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Westerners Migrating to India for Jobs
shonagon53 writes "The BBC reports that quite a few young European tourists stick around in India to work for eSolutions companies who contract outsourced work from European companies. The salaries are mediocre, but you get free housing, great food, snacks à volonté and a free taxi ride to work each morning.
Is this the first wave of the much anticipated reverse-migration which will be a hallmark of the 21st century?"
The problem with your theory is that while capital is free to move across borders, workers are not. Some countries have very strict immigration laws. If this was the Era of the Nomad then one billion Chinese would have already moved to America.
That's great as long as you don't actually want to do anything other with your life other than work. Don't put down any roots or try to make friends or anything.
Radiologists are getting outsourced because x-ray machines produce shitty images and there simply aren't enough radiologists being trained to meet demands in the US & Canada.
Invent a better x-ray machine and you could put radiologists out of business faster than you could break a leg.
Notice how dedicated radio operators have gone the way of the dodo? Telephone operators? People who add up bills manually? Some day radiologists will be in the same bucket as buggy whip manufacturers.
Most european countries have substantial socialist components to thier governments. This means that when these people quit working they'll have
-Free healthcare
-It won't be nearly as expensive (in most cases) for their children to attend university in europe
-In some countries, they'll be given a pension to live off of when they retire
In the U.S., things are a bit different. You have a retirement fund that you need to plug money into. You need to save for your kid's college education. You need health insurance. Now, you might be able to live quite well in India if work there, but the salary that you get is so small compared to what you recieve if you worked in the U.S., that you really won't be able to provide money for any of these things. I dunno, it might be a good experience for a couple of years, but as an American, I wouldn't plan on sticking around if I did it.
Aussies commonly take a year or two travel vacations during their lives. The popular ages are just after school and when the kids are gone.
Amerians are so hard up about working and consuming they miss the important things in life.
Great..... And you could have done that back in the 80's, too. I'm talking the 1880's.
What you're talking about is NOT "Globalization". You've only been hitting the 1st world countries.
Globalization is about exploiting the 3rd world countries. Go and live there for a few years and see if your attitude doesn't change.
The article talks about very few foreigners coming to India and taking up jobs in call centres. Just one or two isolated incidents really dont show that people from europe are actually migrating to India. Also call centres dont offer too high pays as compared to the Indian IT companies and the work experience gained is also of little value. Also one doesnt know for how much time call centres will be around in India, so they are really thought of as temporary sources of income which mainly students use as a source of pocket money.
If they are coming here and taking our jobs and we are going there and taking theirs... why dont we just work in our own countries. Article doesnt make any sense or would more aptly be titled "Westerners who like to travel take temporary jobs while wandering." rather than reverse immigration.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
This is a "work visa". Not citizenship.
The kids going over there are working for a salary and, eventually, will be sent back to their home country. It's easy to explain with two examples.
#1. Euro-kid goes to India and works for 2 years. He makes a "mediocre" wage (1/10th what he'd make back home). He banks it all and lives on cheap rice, curry and lentils. After 2 years he goes home with $X (or whatever his currency is). $X is 1/10 that he'd make in 2 years at home under the same conditions.
#2. Indian guy goes to the US and works for 2 years. He makes a "mediocre" wage for a US job (still 10x what he'd make back home). Banks it all, eats rice, curry and lentils. After 2 years he, goes home. He now has 10x the money he'd have after 2 years of working in India.
The effective difference is 100x between the two.
Work visas are only good for making money in a wealthy country and then going home to a poor country. They suck for working in a poor country and then going home to a wealthy country.
How about d) Realize it is there but deliberatly decide to not live my life according to economics.
Sorry, but life is too short to have my life dictated by some politician/multi-national company.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Right-O.
I'm certain that that expensive "Western"
college education that you borrowed money
to get can EASILY be paid off with the big
paycheck you're going to get from that Indian
IT company. And the storage company that you
trusted all of your worldly possessions with
will happily accept rupees, and a 1/10 of the
per month agreed to storage payment. Oh, and
God help you if you should get sick while over
there working in India -- most Western medical
plans will not cover your overseas "deployment".
(Well, you could rely on the herbal remedies
available locally -- just put enough money aside
to have your body shipped home to Mum and Pop.)
Thanks, but no thanks.
You know what you make a hell of a sense, what I reckon is that if even say 1000 indians realize that they have lost job, you won't be surprised that Indian govt. will pass a regulation banning such intakes.
I remember some time back there were riots in india when migrant labour from other states{within india only} had started to come into Bihar. Many were killed.
So I just hope these european guys know what they are getting into.
And you havent seen 3rd world salaries very soon
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
God help you if you should get sick while over
there working in India -- most Western medical
plans will not cover your overseas "deployment".
(Well, you could rely on the herbal remedies
available locally -- just put enough money aside
to have your body shipped home to Mum and Pop.)
Actually, India is becoming somewhat of a medical tourist destination, you probably won't have to worry about medical bills and health insurance so much if you "self-insure" -- the health insurance companies don't seem to have their claws in the system over there like they do in the US so medicine is still reasonably affordable, especially for someone with a decent (indian) job.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
We're all currently discussing:
- how good your standard of living would be in India on a UK salary
- how long it would take for the Indian company to make you redundant (currently guess: 4 hours)
- what the Indian employment laws are like.
I am not in the UK but I would take this offer seriously. You could stay and look for a job right now but a UK salary in India would go along way and so what if it lasts 6 months or a year?
The worst thing that will happen is you get to see India first hand and become worldly and not miopic.
Say sure as long as you get a return ticket.
Many people live a fair distance from their families, myself included.. I'm willing to move for work but i'm not willing to traverse continents.. The further you live from Family the less you see them.. IM, emailing or talking on the phone isn't the same as being there with them. You miss out on ALOT of stuff.. If you don't agree with that then you don't have a sense of family or you haven't live away from them long enough to realize.
