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Asian Call Center Workers Trained With US Tax Dollars

gManZboy writes in with a troubling story about tax dollars being used for overseas call center training. "Despite President Obama's recent call for companies to 'insource' jobs sent overseas, it turns out that the federal government itself is spending millions of dollars to train foreign students for employment in some booming career fields--including working in offshore call centers that serve U.S. businesses. The program is called JEEP, which stands for Job Enabling English Proficiency. It's available to college students in the Philippines through USAID. That's the same agency that until a couple of years ago was spending millions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money to train offshore IT workers in Sri Lanka. Congressman Tim Bishop (D-New York), told about the program on Tuesday, called it 'surprising and distressing.' Bishop recently introduced a bill that would make companies that outsource call centers ineligible for government contracts."

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  1. Re:Much like tax breaks for the wealthy.... by guanxi · · Score: 0, Troll

    What I, and many others, take issue with is that some of these people come over here and bring with them the very parts of their culture they were coming here to get away from. If you're going to come here to live your life exactly as you were living it in your home country, go back home. Immigrating to America is supposed to be about improving your life and our country; if you're not interested in doing at least one of those things, we're not interested in having you here.

    People have been complaining about immigrants since the second one set foot here (and the Native Americans probably said the same about the first European settlers), and it's always been the same complaints, that they don't integrate into the culture, learn the language etc. It was said about the Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Latinos, Chinese, etc etc.. They said the same about your ancestors.

    Lucky for them that they moved to a free country, where you have no more right to tell them how to live than visa-versa, and your interest in having them here is no more important than their interest in having you here.

    Personally, I find narrow-minded bigotry and intolerance to be the only serious problem we face. The arrogance and short-sightedness astounds me. Don't they know where these attitudes lead? Who are they to think they are so much better than everyone else?