicians have structured a political system that implicitly and irrevocably favours the movement of capital over labour. Why should this be so? Could it be different? These are questions that need to be addressed. Different political movements are examining them in different ways.
Meanwhile, for ordinary people who, for the most part, have no greater or more fundamental asset to offer than their labour, their options are a lot more restricted. US companies send jobs south into Mexico with minimal regulation because of NAFTA, but Mexican people are not equally free to move their bodies north into the US. This unequal treatment creates the exploitative arbitrage that the corporations milk for profits.
This also explains a fundamental difference between the USA, NAFTA, and the European Union project. I've noticed most Americans really don't "get" the EU because their expectations are constrained by NAFTA and the halting of the US expansion within North America.
At its core the EU project is very simple, but very powerful. It holds out the promise of regional improvement by granting freedom of access to a unified market for both capital and labour. As it expands, relentlessly it seems, it allows poorer countries to join, once they restructure their political, legal, and social systems to bring them into some degree of harmony with the EU consensus. In return for this social transformation, all the citizens of member countries can enjoy free and unfettered movement throughout all other EU countries (admittedly and annoyingly, several EU countries impose different temporary restrictions on some new member country citizens). In essence it's very similar to the freedom of movement that US citizens enjoy throughout all 50 States.
This is a powerful lure. For all the talk of "old Europe" and "new Europe", the former Soviet Bloc countries are not clamouring to create bilateral trade agreements with the US... they are fighting tooth and nail to join the EU, and so submit their trade relations with non-EU countries to the fiat of Brussels. This yearning for EU membership has produced and is producing massive social and political change across eastern Europe.
However, it seems that the US project has stalled at its current borders. I don't see the US engaged in a determined effort to expand south, to create a distributed American citizenship that would be a beacon for social progress and political aspirations throughout the Americas and the world. Immigration isn't any sort of answer: it's tedious, socially disruptive, and over-regulated. Try opening the floodgates, as the EU has done for its member countries, and within a few decades the improvements in both old and new member States will be enormous and unprecedented.
But that's a fantasy. People today in the poorer countries of Central America, so close to the US, nonetheless know explicitly that their relation to the US and the member States within can never be based on equality and access, but will instead be permanently structured as clientist an
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