I've lived away from home for 7 years now.. and I miss it more and more each day... I've missed so much i'm afraid i'm going to regret it down the road.. i'm already starting to regret it now.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
He is not pushing for more illegal workers... He's just trying to get them to be treated as human beings.
As you might now southern U.S. states are very mexican-unfriendly even when a U.S. company sponsors a mexican or if a mexican wants to go shopping to the U.S. you get stupid comments by immigration people like: 'how's the crop this year?'
It just shows that no matter where you are from education means everything.
My penguin ate my sig
>Communications technology makes physical location nearly irrelevant.
How are you going to raise a child through IM? How are you going to take care of your parents through ICQ?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I'm certain that that expensive "Western" college education that you borrowed money to get...
I believe you just put your finger, perhaps unwittingly, on the big problem with Americans and globalization: Americans have to pay a ton for their education, putting them in debt right from the start, whereas in most of the world, the education is heavily subsidized by the government. So while the rest can get educated then move to any other country that fits their lifestyle, the educated Americans are restricted to a few wealthy countries, at least until they pay off their huge debts.
Very good points. The problem is that capitalism hasn't got any checks and balances. People, as a whole, are to short-sighted to realize what they are doing to themselves until it is to late.
Everyone wants cheaper stuff so companies find ways to make cheaper stuff which requires them either reduce the quality, reduce their own profit margins, or pay less to produce the same items. To some degree they do reduce the quality but that can only go so far before people don't want the items anymore. Those in charge can't reduce their profit margins because if they do they'll be removed from control of the company and someone else will be put in their place. That means they have to reduce the cost of producing the items. That means more automation and cutting back on the wages they are paying. So, to simplify, lower prices mean fewer jobs and lower wages. Sure, we can't all afford to buy a Porshe but you should think about the companies that make the products you buy when comparing products. The Walmart-economy will cut all our throats. You'll notice that they no longer mark everything at Walmart as 'Made in the USA.'. There is good reason for that. Demand more locally made products and demand that more of the companies you buy from pay fair wages to their employees. IMO it's okay if a product is made in India, if I can't get the same product made locally, but I want to know the people making that product are earning a comparable living wage to those that live in the US.
I think the US needs to boost it's education system too. Highschool degrees have become almost worthless because highschool graduates aren't required to know anything. We don't pay our teachers enough so we don't have enough teachers and many that we do have are not that well educated. Also I think that as long as highschool degrees are worthless for getting jobs that the government should make free public colleges for getting your Bachelors degree. There should be no extra paperwork or requirements - it should be as easy as signing up to highschool. We should make it easier for everyone to get advanced degrees also.
Without correcting those problems we're going to have our asses kicked by globalization. A lot of people think the US will always be a world power but that is just arrogance. It's all to easy to fall from greatness if you don't make an effort to maintain that position.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
>you take your family with you
You can't drag your 80 year-old mother around the world everytime you change jobs.
Ask your cousin if she rather prefer to raise their child moving to a new culture/country each year or staying in one neighbourhood until the child is 18.
Ask any 12 year old if they want to leave their school/friends/way-of-life for some alien culture. Hell, try asking him to turn off the tv and clean his room for that matter, if you think child raising is so easy.
>Done right raising a family while travelling the globe
Anything is possible if "done right". Raising a family "right" is hard enough in a consistant environment.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
And chilling out after work in Holland really is second to none on this planet.
Being an army brat isn't the same thing.
You have more of a support structure there. No matter where you go, you're going to have other families around with other people who speak the same language as you. You have a lot fewer safety issues both physical and cultural.
Your figures ignore the taxes that, at least in the US, will be deducted as withholding from salary. $50k after US and state (esp. California and NY where so many Indian workers are located) surely comes to less than $35k net and so the savings end up much lower. Then again, H1-b is usually closer to six years than two.
A lot of the jobs I've seen there were between US$2-$5/hr which sucks until you've been downsized here in the US and you're unemployment runs out. You could work for $5.75/hr or whatever minimum wage is here and be unable to pay for a house and food or you could move to India and work for a similar wage and have a house and food given to you. My rent for a small one bedroom apartment in Las Vegas is $1000/month. Having a comparable place for free would make the rest of my money go a lot further.
I'd be curious is to the quality of housing and food they have. My apartment is expensive IMO but it really isn't very nice. The buildings are cheap and probably don't even meet the legal standards of saftey. There isn't much space. Short of dirt floors and lots of bugs I doubt that the free places in India could be much worse.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I'm curious about wages. Presumably one of the reasons people were outsourcing to India in the first place was because of lower wages (and expenses in general.) Wouldn't moving to India then, mean taking a paycut? And would the paycut be lower or greater than the savings in expenses? :-/
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
You act like there is a lot of new small companies forming and that our economy has more than enough jobs for every American. What country have you been living in the past few years? Did you not notice the jobs moving to India during the recession? When theres not enough jobs, you move to the jobs.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
That the European welfare states are collapsing-- but they just keep plugging along.
But not as well as Britain after Britain made their economy more market-oriented.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
There are signs that 'staying home' may not be the economically 'safe' thing to do anymore. This has nothing to do with outsourcing or offshoring, and everything to do with the imminent collapse of the debt-bubble in the US.
The DOW, as of yesterday, is up one-half of one-percent from the beginning of the year. Investors are starting to look elsewhere. Meanwhile, some fairly respectable economists are starting to see only a 10% chance of avoiding a coming economic meltdown - I don't just mean the little recession we just had, I mean a serious change in the standard of living.
If you are unemployed, a low-paying job is not a pay cut.
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